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.