A Fortnight in Tropical Paradise

So after some very unusual birthday celebrations, Michèle and I found ourselves lugging gigantic suitcases through Paris in order to get to the airport and jet off to La Réunion, AKA tropical paradise. I'm not exaggerating about the size of the suitcases. We had about 50Kg of checked baggage between us. I blame Michèle entirely. If you want to take my version of events, I showed up with a small rucksack (more of a purse really) while she lugged along six enormous trunks. Or maybe it was 10. My memory is a little hazy now. But I digress... 

La Réunion has been the home of Will, one of our good friends, for the past year and to be honest it would have been rude not to have gone to visit him. We're just really nice like that. Huge thank you to Will here and all of his friends who showed us an amazing time when we came to visit! Will organised for us a full tour of the island, starting off with a week in the North East. We visited a few waterfalls and bassins (which are everywhere in La Réunion, it seems) and explored the towns in the north of the island, all the while trying to dodge the rain. At the risk of sounding pig-ignorant, it turns out that there's actually quite a lot of rain in a tropical climate. As a friend helpfully pointed out to me, it's the desert where you don't get any rain. My bad!

Thankfully, Will's well-practised at rain dodging by now, so we found plenty of beautiful places to escape to, even when the roads are flooded:

The infamous nightclub in Saint Gilles is worth a mention here too, purely because of its name: Titty Twister. Apparently nobody knows what that actually means, but the owner just liked the sounds of the words. Make of it what you will. It made for a fun night anyways!

We then headed south for a week to enjoy the beautiful weather and beaches - it doesn't really rain in the south apparently. I was able to try surfing for the first time, which I'm now completely addicted to and I need to do it again soon, even though I wasn't that great at it. (Story of my life.) So far so good, until suddenly we found ourselves trekking up the highest point in the Indian Ocean - the Piton des Neiges. I'm still not entirely sure that I ever agreed to this. Extreme hillwalking is neither an interest nor a talent of mine, and 3,069m (10069 ft, imperial fans) high definitely counts as extreme in my book. However, I'm very proud of myself for having completed it, including the 4am start the second morning to reach the summit for 6am, even though we were completely soaked to the bone the entire way up and down. Proverbially speaking, it didn't rain but it POURED. We ended up taking off our raincoats halfway up because they weren't keeping any water out any more. It took me 4 days to dry out my walking boots afterwards. FML was definitely floating around my head a lot over those two days. Especially when I thought I'd been bitten by bed bugs in the gîte we stayed in overnight. That was never confirmed, but I definitely got mauled by something nasty because I had a full week of cold showers, antihistamines and people staring at me in the street afterwards. Bad times.

From this:

 To this:

But this made it all worth it:

Don't worry, dear readers. The soggy misery was not to last, and despite what I just wrote, I had a fantastic time. It was character-building, as they say! The rest of our time was spent recovering on the beach and attempting to get a tan. This was desperately needed on my part since people were actually pointing and laughing at me in the street because of the blinding Persil whiteness of my skin. If I had a euro for the number of times I heard "regarde la blanche-là!"... (Translation: "look at that white girl over there!") After a good solid two months of trying to catch the sun, you'll be relieved to know that while I will never be mistaken for a mahogany tree, people have now stopped staring at me and I even have the hint of a tan line on my shoulders. I'm excited. I've never felt like I've had a tan before. I now have an officially normal, non-Irish skin colour. You probably wouldn't call that a tan, but beggars can't be choosers.

And all too quickly, it was time for the sorry car journey back to the airport and a sad goodbye to Will. I'm still not convinced that he'll actually come back to us in Bristol, he loves the place so much, and so it remains to be seen whether or not we'll see him again. I suppose if he did stay, then I'd just have to go out and visit him again. God, what a drag. The thing about Réunion is that there are far too many interesting things there for me to be able to put across to you in one blog, or even a dozen. It's a fascinating place with so much to offer and so if you ever find yourself in that part of the world (or a lot of money for a plane ticket), do not hesitate to go and explore this very unspoilt tropical paradise. Just don't forget your mosquito spray (and get a fake tan first if you're anything like me).

Next time: Return to Aix en Provence, a wee bit of Italy and the Côte d'Azur, and Bordeaux!

