You only really learn about your home country when you leave it, live somewhere else and talk to 'foreigners'.
I love the sea.
It doesn't take long to get used to driving on the right hand side of the road.
Languages are always more complicated than I think.
The Indian Ocean has taught me to move my feet when I dance.
Reunion seems to be a 'reunion' of like-minded Europeans, creating their own microcosm world in an Indian Ocean Island, that generally doesn't mix with Creole culture.
Many people question European society, you just might not meet them, because they're not there anymore.
I adjust well to new situations.
If you're not happy living somewhere, move on.
Wherever you live, there will always been petty discussions about who should do the washing up.
I'm greedy. This reputation seems to travel with me.
Use the sea as a detox regime.
Wear suncream.
Avoid ERASMUS students en masse.
Don't be scared of doing something different.
Nature is powerful.
I'm happy most of the time.
The psychology of language learning is very interesting.
Question the other side of the story and encourage others to do the same.
Do you take the time to question where you are, what you're doing and whether you're really happy doing it?
Get Creative.
If in doubt, smile.
There are many French people in 'transit' in Reunion, some of whom are running away from situations in France.
Before you make a decision, think about whether you'll regret it afterwards - if the answer is no, do it.
I've learnt that England can be an extremely competitive environment...what do we win?
Do you really take the time to live?
Forget about what people might think, just let go.
Colonialism still exists and I don't think it's a good thing. But they don't tell you that in school.
African drums can easily make me cry with emotion.
Who cares if you don't shave your legs?
Don't just write me off as a travelling hippy.
Don't assume that everyone is in the same situation as you.
Open your eyes to everything.
Go on a hike without any trousers on, you'll be surprised how much fun you'll have.
Don't just ignore what is easier to ignore.
If you don't have any energy, do something to get it back.
Laughing, smiling and crying are a universal language.
Be prepared to smash your limits, socially, culturally and physically.
Question what is not normally questioned.
Stop being afraid of what society will think.
The digeridoo is cool and doesn't have to be associated with Rolf Harris.
Why compare everything to what you already know? Wipe the slate clean.
Dance, like a crazy person, everywhere you want to.
If the music is right, if the company is right, you can drink water all night and have the best night out of your life.
You don't 'visiter quelqu'un', you 'rendre viste quelqu'un'. In the words of my housemate - "do you arrive inside them? No? Then you don't 'visiter' them."
Get up early and walk.
I now drink coffee. With sugar.
Be a citizen of the world, and not a citizen of your country.
Waking up every morning to blue sky and warm sunshine leaves me a happier person.
English tea is comforting when it's raining.
I really appreciate 'Apéro'.
Culture is never simple.
The French translators of Harry Potter ballsed up big time by changing too many of the characters' names.
I don't notice the colour of people's skin any more.
Wrap your food up a thousand times and put it in the fridge to avoid the ants.
The Elizabeth who speaks French is different to the Elizabeth who speaks English.
I am more free to express myself in French. The lack of emotional connection with the sense or nuances of the words sometimes leaves me more free to just say whatever's in my head.
Dance. Did I mention that already?
There should be more of link between the Indian Ocean Islands.
Pharmacies should not burn drugs that are still suitable to be sold when people are dying unnecessarily an hour and a half away on a plane.
Why are people defined by their careers?
Madagascar should not immediately promote the words 'poverty', 'misere'.
You have to work very hard to really understand somewhere. It might be easier to just assume where you are and what you're doing is normal, but you miss almost everything.
I have become very emotionally attached to the French language.
The academic marking system should not judge your level of French.
In my dreams, I am conscious of what language I'm dreaming in.
Leave people the space to grow and air their opinions - in whatever language they want.
Don't assume that the English speaking world produce the best music.
I prefer French Masterchef.
Be wary of 'piment' (chilli) in Reunion. Eat with caution, but eat it nonetheless.
Stop being a tourist and start to try and understand rather than just look.
Some people are lost in the world.
Half of the Earth is forgotten in education - what does that make education?
I would like to publish a little story from my most recent trip to Madagascar:
Martin came to La Reunion to visit his girlfriend, Anna, who is one of my good friends here - a German language assistant. Martin became a friend and as he left to return to Austria, he gave me his battered, holey, leather, very well travelled, Camper shoes so that I could help them to find a new loving owner in Madagascar.
