The End of the Road (to Rouen)

Newsflash folks: ELLA IS BACK IN THE COUNTRY! After a horrendous car journey to Calais through torrential rain (apparently France was crying at my departure) and a typical Dove family mad dash for the Eurotunnel, here I am safe and sound, back in the Garden of England. Giant French dictionary, cuddly toys, shoe rack, the lot. In fact, I’m sitting exactly where I sat 7 months ago (7 MONTHS?!)  when I first decided to start a ‘gay’ year abroad blog (see entry 1).

                            How time has flown. I don’t have to tell you whether I’ve enjoyed my time in France or not, as I think spending almost 60 euros in the Le Havre tourist office the other day says it all. My entire family are now kitted out with postcards, pens and mugs with genius slogans. ‘100% Havrais’, ‘HAVRE nice day/night/week’, ‘I HAVRE dream’...sheer brilliance. I’ve always been a sucker for a bit of wordplay. I even bought an ‘I Love Le Havre’ t-shirt, something I never thought I’d own when I first set eyes upon the monstrous Hotel de Ville (Google it). But as one friend recently commented, despite its greyness and excessive usage of concrete, Le Havre DOES have charm. The food is good (with the exception of the dyed-black Darth Vador burgers in Quick), the people are lovely, and it does have everything you need shop and entertainment-wise. I’ve joined exercise classes, I swim, I go to languages café every week. My friends and I even have a ‘regular’ salon de thé (aka café) which serves THE best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted, and the crepes and maxi-banana splits aren’t half bad either! Incidentally, quick shout out here to my fellow Le Havre English assistant ladzz, who I’m going to miss an awful lot, but I know we’ll all stay in touch and maybe it will even lead to some American/Australian holidays in future! (hint hint...) I’ve even managed to make a few French friends (teachers included!), although admittedly not many are my own age....Still, you win some you lose some, and I know I’d be welcomed back to many of their houses with open arms should I ever fancy popping over on the ferry for a weekend in the big LH.

                         As far as travelling is concerned, I’ve also done pretty well. As well as touring all around Haute-Normandie, I’ve visited Rouen, Caen (where we also went to Bayeux and Omaha Beach), Paris, Disneyland (twice!), Lille, Reims, Versailles, and most recently, Nice and Monaco, both of which were absolutely gorgeous and made me realise just how much of a wuss I was only choosing places in the North so as to be ‘closer to home’. During all of these trips (with the possible exception of Disneyland), I’ve attempted to speak French at least a little. Gone are the days of ‘est-ce que je peux avoir SOME ketchup’ and ‘où est l’HOSTAL PLEASE?’, although of course there are still occasional slips (dinner party incidents spring to mind...see previous entries). However, I’ve managed to laugh off the majority of these faux-pas, and I’ve had a significant amount of Facebook friend requests from my students, though this is probably due to the fact that I bought them sweets as a goodbye present. Unfortunately though, this didn’t work with one class who actually CHEERED when I told them it was our last lesson and then proceeded to complain that the lollies were ‘too small’ before grabbing about five each and running away whooping. Brats.

                        Élèves from hell aside, I really was quite sad to leave the large majority of my classes, though I was pleased to see that since my departure, two eager beavers have written heartfelt (aka suck-up) messages of thanks and appreciation on my wall IN ENGLISH! Definitely not the type of thing I did at school.... *cough cough*. Naturally, I replied to each in a suitably formal teacher-style fashion. I believe I even told one of them to ‘keep working hard with English’. Too cool.

                So. What exactly have I learnt from this experience? Well, here’s a list of my top ten discoveries:

1)      Tracksuits by day, parkas by night: the dress-code of a French teen.

2)      Speculoos (basically Nutella except it tastes of crushed biscuits) is the most amazing thing on the planet. And it seemingly only exists in the North. Crazy.

3)      Colombians like carbs. My flatmate thought plain pasta with plain rice constituted a proper meal...how wrong she was.

