We are speedily heading towards Christmas - hurray! My boat is booked to go home in December and I've booked a hotel in Caen so I can stop off along the way. There's a few things to see there and I'm kinda wishing I had a little more time to wander around.
Last weekend Imogen, Lauren and I went for a little frolic around Fécamp which is on the north coast. We really had no idea what to do when we got there. Lauren had done a little research and she told me there was a fishing museum. As thrilling as that sounds, we didn't even see it. There was a market though and we had a little wander through before having a nose into some shops and buying a few things. We bought lunch from a cute little boulangerie/patisserie and ate it on the church steps. I had my first proper French chouquettes!
Chouquettes!
So anyway, I've noticed this trend at the school canteen. The French love their big lunches. Typically you'll have something warm (meat and plenty of vegetables) then you can pick and choose from each section of salad side dishes, yoghurt, dairy, fruit and some kind of dessert. Oh, and pretty much as much baguette as you like; I generally help myself to two slices. So when it comes to fruit it's generally pretty variable in what there is available like bananas, apples, oranges, clementines, grapes. But everyday without fail there are always plenty of half grapefruits available. I actually like grapefruit but can never really be bothered to eat it at home so I've been getting a good dose of vitamin C every time I eat at school. The great thing is that I haven't had anything totally awful yet, though admittedly I'm fairly easy when it comes to food. There was one some kind of meatball and tomato and a sauce served with rice that looked GRIM but it actually tasted great. The other day there was ice cream and this made me a very happy bunny!
As we speedily head towards December I'm really starting to think about what I'm going to write my Cultural Report on. I've now decided on the subject of the planned water purification centre (yawn) and to get some documents I'm going to need to visit the town mayor and maybe even the head of an environmentalist group - luckily I was speaking to a teacher at school about this and she even said she'd come with me which was very kind of her! I felt extremely guilty at that point because, for the life of me, I can't remember her name!!
I'm trying very hard to read the local newspapers as much as possible now to get to grips with the local news and also some language. I've been compiling a list of new vocab that I've been picking up here and there. One nice thing that I picked up in Marie Claire was the phrase 'être mort(e) de rire' which is to say 'to die laughing'. Another thing I picked up in class was when I saw a girl in one of my classes bring in a tiny rubber duck; I asked her if it was a lucky charm. She didn't understand so I described it and told the class about traditional British lucky charms. The point was that I learnt that the French for 'lucky charm' is 'porte bonheur'. The thing I like about learning things in situations like that is that I know that it is going to stay in my head and I bet the students love being able to teach me something new too!
ttfn x
No comments:
Post a Comment