The spider battle will continue...

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! 

Black sand and a surfboard

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.

Christmas climate confusion

8:30pm. Un short, une bière fraîche et un arbre de Noel. 

A rescued chair

I'm sitting on my balcony, listening to the goats next door as the bleet in the afternoon warm sunshine. The palms of the coconut tree gently flutter at me, as I look out to the south facing blue sea. I can still taste the Mango and Passion juice that I've just drank straight from the fridge. Ahhhh. La Reunion.

Jean-Yves one of my new housemates cut down the bananas from the banana tree in the garden yesterday. They're sitting on our main table looking very green and will be snapped up by everyone, I'm sure, when the green turns to yellow.

All four hours of my lessons were cancelled this afternoon, sods law as this afternoon, I was the most prepared I have ever been. I spent last night and this morning revelling in the idea of teaching 'family links' with the help of The Simpsons and Facebook..."Homer is now married to Marge" etc. Hopefully I'll be able to whip out that powerpoint next week, for my class of rowdy boys who are more interested in getting my phone number than learning English.

So instead of teaching for 4 hours this afternoon, I managed to organise a meeting with a mum who wants an english teacher for her 4 young boys...I'll be teaching on her balcony that sits just above her pool, nestled in between the palm trees that stretch out to Saint Joseph and eventually to the sea.   Not a bad learning environment eh? She's another one of the many people that I've met who have emigrated here from Lyon in France. Not sure what the connection is there...but it seems this volcanic lump in the Indian Ocean is a popular place to move to from the Eastern French city.

After a bit of a shift round in my little bedroom - I've got enough room for my ever expanding kit. I don't know how it's expanding because I'm not really buying anything, but it is. I feel at home with the Malagasy pink woven 'wallpaper' and woven hanging baskets for all the 'knick knacks'! Not that there's a problem of storage in this house...any house that has a ping pong table in the sitting room with enough room for professional chinese players to play is big enough, I think!

I don't really have anything special to write about today. But after I rescued this chair from the shabby garden and took it up to the balcony, I felt compelled to write. It was either that or reading Harry Potter in French (I found it in the bookcase downstairs), but I haven't quite forgiven the translators for 'translating' Hogworts into 'Le Poulard' so I decided to go with the English blog instead.

Voila! A la prochaine...

Chez-moi for the next month.

Le salon of my new house

Somehow, it's been two weeks since I've written on this blog. I've been very busy with Mwenya Uganda (www.mwenya.blogspot.com plug plug) so I've put writing this to one side.

However, I'm now trying to balance les deux blogs!

The bar by the pool - new house

So, I spent the last two weeks living in a studio in the garden of a man who works at one of my schools. The studio was perfectly placed for my two schools, completely equipped and furnished and just what I needed on paper for accommodation. But, I was living on my own, and after a house full of active children and family coming and going all the time it was quite a shock to have so much time to myself. Therefore I continued my 'logement' search and last night I moved into a huge villa with a swimming pool, a sea view and real French housemates!

Everything here is great so far, I'm in the smallest room of the house so therefore paying the least rent and thoroughly enjoy a sea view from my bedroom window, afternoon cold beers with my housemates and the promise of a fully functioning pool. Turns out one of my housemates here works in Saint Joseph too, and she's got a car, and she's willing to drive me to work. Good times!

