Les Anglais ont débarqué

In theory, it's hometime tomorrow! However, this is dependent on high winds not disrupting either my trains or my plane, plus the airport security personnel strike being not too serious. I have major fear right now, let me tell you. If I miss my connection (at Disneyland?! I change trains at Disneyland?!), which is likely as it's only a ten minute connection, then I have to wait an hour for the next train to the airport, which will get me to the airport around 25 minutes before my gate closes. If my connecting train is on time of course. I need a miracle right now so will someone please perform some sort of anti-rain dance for me to take my stress away?

Mais c'est la vie en France. I thought it was quite amusing at first that the French go on strike as regularly as clockwork, but it turns out that the novelty wears off exceptionally quickly. Like when it potentially disrupts your travel plans (last week there was also a threat of a train drivers' strike because of the new timetable changes. I kid you not). Or when you have no internet for a day because the tech staff are on strike so can't flick the switch to turn the internet back on, as happened to me yesterday. Merci. Some of the teachers were also on strike today, although this was less disruptive so I can deal with that one.

Alright, rant over. Nothing much else to report here. It's rained for two weeks solid so I haven't really managed to venture too far! I went to Metz last weekend with one of the teachers to do a walk around the city to see all the sights. Literally all of them. I had no idea it was a 10k walk before we arrived there and I was hurting everywhere by the time I'd finished. But I guess it helped me work off the vin chaud and the waffle smothered in chocolate and cream that I needed to sustain me for the trek... I was also in Metz last Friday to accompany a Year 10 class. From what I gathered, the trip was some sort of careers event, so we ended up in the Pompidou Centre (an extension of the Parisian original apparently) to ask the tour guides about their careers, and then to the offices of the Républicain Lorrain - the local newspaper - where we got to see the printing presses and the whole process of making a newspaper from start to finish. The guy taking us round was very interesting and by the end of the tour I was ready to throw in the towel with my PCGE ambitions in order to become a journalist...! I'm still a little bit tempted, if I'm honest. But it was made clear to me that in France, local newspapers are real newspapers too, unlike back home (unless it is genuinely important to you who won the "Pigeon Fancier of the Year Award"). Here, the newspaper prints national and international news, added to the local news which is divided between seven different versions of the newspaper depending on which area you come from. Very impressive considering that this is on a daily basis! Another interesting fact is that the Républicain Lorrain started life as a German-language paper because that was the main language of the demographic at the time - Occupied France pre-WW1. After Lorraine was returned to France, the newspaper was printed in both French and in German, and the German edition was only stopped in 1989. Interesting stuff.

So with that little gem of local history, I'm going to love you and leave you. I'll also end with the fun fact that I learnt today which gave me the inspiration for the title: "les Anglais ont débarqué" (literally "the English have landed") means that a woman is on her period. Because the English wore red coats back in the day, y'know? So gross but highly amusing.

Wish me luck for tomorrow!

Bises,

Sophia xx

Juste pour les lols

Last month, a few of the English classes interviewed me and had to write a summary of what they had learnt about me. These are the highlights (or lowlights depending on how you look at it) - I just remembered about these today and thought they would amuse you as much as they did me! Marking these = hours of laughter.

"she would like to be a French teacher and later have a child"

"the young woman loves her food, her culture..."

"She lives in the north of Scotland, in England"

"Miss Mcc Ray has a boyfriend who call Christ"

"Unfortunately, the woman quit the France in May"

"She is quite sad to be here, but for the holidays she goes back to England"

"she is a twenty years olded woman"

"Sophia has twenti years old, he live in England"

"Sophia's family live in Ireland but she's live in England with Chris, her boyfriend"

"It's a young woman, she is a 23 years old"

"She use to chat with her family on skype and with her boyfriend Chris with who she wants children, but much later"

"There, the life is different. Indeed, they drive to the left on the road"

"She has green eyes and red hair and she always smiles"

"The young English likes France in particular for the culture of this country"

"She goes in Ireland to Christmas in family"

"Her birthday is the thirst May"

"She has not a brother or a sister because she has a dog"

"Her name is Sophia and she's 30 years old"

"Sophia she a ordinary women"

"This is assistant call Sophie and She live in Scotland. She can learn French because it wants to become a French teacher. She came to Lorraine to know history. But his favorite country is Ireland because that is were family lives. She loves the number 4. She love the movie "Black Swan" and her favorite book is "To Kill Moderking is". She has a dog. She enjoy this sport "hockey" and she play to hockey. She was watched world cup rudby. She love fashen. She is fashen girl. She back to maybe in France."

After all of these howlers (and many more which didn't make the final cut), let me tell you that I am seriously questioning my looks - firstly, is my gender really that obscure? Do I really look 30? And most importantly, do I look ginger?! One pupil asked me last month if I had ginger hair, but thankfully I was valiantly defended by one of her classmates, who retorted, "can you not see that she has not got the head of the carrot?!". Indeed.

