On Friday I headed back from Egham back to France. The journey there was fine, and getting off the train was fine too. Problems started to arise when the sun went down. In accordance with the law in France I have light converters on my car's headlights (basically stickers blocking the light from going into French drivers' eyes). However, this actually blocks the lights and can make it quite difficult to see the road ahead when driving in the dark. French motorways and major roads aren't lit in the evening, nor do they have helpful little cat's eyes either. Add lots of drivers on the other side of the road (so I can't use full beam) with very bright lights that go in your eyes into the mix and you can probably imagine how difficult it can be just to make sure I stay in lane. Luckily, I developed an idea on the journey that I've dubbed 'The Light Buddy System' where you hopefully find another driver ahead going roughly about the same speed as you, adjust to match it and use the light from their car to help light the way (seriously, this works). Problems with this system arise when they turn off leaving you stuck in almost darkness until another car comes by (roads in France can be fairly empty) and also when they just drive too fast for a car with a 1.3l engine to keep up. I ended up following a big lorry going fairly slowly for a while...
So while I was back in the UK I stocked up on British delights like Robinson's fruit squash, baked beans, bourbon biscuits, chocolate digestives, shortbread, Malteasers, Cadbury's chocolate, fudge, cheddar cheese and plenty of mince pies - they were buy one get one free, okay? I also bought my favourite 'emergency ramen' and some other noodles (the French aren't so keen on Asian cooking... except rice.
I'm back to school now, I only taught on Monday though as I had a teacher training day on Tuesday. I thought I'd put it out here again that Imogen laughed at me for ages about the fact that I said 'I'm partial to a cheeseboard' because she thought that is was 'the most southern thing [she'd] ever heard'. Aside from the constant threat of being mocked in class (thanks, Chris), it was a bit of a nice day off (apart from the getting up at 6am part).
Today I had my first session of tutoring. An art teacher at the school approached me and asked if I would tutor her daughter who's in her last year at school. I followed her in my car to her place and it's the most gorgeous old farm house - the French have such lovely old houses in the countryside! Inside it was very rustic (or as I learnt today, authentique). The interior was amazing too with old wooden floors and shelves full of mismatched jars full of homemade jam, honey, lentils etc. the whole thing was incredibly charming. So I met my new tutee and we basically chatted for an hour. It's such a nice change to speak to a student that that can speak English relatively fluently. She even took it upon herself to independently study Romeo and Juliet (in English!) - I was very impressed.
After the tutoring I went to Bolbec to the SFR to set up internet in my apartment because I'm getting a little bit sick of the iffy stuff I get here. I am PRETTY proud of the fact that I did all of it all by myself and all in French. Then only minor problem was when she started talking about a parabole and she was trying to describe it to me at 'round and white' which didn't really help! Luckily I figured it out that it means 'satellite dish' just as she was scrambling around looking for a pen and paper to dry to draw it! Another hitch was the fact that the apartments aren't numbered so the poor girl had a hard time trying to find my apartment on the system. They tried tracing my line through the old number but that didn't work so there was a little faff around trying to find it. I feel quite sorry for the girl, I'm fairly sure she was pretty new because she had to ask for help quite a lot but excellent customer service, SFR!
I'm really starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of French now. A month ago I would NEVER have dared to go and sort out internet myself and I can have pretty long conversations with French people about lots of things now which is amazing! But the best part today was when my tutee today said that I have 'a cute French accent'. WIN.
Off to make some marrons glacés now!
ttfn x
PS: You know a letter is from Jenny when the addressee on the envelope looks like this:
No comments:
Post a Comment