Hindu Temple in the garden - new house

Over the weekend, I spent two days up in the mountains huffing and puffing up the rocky scree slopes of the Cirque de Mafate. Reunion is made up of three 'cirques' - like huge mountain ranges in a big amphitheatre style circle. On Friday, myself and 3 other assistants took the local bus up to the village of Cilaos (one of the most spectacular bus journies of my life). We then managed to squeeze all four of us in the back of a little car after successfully hitchhiking! This got us to the bottom of the footpath and off we went. Three hours of walking up (and I mean up) the hill - stopping for a 'montante' (tea specially brewed to help circulation and respiration during climbing up hill) on the way. When we reached the peak, we were unfortunately in the clouds. The prize of a magnificant view didn't quite happen. But none the less, we enjoyed a huge lunch and descended down the other side of the peak, into the Cirque de Mafate. At the bottom of the huge solid lava mountain side, a little mountain village waited for us. No roads connect this village to the outside world, it is just the daily helicopters that drop off supplies and pick up rubbish that form any kind of link with the rest of the island. After a much needed coffee, we continued on our trek to La Nouvelle. After about 6 or 7 hours of walking we made it to our gite. Just in time, as the rain was rolling in and we were well and truely in the clouds. The next day we got up at the crack of dawn and walked back along the same route in the crystal clear light and surrounded by magnificant views. One of my French housemates has just told me that this hike was the hardest she's done since arriving here over 4 years ago...so I'm feeling quite smug!

Cirque de Mafate 

A Sunday Hike

We started with a view like this...

 Grand Bassin made me aware of two things:
1.) La Reunion is stunning.

2.) I need to stop eating brownies and start doing some exercise...

oh, and buy a hat to reduce my face turning into a tomato.

 Left: the little white spots in the bottom of the ravine is the village we walked down to...


Right:...we ended up at the bottom. That little point that sticks out at the top of the cliff, is where we started, and where I took the photo above....

This is what waited for us at the bottom...lunch spot...

The view from half way down...or up...

Kisses

The God, that is Michael McIntyre once did a sketch about how 'les bises' adds ridiculous amounts of time to any trip out of the house in France. I have also come to realise this. The 'Mwah mwah' of greeting people is on the one hand a nice sign of affection and is an unwritten rule strong enough to avoid the horribly awkward english crush of hands between stomachs as one goes for the hand shake and the other goes in for the kiss. However, the 'mwah mwah' of every greeting sometimes means you never get past the greeting itself.

For example, sometimes I sit in the staffroom at work planning lessons. Nearly every teacher that walks into the room approaches you for the 'mwah mwah's. Think over 60 staff, all with different timetables, coming and going from the hubbub that is the staff room...nearly everytime a new teacher walks into the room the whole room braces themselves for the greeting. Just imagine how many 'bises' that is! I'm always slightly on edge as I sit at the table, waiting for the next person to come into the room and purposely walk towards me, I'm scared if I concentrate too much on what I'm doing I'll totally miss the 'bises' moment and get the 'oh, les anglais ne font pas des bises' joke...which has happened before! The other thing that my English brain finds quite funny, is that sometimes the kisses are all you get. I don't know the majority of the staff yet, and so if they're in a rush, it's a case of 'mwah mwah' and then them walking in the totally opposite direction, after they've done the obligatory greeting, with not even a 'bonjour', let alone time for me to say 'je suis la nouvelle assistante anglaise, Elizabeth'!

The 'bises' culture also requires something very important...good dental hygiene. After lunch in the staffroom, if you make a trip to 'faire pipi', you'll arrive in the toilets to see half the staff brushing their teeth to ensure they don't greet the next person with the smell of their croque monsieur they've just eaten.

As long as you remember to brush your teeth, however, and be decisive with your 'bises', I like the way of greeting people here. It's like you've broken any sort of awkward space and are already at ease with each other. In England, there is always that dreaded situation with people who you vaguely know, when shaking hands is too formal and kissing is pushing the very large British personal space boundaries. On top of that, if you do go in for the kisses, how many do you go for? Just the one? Or two? Maybe even three?

I think the French have got it just about right. 2 kisses. Greeting. Done. Get on with your day...

...or kissing the next 10 people in the room...

Jay-Z in a nappy

From the view from my bed I see the clouds are lurking around the top of the mountains, on my high horizon. Yet the sun is shining through the palm trees in the garden. The weather is often like this here, the ever amazing 'micro-climate' due to the geographic structure of the island never fails to mess with my brain. As the island is basically a mountain range in the huge Indian Ocean, the weather doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. I sit here in the South of the island: Plateau Vincendo, in a pleasant warmth and gentle breeze and I imagine there are little white horses dotted all over the sea (NB. French for white horses = Les moutons, sheep!). If I drove half an hour west, it will probably be scorching hot without any wind at all, and next to no waves. The further west you travel the more the mountains act as a huge wind break to everyone on that side of the island. In the same way, it can be tipping it down here and perfect sunshine half and hour to the west.

