Mon horloge va vers arrière. Or, learning a language turns back the clock.

Happy January folks! My 2015 resolution of BE BETTER AT EVERYTHING is going well. I’ve just had a very productive morning.

Job 1: I successfully located the little grey plastic funnel dishwasher-attachment-thing, thus enabling me to refill the dishwasher salt for the first time. Having been given extremely specific instructions on maintaining all household appliances in the apartment I’m renting, I even watched 3 different youtube videos on how to use said funnel to insert said salt before copying the whole process VERY CAREFULLY. Don’t worry – there’s supposed to be some weird water in there already, and it’s supposed to take a surprisingly large amount of salt to fill the thing. DISHWASHER MAINTENANCE COMPLETE.

Job 2: I continued my mission to use increasingly more coffee and increasingly less water in my coffee-machine. My goal is to see how far I can go before the stuff that comes out would technically be termed mud.

Job 3: French homework. Instead of doing this in a 15-minute rush before my French class on a Wednesday, this week I am grown-up and mature and doing it 2 days in advance in a neat and organised fashion. This week, my homework was a written composition about how I spent New Year, using at least 20 verbs and at least 2 past tenses.

I’ve just finished. It took ages. I drank all the coffee and shouted at Google Translate three times, but it was worth it. I was feeling pretty smug by the end – I’ve used the word ‘twinkle’ for goodness’ sake, and 3 (that's right, 3!) reflexive verbs.

And then I read it back to myself, and realised that when I write in French, I sound like a small child. I have completely regressed. I should probably change the dots over the i’s into small hearts for truer authenticity.

Don’t believe me? Here, for your amusement, is the English translation of what I wrote. On the plus side, it doubles as a blog entry about New Year, albeit through the eyes of a 9-year-old (who drinks champagne).

My New Year's Eve

I spent New Year’s Eve in Paris. After Christmas, which I spent at my parents’ house in England, I went to London. When I arrived in London, I met my friends at St Pancras Station. It was the day before New Year’s Eve.

On the 31^st December, it was cold, but it was also sunny. So, we went to the Jardin des Plantes and we walked about. After that, we visited the Evolution Museum, which is a museum in the Jardin des Plantes with lots of information about Natural History. The panda was my favourite animal.

Then, we walked to the Arab World Institute. There, we climbed up to the ninth floor to see the magnificent view. It was awesome!

Later, we were walking in the Jardin des Tuileries when the sun set. The sky had lots of different shades of pink and purple. Suddenly, the Eiffel Tower started twinkling. It was perfect!

That evening, we returned to my house, where another friend joined us. We cooked a traditional cassoulet, we drank champagne, and for dessert we ate a Christmas Chocolate Log. On the log, there was a small model of Father Christmas. It was the first time that I saw Father Christmas holding an axe! 

It was a really cool New Year’s Eve!