Barry White, Bra-Bowling and Brie Sandwiches

I would be the first to admit I can be a bit of an absent blogger, but leaving it this long’s been a record even for me. As normal, I’ve got no excuse but at least I can say that I’ve been doing a bit of jet-setting recently.

One of the few bonuses I can see to being a teacher are the school holidays, so in my Easter vacances (which were actually nowhere near Easter, classic French) Mum and I went to Gambia. We spent the week wandering on the beach, being harassed in equal parts by a group of men on horseback, and a gang of monkeys.

However, that wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen in Gambia – the new craze over there is for young Gambian men to try and snare any (literally any) English woman, and get her to take him home with him. You wouldn’t believe the amount of obese British grandmas on the arms of young Gambian twenty-somethings until you see it for yourself. 

The confusion continued when I realised that if the locals can’t remember your name, they will just pick one out of the blue and that will become your name. Thanks to this, we spent the holiday being called, Pauline, Hilda, Moira, Hannah and my personal favourite… Jonnifer.

In fact, a lot of the people travelling in Gambia were a bit weird too. I spent one lunchtime watching a couple having the ultimate mid-life crisis as they bathed a stray puppy (against its will) in the sea, and then wrapped it in a towel and forbade it to leave their sunbed. 

Shortly after, a spindly bloke who introduced himself as Barry White appeared and beckoned me into his wooden hut full of material. Most people with an ounce of common sense would have been straight off back to watch the puppy show, but off I went and before I knew it I was putting down a deposit for him to make me a pair of African trousers and a maxi dress. For all you of little faith that said I’d never see that money again (or Mum's maxi dress which I lent him after seeing the look on his face when I said 'maxi dress' and he clearly pictured a smock for the obese traveller) I’ve gone high-tech and popped a couple of pictures of my new African garmz below:

As for life in Lille, it’s all ticking over as normal. In true Northern France style, we went to a ghetto party last week and got more attention on the metro than I’ve had since I moved here on October. It’s probably worth mentioning that most of this ‘attention’ was from a surly trackie-clad teenager who shouted ‘’I have the big balls’’ down the metro carriage at us, which reminded me alarmingly of being back at work with the more challenged pupils who have disregarded ‘hello’ in favour of ‘motherfucker’, no matter what the circumstances.

As any of you who know me will be aware, a blog of mine isn’t complete without a health fail of some sort, and as usual you won’t be disappointed. A couple of weeks back I went to the doctor with sinusitis and he prescribed me a cocktail of tablets and ended our rendez-vous with ‘and OF COURSE you will be desperately needing a nasal spray.’ Of course.  Just as I was starting to feel better, I headed over to Angers to meet up with the usual Soton gang, and had a classic ‘’to faint or to be sick’’ moment in the Grand Place, which everyone enjoyed (particularly Will, who had to carry me like an invalid).

The same evening, drama over, we all went bowling and even though I won spectacularly, my top fell down and left me bowling in just my bra. Swings and roundabouts though, and I rolled with it because it’s tough being a hero and something had to give.

Once the glory wore off and I was safely installed back in my Lille pad, I’ve been considering what to do with my Summer, fairly certain I didn’t want to spend it in England. Not that England’s all that bad, but I’d much rather experience something new while I can than get excited about returning to Waitrose and 4oD. I’ve been considering all corners of the globe, trying to work out what the most beneficial thing I could do would be, until yesterday when I ordered a tuna sandwich and a brie baguette from a stall and the woman replied: ‘’OK, so one chicken bagel yes?’’ On that note, I reckon the best thing I can do is stick around in France, and hopefully move down South – looks like leaving Lille won’t mean an end to my French faux pas.

Definitely time for me to love you and leave you now, as the flush on our toilet’s broken and I made the unwise decision of having a cup of tea when I started writing this, which means time for another sneaky mission to an unsuspecting café. Oh, France. 

Foot on the mouse, Foot in the haggis, Foot in the face...

Salut! It’s been a ridiculously long time since my last blog post (as ever) but this time I have an excuse, since I’ve spent what must be nearly the entire past six weeks in the CAF office (France's answer to benefits). Oh, and still haven’t received any money, just in case you were wondering. Classic France, at it again. 

The job’s still exhausting as ever – turns out the trick is to stop caring and let the ones who want to learn English do so, and let the ones who just want to sing ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ over and over again for an hour get on with it too. Everyone wins. I also only found out the other week that most of my pupils are going out with someone in the same year, which is why there’s constantly so much drama and storming off in my classes. This all became clear last week when one poor boy got dumped by his girlfriend and the other boys started singing ‘Goodbye my lover’ to him throughout the whole class. I also found this more amusing than my worksheets on Fair Trade Coffee, so yet again I left them to it. I think I’m fast becoming one of Nord-Pas-de-Calais’ least professional teachers.

