Last blog of 2012...

Now, I'm leaving Melle in 9 and a half hours and I need to go to bed in that time, but I thought I better write one last post before les vacances de Noël. I can't believe I've already had my first term here in France. It's quite depressing to think that when I come back in January I'll be almost halfway through my placement.

I'm in a very good mood as I write this, as I've just returned from a crêpe party. The association that runs the residence at which I live owns another 3 or 4 in the area. And so every now and then Olivier (one of the people that works for the association) organises small get-togethers. As he only ever gives 1 or 2 days notice, this was the first one I've been able to go to. So I went with another girl from my block who seems really lovely and is the same age as me. In fact, there was about 10 of us in total, and it felt so good to be able to speak French with a group of people my age. We played a game and cooked and ate pancakes, and it was very enjoyable indeed. So, hopefully this means I now vaguely have French friends my age =)

I need to go and finish packing now (despite all good intentions, it was inevitable that I wouldn't have finished packing the night before departure), but before I go I'd like to thank all of my readers who have been interested enough to keep up with my blog for the past 3 months. I've had almost 1200 views so far which is really flattering. They can't all be my dad! I promise I'll continue to record my life in France when I come back after the holidays, but until then, bonnes vacances, joyeuses fêtes, et bonne année! 

PS. I might decide to write another post before I return in the New Year. Who knows, I might get home and suddenly realise all the things I love about France. Anyhow, ciao for now. Gros bisous.

My little bit of Christmas in my Melle flat. Looking forward
to getting home to a proper tree!

A Tale of Hairy Armpits

I just did something spontaneous! I went to Zumba! When I was at school today Domie was the only one that could take me home, and she said it was convenient because she was going to a Zumba class in Melle anyway this evening. WHY HAVE I ONLY JUST DISCOVERED THIS?! So she invited me along, and I jumped at the chance. However because this was unplanned, and we weren't going back to mine between school, her house and Zumba, I didn't have any trackies with me. We managed to find suitable bottoms at hers, and she said what I had on top was fine (a vest top under a cardi). I have to make a confession at this point and say that, as it is winter, I don't make a habit of shaving my armpits everyday. So when I realised I'd have to be doing Zumba in a sleeveless top, I panicked. On second thoughts, however, I decided that as I would be amongst furry Frenchies, it wouldn't matter! So yes, I went to Zumba in a vest top with slightly hairy armpits, forgive me Lord.

It was a lot of fun though, and was the last one before Christmas, so people were wearing Santa hats. Then we Zumba'd to Auld Lang Syne, and I felt like I was back in England for a couple of minutes.

And GOD I just want to slap some of the pupils I teach. Teenagers can be such dicks sometimes :@

But, as there remains but four days in this country, I will laisser tomber.

(That was a totally pointless post)

6 days until I'm home...

This time next week I'll be back in England!! Food, family, friends, I cannot wait. Doing lessons on 'Christmas' this week at school and therefore showing them pictures of an English Christmas Dinner is making the wait even more difficult than before!

However, I've had a very enjoyable week as always. I worked a total of 4 hours, which were all on the same day, so I'm currently enjoying a 5-day weekend which has given me lots of time to do Christmas shopping.

I finally had another night out last night. Mike organised a big assistant Christmas party meet-up in La Rochelle, so I got to meet a few more people, and actually go to the first club since I've been in France. Spending the day there as well as the night allowed us to walk around a bit (although the weather couldn't have been grimmer), eat galettes and crepes, drink vin chaud, and see another Christmas market. Getting under 4 hours sleep and having to get the 9:30 train back to Niort this morning was the only downside, but it was great to get out again and experience La Rochelle by night.