Bises,

Sophia xx

A Very Belated Update

Very sorry once again for the weeks of silence on my part, but I'm on permanent holiday/unemployment now that I've finished work and I haven't been in the same place for more than a week or so at a time! No excuse, I know.... Also, believe it or not, I've wanted to update my blog for a couple of weeks now but the website fell out with Google Chrome for some reason (and Firefox, which I decided to try as well), so it wouldn't actually let me upload anything.

So where to start? Before my Easter holidays I had a wee cheeky trip down to Dijon with 2/3 of the other assistants in my region. I say 2/3 because Kate couldn't make it down with us in the end, but we made sure that she was there in spirit:

I then had a bit of a whirlwind of a holiday during Easter because I was here there and everywhere! I started off at home for four days, then headed back to Metz with my mam and dad for a week. It was really lovely to be able to show them around all my haunts. Highlight of the visit was a night in Strasbourg which led to walking over the Rhine bridge to Germany, where my dad not only found a WOOLWORTHS, but purchased two massive flyswats (of all things).

Next off was a trip to Champagne with Aline, one of the English teachers. Going to Champagne was high up on my ticklist of things to do this year, so I was thrilled to be finally able to drink Champagne in Champagne!

Next up was one final week at school and a quick trip to Schengen and Luxembourg City before an emotional goodbye, a bulging suitcase and a TGV hotfooting it back to Paris. This was in aid of my 21st birthday celebrations with Michèle and a flight to LA RÉUNION, a wee island in the Indian Ocean which is next to Madagascar. I'll leave that for next time though because it deserves a whole blog post to itself. 

The fun thing about having my birthday in France was that my birthday, being the 1st May, was a bank holiday. And not just any old bank holiday, but Workers' Day - the mother of all bank holidays. Nobody works on the 1st May. Especially not museum staff. So Michèle and I found ourselves at the Sewer Museum, it being basically the only museum open. It was a very informative tour which genuinely led us down into the Parisian sewers and taught us not only about the history of the sewers, but how the whole process works. Fascinating...! The afternoon was a little less smelly because we found ourselves at one of Nicolas Sarkozy's final rallies before the election. A lot of fun and a lot of people, but sadly not enough to help him win...

So that brings us up to date until the beginning of May - next stop, La Réunion. I'll be a bit quicker with the next one, I promise!


Bises,


Sophia xx

Des Bêtises Scolaires

Here's a quick quiz for you: what does this picture make you think of? For a terminale (Year 13) student in France, they have to be able to discuss an image for 5 minutes and be able to participate in a 5 minute conversation with the examiner in order to pass the oral part of their foreign language exam. I've been giving mock exams to pupils all year, but this past week I've been trying out a new picture on my classes, and it's been amazing what I've heard in response. The picture I've been showing them is one similar to the one below - the only difference is that the Statue of Liberty is facing forwards. 

If you're still guessing, the picture is about global warming and climate change. It's a warning as to what might happen in the future if we don't try and do something about it. I must have shown this picture to a dozen kids, none of whom have managed to guess that. Is this a sad reflection on French teenagers not knowing anything about climate change/not giving a rat's arse about global warming or is this me being dense or over-analytical? General public, cast your vote. Update: I'm now leaning towards this being my problem, having asked my parents their opinion and my dad immediately replied with the answer that the picture obviously represents the September 11 attacks. Erm...?

And the kids I've presented this to have been nothing if not creative. Some of them obviously have excellent imagination. I've had pupils explain to me how the picture was a metaphor for the relationship between France and America (the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, fact fans), and how the picture's message is about immigration to the US. Those are actually quite clever ideas, so hats off to these kids. Maybe it's me who's lacking in imagination...? But the best one by far is what I heard this afternoon from one male student. "I think that this picture represents the tsunami in Japan last year because it shows that Japan is a poor country which has no money to rebuild any of its roads or houses, but if there was a tsunami in America they would have enough money". Erm...? Not sure what Japanese people would say about that, considering Japan has the third largest world economy...

