The calm before the storm.

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.

Bonne Année

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.

Bisous et Bonne Année.

L'anglaise. 

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