Pretty lights underneath the Grosse Horloge

Christmas market

Festive illuminations on the Hotel de Ville 

Aw, that's cute :)

Les meufs

Mike and I were rather excited about today, as for the past week Melle has been highly advertising its For-One-Day-Only Christmas market. So we went along hoping it to be really buzzing and festive but expecting it to be a let-down (as after all this is Melle). Having now experienced it, all I can say is that it was rather odd. A Christmas market in Melle apparently means the inclusion of random ponies giving a new kind of Melle Smell; health-and-safety defying giant spider chimeneas casually burning ferociously in the middle of the walkway; a mini art exhibition; and a posh version of a school Christmas fayre but in an 11th century church. Aww Melle.

A blazing tarantula

Cheeeeeeese

Stalls inside St-Savinien church

 And I have been thoroughly enjoying my Christmas pasta.

I realise how terribly dull this post is; I'm so tired and uninspired but thought I should update it....

A big surprise, the French, and marijuana

Alors, qu'est-ce qui s'est passé in the life of Mademoiselle Melle this week, I hear you all ask eagerly. Because of course you all flit between languages mid-sentence. Well you're not the only ones. Despite being oh so far from being able to speak French well, little phrases keep popping into my English speech and it takes me a good few seconds to remember the English equivalent. I'm yet to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Anyway, the answer to the initial question is 'not much to be honest'. But I feel obliged to write another post, so I shall rack my brain to think of something vaguely interesting I can tell you...

Of course, how could I let it slip. Last Tuesday evening, after having returned home from a petite soirée at Anne-Lise's house with some colleagues (which was lovely for her to organise in my honour even if most of the conversation went in one ear and out the other), I had a telephone call. Dun dun duunnnnnn. Gripping story so far, I know. The little screen on my back-to-basics French mobile informed me it was my dear boyfriend wishing to speak to me. After accepting the call and saying the standard 'hello, how are you', the conversation went a little like this.

Rob: In 10 seconds I'm going to ring on your doorbell.

Me: Haha Rob you're hilarious.

Rob: No, seriously, I'm outside your flat in Melle.

OK so I may have romanticised it a little bit, but the gist remains the same. My boyfriend flew across the channel to La Rochelle, took the train to Niort, and the bus to Melle, to come and surprise me. Aww isn't he cute?!

So that's the main news of my week. He was here for 2 nights and it was lovely.

I was quite ecstatic to learn from Mike that Melle turned it's Christmas lights on on Friday. Perhaps it was because I had seen Paris' lights the previous weekend, or the fact that in my head I had turned Melle into a winter wonderland with snow, glitter and Christmas music falling from the sky, but my expectations were in hindsight a bit high. In reality it's quite endearingly undramatic. None of the lights match, and there seems to be no logic as to where they've been placed. So I've made up for it by blasting Smooth Christmas Radio out my laptop 24/7.

Pretty lights in Melle, just a shame this is the only one of its kind...

What else? My suspicion that the French are a rather odd race has been reinforced. I was pleasantly eating my lunch in the cantine last Tuesday, as usual not really knowing what it was but enjoying it nonetheless. I then heard the other teachers discussing what it was. "C'est la joue de quelque chose..." "Joue de raie, je croix".

I suddenly chipped in by demanding "JOUE??!?" ('Joue' means 'cheek'. -- yeah, see, now you get my shock/horror). Not having been taught a wide variety of animals in French other than the standard pig, cow, budgie and guinea-pig, I had to ask what 'raie' was in English. Anne-Lise, an English teacher, didn't know, so we had to ask Domie, the other English teacher. "Oh", she said, "it's the same in English I think, 'ray'".

Ray? I've never heard of 'ray' bef-- Oh, STINGRAY?! I had just eaten Stingray Cheek it seemed. And I thought I was eating chicken. Having eaten rabbit the previous week, which appeared to have its eyeballs still intact, I shouldn't really have been so surprised...

But really, les Français? Is that really necessary? Chicken, beef, pork or lamb are perfectly sufficient for school dinners.