Anyway, less of the British weather talk...

So this week has been one of achievements I think. I have found a new pad, I have taught classes of students on my own and I THINK I found myself a car!

St Joseph centre ville, a stone's throw from my new pad.
This is the view from the library.

To the new pad...Nathalie asked around school if anyone knew anyone, who knew anyone, who would be able to put me up until Christmas, the response came back quite simply 'Why haven't you spoken to Patrick, he's got a furnished studio in his garden that's available'. Casual! So off we went to Patrick's house, and it was exactly was it said on the tin. I couldn't find anything more central in Saint Joseph if I had all the money in the world, it is on the high street itself, yet it's quiet, almost invisible, through a wooden gate, down some steps and it backs onto the river that babbles its way through the short distance to the sea. Patrick (the photocopying man at school) lives next door with his wife and new 8month old baby daughter, his wife runs a tailors under the palm trees in the garden and apparently his grandma sits in the shade making patchworks. He also rents a little rectangle of land at the top, on the high street to a German man who sells samosas and sandwiches in a van...and already gives me banter for being English. I think I found the right place :) The studio is big enough for a little army with a double bedroom, an office, a sitting room with Canal plus TV, a kitchenette and my favourite bit, a very shabby courtyard area out the back with a fully equipped outdoor kitchen and the sound of the river in the background. Once I saw the rice cooker, I knew it was for me! What's the catch? Uncle Rupert asked me...I found it, 'If there's a cyclone, you have to evacuate and the house will flood'. Again, casual! Cyclone season is after Christmas, there hasn't been a big monster one here for a while - according to Yorkshireman's predictions, THIS will be the year...no surprise to hear that apparently he says that every year. Anyway, no biggie, every major volcanic eruption, cyclone, traumatic event here seems to come with enough warning, I'll be sure to grab my new rice cooker and run to dry land.

Julie (7) in her traditional Reunion dress,
showing me how to shake your booty,
Reunion style!

So now for the 'work' part of this adventure. I taught 4 hours of English lessons on Thursday, all by myself! With no more than 8 people in one class it was all quite informal, and once I had realised that I had to speak really....really....slowly....everything went quite well! We went 'shopping' to the supermarket and I took with me an assorted range of Julie, Thibault and Illyan's toys (Nathalie's children)...so I was pulling a plastic chickens, strawberrys, wine bottles out of a bag and got the whole class to say 'CHICKEN, STRAWBERRY and WINE' in unison! My favourite lesson was the one with all boys: Brice (it's got to be the French equivalent of 'Bruce') lived up to all stereotypes of the name...a huge 14 year old boy who sat next to the shortest boy in the class. I asked him to buy a pink barbie dress for me, and nobody could stop laughing as this huge guy held up a silky pink dress for Barbie.

The group of boys hung around after the bell and pushed each other out the way to look at my timetable to find out when they would be in one of my lessons next! Apparently they then told Nathalie 'Madame, give me two more hours in her classes and I'll  be fluent!!' Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Yesterday I had a day of dancing with Illyan who transforms himself from an angry-at-the-world-especially-elizabeth, 2 year old to a budding Jay-Z in a nappy when you turn the radio on! I wanted to upload a video here, but it's really slow. Have a picture instead. And the link to the video on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150889801945374


Today is Sunday. Sunday in the Garcien household means two things: family and food. Both of which are great here. So as I write this Nathalie and Thierry's sister are going up and down the garden, past my window, to the 'kiosk' in the garden...knowing them, probably stocking up the 'bar' down there! Ooooh my new favourite drink: Reunionnaise Punch - white rum infused with vanilla, sugar cane sirop, and any combination of tropical juices. Cheers!