On the upside, in my second week back after Christmas, we had a ‘galette des rois’ party at work, which is where you all have a piece of frangipane tart, and there’s a little toy hidden in one of the pieces and if you have it, you get to wear a crown and feel all proud. I use the term ‘party’ loosely here though, because firstly the tradition states that the youngest person has to call out the names of who gets each piece of pie from under the table, so I spent my party under the table in the staff room. Secondly, one teacher started crying halfway through about her timetable and then the others started complaining about how much of a choking hazard the small toy is, and it all got a bit awkward so I took my cue to leave.

I’m currently writing this blog from my death bed since I’ve had to take another day off work thanks to some grim French virus, and my teachers can’t get their heads around why I insist on doing things the English way – i.e lying on the sofa watching Peep Show and taking paracetamol rather than going to various doctors around the city getting second opinions and filling in bundles of paperwork. This might have something to do with the confusing phone message I left at the school office this morning to say I couldn’t come in. I had it all planned in my head, to explain to the secretary that I’m still taking paracetamol and resting but don’t quite feel right yet, but speaking French on the phone still baffles me a bit and instead what came out in a jumble when she answered was : ‘Hello, I am the English Assistant and I have vomited.’ Lucky woman.

Life outside school, however, is plodding along nicely. On one of our (still rather frequent) trips to McDonalds a few weeks back we decided to get on a train somewhere that night and stay the weekend, and picked Brussels. This was a particularly proud weekend for me, because after the FrenSoc trip last January I somehow still managed to guide everybody around without one single fail – I regularly get lost on Highfield Campus, just to put this miracle into perspective. Highlights of the trip were Harrie screaming for an ambulance for stomach pain as soon as we reached the hostel, but actually settling for a glass of wine five minutes later, my standing on a dead mouse in a Kenyan restaurant and all of us managing to be under 12 years old to get a child’s ticket for the tour bus.

We had our own little Burns night celebrations last week too, where I was quite happily nibbling away at my haggis until Graeme told me it was made of intestines, lungs and heart, and the fun was spoiled. I also ended up standing in a disturbing amount of haggis that had made its way to the floor, but nevertheless, I did get to play with Graeme’s sporran, so the evening was not wasted...

However, the final major incident of the past couple of weeks is one that I fear will never leave me. I still have sleepless nights thinking about the two hours Cathy and I spent in some woman’s attic in the outskirts of Lille, surrounded by moaning men and women who don’t feel the need the shave, having my legs forced behind my head. Never have there been two bigger victims of false advertising than Cathy and I attending this ‘yoga’ class. As if this wasn’t disturbing enough, at the end of the ‘session’, the woman made me lie down and wrapped me up (chipolata in bacon style) in a suspicious looking blanket. Shortly after, a man started wailing and shoved his foot in Cathy’s face, which was almost worth paying the €7.50 for. All in all, this didn’t even come close to a yoga class. It was, in fact, attic abuse, which I was even more bitter about when I couldn't sit down properly and developed a kind of waddle for four days afterwards.

All in all, it’s been a standard few weeks of confusion and awkward misdemeanours, but I reckon you can’t go far wrong in France if you just generally watch where you put your feet, and never let anyone ‘teach’ you anything in their attic. Especially if they’re wearing an embroidered waistcoat.  

A little sapin ridin' on the metro...

It’s been a shamefully long time since my last instalment of French Fail. This has nothing to do with the fact that my ‘vie en France’ has become less embarrassing, but more likely due to an increase in my intake of ‘vin rouge’ and (therefore) napping. So it’s about time I got the blog up to speed again, helped along greatly by the fact that I have nothing to play with because both mobile phones and my camera are currently submerged in a bowl of rice in a desperate attempt to dry them out after the ‘Juice Explosion of 9^th December 2011’ hit my handbag hard.

Lille’s recently been invaded by a few of Southampton’s finest, who exploited the fact that French nightclubs haven’t quite cottoned on to the fact that any decorations that aren’t nailed down will be pilfered fairly casually by the average drunken English student. We learnt it’s definitely not acceptable to be carrying a pineapple around with you like a baby at 4am but it did make a cheeky fruit salad in the morning.

In more fruit and veg related issues, never ever jump around with a broccoli in your hand if you don’t have a firm grip. Harrie hasn’t quite got the hang of taking big enough bags to the supermarket yet, so broc was riding solo in Tom’s care for approximately 30 seconds before his excitement for the Lille Christmas Ferris wheel got too much, and one leap sent it flying not only into the face of the woman behind us in the queue, but then rebounding onto her nice expensive camera. Turns out this woman’s festive sense of humour had escaped her, especially when she was asked ‘err sorry but where is my broccoli, I have now lost it?’