But he's not alone in this geography fail, sadly. I don't know whether this shows a general trend in French teenagers, or whether this only happens in this little remote corner of la République, but just today, I have been informed that:

• Belfast is the capital of the USA
• One of my students wants to visit "The United Kingdom of the United States"
• Glasgow is the capital of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
• The above two countries are "the same thing"
• Kate Middleton is currently Queen of England
• Prince William is the son of the father of Queen Elizabeth II (that's how it was told to me)
• Prince William is the cousin of the Queen
• Prince Charles is the daughter of the Queen
• I got asked "what is the Wales, Madame?"
• The UK's currency is the dollar

I have so much work yet to do, evidently... I'm starting to realise that this might actually be accurate: (Click on the image for a larger, clearer version!)

"Europe according to France"

On the bright side, I received a crêpe machine as my leaving present from the English department. So much love for them right now! I can't wait to get cracking with my crêpe making career. And I'm off home for a flying visit tomorrow thanks to the Easter holidays, so wish me luck with the 13 hour train journey!

Bises,

Sophia xx

My First French March

Today was the day I've honestly been waiting for since the day I moved to France. My First French March. I missed one small protest a few weeks ago by sleeping in (who protests at 8am?!), but I was determined not to miss this one. It wasn't big, there wasn't any major disruption, it wasn't a proper strike, just a march, but it's the closest I've come to full-frontal French protesting and I was going to make sure I experienced it. At the moment in France there are a lot of changes to funding and how its being distributed - we're all in the same economic crisis - and the French aren't happy about it. I can see why they're upset here. Because of funding cuts, German will no longer be offered as a second foreign language. (In France, pupils are expected to learn two foreign languages, but one is given more lesson time than the other, unless the pupil chooses to follow an academic programme equally weighted between both languages. Most people choose English as their first foreign language and then can choose from German, Italian and Spanish as their second.) This change is a big deal here because of the area's proximity to Germany and Luxembourg: a lot of people who live here work in either of these countries, where they're quite likely to have to speak German (as well as English). There are also going to be cuts to the Italian department, Latin and Ancient Greek are to be cut, as well as one of the technical bac programmes (the French equivalent to A Levels). This will mean that pupils who want the option of these subjects will either have to go private or go to Jarny or Metz, adding a good 20-30 mins to their journey time. Considering that at the moment the school has some pupils who leave their houses at 7am to get the school bus, and don't return until after 6pm, that's a big ask.

So that's what the protest was about. It's widely agreed that it probably won't change much, if anything, but the French would never lose an opportunity to show their displeasure about something. After all, if you let something like this slide, who knows what that thieving Sarkozy and his cronies will try and do next?! You can't let the government think that you approve of something due to your inaction. It's a message which I think us in the UK would do well to heed sometimes, but then again I think this has a lot to do with the national psyche. In the UK, people show their displeasure towards the government through snide remarks and clever TV programmes. Like so many other British habits, it's never about what you say, but how you say it. Here, however, direct action seems to be preferred, even if it's only symbolic. 

I arrived at the appointed time, joining a few teachers and pupils and other general sympathisers. The atmosphere was jovial and we all had a good craic in the sunshine whilst waiting for someone else to decide that it was time to go. I was getting quite excited. Someone appeared with a horse-drawn carriage, another with a big white van blaring music out of the windows, and we set off in a long line up the road towards school. We had a police escort and we were blocking traffic, as well as handing out flyers to anyone who crossed our path. What more could you want from a sunny Wednesday afternoon?! We slowly marched through town until we reached school. There, the van was unloaded and some chairs were pulled out, as well a large coffin-shaped piece of wood, which was placed in the middle. I'm not describing this very well but hopefully the photos will shed some light on that one! The guy in the van started playing a funeral march and we all stood around while someone made a short speech about how uncultured the French were becoming and how disgusting it was that these subjects were being denied to future generations. Then we stood around for another chat before heading in when the sun started to go in.

All in all, it wasn't anything spectacular. Nobody got angry and shouted a lot, nobody was on strike (there's no school on Wednesday afternoons), and there really weren't that many people. There wasn't even any chanting. But I still felt very proud today to stand up and participate in my first French protest, and to support the school that I've really come to love. Now that I've only got a month to go until I finish working here, I'm starting to get nostalgic about the time I've spent in Briey, and I'm glad to say that I was finally able to tick one of the major culturally stereotypical "things" off my list. Vive la grève!


