Je vais changer l'eau des olives...

Another interesting thing happened! The other night I was invited to a crêpe party here with Sam, another assistant. The person inviting us was an English assistant from last year who lives in Lyon now but whose French boyfriend lives here in Briançon. So off we went, with gifts of red wine and cake, and had such a good night! The guy whose house it was is called Pierre and I'm not going to lie to you I was very excited to make a French friend called Pierre. If only he had been wearing stripes and a beret my day would have been made. Anyway we ate crêpes and drank beer and had a great night chatting in French. I left feeling really proud of the fact that I had been able to converse easily with them, even though they spoke SOOO quickly and used a lot of Patois which of course I understood NONE of! But yeh they were all lovely and we have said we all need to do it again soon. :-) nothing like food to bond over! Also we managed to learn a few new expressions during the evening. I was explaining 'I'm going to see a man about a dog' to them and then was told that the French equivalent is 'Je vais changer l'eau des olives' (I'm going to change the olive water)...yeh I don't get it either. But then again the English one leaves me pretty stumped too. I showed them this video as a little joke but, despite my frantic explanations, they seemed to think this was an attempt to attack them. So they basically thought I was telling them they were alcoholic, food obsessed people who swear and make incomprehensible noises all the time...umm... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edYHlnhxyOI

Trains, Towers and TOO MUCH FOOD

Sorry, it has been far too long since we last spoke. I have been gallivating over the country and sleeping in far too late to even consider blog posts. But all that changes right now! So I am currently in my second week of Toussaint holiday. In order to make the most of our hard earned wages (not hard earned) and our hard earned holiday (not hard earned) Louise, Kathleen and I decided to go on a trip to gay Paris! We took the overnight train there, which, with a Carte Jeune railcard, cost 48 euros for approximately 11 hours of travelling! I have a family friend that lives in Paris and very kindly offered to take us strays in for a couple of days. Then we got to become the one thing that everyone loves- TOURISTS! Oh yes, we went to all the spots, took all the cheesy photos and Louise even bought merchandise from a 'tack shack'. 24 Carat, I <3 Paris wristband wearing, stretch your arm to get the tower in, jumping on a bout tour tourists. And it was spiffing.

The classic pre-voyage photo.

We were very annoyed that this car was there but to be honest I quite like it because it looks like we are in a chic advert.

Ahh yes. Who says you can't take photos in the metro? This was after Louise's instruction of 'act natural'. I feel we achieved that quite well. Another highlight of the day was meeting a new British friend near the Eiffel Tower...

I can not explain his outfit. Perhaps he had just returned from a holiday in Dubai? Anyhoo we did actually do other things in Paris besides sightsee. The main reason we went was because I had seen the line up for Pitchfork Festival and the Thursday night looked amazing with my highlight being JAMES BLAKE. So off we trotted after a full day of being tourists and feeling pretty shattered. To the point where we thought maybe it would be rubbish...WRONG. The night was brilliant! The music was great and the atmosphere was so fun. We bumped into out friend Jimmy, another assistant, and spent the night hanging out with him and his French friend, Florian. I took it upon myself to actively try to stroke the man in front of me's knitted hat (it was so soft), we had a role reversal of nationalities and I even managed to make a joke in French (HE LAUGHED AND EVERYTHING!).

This is the proof of the nationality reversal. Here you can see Jimmy (from Washington) mimicking a 'British boy stance', which apparently is having all of your buttons done up, looking awkward and portraying a melancholy expression. To his left you may also see myself (definitely English) doing my best to illustrate a steretypical American girl pose. This involves simply having the hand on the hip and a smile bigger than any other human. However, my impression is perhaps flawed because on Jimmy's right we can see Kathleen, a genuiiiine American filly, and she looks normal compared to me. Needless to say, American cheerleading movies sometimes lie about American posing. So after 3 jam packed days in Paris, Kathleen went to meet her family to go on holiday and Louise and I went on to Lyon to stay with my friend Alex. Soooo good to see a friendly face from uni here! We had such a good time together too. Mainly involving drinking cosmos, white wine and cooking food. We did actually go out into Lyon one day but still this day revolved around food and drink. Namely, a salad larger than my head and a nutella crepe...mmmmm. Lyon was beautiful and I will definitely be going back there! Especially for the Festival of Lights which I have high hopes for. I'm imagining snow and carols and mulled wine and penguins and reindeer. Fingers crossed.

Belle

How beautiful is my home? Best end to a day chatting French with my teacher and neighbours :-) Bisous x

Je mange pas de la viande!!!!

