Lessons in Franglais

La Fin

2009-05-08T02:39:00.000-07:00

Well, as the great host of Looney Tunes characters would say: that's all folks! My stint in France has officially come to an end; chalk dust is gathering on my lesson plans, a few more much-neglected plants have died (although Basil the Second is bursting with health) and Chez Nous is all hoovered and tidied in preparation for Stage 2 of the Unwelcome Ant Invasion of the kitchen.

I've had a fantastic time pottering around in France and have certainly honed my Franglais skills. I hope this blog, which has been cathartic to the extreme in times of beaurocratic and linguistical crisis, has served to record a few of the lessons I've picked up along the way. I thoroughly recommend that you forget all of them if you should ever find yourself in the same situation; it's just so much more fun to experience them for yourself!

Back in September, in my hazy days of squinty optimism, I set myself the following aims:

- Climb lots
- Ski lots
- Eat lots
- Learn lots
- Become fluent

Have I been successful? In a rather Soviet fashion, I set myself high targets, with the hope of getting at least some way towards achieving them. Of course, being an arts student, I managed to avoid any numbers and left the vague quantity of 'lots' in the majority of my aims. This is such a gloriously flexible and quaintly cosy figure that I can't help but embrace the feeling of having reached it.

Climb lots
I've bouldered in Fontainebleau, ice-climbed locally and in England (quite an achievement in any year, especially when I'm meant to be in France!), danced up multi-pitch routes in Savoie and the Calanques and thrutched my way up (and sometimes rapidly down) single pitch delights on some of France's finest limestone offerings: French ethics in Orpierre, with its generously bolted offerings; naps below the Dentelles de Montmirail with its razor sharp holds; and an utter spanking at Buoux, with its unpronounceable name and technical pockets. I've carried a trad rack across rivers and over barbed wire fences, which almost counts as climbing trad, and I've successfully dodged droppings by smoking belayers or confused Frenchies who didn't quite understand my panicky shrieks of 'SHIT, BOLLOCKS, SorryforswearingSHIT-I'm gonna fall-watchmewatchmeTAKE! TAAAKE!'.
I've bumped up my indoor lead grade, thanks largely to the relentless enthusiasm of my retired Grenoble climbing partner, and I've mucked around on a fair amount of via ferrata with nimble non-climbing friends. It's going to be difficult returning to trad, particularly grit, but my newly-adopted backup of resorting to French ethics in times of stress must be discouraged by British tutters.

There can never be enough climbing, but I was fortunate in being in a climbing area and meeting lots of enthusiastic and welcoming people. I never did manage to convert them to going to the pub after training, but I did stolidly defend British climbing against their dismissals of 'But zer are no mountains in Eeengland!', and have done my bit for promoting British traditions: watch out for a host of French people leaping to tearooms nationwide for cream teas with fresh strawberries.

Most important lesson learned: If it says it's 5c, eet eez 5c!

Ski lots
For two months, I slid down mountains on wooden planks at least once a week. I still find it a very strange sport, but I've managed a few black runs, a couple of which I even chose to do, and I've had the privilege of watching lots of very good skiers whizzing around looking über-cool. I've had a good tour of Alpine ski resorts, with hot chocolate sampling in Val Thorens, Les Arcs, La Plagne, La Norma, Val d'Isere and many more. Whilst I can no longer join in the faux-snobbery of the Savoyards, as they take the piss out of 'les touristes', I am quite the expert on the nursery slopes of the main resorts. Nobody need know I should be much better...sssh...

On a different note, I've become a real fan of 'skating' - the most recent development of cross-country skiing. Sure, it's full of people in lycra tights and another great place to be utterly shown up by OAPs, but it's really good fun whizzing through snow-covered forests and collapsing in front of a crepe, utterly exhausted after a few hours of intense exercise.

Most important lesson learned: Skiing is intrinsically silly and illogical, so all instincts and reason should be ignored: lean downhill, don't think, don't look at things you want to avoid, lean into your skiboots until your shins are screaming, and embrace the madness!

Eat lots
Well, on the plus side (in every sense of the phrase), I've now got an excuse to buy new clothes! Expanding wasitline aside, the past few months have been an absolute delight. I've worked my way through various delights in the patisserie, have had the obligatory frogs' legs, escargots and foie gras (yes, I know, don't worry: I'll save an orphan or something for my ethical sins) and have been fed more fondue, tartiflette and other combinations of cheese, potato and bacon than I could ever have imagined. I've also had some pretty traumatic food experiences and am now slightly more wary of ambiguous meat dishes.

Most important lesson learned: French meals start and finish late. It's a fine line between devouring your bodyweight in pistachios and aperitifs from hunger, as it's gone 9pm, and eating beforehand, but being stuffed to bursting when your lovely host insists on giving you 'just one more helping' of the fourth pudding to be brought out, when it's approaching midnight and there's still the cider and coffee to go.

Learn lots
I've learnt lots about French culture. Some cultural events I had no idea about, such as le Tirage des Rois (finding little trinkets in a special cake on Twelfth Night), Beaujolais Nouveau (festivities caused by a new wine coming out) and Carnaval. Other cultural stereotypes exceeded all expectations: strikes, dog poo on the streets, smokers everywhere, beaurocratic faffs and erratic shop opening times. Some stereotypes were sadly untrue: they don't actually eat that much garlic, I hardly saw any striped jumpers, and nobody really says sacré bleu any more.

I've come to love the French, with their apparently unanimous 'Fuck Sarkozy' attitude, their blunt ways with friends ('Yes, this meal you just cooked for me is rather crap') and their romantic offerings. I was pleasantly surprised to be offered nuggets of poetry by homeless people in the ghetto-etto near my house: 'You are beautiful, Madame', 'May you have a wonderful evening'. Try getting treatment like that from any stranger in the UK on a Saturday night.

I've also learned a lot about other cultures, through meeting people from around the world. It seems it's only non-French people who ever go out at night in Chambery. I've mingled with other assistants from the USA (West Philadelphia born and raised...you can do the rest!), Trinidad, Germany, Italy and even the exotic climes of Swindon. I've lived with people from France, Norway, Sweden, Moldova, Germany, Austria, Brazil, South Africa and Japan, and I've learned that almost all these people will always be better at English than I can ever hope to be in French. Apart from the Americans - we definitely don't speak the same language ;-)

Become fluent
I'm still hindered by being instantly obvious as a Brit. There have been times when I've entered a room alone, dressed in purely French clothes, a French carrier bag in my hand, and before even opening my mouth, I'm greeted with a cheery 'Bonjour! Anglaise?'. According to someone experienced in such matters, it's due to my face. Great.

Still, I've waffled unwaiveringly, have destroyed any last ounce of pride, and have made pretty much every linguistical blunder possible. It's still slightly surprising every time a French person responds to something I say - it seems these strange noises coming from my mouth actually mean something to some people. Must be a good sign.

As for fluency in Franglais, I'd say I've greatly improved. Strange things are now 'bizarre'; if I want to do something, I either 'have envy to do it', or 'have the intention to do it'. I talk about 'the car of my parents', rather than 'my parents' car', and I can swear quite convincingly at French drivers as I swerve around on the wrong side of the road.

Conclusion
I've loved every minute of these past few months, although admittedly some of the earlier minutes in the day required a little more oomph to fully appreciate. Never before had I experienced quite so many domestic crises in such a short period; from early morning drill attacks the other side of my bed, to firemen and gas leaks, to powercuts, to broken boilers and ant invasions. Never again will I live on such a busy road or have to put up a sign requesting a female housemate to stop peeing all over the toilet seat (still a mystery, and sorry to our lovely male housemate who we were ready to accuse!).

I didn't travel around France as much as I expected, because I just found far too much to do in Savoie. It was a mountain sport fanatic's dream and I wish I could have stayed there in the summer for more mountainbiking and, hmmm, I don't know...maybe a spot of rock-hugging...not that I'm really into that sort of thing, you understand.

I've made new friends:

This friendly furball jumped into the last ski lift down with me, panicked in a corner for a bit and then decided I was okay and smothered me in big doggy kisses all the way down.

This cheeky chappy distracted me whilst his friend tried to devour Sam's coat, starting with the armpit, much to his alarm.

...and seen some beautiful places:

But now it's time to return to Blighty. To the land of baked beans, Radio 4 and Cheddar cheese. To a place where I can gabble away in English at a normal speed, where I can pop to the newsagents on a Sunday, where I can wake up to the sound of nothing but birdsong and my cat scratching at the bedroom door. There's nothing like living abroad to reveal hidden feelings of patriotism. The Queen's alright, really. The Beatles were pretty damn good. Shakespeare wasn't bad at knocking out a ditty. I'm still English at heart, but I have a whole new feeling of appreciation for the great diversity of France, particularly Savoie, with its mountains and meadows and its warm and welcoming folk.

Zee End.

Ecole

2009-05-06T00:53:00.000-07:00

[The last few posts were written when they happened, but typed up later, hence the dates being a bit out.]

I had my last day at school today. The typical mix of lessons ranging from temping jobs to obesity. Also in typical fashion, my last class was cancelled at the last minute. So much for dramatic au revoirs. As if rain wasn't a bad enough start to the morning, the drinks machine in the staffroom was out of order. Quelle desastre. Lots of panicky profs twitching around in search of a caffeine fix and no hot choccy for my breakfast.

I've not written much about my experiences in the schools, aside from a few funny incidents. For the large part, this has been because I've spent far more time doing other things. Being an assistant can definitely be what you make it; it can define a year abroad, or it can simply be one experience amongst many others. The three schools have swapped around in my mental list of Happy Places, although all have had their sins and their saving graces.

- The collège (middle school) with the 'problem children' turned out to also have some lovely kids, and the rather sparse staffroom became a hub of sociable bodies and home-made cake at break time.

- The collège with the climbing wall and rural appeal had lovely English teachers, but the other teachers never replied to my cheery 'bonjours' and talked over me, passed chocolates around everyone except me, and generally stared at me as if I had a cow stuck on my head. Despite this, it was really nice sticking with the same classes and watching them progress. It also had the most impressive array of spirits and chocolates in the staffroom, but no hot chocolate.

- The lycée had some absolutely lovely classes and some really awful ones. It was nice having in-depth discussions with some classes and the English teachers were the most bonded group of all the schools, perhaps because there were more of them. The staff room had very comfy seats and a resident artist, who went round drawing caricatures of the various colourful characters floating around. Then again, there were other times, in lessons, when irate frothing in English had no effect whatsoever on the gum-chewing, frantically texting adolescents slumped on the tables in front of me.

Lesson Learned

1. School uniform
French schoolkids don't wear school uniform. Aside from much mirth when viewing pictures of British children (quickly cut off when reminded that we don't start school at 8am or go in on Saturday mornings), this should mean that they have much more opportunity for personal expression. So why, why, why do they all dress the same?! The main uniform seems to be black and dark colours. I started rebelling by wearing a colourful top and stood out a mile (which was a relief after being mistaken for a student by various overzealous teachers trying to ban me from the staffroom). There were, of course, various 'alternative' kids, who all wore exactly the same uniform of baggy trousers and rainbow bags from the 'alternative' shop in town. Some from both ends of this magnificent spectrum of diversity managed to look very smart and glamorous. Others, with their enormous flashy trainers, white tracksuit trousers and bumbags (no, I kid you not) prevented any lessons on chavs, for fear of misunderstanding.

2. Teachers
Almost without exception, all the teachers dressed very well, especially the language teachers. No stereotypes of worn jackets with leather elbow patches here; they were a very glamorous bunch. In contrast to this, there was a surprising lack of self-confidence amongst many of the better English-speakers. Perhaps it was daunting being faced with a native speaker, although any doubts must have been removed once they heard my French! It was difficult to reassure someone that their English was fine when they seemed to have adopted the rather English response of a reluctance to believe compliments. Then again, maybe they just didn't believe me: my own English seemed to flounder desperately when put on the spot.
Felicity, could you just spell ostentatiously aloud for us?
Do you say sh-edule or sk-edule?
What's the English for 'ski piste'?
Why don't you give a little presentation about St George's day...now?
And countless other examples, all met with hesitation, much doubt and grovelling apologies as I butchered my own language.

3. Teaching English
I quickly learnt what worked and what didn't.

- 'You need a sheet' was inevitably greeted with great mirth, as fifteen French kids heard 'You need a shit'.

- Repetition exercises had to have a clear end, or fifteen joyous voices would repeat my desperate pleas to get them to stop:
Me: 'Okay, good'
Class: 'Ohh-kaay goood'
Me: 'No, that's finished now'
Class: 'Non, zat's feeneeshed now'
Me (gesturing wildly): 'STOP!'
Class (gesturing wildly): 'STOP!'

- When spelling words aloud, any hesitations were interpreted as letters by confused students. 'Er' is the French for E. 'Oh' is O, and so on. Not helped by E being the sound for I in French, and G and J being the other way round.
A simple question: 'Feeleeseetee: how do you write 'get' in 'what do I get?'
+ A simple response: 'Okay, er...G...E...T...er...question mark'.
= A crazy new word: 'Okejitquestion Marc'

- It is essential to make it really obvious when a question requires an answer and not just repetition. A friend teaching in a primary school found it rather frustrating when the entire class cheerily responded to 'How are you?' with 'How are you?'. I had similar examples in a couple of the colleges:
'Who can tell me the French for 'factory'?
Fifteen hand enthusiastically shoot up. Excellent.
'Zee French for factory!'
'No, I'm asking a question: Who can tell me the French for 'factory'?'
'Oo can till me zee French for factory?'
'No, no, no, I want an answer! Never mind; it's 'usine''. A hand shoots up again. 'Yes?'
'Usine is 'factory'!!'.
Yes, thank you for that masterful insight...

- Despite these miscommunications, I generally really enjoyed teaching. We had some cracking lessons, with my favourites being a re-enactment of a section from a film and a Marmite tasting session. It was great experiencing three schools and seeing the differences, and really brought back memories of my French lessons.

La Grande Braderie

2009-05-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

Twice a year, Chambery hosts a 'Grande Braderie'. This is essentially a giant car boot sale, without the cars. Shops and local traders set up stands selling end-of-the-line bargains and trinkets, and families set up deckchairs and tables piled high with second-hand junk. And it really is a sight to behold: roads cordoned off, car parks overflowing, more people in the streets than for Carnaval or even (quelle honte) the Strike to End all Strikes...and all on a Sunday, when the town is normally deserted. All just to buy other people's crap.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not averse to trawling through this crap in search of hidden treasures. It's just that no one seems to draw the line. Second-hand underwear really is taking it too far, 50 cents a piece or not. There's a fantastic array of artefacts, ranging from Polly Pocket to wagon wheels (and I don't mean the chocolate ones!), from escargot forks to skis to wigs. I pick up a fondue/raclette kit and proudly carry it around, indiscriminately bashing into small children and old ladies as I leap from stall to stall.