These shoes went on a journey to and through Madagascar.
When they were given to me, they looked like this.
They were taken to a street side cobbler in Fort Dauphin so that he could repare the holes.
This cobbler did a job that was 100 times better than I expected. Using bits of leather from other very old shoes that would have been thrown into the bin in the Western world, he made a beautifully strong leather patchwork.
After repair, in Fort Dauphin, the shoes travelled with me to Fianaransoa and were lovingly polished.
Laces were added...
Et voila. In Europe these shoes would have been thrown in the bin. I spent the equivalent of less than 1 euro paying for them to be repaired and now they have at least another 5 years life in them. They now have a loving Malagasy owner who wants to carry on the reparation story when they become worn out for the 2nd time. Where will the end up after that?
Through various small scale projects, I am trying to create more of a link between the economically rich La Reunion and Madagascar, as the potential benefits to both side are enormous.
This is a little story. About 1 pair of shoes. But I think it's a good story.
Next time you go to throw out a battered, old, holey pair of shoes thinking "nobody will want those" - why not put them in the charity shoe bank?
They might just end up in Madagascar and go through the same journey as Martin's Campers.
This is what Cyclone Giovanna left us with. She passed about 300 km north of Reunion and left us with heavy rain, wind and watery sunsets. Unfortunately she bulldozed her way across northern Madagascar.
Look closer...
We drove up to the carpark on the volcano at 2am after a party with the intention of walking to the top in the dark for sunrise at the summit. We drove through the pouring rain, fog and endless clouds on a road made of lava to sit in the car for two hours talking about our lives, and decide that it wasn't worth walking for 2 hours in the rain with no view. So we did a U-y and drove back down!
Two of my students manning the Valentine's Day stall at school. They sold their own made perfume, magnets, their own made jam, Valentine's Day Cards and Roses to raise money for their trip to England in October.
The 'rainy season' is starting to live up to its name. This is the entrance to my classroom, I hid there for a while waiting for the rain to pass...it didn't.
The most beautiful sunset I've seen yet on the island. This picture doesn't do it justice. I swam out to the coral reef in a gold sea.
The Austrians! Bob with the gun, Anna already dead on the floor and Martin wondering what to do in his last few moments of being alive in a sugar cane field.
I swam in my pants in Cascade Niagara.
This water rushed down the rivers after heavy rainfall in the mountains. Unfortunately it took 4 victims in its path in East Reunion.
Well, hello world. I am sitting on a grassy hill looking out over the carpark of a gym. Doesn't sound very exciting does it? Well, in fact it is quite exciting for me. For different reasons. The first reason is, although a carpark gym isn't the most glamourous of places, this car park has palm trees. The second reason is that the sea is the backdrop for this car park. And the third reason, is that this spot is just down the road from my school (and the mosque - by the sounds of things) and has a wifi connection...
So that was a draft of a blog post that I wrote just before my battery died on my laptop. Everything was perfect; grassy hill, pre-prepared lunch, wifi...but my Toshiba battery couldn't keep up with the excitement.
So, a couple of days after my draft, I am coming back to my post, after watching quite a few very inspiring sunsets from the wall of a small port which is a 2 minute walk from my new house.
Yes, I have moved house, again. After discovering the world of frenchies who abuse the benefit system, I decided that that house was not for me. By a huge stroke of luck, I've hit gold with a month sublet in a great houseshare in the middle of Terre Sainte, the old charming fishing village over the river from the main town of Saint Pierre, in the south of Reunion. This house is a 30's style bungalow with glass bricks and 2 gardens, large sitting room with the usual array of furniture made from palettes - there are lots of houseshares with only Metropolitans (people from mainland france) and all of them will feature palette furniture - a cheap way to furnish your new rented house in the tropics. I'm sharing with a French physio and a guy who used to be a tree surgeon and plays the digeridoo. Both of them, and their friends, are totally on my wave length. I was welcomed with a prawn dinner washed down with a box of red wine in the garden. It was a very good start. Living about 200m from the beach is something that I will pine for wherever I live after this. Any spare half an hour is an excuse to 'aller a la plage'. Et bahh voila! By the powers of techonology - have a little tour of my road down to the beach!
