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!
