"There must be more than this provincial life" aka Saturday night in Brive, c'est la fête!

Despite the somewhat skeptical title of this blog entry, what I actually have to report is that I spent a lovely evening drinking beer in the company of some wonderful couchsurfers and other tag-a-longs who, in the space of an evening, have made Brive into a much more live-able place. Ron and I had arranged to meet an Italian couchsurfer, Cecilia, who is studying here in Brive, she'd invited some others too but we expected that it would be just the 3 of us, och well, off to have a beer and a chat we went. We ended up being 12 I think: myself, Ron, Cecilia, a Mexican fille-aupair, 2 Spanish interns, a Bulgarian volunteer and 5 Frenchmen.
I don't think I had realise quite how much I missed that kind of social interaction until I was walking home and suddenly realised that I felt massively relieved and excited to have met such a lovely bunch of people. Who new that there were these friendly people around just waiting to be met, eh?

A Rant

Watched a film with Ron this evening called After the Rain which is about the water war which they had in Bolivia in 19_?

under the weather

I have a cold. Perhaps this might have something to do with wading through waist deep water in the Catacombs, or maybe from leaving the hostel with wet hair each morning for 3 days in a row, shock horror. In any case, I have a cold.

This afternoon I left the flat just once. I wanted to buy some spices for making mulled wine. (Yes, I know it's a little early in the season for mulled wine but I needed its medicinal value!!)

During that small excursion 5 things happened:

1. The lady at the tourist office was SO lovely. Perhaps it's just that after being in Paris everyone seems inordinately friendly, but no, this woman was really very helpful indeed and showed me where I could find a real épicerie to buy proper spices :)
2. I saw the police arresting an old man. I like to think that he was hardened member of Brive's criminal underground. (ie. it must be so boring to be a bobby in this town.)
3. The security guard in the supermarket helped me to find the spices I needed, and then came looking for me twice, just to make sure I'd got the right ones. ("Mademoiselle, you did take cinnamon sticks and not powdered cinnamon, didn't you, yes? Good, good, that's very important", "Ah Mademoiselle, thank goodness I found you, you did remember the oranges didn't you? you must have sliced orange for mulled wine! oh you have some, oh that's good"... etc.)
4. The cashier and the wee old lady in front of me in the queue talked to me about seasonal jams (apparently green tomato, quince and fig are the flavours of the moment peeps).
5. On my way home I saw one of my pupils who said "hello" to me, very prettily, in her best English accent.

The end.

Espansaisish

I'm trying to learn some Spanish.

Here are the things I can say so far:

• este whisky esta muy bueno.
• yo voi a Brive en train.
• como digo esto..?
• cuchillo
• cusina
• servilleta
• quieres ejersitar tu espagnol?
• es hermosa verdad.
• me gusta la cerveza!

Paris

Pretending to be a teacher

meh

drank a bit too much red wine this evening and now feeling tearful and homesick. bad move.

totally procrastinated making deisions about the coming weekend (start of the holidays) and don't have any internet. bad move. worse luck.

made cake and managed not too burn all of it. things are looking up. it was a bit dry though. meh.

Mum and Dad and the girls are at Benmore. I wish I was with them.

Photos pending...

Vendredi 13.10.11

On thursday night we went to see a production of Little Red Riding-hood (Le petit chaperon rouge) at Brive theatre. It was pricey, but beautifully done: lots of movement, lovely sound and amazing performances from the company of 3 who played: the narrator, the mother/wolf and little Red/her granny. The wolf was especially brilliant, moving in such a way that you had to double check that it wasn't in fact an actual canine on stage.

There was one scene in particular which tiptoed it's way into my imagination, where little Red plays games and dances with her shadow in the forest. Then, on Friday morning as I walked across the playground from the staff room towards my apartment in the other building I saw, over by the hedge, one of the young boys from the collège (junior high) was playing games, dancing with his shadow :)

After the theatre we went out for a drink with Mildred, another lovely spanish teacher...