4)      Fifteen year old boys DO like Taylor Swift. Even if they pretend not to, the truth will be revealed the minute ‘Love Story’ is played during a Valentine’s Day lesson.

5)      If you speak English on the bus you either look like or attract a weirdo.

6)      French food is the best.

7)      French milk is the worst.

8)      The English lunchtime should be made longer. 4 course meals are definitely the way forward.

9)      The Channel is too cold for swimming in early April.

10)   The SNCF station announcement noise makes everything better. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bobmqeNirU).

               Oh, and one final thing? After a surprising amount of positive feedback, I’ve come to the conclusion that year abroad blogs (or mine at least...) are not ‘gay’ after all. Thank you to my lovely readers for sticking with me; it’s been faaabulous daaaahlings, and with a little bit of luck, I’ve even managed to entertain you!

The Road to Rouen: Complete. 

Versailles, Einaudi and Englishness: my plee to be bourgeosie....

Typical French saying #346: ‘Ah, it eez because of zee change in zee wezzzzerrrrr’ (weather, for those of you not au-fait with this advanced French pronunciation). No-where else would you hear such a ridiculously nonsensical statement. A stifled cough and you’re an immediate victim of this imaginary temperature alteration syndrome. A yawn and you must be tired because it rained yesterday and today it’s sunny.  God forbid you develop a cold, as I learnt last week the somewhat hard way. ‘Oh yes, Ella ‘as lost ‘er voice today...it must be because of zee wezzzzerrrr’. What utter nonsense. For a start, I’m English. One of those hardy creatures who persists in wearing t-shirts in February (shocker) instead of the thick winter woollies sported by a large proportion of French population. Sometimes, I even go out to a nightclub not just without a full-length parka, but often without a jacket of ANY description! Talk about crazy rosbifs.

                 However, having now recovered from my illness, the French finale fun (lovin’ the alliteration) continues. Highlights this week include hearing a weird French cover of Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’ during my weekly Carrefour shop, watching a group of excitable teens (and a couple of teachers!) try on my Primark bunny onesie during today’s English Club before labelling me as ‘trop cool’ (which, of course, I am), and a few more daytrips, which I will now proceed to tell you about.

               Well, last weekend was pretty packed. On Saturday, I went to a prof’s (‘cool’ onesie-wearing English slang for professeurs, aka teachers) house for lunch with her and her two sons, which was lovely, apart from the eldest’s deliberate attempts to test my language level by using what was probably the largest amount of slang I’ve ever encountered. Most of the time, my nods and nervous giggles seemed to suffice, and I thoroughly enjoyed the display of a 23 year old man being disciplined by his mum for talking ‘trop vite’ with Ella. Unfortunately, he noticed my wry smile, and got me back later on during discussions about basketball players, most specifically the name ‘John Cox’. ‘Cock’ is an English word, no Ella? Can you explain what it means? I do not know....’ As you can imagine, I was mortified. Bien joué lad, bien joué (yes, that does mean ‘well played’, for those of you poised over Google Translate). Suffice to say, I didn’t oblige, simply telling his curious mother that it was in fact ‘quite rude’ and thus earning him another telling off. Ella: 1, Frenchy: 0.

                Sunday involved a trip to the Versailles Palace with the Le Havre assistants gang, which aside from being absolutely freezing (even for an English girl WITH a coat), was a fab place to visit. As under 26’s who’d been residing in France for at least 6 months, we also managed to wangle free entry and a free audio guide, both of which were added bonuses to the day. We even ate lunch in the Chateau gardens (Oh So Posh), and it was all going well until I stood up and pushed my chair back, knocking over an entire metal stand and (thankfully plastic) plant pot. It caused an incredible clang, not to mention several dirty looks from fellow customers and soil and miscellaneous flowers strewn all across the path. My second embarrassment of the weekend, and naturally, I did what any sensible wannabe high-class English girl would do....I ran.