As if the Ferris wheel wasn’t enough excitement for one week, my favourite SDF has started dressing up as Santa – it’s probably not acceptable to have asked to have a photo with him, but I went there. I went there.

That said, my general festive spirit was killed off by a nice bout of flu which meant I had to brave the French doctors, and immediately having walked through the door, had already made myself the most unpopular person in the waiting room.  After walking in and sitting down, like a normal person, I realised afterwards that you never enter a waiting room without greeting EVERYONE in there and waiting for their amen-like chorus of hello’s back before you sit down. Technically, as ever, it was me that made a fool out of myself, but this is definitely far too retro a custom to be OK in 2011.

Another area where the French are stuck in the 1930s is their choice of names. I will never ever get a French boyfriend if I can’t keep a straight face when they tell me their name. I know it’s not personally their fault, but there are only so many ‘Wesleys’ and ‘Cyrils’ I can take. Sort it out.

Aside from accidentally being fairly offensive here and there, the biggest embarrassing incident of the last week has been my and Harrie’s trip to buy a Christmas tree (or a ‘sapin’ en France). I don’t know if the issue is that the French aren’t big on the needle-dropping little things (considering this is a country that employs an entire workforce to hand-wash the pavements every day) but it was near-on impossible to find anywhere to buy one. In a final impulsive moment of desperation, we hopped on the metro for half an hour to go out to a trading estate, and never has a plan been so poorly thought through. Also, never have I had to run to catch a metro with a Christmas tree under my arm, and never have I missed said metro, but just caught everyone on it applauding as it moved away. And when the wrapping snapped and the little thing broke free, I vowed never to catch the metro with a ‘sapin’ in tow again; a decision probably supported by the bloke sat next to me with a branch in between his face and his newspaper.

All this considered, the moral of this blog can only be: keep a close eye on your fruit and veg, and you haven’t lived till you’ve taken a ‘sapin’ on the metro. Joyeux noël à tous!

Breakdancing, Brass Bands and Bins

The past couple of weeks have been spent generally trying to sort my life out French-style, which, in short, means a ridiculous amount of paperwork teamed with a ridiculous lack of efficiency. The high point of all this was when Harrie had to send off two photocopies of her passport to Orange in order to receive her €5 free credit on her Carrefour phone.  A week later, she’s still waiting with a phone that is far less useful than the biros and razors dear old Bic should really stick to making.

Technology has also let us down in the form of the Neufbox, the all-purpose (but actually does nothing at all) router . We’ve been dismally watching the orange ‘erreur’ light flash for three weeks now, and even made two wasted trips back to Carrefour where were firmly told to wait some more for technical checks, because in France it’s OK for internet to take three weeks. The only plus side of this was that it made it OK to go to McDo daily, which I’m now missing an unhealthy amount.

 Today I whipped out my domestic goddess and rummaged around in the wires for a bit, and ten minutes later we had English TV, internet and free phone calls to England. Cheers Carrefour. Domestic goddess didn’t survive for long though, as I immediately got too cocky and tried to stick up my picture board, and ended up super gluing not only two fingers together, but my shoe to the floor, and, thanks to some rogue splodges of super glue, my foot in my shoe. It was all painfully reminiscent of the time I tried to dry my shoes in the oven after a rainy day and ended up with a ruined oven and a very small pair of shoes.

There’s been none of this pathetic behaviour in class though, I’ve stepped up my game there after coming home after my first day with an invitation to visit a boy’s family in Morocco and ten Facebook friend requests. This would have actually been my second day, but the pupils casually went on strike the day before, and the day after that, the trains did the same thing. There’s nothing quite like a good strike in France; they’re averaging two a week since I’ve arrived.

In my classes this week we’ve been going through news articles and having vague debates about the topics, but I remember being in classes like mine and thinking it was all a massive doss. To try and get the students out of this mindset, I worked out you don’t need to shout or get angry, you just need to calmly tell the student who claims he ‘doesn’t need to know English because he can breakdance so well’ that unless he gets up and immediately demonstrates, he can do the work like everyone else (or go back to Tonga as I was thinking myself, but I don’t think Summer Heights High’s really hit France hard yet.)

