Appelles-moi peut-être?

Everyone is finally starting to leave Bordeaux for good, and emotions are running high! Its been the most fantastic seven months, and I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to spend it with. I know that we'll all stay in touch, but its not going to be the same when we're spread across three continents. I can't even begin to write about what a great time we've had together, but here's a video so that you can see for yourselves. A few months ago Justin Bieber and his friends posted a video to youtube of themselves dancing to this song, and so naturally we thought we'd make our own version. Enjoy. 

Carnival!

Today at school I learnt that next Friday, which is the last day of term and which is also going to be my last day of teaching at my Thursday/Friday school, is the day of the St Jean D'Illac carnival, and so instead of school that afternoon all the children and teachers and apparently also me will be part of a parade to the town square/green where each class has to perform a dance and everyone will be dressed up in costumes. It sounds like its going to be the perfect send-off, but now I have a week to come up with a worthy costume!!

La plage, les vagues et le fromage.

Its been far too long since I updated this blog and my dad has been expressing concern for my 'first epistolary novel' so I really should write a new entry. Life in France is all going well, and I have to say that the excuse for why I've been so lax in keeping up with my e-communication is one of the lamest I've ever heard myself argue. Its just been too sunny. Too sunny to be inside, and when I'm outside its too sunny to use a laptop. Sad, I know. The summer, it seems, has come to Bordeaux just as quickly as the winter did, and just as early as the winter was late. My landlady explained to me with heartfelt apologies that here in Bordeaux 'we don't really have spring,' and it would seem Bordeaux has chosen instead to give up with all the shivering around the second week of March and whip out the flip flops instead. Or so I assumed, when I first looked out of my window to see the sunshine beating down, birds singing and not a cloud in the sky. 'Oh, fab,' I thought. 'Time to crack out the shorts.' Apparently the citizens of Bordeaux do not feel the same way. A fortnight ago my fellow assistants and I made our way to the Bassin d'Arcachon, a bay on the ocean about 40 minutes away which the Bordelaise call the 'back garden of Bordeaux - complete with swimming pool' since whenever there's a sunny weekend almost the entire town packs up and relocates to the beach. Having packed up our beach towels, baguettes and cheese (essential travel items) and checked the weather forecast (25 degrees at least) imagine my surprise when I skipped merrily onto the tram to discover that the women of Bordeaux had chosen to dress themselves in leather jackets, fur boots and wool scarves. I'm pretty sure most of them will have had to be hospitalised by the end of the day. Just another thing to add to the list. When Laurence Richard, my university French teacher came to Bordeaux to interview me for her research project on language acquisition, one of her questions was if 'I had ever been surprised by anything in France?'. I'm pretty sure when her team listen back to my tape they will hear me audibly laugh out loud because really a simpler question would have been: 'In the 6 months that you've been here have you ever left your house and not been surprised?' 
Since its become clear that there are not many better ways to spend a day than hanging out on the beach with the vagues and some fromage - the waves and the cheese to you - March's activities have been fairly ocean themed, and have included a trip to a caravan site on the Bassin which was pretty empty since it was only March - its probably for the best that our group of 10 twenty-somethings didn't have many neighbours anyway - and a trip even further afield to La Rochelle. Last weekend we got up at the crack of dawn to get the train there and then went on to the Isle de Ré, a 30km long island off the Atlantic coast which is apparently the chosen holiday destination of many a French celebrity and the home of many an oyster - fortunate for the rich and famous and less fortunate for the oysters. We chose a town to visit pretty much at random, taking the bus from La Rochelle to the island and then waiting until we couldn't take the winding roads any more and getting off. We ended up at La Flotte, a picturesque village with a beach through the middle of it where we set up camp for the day. As well as some traditional french sunbathing, we also managed to delay hypothermia just long enough to swim in the ocean, and then once the tide had gone out, we realised to our amazement that the wet sand was actually full of oysters. Naturally we then set about looking for them. When you find them they are closed up and look like a rock or a normal shell, but then if you hold them underwater for a while they open their shells and you can see the oyster inside! My inner Biology A level student, the one who got over excited looking for gammarus and limpets in Arran, was out in full force. There were also lots of sea snails, so we held races (you may or may not be pleased to know that between Daniel and Rupert, Daniel won) and generally behaved like 9 year old boys all day. We had the compulsory moules-frites for lunch, which I've decided are actually really nice if you don't make the mistake of taking a close look at what it is you're putting in your mouth. La Rochelle itself is a beautiful town too and it was a shame we only had a day to look around.. its definitely been added to an ever growing list of places I need to visit. 
The first of April is known as 'poisson d'Avril' in France, and their April Fools Day antics tend to all be fish themed. This isn't as bad as it sounds.. mostly they just eat chocolates in the shape of fish and draw and colour paper fish which they then stick on people's backs. The trick is to try to stick them on without the person noticing, so that they then walk around with a fish stuck to them. At school on Monday all the children thought it would be really funny to try this on their teachers, myself included, and so I tried to ignore the unsubtle giggling fits and thumps to my back as fish got cellotaped onto me and pretend I hadn't noticed anything. Kids must be getting worse at subtlety because when I was eight I'm pretty certain I was a master of subterfuge. My mum and dad are clever but they never suspected anything, so I'm sure I was much better at it than these French amateurs. Still, the teachers and I played along, and compared fish at lunch time. Some of them were actually really well decorated! Talking of school, the last few weeks (that sounds so sad!) have been really fun. I don't think the teachers have actually told the children how soon I'm leaving, so saying my goodbyes next week is going to be really sad. I only just realised that I'm allowed to take the children into the hall to do activities with them, so we've had some great dramatic readings of 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt' involving human grass, forests, snowstorms, and even a very convincing bear, and also some renditions of the Hokey Kokey which have been so exciting we've had to stop and all have 'sitting down time' since I was sure if we continued shaking it all about we were going to have to call the 'quinze', France's much overworked emergency services number. 
Having had a good 4 trips to the beach already this year, I can hardly be too sad that the weather has finally returned to normal and everyone has had to retire indoors again. Alors, its back to the dreaded Year Abroad Research Project and figuring out a plan for the summer. I know people warned us how quickly this year would go by, but it really has felt like the blink of an eye. Now I just need to make sure that the last month (or two or three, depending on how long I hang out here after my contract ends) is even better than the past 6 have been! 

