Grab a cup of tea (or something stronger😜, I won’t judge), pull up a chair, and let’s have a proper catch-up.
If you’ve been following my journey here on the blog, you know I have lots of stories to share and that my life is also a bit like a London weather forecast: brilliant sunshine one minute, a sudden downpour the next, and occasionally a bit of unexpected hail just to keep you on your toes.
We have officially made it to the end of term five. Five terms, people! That is roughly 30 weeks of convincing teenagers that learning the difference between le and la is a matter of life and death, all while navigating the chaotic streets of London and putting up with an erratic weather that behaves like a woman on her period. And guess what? I am currently writing this from the absolute sanctuary of my half-term break! No alarm clocks. No school bells. Just me, my balcony and a surprisingly warm London breeze in the mornings, and a mountain of marking that I am choosey-blindly ignoring for at least the next twenty four hours or more!
But before we look forward, we absolutely must look back at some of the glorious madness that was this past term.
Being a secondary school French teacher in London is a unique kind of extreme sport. You need the stamina of a marathon runner, the diplomatic skills of a UN ambassador, and the poker face of a seasoned Las Vegas gambler.
Let’s start with break duty. Ah, break duty. It’s meant to be a time for teachers to get some fresh air and to simply supervise the kids so they are still safe while playing, but really, it’s a goldmine for stand-up comedy material. My students have realized that if they come up to me with enough drama, they can get me to smile a bit more. Just a couple of weeks ago, a student marched up to me with her “girlz-girlz” with the utmost gravity, looking like she was about to report a national security breach.
« Ms. you need to listen to person xyz’s french rap! »
Me: amazing! Let’s hear it…
She started….
I had to gather all the strength I had in me and channel it into self-control in order not to burst into laughter. I applauded her when she was done and added an excited “bon travail!!! That was lovely!” And I prayed that the trumpet wouldn’t sound that very minute because I had just said the opposite of what I was thinking.
The sheer passion with which they also snitch on each other over the most trivial things cracks me up every single day. I hear someone making some silly noises with a paper plane and want to find out who so I count…
“You… 1, 2…5 of you, if I don’t get to know who made that silly noise when the instruction I clearly gave was to be quiet and to do your work, you’re all in trouble and will be sanctioned with an after school detention.”
Oh I found the person in less than 5 seconds! Because my students know me…I tell them bluntly if they don’t behave properly, I’ll give them an after school detention, call their parents and they are welcome to stay in school with me because I have got that time for them since I always leave after 7pm(don’t ask me why…the to-do list is always long and I teach all day almost every day…there’s usually no time)
And oh my lunch detentions are the most annoying for them. Instead of going to play with their friends, I just keep them seated with extra tasks that annoy them. The break time detentions on Thursday and Fridays when I’m on duty also annoy them. Seeing their friends playing yet all they can do is to look on because they are on detention. With time, these have helped them understand they will not get away with anything and a whole school detention isn’t the only form of sanction(because some of them actually want to be in detention with their friends so they deliberately behave poorly). Asem ooo.
Then, of course, there are the classroom sanctions. Generally, managing behaviour in a secondary school in this country requires a delicate balance of authority and humour. I try to keep things light, but sometimes the reasons I have to give out sanctions are so absurd I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Of course, it hasn’t all been a walk in the park. Every teacher has that one class. You know the one. You look at your timetable on a Tuesday morning, see their name, and immediately contemplate if you could forge a sudden illness. This year, my nemesis was a particular group containing four boys who apparently formed a sacred pact to resist me and the French language at all costs.
Teaching them wasn’t just difficult; it was an Olympic-level feat of behaviour management. I spent a lot of time saying, “Sit down,” “Taisez-vous!” “Why are you talking while I am talking?” and parking them in other classrooms. There were days I dreaded walking through that door. It felt like a constant tug-of-war where I was pulling for their futures, and they were pulling for a laugh from their mates. Children!
But even with that stress of the Apocalypse, we survived. And looking back, even that chaos has its own strange, energetic charm. They keep me 16, I always say, or perhaps they’re giving me invisible grey hairs—it’s a very fine line, I suppose.🤣
It’s easy to laugh and keep things bubbly when I’m performing in front of nearly thirty teenagers. But a lifestyle blog is about real life, isn’t it? And if I’m being completely honest with you all, when the school bell rings and the halls go quiet, the contrast can be incredibly loud.
Life, generally, has a funny way of happening all at once. One moment I’m riding high on the joy of a hilarious classroom interaction, and the next, I’m sitting in the quiet of my bedroom, feeling the heavy, suffocating reality of loneliness. It’s a strange thing to admit, and it feels almost taboo to say out loud, but sometimes the silence is deafening and defeating.