It's a great idea, especially since it's free for anyone to have a stall, and it's really sociable. I get the impression that some items appear year after year, but it doesn't really matter; Chambery is alive on a Sunday. My last Sunday.

Somewhat tragically, a near fatal overdose of Churros, chocolate and chips sees me bed-bound for an impromptu nap, my head spinning with nostalgia prompted by the goods on show.

Lessons Learned
This day carried a rather more serious lesson than many. While in the death throes of over-indulgence, I mustered the strength to speak to a lovely friend who is busy saving the world in Africa. She was also feeling ill, but kindly listened to my complaints before revealing hers: suspected malaria. There's me, feeling sick from pure gluttony on a shopping trip; the epitome of Western greed and decadence, whilst she's suffering from a serious illness whilst trying to provide desperately poor people with some form of nutrition. That left a far worse feeling than any sugar-coated lump of deep-fried badness and certainly made me think.

French Ethics: It is 5c!

2009-05-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

My last day of local cragging and I'm flailing around on a route that should be well within my capabilities. The guidebook says it has a hard start, but this is ridiculous! Just as I'm employing some more extreme French ethics, a bloke wanders up:

'Hmm...I was hoping to work on zat route.' (Common climbing speak for thrutching about on a bit of rock that's probably beyond your capabilities.)
'I wasn't expecting to have to!' I reply
'Non, I mean I want to do work on eet'
I give him a quizzical look. 'Eh'?
'All of ze important holds have snapped off.'

Ah, that would explain why it feels so hard.

'Oh, so it's now graded 7 something, is it?'
'No, eet eez a 5c.'

It most definitely is not a 5c.

'Eet eez a 5c.' And with that, he whips out a drill and starts drilling away at the rock to form new holds.
I really can't believe my eyes. In the UK, it is mightily controversial even to drill bolts into cliffs for protection. If someone got out a drill and started altering the rock, tea would most certainly be spilt in spluttered indignation and ethical outrage. If that drilling maniac happened to be French, well...moustaches would certainly be set a-quivering both sides of the channel.

If only we had that much rock to play with in the UK...

A Weekend That Wasn't Meant To Be

2009-04-28T12:00:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I get the feeling that climbing involves more than just fighting gravity. Since the Great Meatball Disaster of last year, I've been pretty successful in rock-hugging at weekends. With spring trying its best and the call of a trad multipitch route (very rare in this part of France to find accessible rock without metal bolts drilled into it), I was happy. Perhaps too happy...

Baptiste had called me on Thursday evening. The proposal: climb all day Friday, spend the night with his friend in a mountain refuge for which he had the keys, climb all day Saturday. Yippee! With the sort of enthusiasm that only comes after excessive sugar consumption, I lept on an early train to Annecy.
At that point it all started to go wrong...

I meet Baptiste. Hmm, the rock's still wet, let's wait.
3 hours later: Hmm, looks like rain. Sod it, let's go anyway.
1 patisserie stop later: Ah, so there's still snow up here. Really wish I'd brought waterproof shoes.

We drop off Baptiste's friend to go walking in the middle of a snow field (in Converses) and drive back to the crag.
MERDE! What? Ah, putain! What?! I've forgotten something really important.
My mind races: shoes? he'll just have to climb in trainers; harness? we can improvise one; chocolate? well, I suppose I could share mine.
'What have you forgotten?'
The ropes.
Ah. Yes, that's probably a bit of an issue.

A fruitless visit to the parents of a nearby long-lost friend (oxymoron?) and a more successful return to Baptiste's house later and we're back at the bottom of the cliff. It's raining. We bodge a slippery path over barbed wire fences, through spiky bushes and between trees. We cross two rivers only to find another, even less welcoming torrent of wetness. Simply impassible, as Lewis Carroll would say. Somehow, despite never being further than 100m from the start of the route, we had got sucked into a Gorge of Doom. Steep-sided rock that crumbled if we so much as fluttered an eyelash at it on one side, and an increasingly violent torrent of water on the other side, coming from the rather inconveniently placed, enormous waterfall in front of us.

A very panicky, slippery slab descent (me) and raping by pointy rock (Baptiste) later and we were sat in the car in a torrential downpour, nervously hoping Baptiste's friend hadn't panicked upon returning to the meeting point earlier to find the car distinctly absent. Refuge plans were called off as nobody fancied several kilometres of knee-deep snow with trainers on. Barbecue plans were deemed too ambitious and we settled for a kebab and a DVD.
Plans were made for an assault on a multipitch sport classic on Saturday.

The conversation the following day went something like this:

Baptiste! Wake up! We're leaving in 10 minutes...[faff]...Okay, we're about an hour and a half behind planned time; shall we do something more accessible before the rain comes?
Naaah...it'll be fine.
I don't really want to walk an hour and a half just to be rained on.
Pas de soucis; we'll just walk very quickly.
Uphill? With big rucksacks?!
Oh, stop moaning, you soft Brit!
What about that nice cliff there?
Ah oui, that's nice: a 10-minute approach and some good routes. Should be in the sun as well.
Sounds great!
Nah, I've driven past it now.

Over an hour of slipping around on mud, cowpats, scree and snow (still no waterproof shoes) later, and we arrive at the bottom of the cliff. Baptiste was right; it does look like an amazing line: up the arete of a pillar, abseil down the back, then up a clean slab to the top.

Baptiste touches the rock. It starts to hail. A lot.
Hail turns to sleet to snow to rain on the first three pitches. The climbing is fantastic, but the limestone lives up to its slimestone nickname in the wet and we take it in turns to be freezing. Baptiste leads a stunning and exposed pitch involving swinging round the pillar, and I gibber my way up an easy scramble where the bolts are far too far apart for my liking.
We retreat after the pillar, just as the sun comes out. And stays stubbornly out for most of our descent back to the car.

Bad decisions? Maybe. But I reckon some weekends are just not meant to be...

Lessons learnt
This time it's a pronunciation lesson learnt by Baptiste. I can't remember what we were talking about, but he suddenly came out with the line 'You know, when someone shits on his girlfriend'. Er, no...is this some weird French thing? If so, I don't want to know about it! He tries to explain. 'Like when you shit on your exam paper at school'. Not improving the situation here, Baptiste...

Some (thankfully less graphic than expected) gesturing later, and I'm more than a little relieved to be able to correct his pronunciation: 'cheeeeating', not 'shitting'!

Jab Gibbers

2009-04-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

Giving my affinity for furries and my knack of finding silly ways of hurting myself, I decided that Hep. B and Rabies injection would be a Jolly Good Idea for my forthcoming trip to the Land of Paddington Bear. Of course, the timing of these meant I had to have them in France. A quick flash of research revealed little difference in cost between France and the UK, so I decided a trip to the Centre de Santé Publique would be a new cultural experience.

Me: Hello, I'd like to book an appointment please.
Woman: Okay, how about Tuesday at 2pm?
Me: Sorry, I can't do Tuesdays. How about Wednesday?
Woman: Er, okay...what about Tuesday at 4pm?
Me: Um, I really can't do Tuesdays, I'm afraid. Any other days of the week?
Woman: Monday at 5pm?
Me: Yes, that sounds great.
Woman: Okay, so that's Thursday at 2pm.
Me: Er...no, I thought it was Monday at 5pm?
Woman: Oh yes, silly me! Okay, so Monday at 1pm.
Me: No, 5pm.
Woman: Whoops! Of course; 5pm on Thursday.
Me: No... Maybe it would be easier if I came in later today with my diary?
Woman: How about Tuesday at 2pm?
Me: Okay...

Sometimes it's easier to rearrange an entire day than to attempt battle with French receptionists.

An appointment and thousands of health leaflets later, I turn up for my first jabs. Now, maybe it's just my experience of particular doctors' surgeries in the UK, but every time I've had an injection it's gone something like this:

Nurse: So what are you going to do on holiday?
Me: Well, I'm going to - JAB!
Nurse: All done!

All done in a flash, occasionally with the warning that it might sting a little, and all done on a normal chair in the nurse's room.

In France, it seems like a much bigger deal. I'm lead to a terrifyingly complicated chair, which has more moving parts than a K'nex Ferris Wheel kit. I feel powerless and have strong flashbacks to torture scenes from American drama series. The nurse gets the needle out of the fridge, fills out a certificate with complicated chemical names that are being pumped into me, and shows me. Is that okay? Yes. Is my name spelt correctly? Yes. Is my date of birth wrong? No. Am I definitely going to Peru? Have I had all the other injections? Am I not allergic to vaccinations? It's a terrifying drill in linguistical and organisational skills, and there are so many negatives thrown in, I start just shaking my head around in the hope that she'll assume the right answer.

She shows me the box to confirm she's pumping the right disease into me. Okay, yep that's great. Just ask me about my holiday and jab it in. She takes a new rubber glove out of its packet and snaps it onto her hand. She asks which arm I'd like it in. Does it make a difference? She re-rolls my sleeve up, tells me to relax. No, relax! Relax the muscle. There you go. Taps the syringe, squirts some liquid in the air. Tells me it's cold and it's going to hurt. Asks if I'd like to watch or not. Gives me a count-down. And it's in. Big relief.

After all that, I'm briskly accompanied to the payment desk and sent on my way. In the UK I'm always told to wait ten minutes in case of an extreme reaction. I'd assume that's a bit more serious than the nurse not rolling my sleeve up properly, but there you go. Strange old world.

I've never had a problem with injections before, but with a build-up like that, it's amazing anyone gets vaccinated at all in France!

Bloody Bises Encore

2009-04-28T06:45:00.001-07:00

Just another quick rant about the bises. I've become quite used to them now, and even manage to go for the correct side most of the time, until someone from a different area comes along and throws it all into confusion. What's annoying, and I mean really annoying is when I've come into school at 8am to teach accountancy students something horribly serious and important. I squeeze past the smokers surrounding the school gate; I crawl up two flights of stairs, I reach my corridor. My classroom is approximately 15 metres away. It takes approximately 15 minutes to get to it.

Why? Because every single student seems to feel the need to greet every other student. They probably just chatted together on the bus, then separated for a few minutes. They are in the same classes all day every day; they know they're going to see each other. But still they have to kiss! Not just a simple 'hi', or a quick hug, but a full triple whack of bises. It doesn't seem to work with the few kids who have managed to form an orderly queue outside the classroom; most greetings seem to require lunging across my path for a nuzzling session, or a manly shaking of hands for a minute without stopping, blocking the corridor and thus causing a whole flurry of similar greetings as nobody wants to be left out. This is all well and good, but for goodness' sake; it's a school! Harumph.

Another mini rant in case you thought I'd finished...

Two things have struck me about the French and transport and they're so contrary that I feel the need to comment.

In cars, people never seem to notice the traffic lights changing. Well, they probably choose to have selective vision, shall we say, for red lights, but it's incredible the number of times I've been trapped at a green light because the car in front hasn't noticed it's time to move. A quick honk of the horn usually does the trick (yep, for everyone who has ever sat in my car and been instructed to shout HONK every time I was cut up or we went over that narrow bridge near home, you'll be pleased to hear that Felicia is now the proud bearer of a working horn), but it's really most unBritish, and just tends to draw more attention to the weird foreigner with her 'wrong way round car'.

In a complete reversal of this situation, the French seem to get prematurely excited about trains stopping. The first few times I saw people leap out of their seats while the train was still bobbing along at full speed, I started to panic. SPIDER!! There must be a spider! Oh my goodness, where is it?! Is it on me?! Okay, no, probably not a spider. Is there an engine failure? A bomb?! A streaker outside the train? A multi-coloured sheep that everyone's clamouring to see? I want to see! Oh wait, did someone just fart? But no, unless I have been missing something obvious every time, people do just tend to stand up on average ten minutes before their stop.

Of course, I understand if they have an enormous suitcase that needs several minute of coaxing out of the luggage racks, or if they're in a real hurry, but when it's the end of the line and everyone has to get off anyway, what's the hurry?! I try to feel all smug as I enjoy a few more minutes of sitting on my arse, but sometimes I get caught up in the euphoria of Nearly Arriving and find myself in the same situation as tall people who stand up too early on planes, and have to dodge falling luggage, small children and furries, as elbows and coats go a-flying.

Gare d'Enfer

2009-04-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like I'm on permanent holiday here, but I've just got a bit behind on uploading my blog entries; it's now warm and sunny and a completely different holiday from my Lausanne adventures.

I head down to the Calanques for a blissful few days of sunny sea-cliff climbing on the most amazing limestone cliffs. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful climbing destinations in the world and the ice-cream's not half bad, either. In a typical attempt to Have Fun in the most stressful and time-pressed way, I decided to go home for one evening then head off to Fontainebleau for another few days of chilled out forest bouldering (mucking around on boulders with giant crashpads and toothbrushes). This was also excellent, particularly because of the presence of a pizza van on the campsite.

Climbing paradise: sea-cliffs in the Calanques.

Unfortunately, in-between these two snippets of serenity, these two nuggets of niceness, these two pockets of paradise, I had to earn my way and survive The Train Station From Hell.

I am not built for big cities. I have to run across main roads unless the little green man is there; I look the wrong way at crossings, I get lost all the time. Suddenly being thrown into the capital city's busiest (I hope) train station is not a good situation.

I have 30 minutes between my trains.
I have to get a train to Fontainebleau. This sounds easy.
I queue up at the ticket desk. Wrong ticket desk. Go downstairs.
I go downstairs. The wrong downstairs. Go upstairs then downstairs again.
I go downstairs. I queue up at the ticket desk. Wrong ticket desk again.
I go down more stairs. Wrong floor.
I go upstairs. I find a ticket machine. On the 3rd attempt: success! I have a ticket.

Now to find the platform...There are signs for the metro, for buses, for mainline trains, for RER trains, for TGV trains...a veritable maze of different pastel colours, squared numbers, circled letters and so on. I followed one for a while until ending up back at my starting point and join a very slow queue to find out where to go. This is the first queue I should have joined, but I'd been avoiding it because it was so very long and crawling along.
Back at a different upstairs again and I finally find my train.
Sit on train and breathe. Briefly.
Run back out of train to find composting machine (in France, you have to stamp your tickets before getting on the train).
Look at watch: this Mega Faff took an hour and a half.

Turn up at Fontainebleau to find out the car picking me up is 2 hours late.

The things we do to hug rock...

Vous or tu?

2009-04-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's done a bit of French knows the Frenchies have a bizarre habit of using two words for 'you'. Not satisfied with three words for 'the' (although admittedly nowhere near as confuzzling as the German equivalent), they've got this fascinating conundrum designed specifically to throw foreigners into great confusion and cause unnecessary offence nationwide.

I don't know about you, but at school I distinctly remember learning s'il vous plait years before s'il te plait, and voulez-vous coucher avec moi far before tu veux un orangina ...or were they from songs? That last examples is particularly noteworthy:
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? (Do you want to sleep with me? (No, I'm not asking you! That's the translation...pfff..))
Surely it's a bit odd to use the formal version of 'you' with someone you're about to bump uglies with.