Aiuto! Non parlo italiano!

I often joke that despite having lived in France for five months now, I'm still no good at speaking French. However, during our 10 day sojourn in Italy and Prague I was, in a strange way, reassured by how completely lost I felt without the ability to speak either Italian or Czech. The feeling of part horror and part amusement which overcame me when having disembarked an aeroplane somewhere vaguely near Rome I realised I had absolutely no idea how to explain to anyone around me that my flight from London had unbeknownst to me landed in an entirely different airport to the one all my fellow assistants had taken from Bordeaux made me realise just how much I underestimate my ability to communicate in French. I quickly realised that what in France would have been a quick and easy sentence was being hindered substantially by the fact that the only Italian I know is the vocabulary specific to pasta, cheese and ice-cream, and when trying to get from one side of a capital city to the other, mumbling "Um.. me losto? Cioccolato? Tagliatelle?" is frankly not going to get you any further than the car park of the arrivals gate. So it was that begrudgingly, a little too slowly and a little too loudly, I had to feel a tiny part of my soul shrivel away as I asked an airport official, 'Excuse me? Do you speak any English?' A sad day for language students all over the world who spend their leisurely hours explaining to their housemates who study 'real' subjects that its a disgraceful reminder of colonialism that the British think they can just march about the globe expecting everyone to speak their language. And I hadn't even got anywhere near the Czech Republic yet. 
Nevertheless, it turns out that I'm not the first person to ask such a question in the arrivals gate of (one of two of - who knew?) Rome's airport. Having successfully over-annuciated my way to meeting up with my friends, we began what would be 10 of the most entertaining days of my life. We reenacted the Hunger Games in the Colosseum, tried our hand at paparazzi-ing in the midst of Milan fashion week, and pub crawled with the best of them in Prague. It was definitely eventful, but I think a lot of the stories are those sorts of anecdotes where you really have to be there. You just have to trust me when I say that I think I hurt from laughing almost every day, and that nothing has ever been funnier than watching the look of despair on the face of a girl who hates to climb stairs inadvertently find herself trapped in a crowd of rush hour commuters who hurried her onto a broken metro escalator, which just so happened to be one of the longest we came across, while we all glided smoothly up the adjacent (fully functional) one. There's no point in me relating every single tale, so have some pictures instead. 