Ok, so I knew that being a vegetarian in France would be a bit of a challenge. They are known for being meat eaters. They even eat snails and frogs rather than munch down on a tomato. But today my worst nightmare became a reality. The other assistants (Manuela and Guillermo) and I decided that today was the day we would all finally use our 3 euro canteen cards and break our eating in the canteen virginity. In France, however, lunch is never just a sandwich or a salad. Not even a baguette! Nope here it is a starter, a salad, a hot main meal and a dessert (with bread on the side évidemment). I can guess what you're thinking. "That's brilliant, Maisie! So much food and such amazing value!" Well a) I'm not sure how you knew how good value it was seeing as I forgot to mention that each meal costs 2.50 Euros. and b) not when the meal is ALWAYS meat. Now I'm not a fussy vegetarian. I'm, technically speaking, a pescatarian. I eat fish. I don't insist on things being cooked or kept in seperate areas to meat products. I'll even pick the meat out of a dish or eat around it. But when I smile amicably at the chef and he then hands me a plate with a steamiing RABBIT carcass on it, I draw the line. I have a rabbit at home. His name is Bertie. He hops around and eats carrots and does rabbity things. Needless to say I literally gagged my way through my salad and little bits of pasta before I gave up completely. The other assistants found this highly amusing. Therefore, it seems I will be surviving the rest of the year on my cheese, bread and rondelé stash. I still have 14.60 euros on my canteen card. I thought maybe I could just skip out the meat parts of the meals. That works fine...but tomorrow the meal is chciken and carrots. I'll stick with rondelé (which by the way is one of the best things about this country. Pure genius).

Bisous x

The first week

So this week (really it's only been 5 days but I'm bored so don't judge me) has been a bit up and down to say the very least! On the plus side I have met some really lovely people, managed to buy a French mobile, opened a French bank account and met a couple of my classes. I have been told I speak very good French twice by people. And I am speaking French regularly at my lycée and with the other assistants here. However, there have been some black times. They have mainly revolved around the fact that I have no internet until today. Not too serious, I know, but when the Ethernet cable is there and plugged in but it still won't work... frustrating to say the least. Then the IT lady says 'oh yeh I need to change the Proxy address...voila'. Well yes brilliant but how on earth was I supposed to know that?! Anyway it's working now and the sun is shining here so I am happy! However, after visiting Marseille for three days to attend an administration day I have decided that I do not really like this town. For several reasons: a) it smells. Mainly of drains. Everywhere. b) I can not understand the accent very well and so I had a couple of 'smile and nod' moments which we language students are so fond of c) It's really ugly! No offence but even the museum had scaffolding all over it and the port was covered up my maintenance works. d) I ate a four cheese pizza that was FAR too cheesy for any human. Although, that's not really Marseille's fault... But we visited a cathedral which was very pretty. See below...

And we got to do fun 'Look what I'm eating' tourist photos. See below...

I'm trying to speak a lot of French and I am feeling more confident but it is also nice because there is a group of English students living around the corner so I can talk to them in English too to discuss issues that I do not have the French vocab for (eg. relationship dilemnas and guess the animal games...). But I should really try to stop speaking English. But I can't help it, it comes naturally after all! Hey ho, the French lives on and I am speaking it everyday and people UNDERSTAND me and I UNDERSTAND them. So I must be doing something right! Bisous x

Ma Chambre

I told you pictures would arrive sooner or later. It has taken me a while to work out how to connect with the internet (don't ask) but at last here we are...

Voila! My pretty bed (complete with Clarence the resident teddy bear)

The little kitchen

The side (including lucky biscuits courtesy of the Fenwick Family)

My desk kitted out to remind me of all my lovely friends and family

And heres the best bit...THE VIEW! Bisous x

J'arrive!

The time came! On Friday 28th September I very tearily left my beloved Angleterre to begin my year en Provence! I was scared and nervous and the excitement hadn't really kicked in yet due to a stressful and emotional last week at home, for several reasons. Then, having flown to Milan, as Turin, the closest airport, had no flights that day, we faced about a 4 hour drive, stuck in traffic for an hour solid. This did nothing to help my stress and left me feeling EPuIsÉE! (Shattered!!!) But then, my friends, the sun came out. Literally, because we arrived at 8:30 pm here so pitch black. And I have had an amazing first day. Firstly, I met my Head of English who is literally the nicest person in the history of the world. She offered to do my washing! Yeh, I know! AND she had purple eyeshadow which is a sure sign of a complete babe of a woman. She gave me the keys to my room YEY! I unpacked and made it all pretty :-) pictures will follow once I take some... And then, the best thing happened. What's that I hear you say? Could my day possibly get any better? Well yes, invisible reader, it could! I went and did the dreaded phone sign up. I was a wee bit anxious as I don't understand mobile phone contracts en anglais let alone here. But I had a little chat with the lady, successfully purchased a French mobile phone (flip phone and everything. Oh yeh, don't say the English don't got style) and a French pay as you go sim AND (here's the best part) was told by the sales assistant that I spoke French VERY WELL! She didn't laugh or anything when she said it so I can only presume she was telling the truth. She is now my favourite person here. Well maybe joint with my teacher. Tonight I'm off to meet my fellow English speaking teachers here. We are gonna head on down to the English bar (original) and hopefully have a spiffing evening. So all is well here. I'll post some pictures very soon. I promise. Bisous x