A la prochaine!
EB x

Have you met the Queen?

So, I really should be sleeping, as unfortunately, classes start at 7:40 in the morning. Luckily, I think I only have two of these 'red-eye' lessons a week. It's tough really...Teaching 12 hours a week, Fridays and Wednesdays off...

This morning introduced me to the general lack of communication and slightly haphazard nature of being a language assistant, but nothing I couldn't handle, with my impeccable French (HA. I'm now famous in all of South Reunion for my baleine/banane cock up- see 'faux pas' bar a droite --->  ) With only one member of the English teaching department in school today, and no students for Elizabeth to teach, I was thrown in front of a class of nearly 20 students at 9am this morning. But luckily I chose the right shirt this morning as it didn't show any sweat patches...in reality, the morning heat and asking questions with nothing but blank faces in reply, meant that I would have even welcomed a spray of Lynx after that class! I joke. It could have been a lot worse.

But here's a question...'How do you reply to a girl who asks you if you have met the Queen?'


I did an impression of a Buckingham Palace Guard. That was the best I could come up with... oh and "she's quite a private lady". HA. Good one.

After that hour, I observed a lesson of humiliation and bollocking because the students had all messed up their tests from before the holidays, so the teacher wasn't best pleased. Then, at 11:30am, my day was done, and I toddled off to the bus stop and made my way back to Nathalie's...I was met with 'orrwww, la vie est trop dure, non?!' (sarcasm intended).

We'll wait and see what tomorrow morning holds, in the 'professional lycee', where their level is much lower but their confidence for saying 'I luv u, u r bute-itful' is much higher...maybe my first lesson could be teaching better chat-up lines?

Breakfast in bed

I was woken up this morning by Thibault. Thibault had made me breakfast in bed with two slices of bread; one with nutella, one with honey, he then took pride in showing me the little mug that sat on the side of the tray...'Capri-sonne', he said. There was a little cocktail fan decoration stuck into one of the slices of bread and a 'joyeaux anniversaire' confetti piece in the other. Thibault is Nathalie's 5 year old son and he did this all by himself this morning for me, presented on a locally made Reunionnaise tray.

Think my day has just been made, and it has hardly even started!

Last night, we went to Saint Suzanne, to the north of the island to drop off one of Julie's (7 yr old daughter) friends who had been staying with us for a few days. Her mum works in a wine shop so 'apero' consisted of Bollinger which - we were all glad to read - was "by appointment of her majesty the queen"! She had made Confit de canard for dinner, washed down with another very nice bottle of Red. Not to mention the home made profiteroles for dessert...Her husband is a professional chef and 2 months ago they sold up their restaurant in the Pyrenees to live a life in the sun here.

Seem to have had a week of lovely food, as I was also invited to Marie-Francoise, my other 'responsable' for lunch on Thursday. Punch coco, Greek salad, Coq au vin and Poisson Carri (Reunionnaise fish curry) topped off with her English Husband's Trifle and cakes brought from a local patisserie made for a lovely lunch on the veranda.

Housing news...I have hopefully found somewhere to stay until the Christmas holidays. My routine every morning is to search 'leboncoin', ie. French Gumtree, and check out the most recent offers of rental properties. More people searching than houses available makes it a very competitive business, and apparently I haven't been quick enough off the mark up until now. However, after about 2 weeks of searching with nearly no results, yesterday 2 fell on my lap! One of Nathalie's friends is selling his house, apparently it takes 3 months between the signing of the contract and the actual move, so his house is lying empty just over the road from Nathalie's! He was more than happy for me to move in and occupy it, as long as I didn't mind prospective buyers having a look around every now and then! He then rang back and said that he knows of a primary school teacher who lives in a 3 bedroom house in Saint Joseph (where I'm teaching), who's on his own...so that's option two! Will arrange to go and have a nose around and then make a decision.

Sunday today, which means more big meals! We're going to Thierry's (Nathalie's husband) sister's house for lunch....