Even stranger was an incident I witnessed the other day: French man drove into the back of French Woman's car in the carpark. He leapt out, shouting: "Putain de bordel de merde! Putain! Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait?!" (Oh, you silly billy! What have you done?). Whilst hurling abuse at this poor woman, he still used the polite form of 'you'. I quizzed a friend about this and he replied: "Well, it's a sign of respect, isn't it?" Naturally.

In a reverse situation, I have managed to offend teaching colleagues by using 'vous', who despite them being twice my age and never having met me before, insist upon 'tu'. This is lovely, but never explained to poor English schoolchildren, who eventually become poor English assistants! Then there are countless shop assistants and bank workers who I've unthinkingly addressed with 'tu', and the people with whom I appear to be in a permanent 'vous' stalemate; both parties possibly too afraid to attempt a 'tu' at this late stage.

Horseplay

2009-04-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

Whilst trying to persuade tutoring dad that my friend's sister would make a great penpal for his daughter, I decide to extoll the virtues of the family.

"Oui, ils sont super gentils. Ils ont une jolie maison...et ils ont des cheveux et tout!" (Yes, they're really nice. They've got a lovely house...and they've even got horses!).

Tutoring dad gives me a funny looks. I decide to emphasise the horses.

"Oui, beaucoup de cheveux!" (Yep, lots of horses!)

It's only on the way home that I realise my error: cheveux is in fact 'hair'... An easy mistake to make, since chevaux is 'horses'. At least he will be more than reassured that his daughter will be communicating with a very hairy family...hmm...

Non-Faffy CAF

2009-04-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Since Christmas I've been on a bit of a mission to try to stay upright on skis. In fact, it's not so much avoiding the horizontal that seems to be the problem; more the general consensus that skis should point firmly downhill and move. I'm more a followed of the 'traverse-sl-o-w-ly-across-the-slope-careful-now-reach-the-edge...and...PANIC!Quickturndon'tlookdown-Oh-crap-pointing uphill again' school of thought. Rather inconveniently, I seem to be the sole disciple of this underrated discipline.

Free lessons with a robust young Frenchman seemed like a sensible option, especially when I often get 1:1 tuition due to being distinctly CRAP compared to the savoyards who perfect black runs and slalom in primary school, having been skiing since the age of two.

So, if any Chamberien is foolish enough to be awake before dawn on a Sunday morning, they might just have the misfortune to see a dishevelled bunch of assistants shuffling across town, boots weighing upon our necks like enormous cowbells, skis balanced precariously across our shoulders, creating a medley of slapstick noises as they whack against lamp-posts, buildings and people.

Each trip usually starts with the delightful old man in front of us telling us we MUST speak in French:

Old man: Oh look Feleeeceeeteee eez asleep! Feeleeceeteee are you asleep? Feeleeeceeeteeee!
Me: Maintenant je dors plus (I'm not sleeping now!)
OM: You must spik in Francais!
Beth (in French): Yes, we do. We even speak French at home, with our French housemate.
OM: No, that's useless! You must spik ze French!
Beth (in French): Okay, we'll speak French today.
OM: Pas compris! Non! You not understood.
Us (in French): Yes, we've understood.
OM: Zey are spiking in Eeeenglish! You must spik in French!

At this point on a typical trip, Sam, our American friend, might interrupt to nobly defend us. This inevitably diverts Old Man's attention to Ze Americain to whom he has inexplicably taken a strong disliking.

We eventually arrive at an exotic destination, bleary-eyed and fuzzy, and suspiciously survey the weather, which will dictate the course of the day. Come snow or shine, we then head up to the slopes. I take a lesson in the morning with my ever-patient, pre-Raphaelite-haired, orange-trousered ski teacher, then we meet the other CAF-istes for a picnic. This can involve glorious panoramic views of Alpine peaks, or soggy sarnies in a steaming picnic room. The most memorable so far was an 80th (!) birthday celebration featuring champagne, cider, wine, doughnuts and a thousand sorts of cake...

More skiing in the afternoon, either with others from my lesson, or, if I was alone, with one of the many people who have adopted me as a pet project. Wonderfully, this often ends with a hot chocolate in a cosy bar.

As the lifts shut, we pile back into the coach, melting snow steaming up the windows. Rosy-cheeked and aching-limbed, we pass round a small flask of something potent, always in a red sock, and watch the mountains alight with fire as the sun heads back for its own après-ski snooze.

Lausanne

2009-04-21T03:31:00.000-07:00

'Let's go travelling!' the enthusiastic email says. Okay! I hardly need persuading. The only slight hitch is that two weeks of holiday seem to have turned into two free days, one of which is spent comatose after driving back from Blighty. Chronic apathy and all that.

Switzerland is the chosen destination and Lausanne seems as good a place as any for a day of shamelessly touristy shenanigans. Due to a slight oversight in Franco-swiss relations, the most convenient train leaves at a time that is acceptably only to Jack the Ripper and Thatcher, and we all know what became of them. Nevertheless, I once again form a strange bobble-hatted silhouette whizzing down the streets of Chambery, baguette à la main, with seconds to spare.

I look forward to beautiful views of rolling Swiss hills and tasty toblerones and promptly fall asleep. Am woken up by a not-so-beautiful or tasty conductor wanting to see my railcard. Can only hope he hadn't been poking me too long while I lay slumped, gaping-mouthed and twitching.

Switzerland appears through the windows, snowy and very cold. My companion cheerfully informs me that the forecast predicted highs of -2 degrees. The train arrives and we leap out into the bustling metropolis of Lausanne, ready for a day of exploration and culture.

Hang on; where are all the people? A quick hunt around reveals that the shops don't open until 10am.
Somehow, sneakily, we seem to have become ever so slightly French, and we're shocked that people haven't been up and about since 8am.

After a not-so-brief introduction of Lush to a Trinidadian, we explore the old town, bags full of natural deodorant and massage blocks. Lausanne is very steep and it's good fun slipping around on compressed ice with massive drops scarily close. Our map doesn't show that the streets are at different levels, so some crossroads turn out to be bridges a significant height above the other road. You've got to admire that stubborn Swiss determination in building a city on such a steep hill.

And I thought climbing was my most risky activity...A typically graphic French warning sign.

We soon leave the town centre and head towards a large green area on our tourist map. In real life it's rather more white, being submerged beneath a foot of snow. Still, it's pretty, and we look forward to seeing some sites marked on the map: a small castle, a hermit cave, a chocolaterie and a lake. Luckily, the snow proves entertaining for my companion, who hasn't experienced much in her native Caribbean home. I say this, because nearly all our eagerly awaited sites aren't quite as expected:

- The 'petit chateau' is extremely petit and appears to be little more than a house with a fancy name.
- 'L'hermitage' turns out not to be an ancient hermit dwelling place, but an art centre that is distinctly shut.
- 'La chocolaterie' never appears. Big disappointment.

Fortunately, we're treated to an impressive view over the city and the lake and a cosy, little restaurant at the top of the hill provides Swiss cheese and ducks.

The rest of the day sees a bimble through town, an attempted passport exchange with a man selling crepes, lake-side unicyclists on obstacle courses, an amazing children's play area (tested!) and the Olympic Museum, complete with giant, moving models of abs and various other body parts. The outdoor escalator particularly impresses: what better way to encourage people to participate in sport...

A characteristically hassled sprint back to the station and we're safely on our train, back in time for Plus Belle La Vie, France's favourite soap.

Red Nose Day, Grand-pères et les pompiers

2009-03-22T14:01:00.001-07:00

A few memorable incidents from the past week:

Words and phrases invented by schoolchildren
'funning' (= to have fun) eg: We were funning on holiday.
'curly flower' = cauliflower

These were accompanied by a suggestion for a rainy day to 'watch TV on the dog'. Poor dog! Apparently they meant to watch a programme about dogs. Hmm...

Red Nose Day
This doesn't seem to exist in France, so I had great fun explaining the concept to one of my older classes with photocopies of a beaming Lenny Henry and various red nose designs.
The task: 'Come up with your own themed day for charity. Explain it and decide on an event to help raise money'.
The results:

Group 1: Stop Smoking Day.
Me: So what's the aim?
Group: Everyone stops smoking for a day.
Me: Okay...what about people who don't smoke?
Group: *hesitation* They should stop smoking.
Me: *tactful pause and choose acceptance* And which charity is it for?
Group: Smokers.
Me: You mean smokers who get lung cancer?
Group: Smokers don't spend money on smoking for a day so they have more money. Me: I see....

Group 2: Condom day
The aim: every school pupil must go to school wearing as many condoms as possible attached to their clothes.
The event: a competition to see who can blow a condom into the biggest balloon.
The charity: anything that helps fight AIDs.
I was so relieved that they'd actually got a charity, I rather glossed over the technicalities. I'm sure it would be a real hit in the primary schools...

Group 3: Baby day
Me: Okay, girls, this sounds like a nice day. What's the aim?
Girls: Everyone pays money to dress like a baby and the money goes to baby charities.
Me: Well, that's a good idea; I think that could work. What's your event?
Girls: A stand in the town hall selling babies.
Me: Oh, I see...hold on, you mean selling baby clothes and toys?
Girls: No, selling babies.
Me: Ah.

You can imagine the rest of the lesson!

St Patrick's Day
For no particularly obvious reason, apart from an excuse to drink a lot, France seems to be really into St. Patrick's Day. We headed to the most popular Irish bar in town and bumped into some other assistants and their friends. We had a shouted conversation over the enthusiastic Irish band playing outside.
French bloke: So, do you go out much with French people?
Me: I climb with French people, but I don't go out much in the evening with them.
French bloke: Quoi? (Pardon?)
Me: La plupart de mes amis francais sont grimpeurs et ils ne sortent pas beaucoup le soir. (Most of my French friends are climbers and they don't go out much in the evening)
French bloke: Tes amis sont tous grand-pères?! (Your friends are all grandads?!)

Silly French words sounding the same (albeit shouted over very loud music!). So now I seem to have given the impression that my social group is mainly OAPs, who, quite typically, don't have much of a nightlife.
Arse.

Les Pompiers
Saturday night a few evenings ago saw me bopping away at an Irish folk/rock concert in a nearby town, completely with comedy Irish-French accents.
I arrive home in a fuzz of accordian echoes, feet still a-tapping but completely exhausted and ready to crawl into bed.

There's a fire engine in the road. I'm far too tired to pay much attention and decide to postpone the drama.
I open the door and start walking upstairs to my floor. 'Bonsoir!' A male voice greets me. 'B'soir', I mutter back, not even mustering the energy to look at whichever housemate is saying hi. 'Bonsoir', 'Bonsoir madame'. The greetings continue. I look up. There are 3 French firemen in my house, all smiling at me and greeting me in a rather gentlemanly fashion. One even takes his helmet off.
WOW. Pretty much every girl's fantasy, and they're really not bad looking at all. I take a second to appreciate my good luck before reality dawns and I realise that they're probably not here as a nice Saturday night surprise for me, but perhaps for something a tad more serious.

A tad more serious turns out to mean a gas leak in the road outside our house. The road is blockaded off, my housemate is told she can't enter the house for the next few hours (although there seems to be no concern for everyone still in the house), and the fire engine is joined by several more. At precisely 3:10am the drilling of the road starts. This whole kerfuffle continues for the next couple of evenings and all my curtain-twitching, blue flashing lights dramas are fulfilled.

Des vieillards

2009-03-14T04:47:00.000-07:00

Old men

I've noticed a certain proliferation of active old men these past few weeks. First, there was the retired teacher Beth and I met on the train. Like most people, he instantly knew we were English (afternoon tea crumbs on our faces, perhaps?) and started chatting to us about his retirement. He didn't want to waste his long-awaited freedom and so had decided to buy an accordion and travel around playing it. Et pourquoi pas?!

Then, there was the 84-year-old cruising up 6b+s at the climbing wall. I've found a regular climbing partner in a retired woman who spends all her free time climbing. Not such a bad life. She's got a gang of friends whose average age must be well into the seventies and whose average climbing grade remainds stolidly a notch above mine.

This was followed by a chap's 80th birthday on a recent ski trip. I wasn't sure whose birthday it was, so I kept looking around for a frail, little old man shuffling up to enjoy a small glass of champagne before sitting down for the afternoon to reminisce over his halcyon days of wooden skis and dayglo one-pieces. My reverie of faux-nostalgie was suddenly interrupted by a spritely chap decked out in the latest gear, a bottle of champagne in one hand and his skis in the other. The gathering burst into song and I realised that this cheery chap, who honestly looked no older than 60, must be the octogenarian. This was inspirational to say the least and I toasted his youthfulness by consuming my body weight in cake.

Lessons learnt
- Pretty much anything you do, an eighty-year-old Frenchman can do better.
- Life does not end at 70.
- It's not such a bad thing that French TV is rubbish.
- No matter how hard they climb and how old they are, French pensioners should never wear lycra.

Ski Championships

2009-03-14T04:27:00.000-07:00

First day of the winter holidays: a 6am start to head off to the World Ski Championships in Val d'Isere. Told you I was getting better! ... Okay, okay, I was going as a spectator, but I'm sure I'll be invited next year.

Five of us cram into a car and head off into the mountains, where we join a theme-park sized queue for a shuttle bus and receive lots of freebies, my favourite being the event pass with an in-built thermometer. It cheerfully tells us it's around freezing. I'd never have guessed. The bus driver eventualy turns off the looped message welcoming us to 'the event of our lives' in several languages and we listen to the men's downhill. The French champion prepares himself, he approaches the starting ramp, he launches off, and- ...we enter a tunnel. The Frenchies are not happy! We re-emerge just in time for his finish. Decide repressing mirth is optimal for survival.

The day is full of good surprises:
- Free drinks in the Salomon tent.
- The music accompanying the women's descent; carefully chosen to offend pretty much every nationality attending (Rammstein for the German competitor was a particular favourite).
- The Milka tent with free samples and no limit on coming out and immediately joining the queue again.
- The helicopter that lands near us then suddenly takes off with an enormous floodlight attached [picture to come]!

The best surprise is saved for the end. It's the slalom, the much-awaited final descent in the men's 'super-combo'. This is the big decider; the Event of Events. We position ourselves in the midst of the buzzing crowd, faces a-painted, flags a-waving. The French are confident of their success: they have several stars in the final. The commentator is equally cocky, gabbling on about the French skiers at every possible opportunity. It starts well: Frane quickly gains first and second place. An etranger steals second, but the crowd is confident of the two remaining national heroes providing a spangling set of medals.

Remaining national hero number 1 arises. The hope of a nation, an inspirational rolemodel, the star of the country.
He stacks it. Crashes straight into a pole and goes arse over tit into the slope sweepers (by every slalom gate there is a team of people who frantically sweep up after each skier). The crowd is not happy. No fear, for Remaining French Hero is here! He steps up, flashes the camera a winning smile and, in one of the best examples of deja vu, promptly whacks into a pole. Every French person in the audience whimpers slightly.