One of my classes last week was vaguely amusing. I decided to make the pupils at the lycée have a debate on the legalization of cannabis, as I figured it would be of interest to them judging by its pertinence amongst that age group in France. Needless to say, all they boys wanted to argue 'for' the drug's legalization, and I pretty much had to play devil's advocate the whole time. After turning my back for a few minutes, I returned to the 'for' table to find a guy casually emptying a load of weed from inside his mobile phone onto the table. 'You're meant to be talking about marijuana, not smoking it', I said in my raised teacher-like voice. And teacher-like it must have been, as he just wiped it into the bin. The fact that I wasn't particularly surprised by this incident perhaps shows that I am well settled into French life.

Paris, je t'aime

Paris was AMAZING!! This weekend was the fourth time I've been to the City of Lurve, but each time I forget quite how much I love it there, and so each trip never fails to disappoint.

I met Tamsin at Place de la Bastille on Friday evening in the pouring rain where we began our weekend of Christmassy adventures, as we are both a teeny weeny bit over-excited about the fact that Christmas is just one month away. As soon as we got to her flat the Christmas radio went on and the Christmas period officially started. With the Cimetière du Père Lachaise just up the road from Tamsin's flat, we spent a couple of hours there during the daytime on Saturday, spotting celebrities who are no longer with us. I still can't get over how big the cemetery is; I reckon its surface area is pretty much the same size as the whole of Melle.

La Cimetière du Père Lachaise

Being both musicians, we had a good old nose at the graves of Chopin, Poulenc, Fauré and Rossini, although apparently the latter is no longer actually in the grave but is instead enjoying himself back in his homeland for a bit. The cemetery itself is beautiful with cobbled paths, lots of trees, hills going up and down, and loads of mahoosive mausoleums which are good fun to get creeped out by.

Ici repose Frédéric Chopin

Late afternoon we went to Galéries Lafayette to see the giant Christmas tree, and it did not disappoint.

However, the best bit was when we stumbled upon the roof of the building just as the sun was going down, which gave us some pretty spectacular views of the city, including of course the Eiffel Tower. I have never seen a more busy shop though, even with there still being 4 weeks until Christmas.

Paris, from the top of Galeries Lafayette

We then walked to Place de la Concorde to begin our walk up the Champs-Elysées in all its Christmas glory. With impressive lumières de Noel, a big Christmas market lining the Avenue, and a cup of mulled wine (or 'hot wine' as they call it over here), Tamsin and I were loving life.

And it got a whole lot better when we discovered they were selling mince pies in the mini M&S there. Making it through the crowds up to Arc de Triomphe, we then walked down a disappointingly non-Christmassy avenue to Trocadero in order to get a good view of the Eiffel Tower. And as luck would have it, we arrived there a few minutes before it was next due to sparkle for 5 minutes. It was so pretty! 

Having walked for hours, we decided to call it a night, eager to get home eat mince pies and homemade cassoulet. If the M&S on Champs-Elysées is the only place in France that sells mince pies, I'm not sure how I'm going to survive these next few weeks.

Mince pies, one of Britain's greatest inventions

We decided on Sunday to go to church in Notre-Dame, to say that we'd done it. Arriving there early, we popped across the river so that Tamsin could introduce me to the most amazing bookshop ever. It's called 'Shakespeare & Company' and I actually felt like I was somewhere on Diagon Alley. It had crooked stairs, thousands of beautiful old books, velvety covered seating areas, ladders on the bookshelves and was generally just so cute. The kids books section was definitely my favourite part. If it's no longer socially acceptable to read Barbar The Elephant at 20 years of age, I might just have a baby solely to be able to read it bedtime stories every night.

Mass at Notre-Dame is not something I'd recommend; the fact that hundreds of tourists are walking around the edge taking pictures and paying no attention whatsoever to the 'Silence' sign means that there are constant distractions, and there were no hymns, which of course is everybody's favourite part of going to Church. The best thing about the mass though was definitely whenever someone in the congregation started to take a picture this Chinese guy would just appear out of nowhere and tell them off like they were school kids, and when a man 2 rows in front of us got his camera out, another guy a couple of seats along just stared at him for about 2 minutes giving him the biggest evils I've ever seen.