I have also managed to get myself a
car...which is on loan from the housemates who I am temporarily replacing in this house. A absolute banger of a ford Escort that needs a screw driver to start the engine and worst of all the passenger window doesn't work...which leaves me a extremely hot and sweaty driver. None the less, it's a motor and it gets me from A to B (after swallowing petrol at the rate of no car I have ever driven before). And allows me to explore the island after 17h30, which the buses do not allow for.
There is one thing that I cannot avoid writing about today. The big C word (not that one...) CYCLONE. La Reunion has gone into a state of mild panic preparing itself for Cyclone Giovanna that is on course to give us a good beating tomorrow and Monday. My housemates and I went to stock up on emergency supplies yesterday evening - emergency supplies mainly consisted of chocolate, crisps and rum. We took the last 2 5litre bottles of water from the local supermarket as Reunion prepared for the possibility of no water over the next few days. Today we woke up to blue sky - "la calme qui précède la tempête"...et voila, this is what's in store for us:
Now, people don't go worrying about me. We've got everything we need ready for this beast and it also means that if all goes to plan, we all get Monday off work! Like the Reunionnais equivalent of snow day! My thoughts are with those in Mauritius and Madagascar who will be much more affected by Giovanna because of their lack of sturdy housing.
I will try to record as much of the cyclone drama as possible so you can get an idea of what's going on. But for now, I'm lying on my bed, watching the palms outside flutter about a bit more extravagantly than usual and waiting for my digeridoo-playing housemate's band to arrive. I think the cyclone party might be about to kick off...
...all we need now is an eruption from the volcano and the Reunion experience will be complete.
After over a month of not blogging, I'm sitting at my 10 euro, flat-pack, Ikea-style, green desk and thought I would update you all with the goings on of the past 6 weeks or so.
The end of term mixed the previously unknown combination of lychees, mangoes, heat and Christmas preparations...sweating in 30 degree heat to be confronted with twinkly snowflakes lights hanging over the mainroads is something that some what boggled my brain. Anyway, the last few weeks of term left me with trying to explain what cranberries, crackers and bread sauce are to my students. Before I knew it, I was packing my bags and was off to Mada for Christmas and New Year.
Although, it wasn't quite this simple, because amazingly, I had accumulated about 45kg worth of children's shoes, clothes, books and toys to take with me. With a last minute addition of 'missionary baggage' I saved myself a small fortune in excess baggage and had a fantastic time in Mada dishing out clothes and shoes left, right and centre. Christmas was spent on the beach and New Year's Eve in a wooden dugout canoe, with a beer on a string hanging down into the water as my Malagasy 'fridge'.
Coming back to Reunion after Mada was some what surreal. It's a strange experience returning from holiday to more 30 degree heat, a huge swimming pool at your house and two weeks more 'summer holiday'. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Obviously.
I just want to tell you all about the 'folie' (craziness) of mangoes in Reunion. They are everywhere. They fall from trees onto the roads below and get squashed by passing cars, they drop all over the show, my friend has a huge mango tree in his garden and he gives me bags of mangoes as otherwise they go to waste and attract mosquitoes in his garden. Lychee season has finished now, but the beautiful mangoes keep on coming, and falling from the sky. If Newton lived in Reunion, it definitely would have been a mango that made him contemplate gravity, and not an apple.
So, on this warm sunday afternoon, I am having the usual dilemma of working out what the hell I am going to teach my students tomorrow as unfortunately, we have reached the end of the holidays. But what awesome holidays they have been. Since getting back from Madagascar, I've had the use of a lovely teacher's car. So we have tried to 'profite' as much as possible (franglais franglais) from my beautiful Toyota Yaris. I've been to free concerts next to the beach, trekking in primary dense forest, watched the sunrise over the black lava of the east coast, had picnics on the beach, followed rivers up gorges, had crepe parties, seen waterfalls and natural swimming pools and also had a lot of laughs with my friends.
I will do my best to blog more regularly again now. It seems strange blogging about my day-to-day life here, because I'm totally adjusted to life I forget that you lot don't know about the stunning scenery, how my name here is 'l'anglaise' and the goats and chickens constantly make themselves heard from the landlord's farm next door. I'll try to keep you better informed next time.