Bises,


Sophia xx

PS On the teeth front, things are looking up! I got my stitches out today and I'm feeling a lot more human, so fingers crossed that's the end of that saga... I also handed in my insurance forms yesterday to get reimbursed for my prescriptions, so we'll see how long that takes to land in my bank account! Wish me luck!

Smile Like You Mean It

Well, the last couple of weeks have been educative, to say the least! After spending two whole weeks on home soil, I woke up the very next day after getting back to France with a toothache. Bugger. I tried to sleep it off but woke up at 5am the next morning with a swollen face that I barely recognised, and a pain so bad that I cried trying to talk to people in the staffroom once people started coming into work. Uh oh. Now please bear in mind here that I've never had to go for emergency dental treatment at home, never mind in a foreign country, so I was panicking! I phoned round all the dentists in town, but out of those who actually bothered to answer their phones, the best I could get for an "emergency" appointment was 3 weeks later. Obviously, that wasn't much use to me, so I lumped my massive face round to A&E, but the nurses there turned me away as well because they didn't have a dentist on call. Bugger. 

Another mournful look into the staffroom and the teachers started to take pity on me, bless them. One offered me his own dental appointment that afternoon, bless him. Another gave me some weird painkiller which would "knock me out for a good 24 hours" (I decided not to try that one), but the best was Aline (I know you read this, so hope you don't mind!), who made me an appointment that morning with a dentist in the next town and dropped me off there in between lessons. 

The dentist took one look at me and announced that it was my wisdom teeth. However, it took me a little while to accept his diagnosis, not just because it was so quick, but really because he was so little... I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to healthcare professionals, the ideal is an efficient-looking woman (with glasses on, of course) and a serious expression on her face, or an older man with a kindly expression and white hair, which subconsciously tells you that they've seen this problem a million times before, no it's not that serious, so there's no need to worry - just sit back and let us handle it for you. No such luck here. The guy looked younger than me for a start, and I'm not old enough to have finished dental school, never mind someone younger than me! And he was tiny - a good couple of inches shorter than me - and at 5'5", I'm no giant. In fact, when I first walked into the room and he shook my hand, I thought he was there on work experience. My mistake! However, once I got over my initial forebodings, he turned out to be very nice. So even though he won't read this, I'm sorry for judging! As you can see, I was really in no position to judge someone by their appearance:

This wasn't even me at my worst, believe it or not (you won't be able to see those photos!)

That was two weeks ago - Monday the 27th. This was followed by a trip to the pharmacy for all the pills the dentist prescribed for me (see below) - 8 boxes of things in total. This was followed by an x-ray on the Tuesday, by which time my face had swollen up on both sides, followed by a revisit to the dentist on the Thursday to see the results of the x-ray. The verdict was that all 4 of my wisdom teeth had to be removed. So that meant an appointment with the dental surgeon the following Tuesday, followed by an appointment for the actual extraction the following Wednesday. This Wednesday in fact (the 14th). All under the national health service, all within two weeks. Now tell me that that would happen under the NHS back home!

Of course I'm crapping myself about it now - I'm getting all four teeth out under a local anaesthetic and my face is going to go back to its Moomin proportions from last week, plus a selection of multicoloured bruises to match. This ain't gonna be pretty! Thankfully, one of the families that I do private tuition for have invited me to stay with them for a couple of days afterwards, so at least I won't be on my own. The father is a dentist too, so at least I have backup if anything goes wrong! But it has to be done. Bleurgh. 

But every cloud has a silver lining, and I have to do the best with what I can. I've learnt a lot of new vocabulary! I've also become very au fait with my insurance details, because of course I still have no proof of my insurance, so every time I have an appointment I have to apologise and explain my situation and ask the long-suffering secretaries to phone the company to confirm that I am actually insured. Thankfully so far it's worked...!

So wish me luck for Wednesday!

Bises,

Sophia xx

No News is Good News...

So I've been bad and haven't blogged for a month. So much for a virtuous January leading into an equally virtuous February... However, if I may offer half a defence, I've been in the UK for the past two weeks (I heart half term). I've spent a week in Newcastle with the boyf, a weekend getting fed by my parents at home, and now I'm about to finish off my second week by leaving Bristol for the Big Smoke to meet my dad before hopping on the Eurostar in order to be back in time for school on Monday.