As one of the others cleverly pointed out on her blog, maybe one of the best things about this whole year is that despite the fact that we just went abroad for 10 days and then came back to start work, it still feels like we're all on holiday. Très agréable, if you ask me. 

Until next time, par-dessous et dehors.

Vacances.

During February, the weather in France isn't quite so cold as it was in January, meaning that your average French woman with the thermoregulation of a desert lizard (the cries of "Ah merde! Ce froid est insupportable!" having echoed loud and clear around both of my schools ever since we returned after Christmas) is able to leave her house without fear of the instant death that I am assured would have befallen her had she attempted the same a few weeks ago. After the bitter turmoil of a three week long winter, the sun has emerged bright as ever, and the only reminder of that dark and difficult time is a good 3 metres of snow, powdery atop the Alps and the Pyrenees. Naturally, and who can argue with them, the people of France long ago decided that going to school during such excellent meteorological conditions, when their time could be better put to use slaloming through the trees and eating tartiflette in wooden cabins decorated with cowbells, would frankly be churlish and, I would imagine, insupportable.  The long and short of it is that we are all on a two week holiday again, and who am I to complain. 

On Wednesday I'm embarking on a trip to Rome, Milan and Prague which I'm sure is going to be fabulous, and in the mean time, I've come home for some rest and relaxation, because these 12-hour weeks are really quite a strain. My mum is almost certainly going to have to check my suitcase when I leave for any kittens I may or may not attempt to kidnap. 

Expanding my options.

I've started watching Grey's Anatomy in French and I think its going to be really helpful if I'm ever in A&E and need to pitch in unexpectedly.
So far I've learnt:
'Il arrive un homme blanc, trente ans, accident des voitures, les côtes cassés et hémorragie interne, touts les résidents venez ici tout de suite!'

'Vite! Amenez-lui a la bloc!' 

'Ah merde! Il fait une hémorragie! Qu'est ce que je dois faire, chef?!'

*'We have a white man, 30 years old, car accident - broken ribs and internal bleeding, coming through. All residents get here right now!'

'Quick! Take him through to theatre!'

'Dammit, he's haemorraging! What do I do, boss?!'

You never know.

La neige en Bordeaux.

Is everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. 