         

                  After braving the cold to stroll around the beautiful gardens some more (and avoiding conviction in my case), we headed into Paris for the evening’s planned entertainment: tickets for a Ludovico Einaudi concert. For those of you who don’t know who he is, firstly, you’re not as cultured as me. Secondly, he’s the one of the most amazing pianists I’ve ever encountered. He wrote the music for the recent popular French film ‘Les Intouchables’, has been played on Radio 1 quite a bit, and there’s a link to his most well-known piece à la fin of this post, should you wish to up your classic music knowledge and be worthy of my upper-class friendship (ps, excuse the hippo). The concert itself was breathtaking, and there was a real hushed and reverent ambience in the auditorium during every piece, no thanks to the ‘warm-up’ act, which was hilariously awful. Picture this: a seemingly-mute man with his guitar, an irritating singer woman with a clear crush on 60-something Einaudi, and an incredibly loose grasp of the English language. Songs included ‘je suis dans no-man’s land’, and ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’- my personal favourite as it was effectively a list of household appliances put to warbling music which went something like this: ‘computer, digital camera, fridge, television....’ and so on. Someone clearly had the Oxford English dictionary for breakfast....and lunch, and dinner.

                    Tomorrow night, a group of teachers are hosting a ‘surprise’ party for me, made distinctly less of a surprise today when one asked me what time we were going to the restaurant (bless...), and then at the weekend I will be heading to Nice to visit a Southampton friend (hey Kasia :p), so as you can see, my life remains as busy as ever here in Le ‘aaaaavre. It must be said though (or rather, shouted from the rooftops) that this week is my last week of teaching, which will be celebrated this evening (after zumba) with a group of friends and a bottle of Madame Pommery Champagne, bought in Reims for this very purpose (told you I was posh). I’ve already said goodbye to a few of my classes, and received lots of cards with brilliantly ego-inflating messages, such as ‘English is better with you’, ‘your lessons are cool’ and the what I believe to be the truest and most relevant statement (‘from the mouths of babes’ as some may say): ‘you are very funny’. 

Finally, recognition.

Rabbiting on about an egg-citing Easter

Don’t worry; omlette-ing you groan at these puns....Tim Vine (and Uncle Tom-hello!) would be proud. So. It’s Friday. This is new. I usually write my blogs on Thursdays and I feel all out of synch right now...but you know what? It’s okay, because I have a handful of Lindt teddies and a wind-up bunny on my desk. All a girl needs for journalistic success.

            On the subject of chocolate, we may as well start with Easter. First of all, Lent is finally over, which means back to the Nutella and banana crepes at our favourite local café, and no more misleading orders of a coffee ice-cream sundae only to be presented with what can more accurately be described as mocha with extra chocolate chips and sauce (I ate it anyway...accidents happen). It also means I am again allowed excessive amounts of mayonnaise with almost every meal, and can technically continue my previous habit of scoffing a Camembert a week. However, this last realisation is one I’m aiming to avoid as much as possible, especially after the unheard of family remarks that I’d lost weight ‘around my face’ during a recent Skype conversation. My insistence that my face is round and not chubby clearly never washed with Mumma Dove, nor in fact my primary school classmates after an unfortunate incident involving the creation of Roman armour-style face masks. You try living down being the only one out of thirty who’s face mould comes out as more of a podgy orange than pointy lemon-shape....I’ve had a fear of modroc ever since!

                        Weight loss or not, I spent Easter weekend in much the usual fashion as I would in England. A trip to church, a yummy Easter brunch, a lot of private parading in my rabbit onesie pretending to be the Easter bunny (originally I had thought this would be cool to do in front of my students, especially the little ones; but in retrospect...it’s not. And I didn’t). We even had an egg hunt on the Sunday, although lack of space in her apartment meant our hostess had to be extremely imaginative, hiding chocolates behind curtains, inside hung-up coats and inside lampshades. Impressively though, she managed to disguise the whereabouts of around 22 eggs, and it was more of a challenge than expected!