A few obscure competitors crawl down at the 'unimpressive' speed of several hudnred kilometres and hour and France starts to celebrate. Two of the top three places guaranteed. A party atmosphere sneaks into the crowd and has a quick boogey around. Even the commentator is waxing lyrical about the great triumph. Eventually, he pauses and says there still remains one last competitor; some bloke from Norway who had a spectacular groin-slicing injury last season. "Let's give him a round of applause to make him feel better" is the rather patronising encouragement. The crowd half-heartedly responds, engrossed in France's prancing victors on the interview stand.

ZOOM - a lycra bullet whizzes past and easily takes first place.
Truly a slap in the face with a soggy mackerel for France. Bloody hilarious! We leave before some moustachioed and heartbroken fan sees our glee and bursts into tears.

All in all, a cracking day out.

Carnaval

2009-03-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

We have pancake day (and long may it live!); the French have Mardi Gras. It all sounds very exotic until you realise it translates as something along the lines of 'Fatty Tuesday' or 'Greasy Tuesday'. Crepes being something of a national speciality anyway, the focus of this festival lies in 'Carnaval'.

So, there I am, on my merry tod, with the rarity of a free Saturday afternoon. 'Carnaval' seems like an enlightening cultural experience and I feel someone should go. Alors, my mind full of fuzzy childhood memories of my town carnival (a few papier-mache coated lorries and always the baton-twirling girls and the ever-cheerful Sally Army), I head into town.

Quelle surprise! I haven't seen so many people since The Strike To End All Strikes. As soon as I reach the Elephants, I'm in a different world. 3-foot Disney princesses garnish me with silly string whilst a miniature Batman holds me at gunpoint, a giant candyfloss/poodle in the other hand. Confetti explosions fill the air and my ears are bombarded with a bizarre melange of Elvis, War of the Worlds and circus music.
So this is Carnaval...

I allow myself to be swept into the crowd and watch the show. The sixty-year-old Elvis impersonator, complete with spangly suit, reassures the crowd that whilst he may not be a good singer, he's damn good-looking. He moves on (unlike the elderly women beside me, still gazing rapturously after him) and the next tractor pulls up. (Naturally, in rural Savoie, all the floats are pulled by tractors.) This is an elaborate affair with an enormous bent crane on hydraulics. A deep-sea diver is inexplicably dangling from the centre whilst an alien trapezes past him, occasionally dropping a ball to the ship's captain below in a haze of smoke. Cracking stuff!

So many of the floats defy definition and description; I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The last stunt involved two towering poles, each with a dancer on. The dancers climbed up sans rope and started making the poles sway. I shuffled around nervously, trying to get out of their line pf plummet in case it all went wrong, but soon realised that this encompassed most of the square and, as I'm sure Elton John would agree, it wouldn't be such a bad way to go anyway - surrounded by merry people and a colourful fuzz of sweets, balloons and glitter.

Le grève des grèves

2009-03-10T06:57:00.000-07:00

Three friends from home decided to visit and sample fondue, skiing and French culture. They were certainly in luck with the latter: they had inadvertently chosen to arrive on the day of France's biggest strike in years. Sarkozy had made a bit of a silly comment about nobody paying attention when there is a strike. So there it was: 'Le Grève des Grèves', the strike to end all strikes...'There will be a 'before January 29th' and an 'after January 29th,''... The headlines filled me with excitement at the prospect of a cracking manifestation, not to mention a day off.

Until, that is, I realised that my friends would quite probably be stranded at Lyon airport...which would be assuming they could still catch their flight if the airport staff were on strike. Fortunately, we found a private bus company and they arrived in perfect time for a good old protest.

"Why are they on strike?" someone asked. Good question. The banners being enthusiastically waved around started to answer the thought, and then didn't stop. I've not seen such a barrage of complaints since the local council back home decided to change to twice-weekly bin collections.

The teachers were there to protest about school reforms.
The nurses were there to protest about medical reforms.
The unemployed were there to protest about being unemployed.
The employed were there to protest about the crisis.
The Socialists were there to protest about capitalism.
The capitalists were there to protest about socialism.
The greens were there to protest about abuse of the environment.
Even the association of interpretaive artists was there with its handmade sign.

We were there for the show! And what a show we had. A first class view from the top floor of Galeries Lafayette, then soaking up the carnival atmosphere as people handed out balloons; played the guitar, cranked out songs and met long-lost friends all around us. I began to see why the French were so enthusiastic about these manifestations. We left before the fireworks and an enormous procession around town, but the sound of chanting followed us round the streets as we clutched our propaganda and went in search of Les Eléphants....

Whoops

2009-03-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the distinct lack of waffling recently. I have been spending many a merry lesson scribbling, only to lose all future blog entries in a tsunami of frantically tidied paperwork as I search for something in my room or attempt to maintain the semblance of being vaguely organised for private tuition chez moi. Life has also been generally getting in the way.

Still, I have successfully retrieved a significant backlog of tales, trivia and tittle tattle; so shall now type them up very slowly on a silly French keyboard. Apologies in advance for any stray letters - they're all a bit confused on this contraption...

Comment ca va?

2009-02-07T13:23:00.001-08:00

I have now spent over half of my allocated time abroad. Three and a half months of pain au chocolat for breakfast, of bodged conversations in shops, of attempting to instil the basics of English into rebellious students. Three and a half wonderful months of cultural, linguistical and physical adventure (of the sporting variety, you filthy-minded bunch!). At this point, it's probably appropriate to see how I'm doing with my aims for my year abroad:

Improve my French
Ben...oui quoi...Fin, je kwah que c un 'tit peu mieux. Qui sait.

Eat lots
Well, this is one area in which I've been spectacularly consistent and, if I may say so, a bit of an overachiever. My greatest discoveries so far have been 'merveilleux chocolats' - an enormous ball of meringue covered in chocolate creme and lavishly garnished with sprinkles.
- I've just counted and there are 7 sorts of cheese on my shelf in the fridge.
- I've tried raclette, tartiflette, croziflette, 3 types of fondue, (meat, cheese and chocolate), diots, polenta and many other local specialities.

It doesn't end with French food, though. We had a house meal the other week to celebrate the international nature of our floor. One dish from each person representing their country.
Starter: frogs legs (France) and haggis (of sorts) in stuffed peppers (well, would you want to stuff a sheep's stomach?)
Main: salmon and boiled potatoes (Norway)
Pudding: flapjack and Brazilian bombons (giant strawberries coated in caramel and chocolate).
Of course, some silly person had to go and spoil it all by eating too much, then spending the rest of the evening sat on her balcony in the freezing cold trying not to be sick....ahem....

Climb lots
This started off really well with a frantic mission to cram in as much climbing as possible before the dawning of The Cold and the fleeing of The Motivation. Fear of Fred and meatballs aside, I've had a great time exploring Orpierre, les Dentelles de Montmirail, les Calanques, the Vercors (albeit in the dark and fog), the cliffs above Lac d'Annecy and a variety of local crags, none of which were as esoteric as feared. I've introduced friends to via ferrata, bumbled up (or nearly up) some local mountains and have befriended/bribed/fooled sufficient numbers of people to make good use of the free climbing walls in town and the excellent centres in Grenoble. It's been brilliant conditions for ice climbing this season and I've been playing around with different axes and doing my usual job of cursing ice screws as they attempt to anchor into my leg.

Ski lots
I think this deserves its own post, but needless to say I am slowly getting better at downhill skiing, having gone at least once every week since Christmas.
Cross-country skiing is coming along very nicely. I wonder why I have this obsession with going up things the hard way, rather than just enjoying the ride down.

Petites Choses Pour Faire Rire

2009-02-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

It's been busy, busy, busy here, but here are some highlights of the past couple of weeks:

- Introducing the kids I tutor privately to Marmite. Oh, the looks on their faces when they discovered it didn't taste like caramel!

- Another tutoring incident: in the middle of talking to the kids' businessman father, I suddenly realised the laundrette was about to shut, trapping all my undies overnight and requiring a really early start the following morning, and most likely having to carry a rucksack full of wet laundry round school. In the midst of this most extreme of crises, the father paid me, handing over a note.
'Maintenant!' ('Now!') I declared.
There was no getting out of it...there's no way that could pass for 'merci' with an English accent.
Fortunately, he seemed similarly distracted and it was just the children who collapsed into giggles.

- I spent a day ice-climbing with Baptiste. In the preparation email, we tried to sort out gear.
"Ne t’inquiète pas: je prendrai mes sangliers" (Don't worry, I'll bring my slings) I reassured him. (NB: For all you non-climbers, a sling is like a thin loop of rope that we tie around things for abseiling or to attach ourselves to rock/ice.)

The next day, these slings came in handy. After a couple of pitches of climbing, I asked Baptiste if he wanted to take my slings. "I've got a big sling and a little sling", I offered, "we could wrap one round a tree up there".

At this point, Baptiste burst out laughing. Slightly affronted, I asked him what was so funny, wondering if this was yet another France Vs. England climbing clash, where the other country's habits are mercilessly mocked.
"Do you know what a 'sanglier' is?" he asked. Of course I bloody knew - I'd just been talking to him about sangliers (slings). Why would I have suggested putting one round a tree, let alone own several, if I didn't know what it was?!
Then it dawned on me.
That awful, blushworthy, creeping realisation that the wrong word might just have crept into my vocabulary.
All at once I remembered where I'd last heard the word. It had been ice-climbing, but not during the climbing itself; rather, en route, when we had spotted a wild boar running through the snow.

Yep, that's right. I had merrily and inadvertently been saying "wild boar" (sanglier) instead of "sling" (sangle) every single time. A quick replacement exercise of the above sentences will give some indication as to why Baptiste was now wetting himself with laughter.

Oh, bollocks.

- It's not just me who makes entertaining language cock-ups. At dinner with a teacher and her husband last week, my friends and I were delighted to hear her say: "You're such a bad boy" in a completely innocent sense, followed by his unintentionally hilarious response: "Yes, but you know you like it". Much trouble was had keeping straight faces.

Similar efforts had to be made at the apres-diner magic show, when said husband produced some red, plastic balls (which were soon to multiply and vanish into thin air), took Kat's hand and told her, in all earnestness: "Take my balls in your hand and squeeze them hard".

Pourquoi je blog

2009-01-28T00:25:00.000-08:00

Apart from a little linguistical rant, I've been quite quiet on the blogging front this month. This has been for a variety of reasons, not all of them cheerful ones, but once again the urge to waffle has returned. The end of 2008 was a thought-provoking time; it was without doubt the most emotionally varied year of my life. I won't break out into a fit of rollercoaster-related cliched metaphors, but I'm sure you get the gist.

Despite this, I reckon that it's a great thing to be able to escape the more serious things that life throws at us. Mocking the mundane and focusing on the fernickety is sometimes criticised as inappropriate, as an insufficient reaction to matters of more gravity. Yet we all do it; we all absorb ourselves in the insignificant to form a protective shell of refracted perspective, a blanket of the banal.

I hope that reading this blog provides something of value for you, whether it makes you cackle out loud for a moment, brings back a fond memory, or even motivates you to go and read something better.

5 Things I Hate About the French Language

2009-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

(Written in English to prove my point)

1. Gender

I don't want to come across as some sort of metrosexual-endorsing, genderbending, politically-correct knob, but really, why do words need genders? This manly shirt (une chemise), for manly men, is feminine; this very feminine mascara I'm wearing is masculine; this food I'm munching on actually has a gender. It's enough to make a fruitarian out of anyone, the thought of eating something that is distinctly male or female, something that has male or female aspects...And it's not just the idea of eating that which turns me slightly queasy, but even treading on it, running it over, breathing it in...you name the noun, it's either running around in pink stilettos or grunting between swigs of beer. Granted, it's not as bad as German, with its ever suspicious third gender: 'neuter', but it really causes problems when adjectives have to agree. It's really all rather dictatorish and most un-French t o have all this grammatically induced agreeing going on.

2 Words that sound the same

Yes, yes, I know they're called homophones, except in this case they seem to be homophones for me, but not for the French. Why on earth they have complete opposites that sound identical is a logical cock-up that surpasses even the most beaurocratic of French paperwork systems.

Prime example: au-dessus (above) Vs. au-dessous (below)

I hardly need expand on the disastrous consequences this could have, in terms of instructions or preferences...

(NB: My French friend is positive that these do sound utterly different to French people, so it is just my blithering incompetence, but even so, it's a real problem for us foreigners!)

3. Words that are the same, yet not...

'Temps' ('time' or 'weather') springs to mind here. How unwelcoming to the exiled linguist to greet them with a rally of questions the answers to which are invariably completely different:

"Zeveryfastfrancais...temps en Angleterre?"

This could be: 'How was the weather in England?', for which an answer of '2 weeks' would certainly not suffice, or 'How much time did you spend in England?', for which 'Wet' or 'Absolutely foul' would not be particularly appropriate.

4. The French don't actually speak French

Nearly 10 years of nurture, careful cultivating and prudent polishing, and my Oxford-honed French is about as useful as a bald cat. So, I can discuss Classical chariots, quote liberally from Pascal and read medieval courtly poetry. Well done me. Absolutely fantastic.

However, not so useful when trying to ask for a drying rack in a supermarket, or a duvet for my room (as the 4 blankets currently sitting uselessly in a corner testify). Even GCSE French, the last useful smidgen of 'useful' language, produces more giggles than results. Throw in a subjunctive, or a 'ne pas' and the French find you simply adorable and real comedienne.

5. How all the little sounds are different
In English, we all know the meaning of the apparently universal sounds such as mm-hmm, uh-uh, uh-huh, aw, er, urgh, um, and especially the ever-flexible mm. In French, it seems these are incomprehensible, or, at worst, mean the complete opposite. So much for simple communication.

Bloody Bises

2008-12-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

We all know the French stereotype who rushes up, beret on head, baguette in hand, to plant a dramatic kiss on each cheek as a greeting. Mwah darling, mwah, mwah, mwah. But surely they don't really do that in France?! Surely that's as real as strings of garlic around necks and zee comedie accent? Except zee comedie accent does exist, and so do the kisses, or the 'bises' (pronounced 'bees' as in 'the bees' knees') as the French like to call them. To us English, with our strict unspoken rules of personal space, stiff upper-lip maintenance and hygiene, this habit of kissing one and all is somewhat alarming. Fantastic if it's a particularly attractive friend, but generally really rather awkward.

So far I've had several highly embarrassing moments with the bises, and I'm sure there will be more to come. As you can no doubt imagine, problems include:
- Who do you kiss?
- How many kisses?
- Which side do you go for?
- What if you're faced with someone's partner?
- What if the other person smells funny?
- What if you're about to sneeze?
- What if you've got a gobful of chocolate eclair?