There are moments when the silence feels wider than the English Channel. You can share a roof, a kitchen, and a life with someone, yet still feel like a ghost drifting through the rooms. Sometimes the ache of feeling like nobody genuinely cares about me, or truly loves me for who I am, flaws and all, catches me off guard and takes my breath away. But just as I always tell my students “C’est la vie!” when they respond to my “ça va ?” with “bof” or “ça va mal, I choose to say again- C’est la vie!
I keep going. Every single day, I make the conscious choice to show up. To stay sane. For me. For myself.
I get out of bed, I put on my brightest dress, and I push forward. I am doing this for myself. I am pushing to give myself a beautiful, fulfilled life because I refuse to let the loneliness consume me. I fight for my sanity every day because, deep down in my soul, I know I am not truly abandoned. I know that God loves me. I know that He thinks I am precious, rare, and deeply special, even on the days when it feels like the rest of the world has forgotten I exist. That faith is the anchor that keeps me from drifting away in the storm.
Which brings us back to right now. The present moment. The glorious, heavenly half-term break!😁
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the sheer ecstasy of waking up without an alarm clock? For the next week, my body clock is the boss. On Monday morning, I won’t rush out the door clutching a lukewarm travel mug. Instead, I will make a proper breakfast, step out onto my balcony, and just stand there and take in some good morning Vitamin D.
London has actually decided to play nice, and the weather is beautifully warm. Feeling the actual heat of the sun on my face while holding a plate of toast will feel like a luxury reserved for royalty.
Standing on the balcony in the sun would seem to me as if I were sitting on a beach in the South of France drinking hot tea slowly, sipping mocktails by a pool – yet a massive pile of papers to mark would stare at me! But we won’t care much….we will do our best!
Reading a bestselling novel for fun? Yes, maybe…. I’m currently reading “Behind the net” by Stephanie Archer and I love love it!
I’m not going to let assessment marking ruin my vibe. Absolutely not. I intend to fully and unapologetically enjoy this break. The marking will get done (eventually) and the deadlines will be met, but the rest and the sunshine take first priority.
Amidst the joy of the holiday, however, there is a shadow looming on the horizon. A week from now, my dear auntie will finally be laid to rest.
Every morning, I do my best to pick myself up, put a smile on my face, and find something to cheer myself up. But unfortunately , grief isn’t something you can just smile away. It sits there, a dull ache in the background of everything I do. It breaks my heart every single time I remember that I will never see her again. I won’t get to hear her laughter, or sit in the kitchen with her while she cooks those incredible meals, or lie down next to her at night chatting about everything and nothing until we drift off to sleep when I’m home.
What makes it even harder—what truly shatters my heart—is the knowledge that I cannot travel to Ghana for the funeral. I won’t be there to say my final goodbyes. I won’t be there to see my one true best friend one last time. Being miles away in London while your heart and your heritage are across the ocean is a specific kind of pain that is incredibly hard to bear.
But if there is one thing you should know about me by now, it is this: I am a fighter. I am Nikos Lâham.
My heart might be shattered right now, and the silence within and without might feel like an unwelcome roommate I can’t seem to evict, but I am absolutely, categorically never giving up. No matter how hard the road gets, no matter how steep the hill, I am going to keep climbing.
Even if love and affection feels distant, I believe in its power when it’s genuine. So I’m always going to believe in that. Still believe even if people ignore you when you’re probably going through dark times and you say the wrong things and so they resort to ignoring you and telling you they can be reached by mail because they cannot ignore your flaws. Still believe in love and affection even if you have to give it to yourself and people go silent on you for weeks on end. Still believe in loving yourself enough for you even if people would leave you even at the point of life and death because they say they’re helpless and cannot do anything to help you.
Love yourself and choose to love yourself daily because you simply deserve it. Love yourself enough for you. And if it means you need to start loving people less, then maybe yes, start loving people less because for all you know, they don’t love you much anymore anyway.
I am not going to stop caring about others. My students, my friends, my family, the people who cross my path—I will continue to pour kindness into the world.
I am not giving up on my own healing. Broken pieces can be put back together, even if the final picture looks a little different than before.
Life is a wild, messy, beautiful, and painful ride. We have to take the disruptive classrooms with the hilarious break-time gossip. We have to balance the warmth of the London sun with the cold patches of grief and loneliness.
So, here’s to the next week of freedom, to finding strength in the quiet moments, and to remembering that we are loved, we are special, and we are far more resilient than we think.
Until next time, mes amis, take care of yourselves, look for the joy in the little things, and never let the chaos dull your sparkle.
À plus!
Always with love,
Rosario💜🩷
The Rosario Woman 
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