The last few weeks have been a lot of fun here in Bordeaux. First on the agenda is the fact that the whole of Quinconces, our big open space in the middle of town, has been filled with a circus, which of course we had to visit. We went on a tarif reduit night, which is where you don't get an allocated seat and have to battle the people of Bordeaux for a place, which is why we ended up sitting up in the rafters of a big top. Naturally, I managed to drop my handbag through a hole in the bleacher-like rises, and had to lie flat on the ledge and be lowered down into the tiny gap to get it back. As with so many of the tales here in Bordeaux, not exactly a bon debut. Fortunately, all handbag related faux pas were forgotten as soon as the lights dimmed, the drum roll sounded, and out came four tigers. Because in France it's still legal to have animals in your circus, and if you try hard not to wonder about their living quarters or how much exercise they get or whether they long for the noises of the jungle, they're incredible to watch! There were tigers, horses and dogs, all of whom did some incredible tricks, but I think my personal favourites were the elephants, who managed to climb up onto a tiny stool with more grace than I would be capable of, and then all rest their front feet on top of each other in a circle. I am not ashamed to admit that I regressed approximately 14 years, and sat as open mouthed and wide eyed as the small child in front of me through the whole thing. In typical French fashion, it wouldn't have been a night out without things getting a little bit risqué both in the French meaning - i.e. involving some sort of hazard - and the English meaning - i.e. girls getting naked. So after the interval, once all the jungle creatures were snug in their beds, out came a cage full of motorcyclists which left the whole tent with the thick smell of petrol and burning rubber for the rest of the evening, two very nearly naked male acrobats doing the most homoerotic routine you've ever seen, a pole dancing woman who then got chopped in half by a magician, and two men leaping off a huge revolving tower with their eyes closed, all accompanied by a soundtrack which was a mixture of German heavy metal and gypsy folk music. All very, very bizarre. Still, we all had a great time.
At school things are carrying on in the same old way. To see whether the children really remembered the names of the different body parts we've been playing a game where I give them the detail of 'my friend the alien' and they have to draw him. With the younger children its just a close up of his head - 'He has 3 eyes, he has 4 ears' etc etc - and with the older ones we get more creative - 'he has 2 necks, he has 17 fingers, he has a curly beard' - and its gone really well. Everyone really enjoyed it, and a lot of the kids got really creative with their monsters. There are definitely a few budding Picassos amongst the children of Saint-Jean-D'Illac! The next week we all coloured them in, testing their colour vocab as well as their body parts, and I let them all choose a name for their alien, so long as it was definitely an English name rather than a French one. For some reason they found this absolutely hysterical, and we had lots of Brians, Georges, and Henrys. There were also some Simons, I think because of 'Simon Says', and a couple of Emilys... but I let that slide since I think I was just the only English person they could think of. 
In the ever exciting 'maternelle' (nursery to you) we had a fête de galette de rois which was a party for which the children had baked their own galettes (remember the brioche with the ceramic characters inside) but was basically just an excuse to put 50 three to six year olds in one room, give them all crowns to decorate with glitter and then feed them all a lot of sugar. I got a hand delivered invitation to this event, and all the kids were really excited for me to be there, but I quickly realised my presence was necessary as an extra pair of hands rather than as a VIP guest. I found myself breaking up fights, drying tears, handing out galettes, and even chasing one over enthusiastic four year old through the playground when she decided she was going to make a bid for freedom and escape the madness of the party. When the galettes themselves came out, anyone who had a birthday in January got sung Joyeuse Anniversaire, Happy Birthday and Feliz Cumpleaños, which took a really long time since there were about 6 birthdays!  The girl who later escaped threw an enormous tantrum at the injustice of her birthday having been forgotten, and feeling really bad we sung them all to her and she got to blow out the candles and was wished a happy birthday, but when I then asked her when her birthday had been she replied 'oh, I'm still 4, its not until April.' She'll probably grow up to be a very successful politician.
This weekend was Magen's birthday weekend so on Friday night we had Mexican food complete with margaritas at Kate and Magen's house, which we've named 'the Castle' since it is right beside the Porte Cailhau, which looks like a Disney castle, and their building itself is so old you have to climb 3 flights of stone spiral staircase to get to their apartment! Our Mexican night was rounded off with an arts and crafts session and a game of Salad Bowl, both of which quickly sent it straight to the top of the league tables as a contender for 'best night in Bordeaux'!! Saturday was a continuation of what was christened 'Celebrating Madge Weekend' and we drove to St Emilion for some wine education. Battling the cold was difficult but the town itself is so pretty that it made up for it! Anyone who has me on Facebook will be well aware that a truly obnoxious amount of photographs were taken that day so I'm sure you all already know all about it! On Saturday night we tried to make our own onion soup, complete with cheesy baguette topping, which was a huge success, and then settled in to watch Despicable Me with our newly purchased Saint Emilion wine. Another very successful day!! I was woken up far too early bright and early on Sunday morning to cries of 'Its snowiiiiing!!' and all of a sudden Bordeaux was a winter wonderland and no public transport was running. What else to do except join the Bordelais in frolicking in the snow all morning. Having decided we didn't need to wash before leaving the house since 'no one would see us anyway' we were then photographed trying to sledge down the steps of the 'mirror d'eau' by no fewer than 3 press photographers. So let that be a lesson to you all.. always look good leaving the house, you never know when you're going to get into the regional news. I haven't actually found the pictures online yet, but I'm sure they're out there somewhere. It was nice to finally get to use all the extensive snow vocabulary we learnt in Upper 6th French doing 'La Neige en Deuil' with Mrs Hutson. There's a time and a place for everything. Sadly, I have yet to find use for all the words we learnt to do with the lambing of sheep, but there's time yet.
So there we have it, the last couple of weeks in Bordeaux. Life is ticking along nicely here, I hope that everything is going well for you too. 
Saludos, meilleurs voeux, lots of love.  