Today, I cancelled my reservation for the appartment in Terre Sainte. Amazing as it was, it was realistically too small for two people who do not know each other and too expensive/lonely for me on my own. A bedroom has become available from January in my big old villa here, so I will be staying here until the end of my stay in Reunion, I think. Life in this house is very chilled out. People come and go all the time. Jean-Yves (housemate with skull and cross bone silver capped teeth) who, by the way, I recently found out had been in prison - he casually dropped that into conversation as he meticulously tied the throws over the sofas! Anyway, Jean-Yves fusses over everybody and makes sure we eat very tasty good meals every evening. Belinda makes cakes, I make brownies and everyone else eats and chats! As housemates go, I've been very lucky with this lot. Parties are a pretty regular occurance - the glass recycling pile is always sky high with 'Dodo' bottles - Reunionnais beer. I've moved a sofa outside to the 'bar', which is great for chilling out in the afternoon sun after teaching. I've made my little bedroom nice and homely now with pictures of friends and family all over the walls. The tale of our swimming pool continues, after one successful day of painting over half the pool two weeks ago - the painter hasn't come back since. With rising temperatures and sweaty walks to and from the bus stop, I wish he would hurry up! Anyway, at least the scorching temperatures of January should now be accompanied with a huge full swimming pool! I can tell you now that I will miss waking up to a sea view every morning when the time comes to leave this beautiful island.
One thing I will not miss, however, is dealing with monsters like that in the picture above, (for scale, see small 'normal' sized spider above). However, I'm counting myself lucky - although this spider was in my bedroom, my housemate had one that was preggers with about a million babies in her room. She couldn't squash it because otherwise Mummy Spider's army would be set free in her bedroom. I haven't really told you how my French is coming along. When I skype friends and family in England - I find myself saying 'how do you say that in English?' which apparently is quite funny to those on the other end of the call. To me, 'how do you say that in English' and 'comment on dit ca en francais' have become two very regular phrases in my life. Apparently improving one language screws up with the original one. What have you got to say about that psychologists?! I don't ever want to go back to learning a language in a classroom. Learning French by making French friends and living the tropical French life beats any university training. Anyway, better go to bed, need to get up early tomorrow and do some shopping early in the morning before the midday heat sets in. Bisous!
Sarah, my housemate who's a French trainee surgeon asked me last night whether I wanted to go surfing with her this morning. With a beer in my hand, I happily said 'oui, bien sur'. This morning the alarms were set for 4:45. By 5:15am we were leaving the house - with a surprise appearance from my other hilarious Parisian housemate, Jean-Yves, who has two silver skull and crossbones capped onto his teeth...he's downstairs at the moment cooking tripe for everyone for tonight...he's a character, to say the least.
Etang Salé was the destination, 20 mins drive west of here along the coast. The spiky peaks of the mountains always look stunning in the hazy morning sunshine and the roads were unusually empty. Jean-Yves brought his mug of 'chocolat chaud' and smoked his morning cigarette out of the passenger window. I tried to avoid the smoke in the back and make the most of the morning breeze rushing through the car.
Etang Salé, literally means 'salted pond'. It has a little port, black volcanic sand and the possibility of surfing and snorkelling. The water in the port lay absolutely still in the morning light and a few fisherman pottered about on their boats. The water on the beach gently lapped the sand and I kicked off my Birkenstocks and went to test the water. Beautiful. We snorkelled for about an hour, I think I need to learn the names of more types of fish...my vocabulary goes about as far as the characters Finding Nemo. But there were long thin ones, big flat ones, camoflaged ones, brightly coloured ones and luckily we didn't come across any big nasty ones with lots of teeth. As the sun rose over the palm trees and the fishing village, it penetrated the surface off the water, casting long shadows behind coral. A beautiful start to the day. Then, Sarah lent me her friend's surfboard. The waves were very small and allowed me to find my balance and learn the paddling technique, while watching the more experienced surfers do their stuff.
We came back here for breakfast at 7:30 and discussed life in Reunion in the car on the way back. It seems the relaxed attitude to life here is something that has attracted many people to 's'installer' here. As the island woke up for work, and the roads became busier we all agreed to have mornings like this on a more regular basis.