This might have been topped by today's faux pas. I have been talking to classes about the English school system and have been starting off all my classes by holding up my school tie and asking the kids to guess what we're going to talk about. I've done this with 6 classes so far and every class has guessed straight away. Except my wonderful Year 11 class this morning, where one darling angel boy asked me if we were talking about "when you put your tie on the door to tell people you're having sex". Weirdly enough, he wasn't even looking for a laugh. He was being deadly serious. And that's when I got frightened...

Bises,

Sophia (AKA fashen girl) xx

The Capital of Christmas

Jumping back now to last weekend, I met up with the lovely Michèle and her friend Meredith (bless them, coming from Marseille by sleeper train) to party on down in Strasbourg! Nice and close to me, Strasbourg is one of those places that has been on the tick list ever since I knew I was coming to this area. It calls itself the "capital of Christmas", and it isn't far wrong. Even for someone like me, who doesn't get overly excited about Christmas, it was a truly magical place. Kind of like Disneyland for grownups. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Scrooge, but I'm just not the sort of person who gets excited about Christmas in January. Or even November. However, Strasbourg seems to be the sort of place which can change my mind...

Nothing says "I love you" like a gingerbread piggy

There are lights everywhere, Santa hats galore, giant vats of mulled wine, thousands of Germans (don't they have their own, bigger and better Christmas markets?!) and most importantly/confusingly large hats with a big white bird on the top (see above). At the time, none of us had any idea what this symbolised, but Wikipedia has the answers as always: "The stork is a main feature of Alsace and was the subject of many legends told to children. The bird practically disappeared around 1970, but re-population efforts are continuing. They are mostly found on roofs of houses, churches and other public buildings in Alsace." See a picture here.

Everything which seemed wonderful in the daytime immediately got twice as cool as soon as it got dark - one good thing about it getting dark early I suppose - and the lights everywhere were just dazzling. Easiest way to regress 15-20 years, let me tell you. We even asked for directions from some drunken Sixth Formers, who told us to "turn right when you get to the bright blue Christmas tree". Blue trees! Where else would you get directions like this (that turn out to be accurate)?! 

The street we nicknamed Christmas Street

SO MANY LIGHTS

We even managed to fit in some cultural things in the form of not one, but two museums and of course a visit to the famous cathedral,  which really has to be seen to be believed and appreciated for how spectacular it looks!

However the highlight for me, as always, was the food. I tried as many things as possible from the market stalls (washed down with mulled wine/cider, bien sûr), and we also went for a slap-up meal in a cosy little place on Christmas Street called St Sepulcre. If you're ever in Strasbourg, GO THERE. It's no budget meal, but it's not extortionate and it is worth every single centime. The food was amazing, the wine slipped down nicely and the atmosphere was great craic - very warm and welcoming in true Alsatian style. I need to get back there soon.

So to sum up, get yourself to Strasbourg ASAP, preferably before Christmas. You'll spend a small fortune but you won't regret it! Next time though, I'll try to practice my ice skating first...

Bises,

Sophia xx

A Successful Day (mostly)

Well folks, today has officially been A Successful Day.

Success #1: My shower has been fixed after 2 and a half weeks of cold water and doleful shrugs when I complain to anyone who seemed vaguely responsible (I could never track down the person who was actually responsible, just people who knew him or knew of him). It took a dramatic flouncing up to one of the people in question in the school canteen, interrupting their lunch, and announcing that I now had a cold because I still had a cold shower, so what were they going to do about it. Hey presto, hot water!

Success #2: I have a fully functioning TV! Still not quite sure how this happened because I had no emotional blackmail tools to help me on this, but after 2 months of a decrepit TV with a video player which didn't seem to have worked for the best part of twenty years, I arrived home today to find a replacement sitting in front of the old one. It even has a digibox. Merci bien.

Success #3: After 2 months, 6 forms, 3 copies of my birth certificate (original and translation) and 3 copies of my bank details, I finally have health insurance and a social security number. Again, still not sure how this has happened because I had already resigned myself to the belief that my health insurance application would never be accepted. The highlight of my lengthy correspondence with the MGEN (all by letter, might I add) has to be last week, when I was asked for the third copy of my birth certificate "avec les mentions en marge" - "with notes in the margins". I still don't know what this means, nor did any of the teaching staff present at the time, and all I could do was ask the teacher responsible for me to write a note stating that as my birth certificate is not a French one, it is not the same as a French one. This was topped off by the fact that the stamped addressed envelope included in the letter was too small to fit in anything that I needed to send back. Student Finance England, eat your heart out.

But pride always comes before a fall and this is no exception. In the course of writing this blog I heated up leftover stroganoff from the previous night to eat for my tea. I had kept it in a tupperware box, the previous contents of which was an orange jelly, and my beautiful stroganoff therefore had the pleasant orange, sugary aftertaste which one really needs to create the perfect stroganoff sauce. Fail #1.

But all in all a good day I feel. Vive la France!

Bises,

Sophia xx