Toulouse. Or should I say 'perdre'.

Ok so that's the worst joke ever*.

This weekend I embarked on an adventure to Toulouse with 5 of my fellow assistants here in Bordeaux. And what a voyage it was. Stress levels were high before we had even left Bordeaux train station, since a) apparently you have to composte your tickets to make them valid before getting on the TGV b) the trains involved are approximately the length of the great wall of China and c) the trains like to let out ominous fog horn noises even though they are not yet pulling out of the station. All of these things combined lead to what can only be described as a hot damn mess, with 6 girls leaping up and down the longest platform in history screaming 'just get on the DAMN TRAIN!!' As we say here in France (or at least in the new French film Hollywoo which I urge you all to go and see) 'Bon debut... bon debut...' 

Despite all that, we all got to Toulouse in one piece, and found ourselves arriving in one of the best youth hostels I've ever paid 12€ a night for. And I'm not even joking, the place was a palace! Four of us had a 4-person apartment, complete with kitchenette, bathroom and functioning shower to ourselves, which we took full advantage of! One member of the team was clearly not used to such a novelty, as when she woke up to the sound of the shower running she declared 'guys, I think its raining!'.  

Toulouse itself is a beautiful city, although I didn't take as many pictures as I should have done since it was so cold on Saturday that I couldn't feel my fingers to even try to use a camera. We also happened to be there on the weekend of the soldes, which, for anyone who is not currently in France, means 'sales', and effectively that since last Wednesday the high streets of France have been absolute chaos. As far as I can make out, they just run until the shops either get bored or run out of clothes, but that did not stop the citizens of Toulouse stampeding out across the city like buffalo. You know that its bad when a group of supposedly mature and self-sufficient 20-somethings have to resort to a buddy system when navigating the streets! Escaping the throngs, we managed to get thoroughly lost (always a must in a new city, I feel) before visiting the cathedral and an art museum in order to 'get some culture in'. After being stared down by museum staff for posing with their gargoyles (apparently the curator was not aware how much her statues looked like they were performing the dance to 'Single Ladies') and getting a little too excited by the fact that some of the statues were made of 400 year old terracotta ('but how does it work?! My plant pots don't even last one year!' one assistant cried in awe) we decided we'd had enough culture for one day and decided (perhaps unwisely) to brave it into H&M. 

Sunday was much sunnier, and since Saturday had been so hectic we decided we needed a trip to an aquatic spa. My only advice would be that if you're in a pool full of French people which has a particularly strong current then try not to swim against it, unless you wish to find yourself being blown by bubbles into the laps of at least three of them, with only the pleas of 'Desolée! Je suis anglaise...' to excuse yourself with. The steam room and saunas were also much needed and less traumatic!
Thoroughly refreshed, it was back to school this week where I seem to have gone up multiple cool points for having let the children climb all over the furniture during last week's lesson on prepositions. More than ever I am thrown bits of paper with bizarre drawings on them which I'm reassured are 'presents' and even propositioned with marriage (technically I'm not sure if it counts as a proposal since it appeared to be the future best man who was asking on behalf of his friend, letting me know that 'non, non, c'est bon, he wanted me to ask you...'). In the older classrooms we are now studying the parts of the body, which means endless games of 'Simon Says' which are taken very very seriously, and a reluctant (on my part) admittance that yes, I did know the Hokey Kokey. Inevitably, the Hokey Kokey has proven to be my most raucous lesson yet, with a grand total of 3 expulsions to the corridor and 1 trip to the medical room. Don't say I didn't warn them. In the maternelle section, where the children are 4 and 5 and just the prospect of sitting on a bench is enough to evoke riots, the Hokey Kokey has not even been mentioned. Last week I went with what I thought was a tamer number, Old MacDonald Had A Farm. Apparently this was not the case, since this week I was approached by a frazzled looking teacher who informed me that the song was a no-go, due to (and I quote) 'too much mooings'. When I arrived in the classroom even the benches themselves had been abandoned, so I knew she was serious. Instead of the (admittedly energetic) lesson of the previous week we had a calm discussion of how old we all were, and any song requests were met with a firm 'non, interdit!' So I can tick off my bucket list that I, like Madonna, the Beatles and Lady Gaga before me, have had my songs banned from the airwaves classroom. 