...you'll be glad to hear that nothing's changed with me and my eating habits.

Lava, Snorkelling and a beautiful apartment

The steaming lava in the rain. The volcano erupted over 4 years ago.

Sunday, we went to the East of the island to see ‘la lave’. That was my word of the day, after seeing the amazingly impressive volcano ‘lava’ that descends into the sea on the East coast. There is an active, very large, volcano in the East of this island...which, from what I understand, is responsible for creating this little rocky dot in the Indian Ocean. Around this huge beast of a volcano, are various other little peaks. One of these little peaks erupted in 2007, spewing lava down to the sea. Nobody lives in that area, so nobody was hurt but it was the process after the eruption that is most impressive for a volcanic virgin like myself! The lava covered a large part of the road that runs around the whole coast of the island, it was 25m deep in places, but in other parts, it was hollow underneath the apparently solid rock. This evidently causes huge dangers for rebuilding a road...not to mention the intense heat that the lava produces. It took 8 months after the eruption before cars could drive on the newly made road...before this point, tyres would explode due to the heat from the lava. Evidently, the depth of the lava had to be tested too, in case of any lurking hollow craters underneath the apparently safe road. The result today is very spectacular. On Sunday, it was raining, even today, 4 and a half years after the eruption, I could feel the heat from the rock and it steamed impressively when the cool rain hit the rock.

I also visited the beach in Saint Leu, on the West coast with family friends of Nathalie. I’ve been told that the safest places to swim here are in lagoons. A barrier coral reef stops any famous ‘requins’ (sharks - there was another attack yesterday, the shark broke a canoe in half and left the man completely unharmed!) It also serves as a wave break so the water is calm and very swimmable inside the barrier. So it was at Saint Leu that I had my first snorkelling experience on the island. Beautiful coral with all kinds of brightly coloured fish, with (a little too much) sun on my back made for a very relaxing swim...when I finally surfaced, Thierry, Nathalie’s husband, asked me how I found the snorkelling and he said that actually the lagoon at Saint Pierre is apparently much more impressive! 

Grand Galet Waterfall: all the water comes out of the rock through a series of tunnels.

My ongoing challenge of finding accommodation continues! Nathalie has very kindly just told me today that she’s happy for me to stay here with her until the end of October. Yesterday I found an incredible apartment in Terre Sainte, the old fishing village on the other side of the river to the ‘capital of the south’; Saint Pierre. Slap bang in front of the sea, mezzanine bedroom, completely furnished and a very reasonable price...I was très contente! It’s available from January, so I’ve booked it for the second half of my time here. Until Christmas, however, I’m still trying to find something. With about 85 assistants on the island, everyone searching at the same time, not enough properties available at a reasonable price, it’s a bit of a competition! But I’m very grateful as I’ve been very lucky with my two mentors at each school, who’ve been so helpful and welcoming.

As for my French, I think it’s getting better! Nathalie knows exactly when I’m tired, she jokes with me every evening as I can’t form proper sentences in French in the evenings! Anything important has to be said in the morning when I’m awake and my brain is working properly, by the evening...I’m not so understandable! But, it’s great because I basically speak French from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. Although I’m getting to the stage where my English brain doesn’t work very well either now! Nathalie enjoys learning new words in English, since she’s an English teacher, half the time, I can’t think of the correct word to teach her in English. It bodes well for my own lessons where I have to teach teenagers! But Thierry laughing at my accent or having a joke about a ‘faux pas’ is what language learning is all about, for me. Going back to ‘school’ next year is going to be difficile!

My first few days in Reunion

I arrived on this beautiful island on Wednesday, with no idea what to expect. Air Madagascar pulled out their best performance and got me to Saint Denis with all my luggage present and just about in tact AND a man with a business class ticket needed to sit in my cattle class seat to sit next to his colleague so I managed to swap seats and get myself in business class for half the journey! I was met at the very snazzy Saint Denis airport by one of my lovely mentors, with her English husband and her bilingual daughter. After 4 flights and 4 Malagasy airports with 2 suitcases and 3 hand luggage bags, I was in Saint Denis, La Reunion.