Let me fill you in on what I've been up to:

1. I had a cheeky weekend in Lyon with Michèle, Lola and Rachel back in January. This was fantastic, even though it involved a 5.30am wake up call in order to catch the 6.30am bus on a precious Saturday morning. I haven't seen Lola for ages so it was amazing to catch up with her and to have  a "local" guide for the city (she's at uni there). We ate a lot, we walked a lot, and we had a good play on the hire bikes :) Highly recommended!

The thing I really loved about Lyon was that it felt like how I think Paris feels to other people. I've never really "got" Paris in the way that other people seem to fall in love instantly with the place, but I got that feeling from Lyon. It was atmospheric, busy and exciting without being so hectic and feeling as dirty as Paris. We were able to cycle along the river banks without fear of being run over by six different smart cars coming in six different directions, the buildings were beautiful and as "French" as you could hope for, the roads were narrow and led to infinitely interesting places hidden away from the crowds. And there weren't half as many tourists. It's a win win and I am desperate to get back there!

2. I had a bitch of a week at school before we broke up for half term. Rather less exciting and/or interesting, I had a horrible week at school where I was giving extra mock oral exams for the terminales at 8am each morning of my final week. This was because the kids had missed their allocated mock exams with me on (rather more reasonable) Monday afternoons, so I was the one who was punished by having to reschedule at the only time that we were all available. FML. Some of the kids didn't even turn up. Not that I blame them, but it made my job just that wee bit more sucky knowing that I'd got up for an 8am start for nothing. FML. But they'll get a 0 for that, so I guess they lose out more than I do. At least I've managed to catch up on my sleep...! But it made for a nasty week, and I will be very glad to be back to normal timetable next week!

3. It was my boyfriend's 21st birthday. I think this was the first year in our 3 and a half year relationship, believe it or not, that we were actually together on his birthday (the joys of long distance relationships), so it was really lovely to be able to celebrate with him - albeit in a dissertation-limited fashion. So here's my little bit of sop: I hope you had a lovely birthday, thank you for letting me stay, I miss you and love you lots :)

4. I had a fun fun fun reunion in Bristol with the lovely people I left behind there. Even though I've been abused and farted on all week by most people mentioned above (I think Becca is the only person exempt here), I've had a lovely week and it's been great to catch up with you, even though you've frightened me beyond belief about all the work I'm going to have to do in final year. I'm not entirely sure I want to come back... 

I should probably point out here that while my bestie Sarah has been lovely to me all week and hasn't farted on me once, she has been less than courteous in the bedroom, which means that she gets lumped under the "abuser" category. I've been sharing her bed, and in 3 nights I have been shouted at, booty bumped and hit, all while Sarah's been asleep (I think hope). I'm trying not to take it personally.

I have managed to find and sign for a house for next year though, so it's a nice feeling knowing that I won't be living in a cardboard box next year. Yay!

Anyhow, I think that's us all up to date, so I will love you and leave you. I'm heading back to la France on Saturday evening, so I will try and get another cheeky blog post in before the end of the month (but as always, no promises).

Bises,

Sophia xx

Pride Comes Before a Fall

How virtuous am I?! Three blog posts in a week?! Don't get too comfortable, I don't want to let my fans down but I'm pretty sure this won't last. I'm not entirely sure where this new-found dedication comes from!

It's been nearly a week since I dragged myself out of bed at 5.30am on my day off to go skiing with the collège. I was very excited despite my extreme fatigue; somehow I just couldn't get my shoes on the right feet and I think I put the milk in the bathroom before returning it to the fridge. I say "I think" because I can't quite remember, but I have that horrible nagging feeling in the back of my mind which seems to confirm it. But I managed to somehow pull myself together and make it outside with all my gear by 6am to meet the bus. I was quite curious as to what I was actually going to be doing. This being France, there's no kind of briefing before a trip and information seems to be on a very Spartan need-to-know basis. Literally all I knew was that I was going skiing somewhere in Les Vosges (the mountain range closest to us here in Briey), that the bus left at 6am and that I needed to bring snacks with me. That was IT. It was quite exciting really, sort of like going on a blind date. 