Despite all this, I don’t really feel like an English teacher, and ‘don’t look like one either’ according to the bloke selling metro tickets, who has no idea when he isn’t part of a conversation.  I’ve actually spent an unusual amount of time in gay bars this week, and the other night, after the long struggle of wheeling Harrie’s granny shopping trolley back from Carrefour in the rain, we whipped out the 1 euro wine (lethal) and headed to La Plage, my favourite bar in Lille. There’s just something about the sand on the floor, the absinthe, Sambuca and red wine mixure that is a ‘flaming dragon’ and the barman who will take 5 minutes to make your drink because he wants to show you what he learnt at bartender school that is beyond funny. This only gets better when a brass band barges in, complete with trumpeters and a tuba bigger than me, and insists on playing ‘hot stuff’ over the DJ until he gives up completely. Vive la France.

There are plenty of other ridiculous occurrences that I could go into, but the final pathetic issue in ‘ma vie francaise’ is that we can’t find our own rubbish bins so we have to nip out under darkness and deposit our plethora of empty wine bottles and pasta sauce jars in the neighbours’ bins, which they are so tragically obsessive about that they employ someone to monitor them during the day. They probably have a point though, as like some kind of grubby trackie-clad Santa, it’s time once again for one of my frequent illegal bin trips followed by an unhealthy (but very French) amount of cheese for dinner. A bientôt. 

A less than casual first fortnight..

I have been in Lille nearly a fortnight now, preparing to start work as a teaching assistant in a lycée for my year abroad, and even I am shocked at the amount of ridiculously embarrassing incidents that have occurred so far. Yes, I love the food and yes, I’ve made friends but what I really want to document is how awkward it is trying to casually blend into another culture when you make as many daily faux-pas as I do.

On my first day here I thought I’d try and master the metro as it only has two lines here in Lille, but sadly even that was too much, and I instead marched purposefully down a flight of stairs into a multi storey car park. It took ten minutes of looking for my pretend car and acting casual before I resurfaced again, and gave up on the metro completely.

The second lesson I learnt in Lille was to beware of nightclub lurkers. Fairly obvious in any dingy club in England, but when you’ve just arrived in a foreign country, all you want is friends. Surprisingly enough, nightclub lurkers don’t want to be friends.  In fact, if you’re stupid enough to give your number to one who claims to be an ‘English student’, you might just end up getting voicemails demanding English lessons to top up his ‘studies’, which actually turn out to consist of listening to Eminem, Jay Z and Kanye West.  

However, despite common sense fails like this, there is something that genuinely confuses me about Lille, which is the tramps (and there are a fair few). One came up to me the other day, asking for money, wearing the exact Adidas jacket I tried on and sadly decided was way out of my price range.  To make this worse, I was then approached by one wearing chinos, with an iPod. I can’t get my head round this at all, but definitely won’t be paying for a matching jumper to complete his look. In fairness, my general bitterness towards suspicious tramps comes mainly from what happened to me yesterday morning, where someone actually did try to mug me, while I was just minding my own business on a bench in the train station. Out of nowhere, one by one, more and more gypsies came and sat far too close to me, until one grubby child was on my lap and another one was playing with my hair.  Thirty seconds later, I’m completely surrounded and the dad appears, asks to borrow a pen and the kids are trying to open my handbag.  I made my sudden bid for freedom and had to send a couple of sticky toddlers flying, but a quick anti-bac of the pen and the handbag and luckily I didn’t lose anything. But this proves that lurking extends from nightclubs to train stations and beyond, so beware all suspicious (and possibly well dressed) lurkers, particularly if they ask to borrow your pen of map. They’d really rather borrow your phone and your iPod. Permanently.

Along with these weird little incidents come repeated issues that mean I will never appear even vaguely French if I don’t sort it out. The first is that I get stuck in about half the doors I open, if I manage to open them at all, today’s highlight being that I couldn’t even open the right door to get into McDonalds, and then  noticed my landlord laughing at me from inside. The second issue is that I nearly get run over at least three times a day, so it will be a miracle if I even post another blog.

It will also be a miracle if I ever understand how to behave at a French house party. Never before have I been in a room where silence breaks out for ‘everyday I’m shufflin’ followed by a manic scuffle of shiny Cuban heels all shuffling backwards around the room. I stood motionless and confused in front of this tragic phenomenon, which led to me being asked, in all seriousness: ‘You do not shuffle?’

Cultural differences aside, obviously the biggest issue is the language barrier, where a good proportion of every conversation is lost in translation. The best moment this week was telling my French friends that a cat had adopted me and slept on the sofa and that I thought it was very cute. After a few weird looks and some awkward laughs I decided to look up what I’d said in a dictionary. Sadly, I actually announced that I thought the cat was ‘REALLY fit’.

In reality, adapting to another culture is always going to cause embarrassing incidents. Aside from the fact that I’m gradually becoming numb to social humiliation, I generally take solace in the fact that I can go back to my cheeky city pad and watch Gossip Girl with a cup of tea after a long hard day of pretending to be French.