After mass we visited a little Christmas Fayre in some random building, then we walked back to the flat along the river. After lunch we took the metro to Montmartre and once again timed it perfectly to watch the sun going down from Sacre-Cœur. There was also some amazing busker who was standing on the pillar at the top of the steps doing football tricks and doing handstands and stuff with it. Then he climbed a lampost whilst continuing to spin and balance the ball. The fact that he would have probably died if he'd fallen off was pretty impressive. We walked around Place du Tertre then went into Sacre-Coeur, which we decided is more striking than Notre-Dame due to its sheer vastness and trhe fact that people actually observe the plea for silence. No trip to Montmartre is complete without getting a glimpse of the Moulin Rouge, so we wandered down to Paris' red-light district, then hopped back onto the metro to the centre, walked along the river, then went to the cinema to see Skyfall as I had been unable to see it in English thus far. And it was definitely worth the wait. Although it made me pine for London.

So there you have it, mon weekend à Paris.

Merci mille fois Tamsin!

Sacre-Coeur at dusk

Climbing a lamp post at the top of Montmartre

La Tour Eiffel at sunset

Je vous remercie d'avoir lu mon blog...

I always knew that coming to France for a year would be a cultural experience, however I hadn't realised I would be getting insights into cultures other than that of France. For last night I experienced my first ever Thanksgiving! With there being lots of American assistants in the region, Maggie and Anna organised a Thanksgiving Dinner at their house in Niort, for which people brought along a dish to add to the table. Knowing nothing about this festivity, other than the fact every American seems to celebrate it, I had to do a bit of good old Wiki'ing. For anyone as ignorant as I was, the reason for which the Americans give thanks for what they have on this day every year is because hundreds of years ago when pilgrims came to the States, they died the first winter from not having enough to eat. So the following year the Native Americans taught the pilgrims how to grow crops, and so at harvest time they had plenty to eat. As a result, the pilgrims gave thanks to the Native Americans (and to God). History lesson over.

I also had to decide on a dish to bring so needed to read up on what traditional Thanksgiving dishes were. I settled on a green bean casserole, which is basically a mix of green beans, mushrooms, onions and cream. Therefore rendering a potentially healthy side dish fattening and calorific. It seemed to taste nice, although I have no idea if it was anything like it should have been.

Mike and I got a lift to the soirée and back thanks to a young woman called Aurélie who lives in Melle and was also going to the dinner! So it was great on 3 levels; firstly we had transportation otherwise we couldn't have gone, secondly we were able to practice some French on the journey, and thirdly we now (fingers crossed) have a French friend in Melle vaguely our age! As well as Americans, Brits and Frenchies, there were also Spanish people there, so it was quite a multi-national evening! Because of this, when we had to say what we were thankful for in our life before tucking into the food, it was all in French.

The food was delish overall, with chicken, stuffing, roast veggies, mashed potato, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, tarte aux pommes, chocolate mousse, ice cream, bread, cheese, wine, champagne....NOM. Anyway, I can now say I have experienced American Thanksgiving, albeit with a few French influences thrown in.

Literally nothing else interesting has happened in my life since my last post. I've kept up the jogging though! And I'm actually enjoying it, which I never thought I'd say. Teaching has also gone pretty well, although once again I've only had 5 hours this week (partly due to the fact that a colleague forgot to pick me up on Tuesday), but I'm really enjoying it and I love the authority I have over my pupils!

Right now I am very excited indeed because I am off to Paris tomorrow to stay with Tamsin, who I haven't seen since uni 6 months ago. She's studying music there so it'll be great to hear all about her life there and to see Paris in winter for the first time. Can't wait! I shall tell you all about it when I get back on Monday, and hopefully I'll have taken some cool photos. Ciao for now.