And so the list continues.
Perhaps fortunately, Frenchies are generally a lot more spontaneous, so there's rarely time for more than one of these worries before someone's lunging towards you, lips a-pouting, moustache a-quivering. If only I were equally spontaneous and could just embrace the intimacy and plant a smacker on a stranger's cheek. Unfortunately, years of training in British neutrality have resulted in the instinctive reaction of revulsion. My whole body leans backwards, my hands come out to push the other person away, and my face apparently resembles someone who just saw a naked Gordon Brown dancing The Birdie Song, nipple tassels a-twirling. For some reason, this tends to offend the prospective 'biseur' and has probably ruined many a potential friendship.

Other times, I don't realise what is going on and conduct a merry dance around a room, with a Frenchie lunging towards me, and me nervously edging backwards, until finally, cornered against a wall, I have to give in. It's not that I don't want to do it - I think it's much nicer than a distant handshake. It's just not a built-in instinct. It would be fine with friends, but with colleagues and strangers it really goes against some deep-grained instinct.

The worst times are when I should be taking the initiative, but bumble along in my own little fuzz of ignorance and slight offense that everyone else is ignoring me. Once, on a climbing trip, we stopped at a car park to organise lift-sharing. The woman who was taking me got out of the car, enthusiastically greeted everyone and started kissing them all. It was all lovely: hugs, embraces, laughter. I stood there like a lemon waiting for her to introduce me to all her friends. We all got back in our cars. I tried not to be offended that I hadn't been introduced, reassuring myself that I'd never have remembered all their names anyway.
"I can't believe you didn't do the bise with them" said the woman.
"Oh...well, I don't know any of them. In England the person who knows both parties usually introduces them to each other," I said, half expecting an apology.
"Oh, I've never met them in my life!" she said. "That's how you introduce yourself".
"By kissing as if you're long-lost friends?"
"Of course!".

Of course.
The conversation continued and she very helpfully explained the importance of doing the bise at the right time.
"But what if you're leaving a party and there are 50 people to say goodbye to?" I asked, thinking I'd finally found a reasonable occasion to duck out of the lip action.
"Then you kiss every person goodbye, or you publicly announce why you're not going to," she said.
"But doesn't that take forever?"
"Well, I suppose it does, but it's normal for us."

The woman was very friendly and had spent time in the UK, where she had suffered the opposite problem of offending female friends upon kissing their boyfriends, and was frequently seen as an overaffectionate lesbian. She ended with a description of her American friend who had come to France a few years ago:
"She met my French friend for the first time, and the French friend went in to kiss her. My American friend stopped her at the last minute and said she wouldn't do the bises because she had an awful cold and didn't want to give it to the French lady."
"Well, that's fair enough," I said, busily concocting plans to 'have a cold' whenever meeting new people. "So what happened?"
"The French lady never spoke to the American woman again."
"Oh."

Bloody bises.

Wanks on Planks

2008-12-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

For a long time I have been more than mildly confuzzled by the strange habit of some: to strap themselves to wooden planks and slide down a mountain. You know, those funny little things that tend to throw avalanches, storms and rockfall in our general direction...

However, despite my initial dubiositiness (which was probably similar to yours upon reading that word), I have indulged in this form of madness in the past with varying degrees of terror and adrenalin-filled bemusement. Last year's efforts proved particularly disastrous, with my movements frequently resembling Bambi on speed. Why people can't stick to normal sports like ice-climbing is beyond me.

Nevertheless, it's a good giggle, so this year is going to be my year of improvement. I had intended to await the New Year with free lessons from the alpine club, but when Beth's teacher offered us her parents' chalet for the weekend, we thought it would be rude to decline. All in all, it was quite a success with no deaths or fatal injuries. I only fell over 3 times the first day, each time when I was standing completely still and having a natter. The second day was a tad on the blowy side and I remembered mountains are scary places, so slowed my speed down to perhaps 1km/day. Hardcore.

Next plan: to try cross-country skiing on a proper circuit (rather than at the snowboarding championships in Grenoble). It sounds much less scary, but a little too much like hard work...On verra.

Lessons in anglais

2008-12-18T07:42:00.000-08:00

One of the great benefits of the assistantship is meeting fellow francophiles from around the world who have chosen to inflict their mother tongue on French children. This has led to some curious cultural comparisons and diverse discoveries...

Lessons learnt

- In Trinidad, it is too hot to ever need to use a duvet, hence confusion all round when our friend from said country was faced with fitting a duvet cover for the first time.

This lead to the dicovery of...

- Words and phrases that don't exist in America:

Duvet day - this is a matter of quite some urgency and must be rectified as soon as possible. Duvet day missionaries shall be sent to spread the word about these most necessary of days.

Grotty

Dalek - although this shouldn't really exist in English either. (Interpret that as you will...)

Full stop - I still don't think our American friend believes that we actually use this apparently hilarious phrase.

- Fun new words learnt in French:

Cocooner - to stay in at home. Awwww.

Baguette magique - magic wand! Guaranteed to conjure amusing images of a wrinkled little wizard brandishing his stick of bread.

Aller dans le sens des aiguilles d'un montre - clockwise. Talk about the long way round!

- We had a clearout of the house fridge last week. With a regular turnover of occupants, there's quite a high rate of abandoned nosh. Nobody knows its owner has long since departed, merrily oblivious to the mould and stench left behind. As we were retrieving various entrails, strings of brown slime and furry fruit, our Dutch housemate commented that the English have an astonishing variety of words for 'disgusting'. I recoiled a moment, unsure whether to take this as an insult to our people or a compliment to our literary range. The temptation proved too much and we discovered the following lists to the envy of Eskimos and their many words for snow:

Disgusting
Minging
Foul
Rank
Mank
Awful
Grotesque
Dire

Good
Excellent
Brilliant
Super
Fantastic
Wonderful
Spigging
Awesome
Wicked
Good
Cracking
Phat

It's raining
Spitting
Drizzling
Pouring
Chucking it down
Pissing it down
Raining cats and dogs
Damp

Disclaimer: Some of these phrases are not 'phat'. Some are actually quite foul. But it was pissing it down and we were bored, so voila: nos efforts.

Beaurocratic Bumblings

2008-12-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

To receive my housing benefit, I need a social security number, or so the increasingly arsey letters keep telling me. I quite like free money, so decide to make the trek in the pouring rain to the social security office.

The woman at the desk seems friendly and is having an animated conversation with another woman. I wait my turn then turn on my beaming 'anglaise un peu perdue' smile and explain my problem. The woman is distinctly unimpressed. "Are you sure you 'ave got zee right place?" She stares at my soggy jeans and dripping Gore-tex. I stand my ground, determined to stay in the dry.

She grunts and points at a complicated looking machine. "You'll 'av to zee a conseilleur".
"Er...how does it work?" I ask, meaning the whole system of meeting someone. Surely 'conseilleur' isn't the word for the machine? Is it really that simple to get a social security number? I start wondering who I could get one for...if only Bas and Pom were still with me...
"Ze green button," she snarls, somehow managing to combine two doses of withering pity with a shot of disdain.

Well, it can't be that bad. Everyone knows it's the red buttons you have to watch out for.
I hit it.
A little slip of paper shoots out: You are number 166. There are 5 people in the queue.
Only in France do they have to turn the most elegant of British institutions into a butchery of Argos-style individualism. I fume in a corner, my indignation and sanity slowly being eroded away by Kate Bush's persistent warblings of Wuthering Heights on repeat.
Eventually, I'm summoned into a room.

The next 10 minutes are without doubt the most confusing 10 minutes of my time in France, if not my time on Earth.
Once I've asked the woman to slow down, repeat herself, slow down again, and eventually write some of what she's saying down, the conversation goes something like this:
Incredibly irritating old bat: What is your number?
Me: Well, see, that's the problem. I don't have one yet.
IIOB: I need zee number!!
Me: Well, yes, so do I!
IIOB: You cannot see me without a number.
Me: *many English profanities under my breath*...I need a number. Please.
IIOB: Are you or are you not number 166?
Me: Oh. Yes.
[She takes my number and promptly throws it into the bin. I'm sure the one person after me in the queue was incredibly grateful that she checked in case I'd cheated the system.]

IIOB: Alors, what eez ze problem?
Me: I don't have a social security number and I need one for my hou-
IIOB: Well I can't give you one.
Me: Where do I have to go to get one?
IIOB: Here.
Me: Er...well, here I am. How do I get one?
IIOB: You need to talk to a conseilleur.
Me: I thought that's what I was doing now.
IIOB: [Sigh]. Do you have a payslip?
Me: No, I can't get a payslip until I've got a number.
IIOB: Well, you can't have a number until we've got a copy of your payslip.

Take the last three sentences, add a background beat of decreasingly polite noises to indicate irritation, throw in a constant crescendo, a modulation on each repeat to a slightly higher key, and an increase in tempo. Repeat until exhausted.

Voila: la beaurocracie francaise.

Vive les pompiers!

2008-12-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

The other week, there I was sat at my desk trying to phone those who so lovingly brought me into this world. The usual battle was underway; a tangle of headphone wires resembling my après-tornado hair (a look I frequently sport) and the internet phoneline fireworks had just launched an unnecessarily aggressive offensive against my patience. A particularly persistent Catherine wheel crackle had just interrupted my flowing description of a 6c I'd been working on.

Oooh...Aaaah.

Mother dear: Why are you cooing?
Me: Oh, was I? sorry, it's just the pretty blue lights flashing outside.

Hang on - blue lights flashing outside?

Me: Er...I'll be right back...

A quick goggle outside revealed most of the French fire brigade rushing around outside my house, with a few police cars thrown in for good measure. I ran to get Beth.
"Do you think the house is on fire?"
"Ooh, er, maybe we should go and see."
"Well, they'd probably have told us if it was. I don't want to interrupt them if they're doing something important. [Pause] Especially not in French..."

An excited flap with our French housemate later and we were outside, apparently in the middle of some Buffy-style apocalypse. Fire engines lined the roads, smoke billowed from the lane beside out house, water was pouring down the street, and teams of men in full breathing equipment were dashing around heroically. A van of men with clipboards was parked outside my bedroom window, with two official-looking chaps hurriedly erecting a 10 foot pole on the top.
It was all a bit E.T.

Further investigation revealed that it was in fact all an elaborate training exercise, completely with smoke machines, pretend victims and closed roads. A fanastic show nonetheless, with front-row seats on my balcony, despite the giant pole wobbling past my window in search of signals from space, or some such endeavour.

As I was wallowing in the glorious drama of it all, my computer bleeped at me.
"Darling, are you alright? Is your house on fire?"

Back to normality...

Choc, horreur...!

2008-12-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Twice or thrice a week, I do something that seems to cause a mild epileptic fit in everyone who witnesses it. People gesticulate, twitch and shout at me, eyes a-boggling, hands a-flapping. Admittedly, this is far from a rare occurence with me in England, but there's a subtle difference: back home it's usually people inside the car.

Yes, my shocking action is to drive...with...wait for it...the steering wheel on THE WRONG SIDE!!

The scandal.

I have actually been stopped by people kindly informing me that my steering wheel is on the wrong side. Oh gosh! How on earth did that happen?! Thank goodness someone pointed that out before I felt too normal here.

It's not without its benefits, though. Sometimes I feel I've achieved celebrity status. On a mountainbiking jaunt in the hills a couple of weeks ago, a group of road workers cheered and waved as I went past on the way, on my way home, on my scenic, if slightly unintentional detour back up the hill, and again as I finally headed home. There's nothing like it for that warm, fuzzy feeling of familiarity, combined with slight embarrassment.

Lessons learnt
Not many Brits make it down this far in the car.

Bodging avec Baptiste

2008-12-09T03:37:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Paris I spent a spiffing weekend with a Frenchie called Baptiste who lives in a nearby town. The aim was two days of local multipitch climbing.

Friday night

Baptiste and friends: Salut Flick!
Moi: Salut!
Baptiste and friends: Alors....leveryquickfrenchthatsimpossibletounderstand...hein?
Moi: Er...oui...*nervous laugh*
Baptiste and friends: Bof...wearenotspeakinganylanguageinexistencebutjustmakingnoisestoconfuseyou...n'est-ce pas?
Moi: Le mm-hmm.
*Confused stares*
Moi: Eh...ben...bof...alors...quoi! *big smile*

That seems to do the trick!

Saturday morning

10:30am: Wake up. Panic about excessive lie-in. Reach near hyperventilation stage but decide it's too cold for such a big panic and retreat further under duvet.
10:35am: Baptiste leaps into his living room in a similar panic.
Midday: Reach parking spot in time to eat chocolate eclair. (No point in carrying excessive weight up the route...). The road is a bit icy.
12:10pm: Both realise we've forgotten our big, warm, snowproof mountaineering boots for the approach.
12:30pm: Cold! The snow on the approach walk-in is rather deeper than anticipated. We keep losing the path. This is fine for Baptiste, who glides around effortlessly, but not so good for me. My feet appear to be magnets for everything interesting under the snow. Several times in a row I put my foot through a big hole into a stream or a cowpat. Yum.
1pm: Decide we haven't got time to do the intended route if we want to drive back alive, as the snow on the road will turn to ice as soon as the evening cold sets in. Spot a feasible cliff up a slope and set up an ab rope for toproping. Very fun abseil!

The route turns out to be rather hard (in the 7s I think!), not helped by the water on half of it and my snow-soaked climbing shoes. French ethics are employed to scale the cliff, the rope, and various trees at the top.

Sunday
Lovely multipitch in the sun with gorgeous views and only one case of elbow-crippling rockfall.
Spiffing.

Le 'Vin' novembre

2008-12-09T03:05:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know, I'm very behind in my blogging. I frantically scribble things on the train, late at night, in the staffroom and on the rare occasion when one of my classes is busy working, but I have an inconvenient habit of then losing my scribblings. Let's hope they're lost in my room and not scattered around France causing offense all over the place!

So, some exciting things that have happened recently:

- The 20th November was 'Beaujolais Nouveau' day. Some marketing genius has managed to get the entire country in a multicoloured fuzz of excitement about the arrival of this year's version of Beaujolais wine. It's a pretty impressive publicity feat and has become something of a tradition, with cafes, restaurants and even some patisseries stocking the new glug.

Apparently rich Brits race their swanky cars to France and back in an attempt to be the first to crack open a bottle this side of the Channel. Why they can't just pop over on a night ferry and drink in the middle of the sea beats me.

Naturally, we felt it appropriate to participate in this French tradition, and it seemed right to do this at lunchtime, when the rest of the country vanishes into restaurants. The wine was okay and came in a fantastically colourful bottle which has joined the other objects in my room attempting to hide the giant TV. Sadly, I missed the tasting session at my school. Oh well, there are still all the bottles of spirits in the staffroom for 50 cents a pop...and that's in the nicest school!

In other news...
I'm sorry to announce the untimely death of Bas and Pom. Bas unfortunately succumbed to the fatal drought of The Weekend When Flick Went Climbing and Forgot to Water Him, and was finished off by The Week When Flick Kept Looking At Him And Worrying But Still Never Got Round to Watering Him. Very tragic times, and seemingly completely unavoidable.