Fri 14th-Sun 16th October 2011: Wedding Weekend

The Teji-Coomber wedding saw me making a whistle-stop tour from Brive to Edinburgh and back again in the space of 3 days. 12 hours from Brive to Edinburgh (via Limoges, Liverpool and Wigan North West) and 9 hours back (via Southampton, why not). I was pretty dead for the whole of the following week. But it was very much worth it to see my family, Gina, David, Amy, Roan, Ellen, Blane, Becky, the CCE posse and of course to be able to attend the wedding!!

The wedding ceremony was held in St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile (what an amazing kirk for a wedding). Antasha was, of course, astoundingly beautiful (we all cried as she came up the aisle) and the service ended with panache as Joel Robertson and Becky-ann Symes belted out “Signed, sealed delivered, I'm yours!” EPIC.

For the reception we were all supposed to wear Indian dress and the lovely Swapna lent Louisa and me two of her saris, they were beautiful and so much fun to wear (if a little tricksy for ceilidh dancing). Matt, Antasha and the wedding party had the most incredible outfits and we all got to try our hands (and feet, and hips) at some Indian dancing. Following that, the wedding ceilidh seemed almost like a breather!

Mardi 11.10.11, 14h14

I've got... [this post was abandoned, I don't remember why]

Sunday 09.10.2011, 20h54: Week 1 summary

Sunday evening. Just finished my first REAL lesson plan for tomorrow and I'm excited. Everything is still pretty disorganised (I still don't have a completed timetable) but it's getting there.

Some snippets from this week:

Classes. Thus far I've only got 9 out of my 12 hours confirmed, so it'll take a while before I know where I'm at with all of my classes, but slowly, slowly things are beginning to take shape.
I met three of my classes on Thursday and Friday :) was great to finally get to ACTUALLY meet some of my pupils. It was pretty daunting introducing myself to the first class, especially since I'm talking in French the whole day and then suddenly I have to switch over into English and introduce myself to a whole bunch of teens who wish I was speaking to them in French -I even said something totally ungrammatical in one introduction :/
I'm supposed to speak English only in as much as possible, for some classes that'll be more possible than for others. I mostly have final year pupils but there is a massive range of different ability levels. I think it's going to be quite tricky to gauge the competence level of all the different classes at first, let alone individuals.

This week the waking hours have been mostly filled with admin and feet-finding. Hopefully next week with open up more social opportunities.
Some nice things happened this weekend though:

• Saturday night feast. We were supposed to have a staff outing on Saturday (a hike and then a meal) but in the end it was cancelled. One of the spanish teachers who is working with Ronald invited us out to have the meal anyway. We were 6 of us in the end: Roland, the spanish teacher (Luce) and her husband (Réné) , a retired colleague of the husband (Gilbert), another spanish assistant (Angelica), and myself. It's quite hard to describe the banterousness of the evening; Spanish and French mingled together with jokes and stories. We ate, drank, laughed and were merry (oh such nice things we ate and drank: champaign aperitifs, cèpes (penny bun/porcino mushrooms, boletus edulis), dauphinoise, confit de canard (duck), red wine, cheese, chocolate tart, nut ice-cream, coffee.
  And to top it all off Gilbert insisted on paying for our meal. We came home stuffed to the gunwales with good food and goodwill.


• I went to church this morning. It was COLD.


• Ronald, Angelica and I went for a Sunday afternoon wander in the autumn drizzle. (It's amazing how markedly the season has changed in the last 2 days, not a subtle coming on of autumn but a sudden change in temperature, colouring of leaves.) We stumbled across a folk dancing competition in the market hall, played in a play-park, climbed a wee hill and talked to some horses. Even under the damp clouds, the countryside here is beautiful.