Smiles all around =)

Another weekend means another week gone of my Year Abroad. I have now been here for almost 2 months, and it is scary to think this time in 5 weeks I will be back on the better side of The Channel for the Christmas holidays with only 4 months of my teaching contract in France remaining.

It's safe to say I haven't progressed in the language as much as I'd hoped I would by this stage. I still can't really follow a conversation of more than 2 Frenchies, and I'm pretty sure I'm permanently stuck in the present tense when I speak. I still panic when a randomer asks me for directions, and I still use the excuse that 'je suis anglaise' when I freak out and can't reply to someone.

HOWEVER, today I am feeling relatively positive for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Christmas playlist is currently playing on my iTunes and I'm having a nice sing-song with The Pogues. Secondly, they've put Christmas lights up in Melle (!!!!) which I was worried wasn't going to happen because a) France don't seem to be quite as Christmas-obsessed as the UK, and b) Melle is Melle, ie. slightly behind the times.

For less festive and more serious reasons, teaching went really well this week. OK so I only worked a total of 5 hours the whole week, but they were 5 good hours. And they all took place at the lycée because I wasn't at the collège this week. In the classes I was in on Tuesday I wasn't actually teaching, I was just doing mock-speaking exams with them. It was a strange role-reversal, with these super stressed-out kids sitting in front of me one at a time whilst I grilled them with dreaded questions like 'tell me about yourself'. 

On Thursday I was back to normal teaching, and I had been asked to prepare a class on weapons and military to use in 2 consecutive classes. Knowing that I had to keep the level really basic, it still required me to do some research on the subject, and I now know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. Well, kind of. Anyway, struggling to think of a way of making it an interesting lesson that would make them speak English as much as possible, I then remembered a certain A-Level French lesson I had a few years ago. Basically, my teacher got us to write a short story that consisted of newly-taught vocab, along with a few other totally random and comical words. I decided to apply this idea to my classes on Thursday, thus asking them to come up with a story, in groups, that contained the new military-related words that I'd just taught them, along with a few others such as 'One Direction' and 'cabbage'. They found it difficult, and for the first few minutes I was worried they weren't going to be able to do it. But then, after I started the story off for them, their imaginations got going and they were actually managing to produce a string of sounds reminiscent of the English language. But the best part was the fact that when the bell went they told me it was a really good class and that it was 'much better than with Madame'. To top it off, the English teacher later told me that one of the pupils had approached her in the corridor and said how great my class was. Result!

Another reason for the smile on my face is that I FINALLY got the forms signed to show that I have arrived in France and started work, which means that I can receive my Erasmus grant. Yay to more money :)

Despite what I said earlier about my French not having come on as much as I'd hoped, I have noticed an improvement this week. Having had 2 weeks of holidays during which I had barely spoken any French, I thought this week was going to be a real challenge to get back into things. But at school on Tuesday and Thursday I didn't have to concentrate as hard as I usually do to understand what Manue and Sandrine (the English teachers) were saying to me. I also spoke a lot of French with Alfredo and Mike these past couple of days and in general conversation between the 3 of us it comes quite naturally now, and I no longer find myself quickly translating in my head before I speak. It helps a lot that none of us are native French speakers because therefore we all make mistakes so just don't worry about it. As long as the meaning behind what I'm trying to say is conveyed and I am understood, then I don't mind. I still lack confidence when speaking to natives though.

This week has also been gorgeous weather-wise; most days have been clear blue sky, and the past couple of days have been 18/19 degrees, so it is hard to believe it is mid-November. This has resulted in more walking, but don't worry, I won't bore you with more photos of trees and sky.

This weather and beautiful countryside, combined with the fact that my 21st is coming up and I've thus been hunting for dresses, has inspired me to get out the flat and shape up a bit. So today I went for my first run. I've signed up to a '3 Weeks to a 30-Minute Running Habit' program. Let's just say Day 1 wasn't as easy as it was made out to be... As with any exercise I try to do, this whim is unlikely to last longer than a week, but we shall see. 

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist:

Until next time, grosses bises.