Pom held out a little longer, but at the grand old age of 2 months, he sadly turned a rather funny shade of crimson, wrinkled his berries in disgust and with a melodramatic thud, departed from his earthly realm...
After a suitably dramatic panic, I scooped him up, but all to no avail.
His memory shall live on.

I don't want to end on a sad note, so...
Here's a picture of a lovely little piglet at the market. Panic not - he's there for a fundraising stall, not for Sunday roast.

Awwwww....

Gay Pareee

2008-11-18T02:17:00.000-08:00

Rain
DVD evening

Explore the quartier
Flea market missing
Foot in Seine - Seine has waves
28 different sorts of hot chocolate
Cinema on Champs Elysee
Eiffel Tower blue and sparkling
Giant orange rabbits

Catacombes: big queue
Musee d'Orsay
Culture
Best crepe ever
Unidentified package on metro tracks
Opera: kite-flying millepede, adults dressed as chickens. Czech with French subtitles. Feel posh.

Come home
Snow on mountains

Une petite crise de foie

2008-11-17T13:57:00.000-08:00

The weekend dawns. Sven has promised to take me climbing.

Friday night
Leave Chambery sans probleme.
Reach town with lots of S's in its name. All signs point to that town. Get ensnarled in residential ghetto. Sven admits it may be the wrong town with lots of S's in it.
It is.
Reach T juntion: Left - 'Toutes directions' (all directions). Right - 'Autres directions' (other directions). That's French logic for you.

Eventually get back on the correct road. Wiggle around the mountains. Some kids have spray-painted over the name of our destination village. Amazing how there are vandals even in idyllic ski resorts.
8km before we arrive: ROUTE BARREE (road shut, sorry). Ah, maybe it wasn't chavs after all.

A big detour on more winding roads later, and 7km in the other direction from our destination: ROUTE BARREE (road shut, haha).
Zees ees starting to tek ze peas. Sven mutters someting about 'locals only' areas where they don't bother with signposts for tourists.

2 hours, 200km and much comfort-eating later, we finally get there having taken a ridiculously long detour as our only remaining option.

We spot a clearing in the forest for camping and drive into it. "Er, Sven, this looks a bit mud-" SCHREE! WHIRR!! We're not moving. The wheels are creating a lovely melange of mud and twigs. Unable to reverse, Sven drives further in. We are now on the forest, rather than in it - the undergrowth is entangled round our wheels and if my window wasn't shut, there would be a decorative array of twigs and branches skewering my eyeballs, hair and clothes kebab-stylee.

I get out and try to push. Nothing happens except the car seems to get taller. A quick look down brings the exciting revelation that I am in fact sinking in very sticky mud. I stand and flap uselessly as Sven attempts dramatic reversing manoeuvres and 23-point turns. It suddenly seems very dark and I swear I can hear wild boar surrounding me. It's all a bit Blair Witch.

We eventually find a sensible spot and crash out for the night. The next day dawns a little later and a lot damper than expected, so we abandon dramatic multipitch plans and drive 2 hours further South to the Dentelles de Montmirail - some dramatic limestone 'teeth'.

A summary of Saturday
- Attempt to be adventurous with food.
- Buy mysterious meatballs from charcuterie. "I don't normally tell people what's inside until they've tried one" says the butcher, encouragingly. He tells Sven anyway: heart, liver, muscle and lung.
- Eat some of said ball before climbing - lung appears to be wrapped around everything else.

- Climb 2 routes. Very hot. Feel sick. Very sick.
- Fall asleep for 2 hours at the bottom of the crag, harness and shoes still on.
- Wake up feeling sunburnt. Feel sick again. Fall asleep for another half an hour.
- Retreat to bar. Feel a bit better.
- Forgetting previous culinary mishaps, order mulled wine, which is listed on the menu alongside grog. Enthusiastically slurp it down through a straw. Turns out to be grog and mulled wine combined. Feel rather ill again.
- Camp by 8th century ruined castle.

Slightly more successful Sunday
Wake up late. Bakery. No guidebook. Sharp rock. 4.5 routes. Hard. Retreat to bar. Ice cream. Drive along same country road as a rally race. At the same time. Survive. Home by 6. Eat spaghetti.

Lessons learnt
- No need to be adventurous with food. Never again.
- 'Vin chaud - grog' is an inclusive 'and', not just two things with the same price.
- The bottom of a cliff in the South of France overlooking vinyards and rustic villages is one of the best places I've ever had a nap.

- Spiders eat horsemeat.
- Climbing is a great excuse for travelling (okay, I already knew that one!)
- Olive trees take so long to grow that it's usually easier to get an old one delivered straight to your garden:

- Nothing beats spaghetti and ketchup after a hard weekend's climbing.

Mont Granier - un petit epic

2008-11-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

Beth, Matt and I decide to conquer Mont Granier, the impressive-looking mountain towering over Chambery.

It all starts out fantastically (a steep, slippery slog aside): grapes, rotisserie chicken, local cheese, baguette, sun, impromptu bouldering and gorgeous views.

It all goes wrong when Matt starts telling the gruffalo story...

Matt (in his best primary school teacher voice): "I'm going to eat you up little Beth", said the rather angry gruffalo. "Nooooo" screamed little Beth! "Eat Felicity, for she is far tastier!"

Er, guys, are we definitely on the right path? We seem to be heading downhill. I always thought the top of a mountain was rather more in the uphill direction...
Right, it says on our utterly reliable web printout that we're supposed to be on a well-marked path.
I saw a sign maybe half an hour ago. Or maybe it was just a bit of moss...
Well we've already been behind us. And in front of us is downhill. The big snowy mountains are on our right, so we're heading in the right direction. Maybe we should just scramble up the cliffs to the left and we'll find ourselves on the summit ridge.
Sure, what could go wrong?

20 minutes of bimbling later:

Hmm...who would have thought the top would be so hard to find?!
Er...does anyone have a plaster? I appear to be bleeding.
I reckon if we just head in this, no that, no, er...some direction, then we'll find...something.
What times does it get dark again?

10 minutes later:

Ooh look at that mountain over there!
Hang on, that's higher than us. Aren't we meant to be on the highest mountain around?
That must be our summit then - we just need to walk forward for maybe an hour and we'll be there. Awesome!

5 minutes later:

Ah.
Oh.
Arse.
That's quite a big drop between us and the right bit of the mountain.
Yep.
So I guess the mountain's a U shape and we've managed to traverse too far round the U.
Seems so.
Poo!
Well, we're kind of on the summit plateau. I vote we go down or we won't make it down before it gets dark.
Okay, which way?
Er...

10 minutes later

Okay guys, I think I've found a bit of cliff we can scramble down easily! I'll go down first and see if it's do-able. You all know the emergency number, right?....Yep, it's fine...safely down!....That's it Beth, foot a bit lower, great....Matt, it's just a bit to your left, okay?....Excellent, we're definitely on the right path now. That was all a bit of an advent- FUUUUUCK-ING HELL MATT!!

Matt had found the whole thing so relaxing that he sort of forgot to hold on and is now plummeting down the scramble, his body strangely horizontal, limbs flailing around Matrix style.

What if he cracks his head open?! Where's the helicopter going to land? Does he have the grapes in his bag still? Really shouldn't be worrying about grapes right now. Oh shit, I really shouldn't be swearing so much. Oh gosh, he's still falling. It's only a couple of metres - why is he taking so long?! Ouch, he just bounced out of a tree. Okay, now he's about to land...Oh, he's about to land! BEEEETH!! CATCH HIM!!

Beth and I stare at each other for a second, then she lunges forward and stops Matt rolling all the way down the hill. We make a huge girly fuss over him, but miraculously most injury has been avoided thanks to the emergency sleeping bag in his rucksack. We all stare up at the rockface, incredulous that those few metres could host such a drawn-out plummet.

We return chez nous with new respect for the mountain and a little less respect for ourselves...

Choses Amusantes

2008-11-17T13:08:00.000-08:00

Signs seen in and around Chambery:

Dancing tea...it's all a bit Beauty and the Beast here.

Frogs every Friday night! Yes!

Fanshy shome whishky?

Frogs leg curry anyone?

Speaks for itself!

Saint Francois of the dirty people.

Disclaimer
I am an ignorant, Franglais-speaking, immature student. I find these things funny. So tee hee!

Grenoble et le retard

2008-11-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

A bunch of us popped along to Grenoble to sample the cultural delights. Well, I say that...I fancied it because it was raining so all mountain-related frolics were resigned to dramatic plans for the future. Beth wanted to go because her favourite H&M shirt had got mangled in the dryer and there's a big H&M in Grenoble. Both utterly convincing reasons methinks.

My thoughts on and in Grenoble

1. Urgh it's wet.
2. H&M looks exactly the same everywhere.
3. I think I'll buy a beret.

Due to all-too-foreseeable weather problems, we decide to head to a hot chocolate cafe recommended in my guidebook.

It promises thick hot chocolate with dried fruit, biscuits and a variety of tempting munchies.
It's shut until 6pm.
We spend a wholesome hour in the bar next door.
6pm: Immense effort as we shuffle back to the cafe. Big smiles: "6 chocolats chauds s'il vous plait!"
They don't do hot chocolate anymore.
Never trust a tourist guidebook. Especially if it's a whole year (*gasp* - a whole year?!) out of date.
We traipse across the road. It's pissing wet. Find a 'rebellion' bar with pictures of Che Guevara and French strikes everywhere. Beth has Grog, Verity has a glowstick in her drink, I get my hot chocolate. All is okay. Afterwards we roll into...

The Fondue Place
6 enthusiastic people
+ 3 cheese fondues
+ Wine
+ Giant chocolate fondue
= Much merriment.

The retard

Covered in cheese, chocolate and goodness knows what else, we leap on the last tram to get on the last train. (No, we still hadn't learn about the problems associated with last trains). Arrive gasping on the platform.

*RETARD: 5 MINUTES* (5 minutes delay*) [*The English is not in uppercase, as I'm sure the same notice in England would have been apologetically whispered, rather than enthusiastically shouted in brash capitals]

Okay, no problem. Time to let the fondue settle in our stomachs again.

5 minutes later: *RETARD 10 MINUTES*

5 minutes later again: *RETARD 15 MINUTES*

Even a bunch of franglais-speaking arts students can begin to see the pattern here. We retreat to the main station where an annoying french chav spins around us squeaking 'Oh la la chocolat'. We ignore him, laugh with him, laugh at him, just plain cackle, but all to no avail.

30 minutes later: *RETARD INDETERMINE * RETARD INDETERMINE * RETARD INDETERMINE * (indeterminately delayed, awfully sorrry)
This is accompanied by an announcement: "Mesdames et Messieurs, on regrette de vous informer qu'il y a un retard indéterminé à cause des animaux sur la voie. Merci pour votre compréhension."

Animaux sur la voie...animals on the tracks?! What sort of animals could cause every train heading into Grenoble station to be delayed? The French are hardly the sort to grind national transport to a halt because of a kitten on the tracks. Nor a horse. Nor any animal I can think of. We conclude that it must be a herd of cows or a very angry wild boar.

One whole hour and 45 minutes later: We collapse into a taxi courtesy of the French rail company, the humour of the situation having turned into snooziness. I sit next to a French girl who turns out to also like climbing. (I do sometimes wonder if my range of conversational topics is a little limited...) I rather patronisingly assume she occasionally topropes indoors. Turns out she climbs around 7c and competes. Oh well...she probably didn't just have a guilt-free fondue fest.

Lessons learnt
- Apparently I am seen as a dominant female (revealed after several rounds of the highly hypothetical 'truth' game: kiss/marry/kill/touch inappropriately/shag). I fear slightly that this makes me sound like a moustachioed Thatcherite...
- Even cities aren't much good in the rain.
- You can find the same H&M shirt thousands of miles away. Unleash your wildest tumbledrier fantasies and mangle those tops without fear.
- Fondue hangovers exist. The next morning I felt like I was about to give birth to triplets.

Postscript
Matt sleeps on my floor as we get home too late for his bus. He casually informs me over a week later that at 3am, and again at 6am, I leapt out of bed, screamed 'SHIT, SHIT!!', turned the light on and ran out of the room.
He assumed this was vaguely normal behaviour for me.
Oh dear.

Lost in Translation

2008-11-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

Delightful story from last week:

Who: Class of 13-year-olds.
Where: Computer room.

Teacher: "Research Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks on the internet. Make a poster. In ANGLAIS!!"

30 children duly go to Wikipedia or similar.
30 children copy and paste a huge section on Martin Luther King into an online translator.
30 children put up their hands and say they're finished.
Teacher beams at me and asks me to go and check their work.

3 unintentionally hilarious results from the online translator

1."Rosa Parks went out at the age of 92" (from the French éteindre, meaning 'to pass away', but also 'to extinguish', as in a flame.).
Me: "That's nice - where did she go?" My attempt at wit is met by blank stares. Oh well.

2. "Martin Luther King was a penis of the black civil rights movement".
membre = member = penis.
Someone was definitely having a giraffe with that translation programme.
Luckily the children don't understand the word, so I gently encourage them to delete it, whilst cackling away to myself inside.

And, the best:

3. "Martin Luther King was a brilliant student. He worked hard to achieve his ultimate aim of becoming an avocado."
avocat = avocado/lawyer.
At this point I failed utterly to suppress my mirth and received concerned looks from strangers for the rest of the day as I relived the moment.

Children are wonderful.

L'escalade

2008-11-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

Early experiences

1. Plastic-pulling: After a frustrating week of working out climbing sequences in my head round the house, school and even the Elephant Fountain, I finally got to hug some rock. Well, it was plastic, but let's not be fussy.

A few of us went to Aix-les-Bains, the nearby OAP paradise spa town, which was trying to show its 'hip'n'happening-ness' by hosting an outdooor sports festival. We watched some impressive mountainbiking displays, then had our own über-extreme effort on a pedalo. Everyone was up for a go on the climbing wall, despite the extortionate 3 Euro charge for one ascent.

We join the queue, acutely conscious that we are twice the height and at least twice the age of everyone else.
Nobody is on the hardest route. I rehearse the sequence mentally. It looks achievable.

Suddenly, I'm pushed forward: "Here - she can climb - she wants to try the hard one!"
"Erm, actually, I don't have my shoes, and-"
I pause as the breath is squeezed out of me. A petite French woman is trying to squeeze me into a kids' harness.
"Excusez-moi, this isn't going to work..."...grunt, puff, merde!..."er, c'est trop petit pour moi! YEOW!!"
The French appear not to have heard of hips. By now the woman is sweating in her efforts, face a deep crimson, biceps-a-bulging. A good-sized crowd has gathered, no longer shouting instructions to the climbers, but offering immensely unhelpful advice to my torturer.