I arrived at 6am only to find the PE teacher accompanying the trip and 4 students. FOUR. In England for our ski trips there was always massive demand and half the school would want to go. I guess here it's less of a novelty, so it's probably not worth taking a day off school for it when you can head down yourself in the school holidays. So that was surprise number one. Then, a full-sized bus turned up and I was halfway through a mental rant about how crazy the French are about transport and how this bus was completely over the top for the six of us when I realised that there were other people on the bus. Surprise number two: we were sharing transport with kids from two other schools in the area. To be fair, that's very environmentally forward for the French. Bien joué. 

Thankfully, I can sleep through anything, so 50 or so noisy kids were no match for my powers of falling asleep anywhere I choose. I'm going to admit here that I love sleeping on public transport - I'm not entirely sure why. But it means that I'm always refreshed when I get to my final destination. And it helps to pass the time. Trains are my favourite, but buses are very acceptable substitutes.   But I digress... I had a lovely sleep anyway, but it was very confusing to wake up 3 hours later, and still not have arrived?! Surprise number three: Les Vosges are further away than I thought. Honestly, the way people talk here, you'd think they were a quick hop, skip and a jump away. Couple of minutes on the motorway, et voilà! (Although this may vary from French driver to French driver. Apparently some do stick to the speed limit, but I'm not sure on that one...! (JOKE) (ish)).

And so after three and a half hours we finally arrived, changed quickly into our ski gear and headed up to a chalet to queue for our skis and ski boots. (I'm not going to get started on the French and queueing here; it would take me far too long to rant). We were ready to start, when along came surprise number four: the teacher left me in charge of three of our pupils, while he gave the fourth some lessons. Gulp. I looked at the teacher for reassurance that this was a massive joke/misunderstanding, but all I got in return was a Gallic shrug and a "you told me you'd done a week's skiing, right?" Erm yeah, because that makes me an expert and someone responsible enough to look after three children... Uh oh.

But I didn't want to make a fuss (I know how stereotypical this makes me), so I took it in my stride and set off to the slopes with a sinking feeling in my stomach but a smile on my face. We started on the baby slope, and I managed to make it down without falling, so I made a crucial error. I got cocky. So when one of the pupils suggested we go straight up onto the blue run, I agreed.

Oh, how very true it is that pride comes before a fall. Because I reached the top of the blue run, set off... and promptly forgot how to turn or stop. I think I did about 200m before I crash landed on my face, leaving my skis somewhere behind me on the mountain, sending my poles flying down the mountain ahead of me, and losing my hat in the process. Cue three concerned pupils (all of whom can ski way better than me to begin with) surrounding me, trying to work out if I was OK and gathering my things for me. I picked myself up with a grin (can't let these kids get the better of me, I'm supposed to be looking out for them after all, not the other way round), started off... And made less than 100m before I wiped out again. On my face, again. This was about 10am and we were staying til 3.30. Uh oh.

The beauty of the ski resort we were at was that it was tiny - it was only one mountain, and all the runs led into one another - each difficulty level just started higher up. Which meant that I was able to dismiss the kids to let them do their own thing (i.e. not fall over), and I could keep an eye on them as they overtook me on the way down. Phew. I gathered my wits and went back to the baby slope to teach myself to stop and turn, where I could fall over in peace without the kids laughing at me (to my face). Finally, I was enjoying myself.

But this happiness was not to last, as by mid-morning the PE teacher had joined us and he was keen to progress. He decided that we were to all follow him onto the red run. By this time, I had just started back on the blue run, with some success, so I swallowed my doubts and followed him with a heavy heart. I should have heeded the signs. First of all, I fell over before we even reached the lift for the red run, and we weren't even skiing downhill at this point. Second, when we reached the lift, there was a sign warning that the route was very icy, and only competent, confident skiers should attempt it. Finally, five people in front of me fell off the lift before it even got up the hill. (We were using button lifts where you have to wedge a pole between your legs and hold on for dear life as you're dragged up the hill, not chair lifts, and this one was a particularly fast one). But I valiantly persevered, watching the other kids and the PE teacher head on up before me before having a go myself. The first time, the pole slipped right out of my hands. I went back to wait for the next one, and this time we had lift off (excuse the pun). However, the problem with this was that I was no longer sitting on the lift, but was hanging on to it for dear life while I was dragged up the hill on my stomach. I think I went about 100m before I realised that I should let go. Then, the lift had to be stopped while I retrieved my skis, poles and that bloody hat and waddled back down to flat ground. Oooops. 