Saint Denis is the capital of La Reunion, on the northern tip of the island. I am teaching in two sixth forms on the southern tip of the island so my first experience of La Reunion was a beautiful drive along the western coast. Mountains. Sea. Mountains. Sea. Mountains. Sea. That's how Reunion sells itself to tourists, and that's exactly what I was met by, on a spectacular scale. The coastline morphed itself from beaches with black sand to huge cliff faces to deep gorges with huge waves in a matter of 10mins in the car. John, my mentor's husband who's from Yorkshire, told me tales of shark attacks, volcano eruptions and he also said that there has been talk of building a road in the sea, to avoid the problem of falling rocks from the cliff face into the main dual carriageway on the island...not surprisingly this was going to be one of the most expensive roads in the world, using EU money apparently!

So, when we reached Saint Joseph, the town where I will be teaching I met my other mentor, Nathalie. (I'm already used to the 'mwah, mwah' upon every encounter) She's welcomed me with open arms into her family life. Because we've just started the 2 week half term, the sixth form is closed. I was originally going to board in the school at the beginning until I found my own place, instead I'm living in Nathalie's beautiful house, between Saint Joseph and Vincendo with her 3 very active young children!

La Reunion feels almost like seaside France. There are patisseries a plenty, 'Geant' supermarkets and everyone drives on the right with a little blue "F" on their number plate. But. There are palm

trees everywhere, mangoes, pineapples, lychees ready to fruit and we haven't had a day when the temperatures haven't reached 27 degrees. I think this is my kind of France! The other significant difference that I've noticed between here and France is the people. I don't think I've ever visited anywhere where there is such a range of skin colours. And it seems that everyone lives happily alongside each other. The Creole culture here is very apparent, within Nathalie's extended family everyone speaks Creole to each other. But the slight language barrier hasn't stopped them from welcoming me into their houses with a cold beer and many jokes.

The past few days I have been on tours of my two sixth forms and got to know the area a little bit, as well a having a big meeting with all the other assistants on the island in St. Denis. 8 nationalities and 4 languages (English, German, Spanish and Chinese) were represented and everyone seems really cool, with interesting stories about why they chose La Reunion and how they got here. My two sixth forms are very different. One is a Lycee Professional (vocational college) - where their level of English is very low, but apparently all the boys know how to shout "I LUV U" and "U R BUTE-IFUL" across the playground. The students at the other lycee have a much higher level so it will be interesting to see how I get on! I will be leading conversation classes of 8-10 students in both schools - teaching a total of 12 hours a week.

For the moment, I'm on a mission to find somewhere to live, probably in Saint Pierre, the 'capital' of the 'wild south', where loads of the other assistants are living too. I think I've managed to complete all the necessary paperwork, I've now got a French bank account and a French phone number (+262693039733), the last thing left to do is find somewhere to live...but I'm sure something will turn up soon, it's difficult to get stressed about these things when the sun is shining so brightly!

Illian, Nathalie's youngest, with my glasses on at the beach in Saint Pierre, yesterday.

A Petit Photographic Diary of my trip so far...

Birthday surprise from Mum and Dad :) xx

Not bad eh?!

My new (temporary!) home, Plateau Vincendo, La Reunion.

My room for now, until I find a house for myself.

Madagascar

Madagascar

Blue Bay, Mauritius

Mahebourg, Mauritius

I have a feeling these men sit here on a regular basis.

Mahebourg, Mauritius

Mahebourg, Mauritius

Mahebourg, Mauritius

A few snippets from my Mauritius diary...

