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?