I decided that third time would not be lucky for me in this case, so I settled myself at the bottom of the hill to wait for the others to arrive. My suspicions were confirmed as I watched one girl fall off the lift about three quarters of the way up and slide down the way she had just come, taking out half a dozen people behind her on the lift, all of whom slithered down in a big heap to the bottom. That could have been me. 

The others somehow made it down in one piece (presumably because they're a lot better than me), and I was allowed to make my excuses and head back to the green/blue runs, proverbial tail between legs. However, I slowly managed to rebuild my shattered pride bit by bit as I persevered and gradually began to improve. We had a break for lunch and after lunch I skied for an hour and didn't fall once, even on the blue slope. Go me!

And all too soon, it was time to leave and head back onto the bus for the long journey home. I was sunburnt, bruised, stiff and completely exhausted, but I had the most fantastic time. I'm totally going again next chance I get, even if it means I completely annihilate my pride once more. What's more, Les Vosges are absolutely beautiful and I really want to go back and see some more of them. I managed to survive this time with only some bruises on my legs, bum and on my elbow (did not know that that was possible) - so what's the worst that can happen?! 

Bises,

Sophia xx

10 Weird Things About France

Bonjour tout le monde! I should definitely be working but then I thought, "stuff that, I want to write my blog instead". Only problem now is that after writing this, I think I've run out of procrastination tools. Urgh. Sundays in France are boooooooring (no public transport or shops open on Sundays = serious work avoidance tactics required). You know it's bad when you can't even go to the supermarket to procrastinate because it's not open on Sundays.


But I digress. I've been in this wonderful country for nearly 5 months so I feel that I am now sufficiently qualified to talk about why France can be a pretty strange place to live sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but at the same time a lot of things seem to happen to me on a regular basis which make me very confused... 

1) The French do weird things to custard. This is not necessarily the weirdest thing on my list, it's just the first one which popped into my head. In the past two weeks I have eaten normal custard and custard in jelly form - managable. The straw that broke the camel's back had to be the custard cake. Cooked custard in a flan? Confusing. Yet they don't sell custard cream biscuits...

2) Even big, respectable supermarket chains seem to be doing dodgy deals. I went into my local supermarché in December looking for shampoo to find that all of the Garnier shampoo labels were in Polish. The conditioner, however, was in French, as were all the other shampoo brands.

3) The French aren't so big on dental hygiene (it seems). I haven't (thankfully) noticed this first hand, but when I went to said supermarket looking for mouthwash and dental floss (I had the dentist when I come home and I was feeling guilty), there was a choice of two mouthwashes and no dental floss. For an entire dental aisle. There was toothpaste, toothbrushes and denture glue stuff a plenty, but that was it. Apart from some plasters and verruca cream. For when you get verrucas in your mouth, y'know.

4) Fresh milk is as rare as gold dust. Enough said. I got laughed at recently by a group of people who asked me if I had to get my milk straight out of the cow to be able to drink it. While I'm not that much of a purist, it is true that I am prepared to walk 15 mins each way a couple of times a week to the only supermarket in town which sells fresh milk. I tried with the UHT, I really did, but I just couldn't handle it day in, day out.

5) There is a brand of sugar called "Daddy". LOL! It's even in a pink packet.

6) You can get a doctor's note to get you three days sick leave if you have a cold. A COLD. Unless you're me and you still don't have any health insurance, that is...


7) The keyboards are all mixed up (and very difficult to type with as a result). For example, you have to press shift to get any of the numbers on the top line. Eh?! And you have to press shift to get a full stop, but not for an exclamation mark, colon, semi-colon or comma. Eh?! And you have to press Alt Gr to get the @ symbol. Not cool, and definitely not useful.


8) School here is from 8am to 5pm (6pm in some schools) but the French government thinks the kids aren't working hard enough so wants to cut their school holidays so that they're in line with other European countries...? Go figure.


9) The French seem to be obsessed by the 80's phenomenon which is Happy Days. Not only is the themetune used as a radio jingle for a particular supermarket ad, there is a Happy Days themed restaurant nearby. Erm, what?!


10) French bureaucracy and my quest for health insurance. See earlier blogs.


So that's all for now, folks. I'm off on a wild weekend to Lyon with the lovely Michèle next weekend, so I will have some news and photos for you then. Very excited for this!