Wednesday 05.10.11, 18h11

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating day, trying to sort more paper work, introducing myself at my second lycée, to-ing and fro-ing between the 2 schools. There is a crossover between the timetables of the two schools, certain teachers who want me in their classes in the same period, and it's hard to get folks to agree about who gets me when. Also, I had a bit of a headache and got frustrated and lonely and homesick. Things improved slightly when I came back to the flat and my nice flatmate (Ronald) suggested I take a siesta. In the evening in the evening we both went to do a big food shop, we caught the bus to a BIG supermarket just outside town. We had a bit of hassle getting back because the bus times were badly marked and we ended up having to take a taxi with another stranded lad (a nice Pakistani chap who works as a cook in a Brasserie next to the Truffe Noir in town). Ronald doesn't know how to cook at all so last night I taught him how to make a simple meal, and we had a glass of wine [edit, 19h07: he's going to cook himself this evening :) ]. Our cupboards are full AND I found out that Brive has a Lidl (I <3 Lidl) much closer than the other shop, so the day ended well.

Today, I didn't have classes. I planned to try and FINALLY sort my banking, complete the last of my (current) paperwork, do my laundry, explore town a bit (at last!) and try to find a basketball team.
I walked all around town several times.
I still don't have a bank account. (Although I did manage to book a rendez-vous with Mr Banker for tomorrow morning.)
I spent a fair amount of time trying to sort out the timetable mess, without much success, I forgot that schools have a half day on Wednesdays. Blargh.
I did have an ice-cream this afternoon, which vastly improved the overall enjoyment of the day.
I also managed to sleep past the boarding house bell :D and I got to use my pigeon hole :) AND I met the lady who's in charge of the laundry, who is a total honey.


I'll do my laundry tomorrow. Right after I've been to the bank, and sorted my papers...

Tuesday 04.10.2011 à Brive-la-Gaillarde

It's 7.20am and the second morning bell has just gone (the first woke me at 6.50am). I can hear whistles upstairs as the dormitory supervisors chase stragglers to the canteen for breakfast. If I peek out my window I can see them all trailing up the cloisters towards the other side of the school. We have a list of internal numbers on a print-out next to the phone, it seems that there are 5 dormitories and that quite a number of staff also live on the premises. The boarders go home at the weekend Boarding school life must be weird! I can't even blog about it, we have internet but they've blocked just about every site that young people want to use.

I'm living in a wee apartment on the 1st floor, south wing of a MASSIVE Napoleonic-style E-shaped building with 3 floors and a garret. I say a wee apartment, but actually it's pretty large. It used to be the nurses residence and is still marked as such on the building plan, there are still a few creepy rooms at the end of the passage which joins to the sitting-room with hospital beds and a dusty décor. Now it's kept for foreign language assistants. Next weekend I'm going to go for an explore and find out what's in the rest of the building.
My Bolivian flatmate is very friendly, chatty like me, he's a photographer when he's not being a Spanish assistant. We seem to have got on really well so far, although he keeps speaking to me in Spanish and I haven't a clue what he's saying.
My room is pretty spacious, with a desk, 2 wooden chairs, a wee wardrobe, a big cupboard, a skinny bed and a weird hospital-esque bedside-table. The room itself is mostly yellow (and man is there a lot of it, the ceilings are like, 5 metres high [edit, 05-10-11: the handyman informs me that the ceilings are 7.5m, the winters will be COLD!!]) with blue under a white border, grey lino floor and VASTLY in need of a rug.

The kids are beginning to gather outside now (class begins at 8am). Then quiet.
…
It's 11.46am and I'm just back from visiting my second school. It's amazing how loooong mornings are when you're up before 7 o'clock! I have so many bits of information vying for space in my head that I have a slight headache.

• Here is my to do list for today:


• introduce myself at 2nd Lycée:
  - Secrétariat
  - (Madame la) Proviseur
  - Prof d'Anglais


• voir Mme R (intendance):
  - reprint of attestation de logement
  - bulbs in hallway (who do we ask to change them?)
  - flat telephone (can we get an outside line? can people phone us on it? Number?)
  - card for the cantine...?
  - internet questions


• RV Mme P, salle des profs


• open bank account: (co-op? Crédit mutuelle? La poste?)


• Secretariat:
  - procès-verbale d'installation
  - RIB
  - convocation


• food shop