Eventually she twigs and gives me an adult harness. I pick up some shoes and am gently told to try a bigger size for beginners.
All possible humiliations covered, I drag myself up the route and after a characteristic amount of effort, slap for the top. Win a rucksack for my efforts. Sit down feeling chuffed and watch a ten-year-old cruise his way up effortlessly.
Git.

2. Adventures with Sven: Sven promises to whisk me away for a weekend of sport climbing in Orpierre. Spend a few days gleefully trying out the phrase "Oh, I'm just popping to the South of France this weekend" until even I want to give myself a slap.

We form a group of four: a Quebecois, an Anglaise, a Francais and a Deutschlander. My linguistic brain goes SPLAT and I spend the journey admiring the blizzard.
Hang on...A BLIZZARD?! This was meant to be a sunny sport climbing trip. And we're camping. Bugger.

Fortunately, all turns out fine and I am spoilt by a village geared towards climbing and routes with bolts 50cm apart. Also finally find a cheap drying rack in the supermarket. Success all round.
Saturday night sees a huge camp fire and a veritable feast of escargots, fondue, venison and melted choccy nanas. Yum.

3. Fear of Fred: Meet a bloke working in the local climbing shop. He's called Fred, laughs at my French and is free on Mondays. Perfect. Look forward to my introduction to local crags all week until Sunday evening when Sven jokingly mentions how happy Fred must be to have found a stranded anglaise to introduce to French 'culture'.

Monday: have emergency meeting with Beth. She reassures me that I'm not being stupid: "After all, it's not like he's taking you up some dodgy lane in a forest with no-one around!" Erm, actually, that's exactly what he's doing.
Grande panique!
My phone rings. Plus Grande Panique! He's up the road. I can't understand a word he's saying. "Er...d'accord?" I hang up. Bollocks.
Say my farewells to Beth, arm myself with a nutkey and greet Fred by telling him how great Dan is.

It turns out fine, of course.

Lessons learnt
- Everyone called Fred is friendly. No exceptions.

- Climbing-related words in French are mysteriously bovine: 'vaché' (literally: cow-ed), means 'safe', 'du mou' (Mooo!) means 'slack, and 'en moulinette' (mooooo-lynette) means 'on top rope'.

Le médecin

2008-11-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

To join the Club Alpin Francais, which is the climbing and skiing equivalent of a giant Christmas box of Quality Street, all potential members require a medical certificate to say that they won't fall to bits the second they even say the word 'mountain'.

Righty-ho then. Off I trot to the doctor.

Doctors in France are mainly private and this one at least has no reception.
A note on the door tells me: 'Ring the bell and come in'. Okay. DRIIIINNNGG. Hmm...nobody in sight. I sit on a chair and read a very informative magazine article for ten-year-olds discussing the relative merits of reading on the bog.

A good ten minutes pass and still no sign of life from any of the doors around me. I swear I can hear someone's leg being hacked off with a rusty nail file.
I cough loudly in the hope that my undoubtedly friendly doctor will leap out, present me with the required certificate and give me a sticker for being brave. Nothing happens.
I go back outside and ring the bell for a little too long. Still nothing.

Maybe the doctor has accidentally injected himself with paralysing fluid Mr Bean-style and is lying on the floor, arm outstretched, waiting for me to burst in and record his dying words of genius. Or to save him, I suppose, but that would be far less dramatic, and we are in France after all.

I burst in. "EXCUSEZ-MOI MONSIEUR! JE VIENS!"
Ah. A bemused doctor and patient stare at me.
"Uh...pardon. Je suis anglaise." The catch-all general apology. After all, my nationality usually seems to be accompanied by some sort of apology, or at least an embarrassed shrug and the sort of facial expression usually reserved for treading in a particularly sloppy shit.

5 minutes later I am called in.
Fully prepared for the normal questions (Are you pregnant? Do you have heart problems?), I smile upon hearing the first question: "Vous êtes enceinte?" (Are you pregnant?) "NON!" I declare proudly, beaming at the bloke.
He frowns. Thousands of detailed questions follow about every possible health problem. He really seems to want there to be something wrong with me. I finally 'confess' that my parents are short-sighted. He sighs and asks if I'm pregnant.
Hang on, hadn't I just answered that? Suddenly it occurs to me that the pregnant question wasn't that at all, but had in fact been "Vous êtes en bonne santé?" (Are you in good health?).
Arse.

The following 20 minutes involve various embarrassing poses as he dislocates my shoulder, pokes and prods my ribs, and, for some unknown reason, makes me do thirty squats, arms outstretched, with no top on. Later conversations with genuine Frenchies reassure me that this is perfectly normal, but nevertheless it leaves me with a deep suspicion of all things medical and French.

5 Choses Super Cools

2008-11-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

5 things that are still cool in Savoie

1. Mullets - fortunately limited to mountain villages, but still a veritable tragedy for all involved.

2. Finger skateboards - hours of fun popping ollies in your lap.

3. Roller skating - kids, businessmen, even shop assistants in the hypermarket.

4. Strikes - we had them in the 80s. Everyone moaned. France has them almost every Tuesday and Thursday. Sometimes in Chambery they even put a stick in the ground and set it on fire. Exciting stuff.

5. Mopeds - 15 -year-olds attempting wheelies on hairdryers. Everywhere.

Quelques Petites Merdes

2008-11-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

There are a few annoyances I feel I must share, if only as a cathartic exercise and to put off any few lingering readers with nothing better to do.

- Some mysterious beastie keeps biting me. I won't go into details, but the range of locations of bites is extremely interesting. Must refrain from scratching in public. Can't work out what the little critters are. I squashed one of the buggers against my wall yesterday. Serves it right for gorging on me. Apparently it might be grape flies. Always knew there was more to wine than bad breath and hangovers.

- French people smoke A LOT. I guess we're spoilt in England with out rules that people actually follow, but it's really noticeable here. The secondary school I work in is near empty at breaktime as students and teachers alike pour out for their fix. The scrum to get out the second the bell rings, fag boxes held aloft like VIP tickets to an exclusive gig is equalled only by the gaggle waiting for the lift up two floors for the great Black-Lung-ed who can't puff and pant their way up to the classroom.

This cancer-stick rant was triggered by a day of travelling where ever train, bus and tram journey involved a cloud of smoke being blown in my face.
I'm still politely British enough to feel I should mention that I have several friends who smoke (although I now sound rather early 20th century bourgeoisie - "yes, we have coloured friends, don't we darling? We're ever so open-minded.") My friends who smoke are considerate and English and pretend to give up sufficiently frequently to be endearing in their habits.

- An almost daily occurence now: the apparent misapprehension of my Franglais.

Me: "J'aime la fondue"
Entire class: "Er...wot?! She likes what? Never heard of it."
Me: "Fondue! It's a local speciality!"
Blank stares.
"You know...fondue!!"
Class: "Fondue? Er..."
Me: "FON-bloody-DUE!!"
Eventually, one bright kid: "Oh - fondue!"
Rest of class: "Aaaah - fondue!"
There are only two syllables. I can't be saying it it that wrong. And this happens daily with different words. Gah!

- Opening hours: I know it's all been said before, but honestly, which bright spark thought that shutting everything for at least 2 hours at lunchtime every day was a good idea? Combine that with everyone having a really long lunchbreak and you've got a Really Stupid Situation.
Problems caused: obscenely early starts, excessively long working days, massive queues in all shops for the 5 minutes a day when they are actually open.
Don't even get me started on Mondays...

Séjour à Blighty

2008-11-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

Popped home at the weekend for a couple of Rather Important Birthdays. I had planned this back in the naive English summer days spent daydreaming of quaint mountain village schools where I, the exotic foreigner, would bring the great language of English to a future generation, apostrophes and all.

At the stage, my petit sejour rapidly looked like never leaving daydream territory itself: "If a member of your family dies and you really need to get home, you MUST tell the school a year in advance, never be paid again and go straight to hell".

Hmm...so a long weekend of bithday fêtes probably wasn't going to go down too well. If only I'd known I'd have a two week holdiay shortly after...well, let's be honest, I'd probably still have gone anyway, but let's blame my lack of knowledge for now.

Anyway, much paperwork and negotiating later, I got a couple of days off and tootled back to Blighty as a surprise for the matriarch.
She cried.
3 times at the airport.
Once at home.
Once again Far Too Early the following morning.
And again when I left.

Dan didn't cry, except perhaps once in frustration at my incessant waffling, having rediscovered how to tickle my native tongue. Nevertheless, a jolly good time was had by all.

Lessons learnt
- There is a major financial crisis giong on. I was aware of this before leaving, but had managed to put it all aside in my own personal disgust at Euros seeming expensive. "FIVE Euros?! But that's five wotsits. In England that would be FOUR thingies. Pfff..."

- English people, at airports at least, now think I look French, whilst French people still know I'm a rosbif.
I may be reaching true Franglais status.
Or perhaps just staring blankly in response to all languages, including my own, in a bleary-eyed mess.

English things I had missed:

> An abundance of grateable cheese

> Radio 4

> Cottages

> Proper pubs

> Conversations about the weather

> Orderly queuing

> Common cultural references beyond David Beckham and yellow American cartoon characters. Jeremy Clarkson, Terry Wogan, even Fern Cotton brought waves of love for my homeland.

> And, of course, friends and family.

L'école

2008-10-31T12:10:00.000-07:00

In case anyone is under the mistaken impression that I am here on an extended holiday, please let me reassure you otherwise. For I am a working woman (and not the Parisian, Moulin Rouge sort of 'working woman', thank you very much - a proper, state-employed salariée).

My title is teaching assistant, or assistante anglaise, and this can involve anything from recording those annoying language tapes they force on you at school to taking up to 15 children on my own and trying to inflict some of the Queen's own on them. My experience so far has mainly been of the latter variety, with varying degrees of success.

I work in 3 schools:

- A lycee (Sixth Form college) - this involves teaching lost of people my own age and sometimes older, and they still insist on calling me 'Madame'.

- Two collèges (Secondary schools) - one has a climbing wall (hooray!), but makes me come in just for an hour on Thursdays, ruining my Day of Rest (boo!). The other has 'problem children' from a special home for delinquents in the town, whose distraction tactics involve such joys as sticking their fingers in power sockets and making buzzing noises. How special.

We have a great little clan of teaching assistants in Chambery and we've spent many a happy evening eating crepes or sat in a bar bemoaning our three hours of work the following day. 12 hours a week takes up more time than you'd think...honest.

The good bits
- My commute to the lycee involves cycling past a chateau and a field of horses which I always say hello to. My favourite is called Albert. He looks just like the others and is always the one sticking his head over the fence to have a nosey at the strange English girl pootling past.

<--Albert

- I'm broadening the older students' vocab with important modern words. This week it was 'minger'.

- I seem to have achieved near celebrity status in one of the schools, where English people are seen as very exotic.

The bad bits
- School starts at 8am. This is very, very WRONG.

- I said 8am. This needs repeating.

- All schools are uphill from Chambery, which is bad for early morning cycling motivation.

- I do an introductory lesson with each class where I present myself. Rather too many times now, I've been asked if I have children. No. Do I want children? Probably. When do I want children? In the future. How many children do I want? No idea! What will I call my children? Er, any more questions, maybe about my pets?

Conclusion of the Confusion
I work in 3 different schools
with 10 different teachers
with 15 different classes
making 30 different groups.
Merde.

Le stage

2008-10-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of days after arriving it was time for our 'stage'. This roughly translates as 3 days of being taught how to teach.

We (Beth and I) rocked up in Grenoble, expecting to meet another 40 or so English people from the area. The tram was full of a surprising number of foreign voices: Spanish, Italian, German...The 40 English students turned out to be around 300 future assistants, coming from places as far spread as Alaska, Trinidad and Jamaica. So much for a Heinz Beans and Marmite convention with like-minded Anglophiles!

After an utterly terrifying 3 hour lecture on insurance and legalities, we were herded into 5 coaches and driven to a remote mountain village.

Literary Garage we passed en route.

Highlights of our training included the Alphabet rap, animal bingo and a 50-year-old, leather-clad dominatrix/teacher singing The Beatles to a bemused and terrified audience. I think the German bloke near me liked it.

Highlights of the stage

1. Our nightly expeditions to the one bar in the village, which is in fact on the road back to Grenoble. The few mulleted locals looked rather surprised as double the population of the village poured into the tiny bar. Good times.

2. Every day we had two four-course meals of varying wholesomeness and taste. One night, on being presented with a second tray of chocolate eclairs for pudding, an American assistante was so pleased and surprised that she yelled "SHUT UP!!!" at the offended waiter. (NB: Apparently, this translates as 'Wow, what a surprise!'.) Needless to say, we didn't get any more. Luckily, the American was an expert at smuggling eclairs back into our dorm. We felt about 10 years old again!

3. We stayed in single-sex dorms of 6. One night I got up to go to the toilet. In the meantime, the others had worked themselves into a state of paranoid hysteria, convinced that a French man had just climbed out from Beth's bed in an attempt to attack everone.

So there I am, pottering back along the corridor in a semi-asleep state. I stop outside our door. Is it the right room? Can't see a bloody thing. Fumble for my torch.

The others hear murderous footsteps approaching, a knife being drawn and a victim-seeking light flickering ominously outside.

Luckily my true identity is revealed before either side attacks. I gain a new respect for my image of authority in pyjamas....

The suspected murder site...

Lessons learnt
"French children do not want to learn English."
"The teachers probably won't want to talk to you much, and may well ignore you."
"Try to remember how you treated your assistants at school"
Oh bollocks.

Sauf Samedi

2008-09-28T03:27:00.001-07:00

Saturday: market day! Beth and I adopt full Tourist Mode and have a nosy.

Fun things we see
- A cage of live chickens evidently not giving a flying cluck about their future as they peck around right opposite an enormous display of rotisserie chickens. A blatant denial of The End. Makes you wonder why we worry so much about death, rather than living in blissful pecking ignorance. Rather a chicken satisfied than a human dissatisfied (although admittedly I am mainly dissatisfied because I feel it rather rude to munch on a roast chicken leg in front of my feathered companions).

- A plant stall. Not a barrel of laughs, I admit, but I do purchase two new friends: 'Basil', a basil plant, and a 'Pommier d'Amour' because I like the name. Marketing is overrated - it doesn't take much to persuade the easily pleased.

- Frog legs. Raw. Next to raw, dead squid. Probably better than live squid, but definitely enough to put you off your cheese. Speaking of which...

- Local cheese. My attempt to buy a slice results in a delighted stallholder presenting me with a whole wheel. I begin to wish two years of university-level French had taught me something vaguely more useful for everyday life. Still haven't found opportunity to discuss Classical chariots or eighteenth century philosophy in medieval French...

Annecy
Our market adventures over for the morning, a group of us pop over to the nearby town of Annecy, where we wander around a lake, canals, art stalls and cafes, feeling wonderfully Bohemian and slap-worthily smug. My inner geek gets over excited by an antiques fair with beautiful old mountaineering axes and skis. Attempt to restrain inner geek, but alas it overflows and I am forcibly dragged away from fondling well-travelled and, sadly, very expensive axes.