Bises,


Sophia xx

Flossing? Or Blogging? That is the question...

My boyfriend actually had the cheek to remind me last week that I wasn't keeping to my New Years Resolutions because I wasn't updating my blog frequently enough. I would just like to point out that although I have been a bit remiss with my blogging, I have been very busy over the past two weeks. Furthermore, I have religiously stuck to my other Resolution of flossing once a day, whereas dear Christopher has not, even though he said he would. So you get less procrastination, but I have a beautiful healthy smile. Everyone's a winner (except you, Chris. Go floss.)

Anyways, I do realise that the two activities are not mutually exclusive, so I'm trying to make amends for my poor time management and I will fill you in on the past two weeks. I've been out and about quite a bit! Alex and Sarah kindly came to visit me two weeks ago... I think (hope) they had fun out here! We certainly ate a lot of good food, which in my book means that we had an awesome time, no questions asked. First of all, they came to visit my humble abode here in Briey, although I'm not sure that they were terribly impressed by the sights here (i.e. my room and the cake shop). However, both of them are city folk, so I think being out in the sticks was a bit discomforting for them. It's understandable.

So I tried to make them feel a bit more at ease and we wandered off to Luxembourg City for a day trip! Although I have to admit that we didn't see a lot of the city because we had a long lunch with a generous bottle of wine and so proceeded to go sightseeing in hysterics and meandering round the funny streets. Now I'm no travel writer, but Luxembourg seems to me to be a pretty funny place. It's sort of like a place in Scandinavia which has relocated and now seems a bit lost in amongst all the crazy Frenchness which surrounds it. It's clean, prosperous and you can smell the success in the air (and in the BMW exhaust fumes), but at the same time the roads don't seem to go anywhere and everything seems a little bit confused in the same way as French towns are all higgledy-piggledy. 

But Luxembourg just couldn't contain us, so we took a horribly early train to Paris a couple of days later and had a couple of days in the Big City. But first of all I feel that I should mention the hilarious restaurant we ended up in in Metz the night before... We were feeling the idea of a slap up meal and managed to choose the poshest-looking restaurant in the area (which luckily had a 26 euro menu, as well as a 90 euro truffle menu). We wandered in a bit sheepishly to have our coats taken from us by one of the waiters, we were shown to our table only to be disturbed (in both senses of the word) by the other waiter, who was waving a big glass jar under my nose and looking up at me expectantly. I worked out that there were truffles in the jar and that we were meant to smell them and show our appreciation. Obviously. FYI, they smell a bit weird. Like burnt mushrooms. We were then presented with our "amuse bouche" - translation: "amuse the mouth", which consisted of a courgette mousse, a tiny cup of lobster soup, a cube of mysterious meat on a cocktail stick with a gherkin, and a shrimp in some pastry. This caused a lot of sniggering as I'm sure you can imagine, but it did taste good. Our starters followed, then our mains, then a waiter came round to sweep the crumbs off the table with a tiny brush before we were presented with petits-fours and our desserts. Finally we had our coffee and were able to escape, giggling like idiots, into the night. It was simultaneously the tastiest and the weirdest meal I've ever eaten. I'm obviously not cut out for fine dining. I have no photos of this evening for obvious reasons - it's very uncouth to photograph your meals like a cheap tourist.


Now to Paris! We stayed in a cool little hostel in Montmartre, the only downside of which being that we had to share a room with two Ozzies and a mystery guy who didn't tell us where he was from. They were nice people, but they stank so bad that in the morning Sarah and I thought we were being gassed...

We had a lovely wander around Paris, saw some of the usual sights, and somehow ended up in a lovely little bistro in Montmartre for tea which actually had a cheap menu before wandering into a dodgy little bar where the cocktails tasted like paintstripper because they had so much alcohol in them. All in a day's work... When we were wandering down the Champs Elysées we even managed to see the French Handball team being interviewed in the Renault shop! We had no idea who any of them were but I took a picture anyway...

I even managed to get a cheeky trip in to M&S and procured myself some salt and vinegar crisps - my God how I've missed those!


So to sum up, I hope Alex and Sarah enjoyed their trip out to see me! I certainly did :) More adventures to follow soon, I promise!


Bises,


Sophia xx