A la prochaine fois. 

*Because perdre is 'to lose' in French. But anyway...

Je suis la reine des cygnes!

Remember when I told you that there's a traditional French brioche with characters hiding in it and if you get the piece with the figurine it means you're the king or the queen and you get to wear a crown? Well, anyway, a teacher brought one into the staffroom today and lo and behold, what did I find in my piece but a little ceramic fish. 

All day people have been telling me 'you're the queen!!' and then chuckling to themselves as if the fact that I'm English means that I have more of a right to feign royalty than anyone else. As one 8 year old put it, 'oui, mais elle est anglais... c'est vraiment possible!' I have a feeling that there is a small misunderstanding as to how the British royal family works, general consensus today seemed to be that the eligible princes just draw from a ballot of all the girls in England and someone gets to be the Queen, but I decided not to get into it. Personally, all I could think of was the scene in Black Swan where Nathalie Portman freaks out and proclaims to be the swan queen.. maybe if they'd had a galette de rois at hand there wouldn't have been so much confusion.  

Click on it and she'll show you what I mean.

Dans lequel les seals n'ont pas appropriate lesson materielles.

Life is full of lessons. Here's one:

If you're ever using a children's book to teach French children the names of animals and various classroom actions in one fell swoop, and there's a page that says "I'm a seal and I clap my hands. Can you do it?" skip it. For the love of god, just skip past it. Perhaps go so far as to glue that double page together never to be seen again. 

Today's main event was a group of 30 riled up 5 year olds leaping around a room clapping their hands shouting "phoque! phoque!! PHOQUE!! PHOOOOQUE!"* and two awkward looking teachers peering their heads around the door to ask what exactly I was teaching their children. Great. 

*translation: "seal! seal!! look I'm a seal!!" 

 pronunciation: "fuck!! fuck!! FUUUUUUUUCK!!"

Maison sucré maison.

Bonne Année tout le monde. 

Back to France, back to the blog. Firstly, its one of my New Year's resolutions to try to stay in touch with people more, something I realised I am absolutely terrible at as I set off back to France having failed to see/speak to most of the people I should have. Just, accept this as a public apology and know that you're not alone. Anyway, I realised most of you probably didn't remember/get told in the first place that I have a new phone number (+33615265958) and that I also have barely any Skype contacts (emily.seymour91) so here's to communication. 

Now that I've finished breaking all the rules of Stranger Danger and giving out my contact details to the world wide web (if I get any texts from Russia maybe I'll figure out who you are) I don't have a lot to report except that I started school again today and almost instantly a girl ran up to me in the most secretive of manners and whispered "Emily, I'm high..." Now, while I'm aware that for some of the assistants teaching in the lycées of France this would not be an alarming or, for that matter, unusual statement to make, this student in question was only 8 years old. After a little investigative small talk I realised though that, of course, what she meant to say was "I'm fine," and that this term is shaping up to be just as amusing as the last. I also found a tiny figure of the Virgin Mary in my dessert, which is apparently a 5th January tradition similar to putting a ring in a Christmas Pudding, except that the French fill their brioche with the extended cast of the Nativity scene, complete with sea animals and dinosaurs (no, I'm not just referencing Love Actually, a boy in CP proudly spat out a plastic tyrannosaurus rex) and when I asked the teachers about it they pointed out that a) there weren't enough wise men to prevent fights breaking out in the dining room so the dinner ladies had started to get creative with their figurines, and b) it was more laïque to have action figures present at the birth of Christ. 

That is probably all for today. I leave you with the information that Pére Noël delivered me a book of Franglais which has inspired me to start writing English idioms in French. Points to anyone (obviously not who do French!) who can guess today's title. 

À la prochaine fois.