Note to self:
Must find a rich husband.
Preferably married to me.
Or get a job.
Or just take a photo and moan about impoverishment.

5:30pm: We persuade a restaurant to feed "zee crazy English" while the French finish lunch, then casually stroll back to the train station.

Us: "Bonjour. Could we get a train to Chambery now, rather than later?" (Note: This was all attempted in French, but I feel that comedy Franglais accents will add to the effect as I retell it.)
Annoying station woman: "Non."
"Er...okay...so we must get the 20:12 train in an hour?"
"Non."
"Oh, is it a coach, rather than a train?"
"Non. Zer are no coaches".
"Okay, so it's a train?"
"Non. Zer are no trains."
The conversation seems to have taken a rather bizarre existential twist and we appear to have found France's answer to Little Britain's "Computer says no" woman.

It turns out that despite being around 7pm on a Saturday night, there is no way to get home.

"Can we go to the last place on the line and catch a bus from there?"

She shrugs. We run. We run like the wind - it's all really rather heroic. We catch the last train going anywhere that night. We're quite grateful for the couple of glasses of wine with dinner, which makes the whole situation seem Rather Hilarious.

We arrive in Aix-les-Bains at 7:30 and look for buses.
There are no buses.
We are 10 minutes by car away from home.
The lone taxi hovering by the station costs 40 Euros.
Merde.

We do the only sensible thing and spend 4 hours at Georgie's apartment watching trashy French talent shows with spandex-clad fifty-year-olds gyrating in front of smitten blue-rinse groupies.

Hours later, as we wait for the night-train to Paris (our last chance to get home!), we look at the train timetable and finally notice the dreaded phrase 'sauf samedi' ('except Saturdays') next to every train we'd looked at.

Lessons learnt
French train timetables look really organised and efficient until you read the smallprint.
Most trains read something like this:

19h12: Annecy --> Chambery Except Saturdays and alternate Sundays if it's sunny, except if it's a Sunday. No service in the holidays unless it's a holiday. Will be 2 minutes late on 21st October, when it will be 4 minutes early. Not running until 22nd October, except on Saturdays.

Chez Nous

2008-09-28T03:25:00.003-07:00

View from Chez Nous ^

I feel I should probably explain a little about the infamous Chez Nous, as it will no doubt be the location of many amusing soirees and petites crises domiciles.

How it all began

End of July:

F: 'Hi Beth: Apparently we're going to be working in the same school. I've just found out we should have got accommodation in June. Erm...did you?'

B: 'Hey, nice to hear from someone in the same area. June?! Er...no. Did you?

F: 'No! I'm going to pop into Chambery on my way back from holiday and try to find somewhere. Do you fancy sharing?'

*Quick bout of mutual facebook stalking*

B: 'Sure!'

August:

F: 'Hey Beth, I found a really nice place with a kitten in it!'

B: 'Wow, a kitten! Let's do it!

F: 'Er...the accommodation man wants money now...'

B: 'Kitten! Okay!'

And so it was...the future Chez Nous.

I found Chez Nous during a 16 hour blitz on Chambery in August, in the vague hope of avoiding a year spent in a cardboard box. During this exciting tour of the town with Francois (accommodation bloke), I saw 5 different apartments, of which 3 were of particular interest:

1. Very old place - this was a gorgeous, old-fashioned apartment with fireplaces in each bedroom, a massive oak dining room table, antique dressers and leather chairs. Huge kitchen, Narnia-style wardrobes, awesome knockers (on the doors, of course...). All was fine until Francois mentioned the 'occasional' problems with water. And electricity. And heating. The shower was a hole in the wall with a dirt stain below it. My internal mother said NO.

2. Very dodgy place - this was, well, very dodgy. It was above an abandoned shop with smashed in windows and bits of brick lying around. Francois put me in the rickety old cage lift and decided to take the stairs himself. Not a good sign. The apartment was 'cosy', 'intimate' and 'unique'. So, small, smelly and weird.

3. Shared house with a garage if I wanted the car. All was looking promising, but Francois was reluctant to let me see the kitchen. While he was fiddling with the telephone, I snuck in. All looked fine. I opened a kitchen cupboard to have a nosey inside. A strange squeaking noise came from within. Door opened: kitten inside! A gorgeous, white, fluffy furball of joy. A rather fast furball of joy, it turned out, as it leapt kittenishly from the cupboard and sprinted for freedom towards a rather distraught Francois.

It had to be that one.

Chez Nous now

Little Excitements

The Mysterious Basement - spiralling stone steps leading down into the dark behind a locked door...

The ski cupboard in the hall, complete with fluorescent vintage skis!

Housemates
2 French students
1 Swedish student
2 giant centipedes: Guillaume Whizz and Houdini (discovered in my rather traumatic first week rather too close to my bed. House centipedes eat spiders, bedbugs and ants, and can run at 16 inches/second. Houdini is so-named after escaping from a box he was trapped under for 2 days.)
No kitten: sadly, it seems to have moved :o(

And, of course, Beth and me.

Lessons Learnt
In France, our names have unfortunate connotations. French people struggle to say 'th', so Beth becomes 'Bet', or 'Bête', which means 'stupid' or 'beast'.
Flick sounds the same as an insult for 'cops', which translates as 'scum' or 'filth'.

So there we are: Scum and Stupid, Filth and Beast, Chez Nous.

Premier Jour

2008-09-28T03:25:00.001-07:00

7:15am: Hold on, let me just repeat that: 7:15am.

CRASH! BANG, BANG, BANG, WHIRRR... CRASH!

Wake up in foreign bed in foreign country with foreign war being waged all around. Decide I have probably been in a coma and am suffering from amnesia somewhere in an apocalyptic future.

CRASH! CRASH! ... CRASH!

Decide to attempt movement in case still asleep. Lean over and open window. It feels pretty real. All philosophical thoughts on the nature of reality rapidly vanish as a huge plank of wood comes flying down to join a pile right outside my window.

There is a crane outside my room.

There is a man hammering the wall the other side of my bed.

It is is 7:15am.

That's 6:15am English time.

This is distinctly merde.

Reality

Speak to Francois (accommodation bloke), who reassures me that they are simply touching up the paintwork on the side of the house. Too tired to debate definition of 'paintwork', so go to explore town with Dad and Beth.

We 'do' Chambery's main tourist attractions:

- An elephant fountain: a giant fountain with four very life-like elephants coming out of it.

- The chateau - sadly not open, but spot a row of ground fountains to play with in the summer.

- The cathedral - all the walls are covered in trompe l'oeil paintings, giving the impression of intricately engraved arches and stone carvings. Really trippy - touch a couple to prove to myself that they're not real.

- Memorial gardens

- Skate park - Chambery is keen to get past its image of a bourgeois retirement home.

- Can't find Rousseau's house, so think about him instead and feel literature-ly fulfilled.

Reasons why Chambery is very French

> Every bench has either a collection of old men on it, or a couple engaged in tongue tennis.

> There is a Galeries Lafayette area with mutton-dressed-as-lamb old women caked in bright blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick, complete with little rat-dogs yapping at their stilettos.

> Every 5 metres there is a dog turd. These are conveniently positioned so that you really can't avoid treading on them, unless you do a dance-machine style, hopskotch routine. There's actually quite an interesting range of colours, shapes and textures. You soon learn which are the worst sorts (usually the crusty ones with stiletto holes in from previous victims).

> All the shops shut for at least 2 hours at lunch time. Goodness knows where everyone goes - it's not like they can go shopping in their lunch break.

That said, it's a lovely town. The sun shines, there are enfants climbing trees, I can spot mountains in the distance, and we have dinner in a lovely traditional restaurant. Pudding is a killer: ice cream sandwiched between two giant meringues and draped in chocolate. After a couple of glasses of wine, Dad's French picks up, and he is able to order 'le bill silver plate thank you'.

Day Two

After a final morning of essential patisserie evaluation and How Not to Die in Your First Week driving lessons from the patriarch, my source of money, amusement and food departs back to England.

I merrily head off to the supermarket, which is 5 minutes down the street.

20 minutes later: it still hasn't appeared. I decided to keep walking forward, assuming that it will eventually materialise.

10 minutes later: still no supermarket. I appear to be in the foreign quarter of Chambery, with illegible shop names, dodgy looking characters leaning against walls, and a variety of leaves and smoking devices on sale in every other shop that isn't a takeaway. I speed up to a half-walk, half-jog.

10 minutes later: where the hell am I? Follow a sign to the town centre. It's definitely not Chambery town centre. A hoard of school kids rush past, gold teeth and tattoos glinting alongside their knife blades as they cackle in a foreign tongue. I enter a supermarket to ask for directions, but the shop assistant looks like she'll set her dogs on me if she finds out I'm English, so I buy some hot chocolate and escape.

10 minutes later: having followed a promising-looking bike track down a river, I end up fighting my way through prickly bushes. Maybe it's just an overgrown bike track...I find myself in a small clearing next to a barbed wire fence by the railway. The floor is nicely decorated with broken bottle. My mind full of tetanus and used syringes, I rapidly retreat and call the hubby for directions home from Google Maps. The shame.

Finally get back home to find series of panicky texts from the patriarch asking for translations of various transport-related words. Luckily he made it home more successfully than me!

Le voyage

2008-09-23T12:52:00.001-07:00

2:45am: A strange, unshaven man staggers into my bedroom and tells me to get up. It turns out not be a Communist Purge or the FBI as my semi-conscious brain half-heartedly warns me, but my own dear patriarch telling me my adventure is about to begin.

Sod adventure. I roll back under the duvet to sleep. Bladder rapidly disagrees: too much nervous drinking the evening before.

3am: On the road, full of warnings and messages from darling mother, and wishing Dad sounded a bit more confident that he knows the way to Dover. Try to remember the last time I saw this hour and decide that mid-sleep toilet trips aside, it was probably in an alpine hut. Sadly no mountains to climb now, except the 2 degree slope that Felicia battles her way up in first gear.

3:45am: Woken up by Miss TomTom, our annoyingly well-spoken Satnav, and Dad swearing at her. Tell him off for abusing nice English women, then swear at her myself as she tells us to 'turn around when possible' on dual carriageway.

Unearthly o'clock: Arrive at ferry 1 hour and 20 minutes before it leaves. 80 minutes of my life wasted. Tragic youth. Wake up as we drive on board and yell at Dad that we must run full pelt to claim a decent bench to sleep on. Adopt full January sales shopping attitude and run, elbows out, towards the bar. Followed by about 5 people and, well, nobody else actually. Try to ignore the rusting window frames and knife slashes in the seats. Force down suspiciously stale roll for breakfast and sadly decline the Coke Dad has bought me. Caffeinated or not, it's just not a good time for fizzy sugar. The ferry docks with a nauseating bounce, and we discover there are exactly 23 vehicles on the ferry. It still takes 20 minutes to unload them all.

Vaguely acceptable o'clock: Gawwwwd French autoroutes are boring. Wonderful, easy driving, but b-o-riiinguh.

Elevenses o'clock: Early lunch of steak-hache and frites. Feel rather unhealthy, but too scared to do anything but point when ordering and the canteen lady decided we were Eeeengleeesh so must eat ze fast food. Leave a small pile of bright pink meat - still in very British, paranoid state of mind about eating raw dead animal.

My turn to drive: Dad has 3 hour long panic attack: "Make sure you stick to the right, watch that car, remember to indicate, you can use the screenwash if you like, listen to the SatNav, STAY LEFT IN 50 MILES!!, have you still got your passport?" Novelty wears off after an hour or two, and 5 hours of Radio Nostalgie and Radio Cherie (Radio Darling) start to wear on the nerves. Suicidal thoughts lead to a more relaxed driving style.

6pm: Accommodation man Francois phones me as he is being violently murdered. Can hear his blood spurting out and several deadly punches. Hang up and contemplate living in cardboard box. Phone rings: Francois is back from the dead, or rather, his young son had decided to phone me and gurgle down the phone before whacking it very enthusiastically against something very solid.
First sight of mountains! Dad yells at me to watch the road. He just doesn't understand that some people's minds are on higher things...

7pm: Miss TomTom rebels when we we go through a tunnel, so end up completely lost on a one-way street. Drive straight past the house, which now appears to be on a very busy main street, rather than the nice, quiet residential area my rose-tinted mind had remembered. Finally find house again. Greeted by lovely new housemate Beth and unload the car. Leave Felicia in my garage, which is near The Ghetto then head out to dinner.

10pm: Feel rather smug for getting dinner in posh restaurant while wearing yesterday's underwear, crumpled jeans and hoodie. Feel rather less smug when Dad's hotel receptionist gives him a knowing look as he kisses me goodnight. He fails to inform her that I am his daughter, and I feel her beady eye giving me the once over every time I come to meet Dad from then on. Try to break it to him gently that she thinks I'm his prostitute. Turns out he had already twigged but it wasn't worth correcting her. Charming.

11pm: Resort to 4 season sleeping bag as room is freezing cold. Finally fall asleep after what has been a very long day.

Lessons learnt
- It is impossible to drive close enough to toll booths in a right-hand drive car.
- French radio is truly dire.
- Haribo jelly beans taste really chemical. Only the green ones are worthwhile.
- You should not rely on SatNav in regions with lots of tunnels.

Les preparations

2008-09-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Packing list

10 pairs of shoes (all essential, of course)
Ice axe and crampons
Cadbury's chocolate
Salt and vinegar crisps
Whittards hot chocolate
Laptop
Slipper socks
Emergency loo roll
Ascent of Rum Doodle
Beano

All set to go, Dad and I loaded poor little Felicia (my mum's Skoda) with all my baggage. Delighted to find a spare square centimetre, I packed mountain biking stuff, and we arranged 2 bikes very prettily on the back of the car, with the apparent aim of doubling our width and wind resistance. Wonderful.

The night before the morning after
"Bugger: where's my passport? ...Tit: Can't find my keys ...Wank: Did I phone the accommodation man to say when I'd be arriving? ...Crap: do I need a duvet or not? ..Arse: packed all my underwear and deodorant ...Bollocks: I can't remember the word for 'deodorant' ...SHIT I can't speak French and I'm going to live in France!!"

Needless to say, with all the arse-related swearing, the planned 8:30 bedtime didn't happen. Dad managed to at least be in his room by then, but got up an hour later for a postponed Mega Faff. We were chivvied back to bed, where I had disturbing dreams of snails, frogs and flat land.

Introduction

2008-09-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is: my blog on life in France. For those of you not in the know, I am moving to Chambery in the South East of France to be a teaching assistant and general bum for 7 months.

My aims:

- Climb lots

- Ski lots

- Eat lots

- Learn lots

- Become fluent.

Until those are achieved, I shall be the 'rosbif' from England, who tries desperately to speak fluent franglais.

This blog will be a record of lessons learnt, adventures experienced and cultural clashes. I hope you find it funny, informative, or at least like the pretty pictures.