Well...I have officially survived the first 2 and a half days toute seule in the Southern Hemisphere, at the beginning of my Year Abroad adventure! I flew to Mauritius over night on the 14th: 12hours next to a smug married couple! Sunrise from the plane the next morning was absolutely stunning – a full horizontal rainbow effect which seemed to follow the horizon around the world and back again. I now understand why Mauritius is so well known for its beaches; I have never seen such bright blue water, totally picture perfect, friendly people and endless photo opportunities...it all sounds great, apart from the French creep who wore socks and flips flops, baseball caps and wanted to take me to dinner at KFC. I just knew we weren’t going to hit it off when he pointed to the white grin of the KFC Colonel when there were endless Creole, French, seafood, Chinese and Mauritian restaurants down the road.

I was staying in Le Bamboo Guest House, Mahebourg. Only 7 km from the airport, so just what I needed really for my one night stopover on ‘Paradise Island’. I expected beautiful beaches, but other than that, I had no idea what Mauritian life would be like. From what I saw it was a big mixture of everything – religions, wealth, cultures, scenery and languages. After strolling along the coast and ogling at the 5 star resorts on the beach, I returned to the slightly shabby but very friendly 'Le Bamboo' and got chatting to a lovely lady who worked at my Guest House. She told me about how she couldn’t afford private medical treatment for her baby daughter and that the treatment the baby was getting was making her very upset and not making her any better. We sat over a beautiful cake that said ‘bonne anniversaire’ (thanks to mum and dad!) and chatted about girly stuff...She explained about how she starts work early at 7am so she can go home at 3 to look after her sick baby. I was quite surprised at the beginning to hear that she was married; I thought she could have been 16 years old! But she was 23, married and had a one year old baby daughter. She explained to me that there are many Muslim women in Mauritius who get married at the age of 13 or 14...I wondered how many of the tourists that come to stay in the beach resorts would know that.


This morning, I was told by my friend who worked at the hotel that I hadn’t seen enough of Mauritius and I wasn’t allowed to leave unless I went on a boat trip to Blue Bay! So I did! Glass bottomed boat, crystal clear waters, fish, coral and a guide that spoke in French and then translated the bits I didn’t understand into Anglais, made for a pretty perfect morning...that was until I got off the boat to find Monsieur Flip Flops et Chausettes standing on the jetty!

The bus journey between Mahebourg and Blue Bay reminded me more of a Nepalese bus ride...Spiderman appeared to have been painted along the outside of the bus and the inside was decorated with various little shrines...the African influence definitely appeared when we set off with the loud music that attempted to drown out the sound of a dodgy, over exhausted-exhaust!

Pictures and more stories to come...

For now, over and out,
EB xxx

Preparation Time

Well, I'm currently rushing around like a headless chicken (comme une poule sans tete?!) trying to sort French translations of birth certificates, doctor's notes, booster injections, blindly running across the minefield that is insurance amongst lots of other bureaucratic malarky that has to be done before you spend 7 months teaching English at two sixth forms in the little island that is La Reunion, in the Indian Ocean.

The reality of 7 months away is starting to hit me a little bit now. But I'm going to steal the opening lines from the French film; 'La Haine'...'jusqu'ici, tout va bien...jusqu'ici, tout va bien' (so far, so good).

What might be of interest to you all is where I'm going:

That little 'A' is Saint Joseph, La Reunion. That other little blob in the mass of blue sea is Mauritius. Just to put it all in perspective...because let's face it, being a geography student doesn't mean anything, I didn't have a clue Reunion even existed 3 years ago...this is the zoomed out version...

I'll be travelling from A to B. Little old Thaxted in Essex, to the sea side town of Saint Joseph, La Reunion. Bring on the blue sea, bright sunshine and relaxed island life.

Hopefully I'll avoid the volcano eruptions, shark attacks and coming across anything that comes close to Reunion's 3 world records:

• The most rainfall in 12 hours - 45 inches (3.75 FEET!)
• The most rainfall in 24 hours - 71.8 inches (nearly 6 FEET!)
• The most rainfall in 48 hours - 97.1 inches (over 8 FEET!)

On that note...let's get back to the being 'une poule sans tete'.

Mange tout mange tout.

Bonjour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Bm6YdzZtQ