                              However, I must now go back to the morning’s church service. After a couple of previous bad experiences of French churches (including the time when as a ‘new person’ I was forced to stand up and awkwardly announce my name and ‘je suis anglaise’ in front of EVERYONE while the vicar proclaimed ‘welcome sisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’), I must admit I was apprehensive. Following said occasion, I was expecting a similar greeting, a similar length service (2 and a half hours...don’t even go there), or at least some form of embarrassment. Luckily for me, it was a collective rather than solo ‘cringe’, as the organist appeared to have never taken a piano lesson in her life, resulting in a lot of confusion at almost every hymn, not to mention an entire congregation’s worth of tuneless warbling. At one point, she even told the vicar ‘I can’t play that one’, forcing an immediate (and literal) change of tune, which definitely kept us all on our toes. As if that wasn’t enough, to take communion everyone formed a huge circle around the room reminiscent of a giant okey-cokey game (I wish), and we had to pass around a plate of brioche and a tray of what can only be described as grape juice-filled shot glasses. Unfortunately, halfway through there was an almighty crash....and yes, you guessed it, an old lady had dropped an entire platter. Grape juice, mops and awkwardly-maintained reverence EVERYWHERE. An Easter to remember.

                            One question I do have though: the French don’t have Good Friday off...why? As a predominantly Catholic country (if you ignore all this secular school business), this really surprised me, particularly as they’re usually all up for any reason for a day off. But why Monday rather than Friday...what happened then?! Of course, there was the crucifixion, and resurrection, but after that? As I recently (and of course as sensibly as usual) suggested to my friends, maybe it was just a day for clearing up the party....but in all seriousness, any light people could shed on this would be really useful! Anyway, due to this bank holiday Monday plus one of my schools organising a trip to Ireland (I wasn’t invited...), I’ve had large proportion of the week off. I’ve definitely ‘profited bien’, with a lovely trip to Giverny to visit Monet’s house and gardens, a slightly less cultural but equally amazing excursion to Disneyland (just as magical as ever in case you were wondering), and the long-awaited Assistants au Havre ‘Soirée Anglaise’ production! Despite having never run-through it before, the evening was a great success, and involved a huge variety of performances, from Shakespeare to singing to clarinet to hula-hooping. In a shameless act of self-promotion, we even performed one of my own pieces. There were several laughs which I’m hoping were of enjoyment rather than pity.....and two of my teachers turned up, something which although daunting did make me really happy- it was lovely to feel so supported.

                             As you can imagine, all this activity has taken its toll, and I am currently extremely fatiguée. Therefore, instead of go on a date with a short Frenchman (he literally comes up to my waist...Tina Wilkinson here is your shout-out as I'm sure you lol'd at this) and avoid copious Miranda Hart-style forward knee bends to hide my own height, I’ve decided to ditch free food and awkward company with a man I’m highly unlikely to ever see again (though if it was the yoga instructor, that would be a wholeeee different story) in favour of soup, chocolate and countless New Girl episodes. In fact, I just heard the microwave ping. Laters.

The Show Must Go On (and other news)

You may have heard tell of the ‘Soirée Anglaise’  which will be taking place in a little Le Havre café next Thursday (19h30 should you bizarrely happen to be around my neck of the French woods). A cultural (we hope) evening celebrating the diversity of the English language, with English, Irish and American input, featuring various drama, poetry, music and at one point hula-hooping performances from all us English assistants ici. Allow me to explain.

              At the beginning of my year abroad, a group of us stumbled upon ‘Les Yeux d’Elsa’, a charity bookshop-come-ethnic-café which, as an English student, instantly fascinated me. Sipping my 2 euro hot chocolate amongst antique French Bibles and dusty Beatles cassettes and flicking through that month’s ‘what’s on’ programme, it dawned on me. Why not host our own soirée? After a one-year string of incessant bad luck auditioning for university productions, I know I’ll never be Kiera Knightley (arguably a good thing...not sure I could pull off the corsets), but my inner thespian itched for another performance opportunity, and well...when in France! Anyway, several pleas and a cajoling facebook group later, we’d signed up, and our English extravaganza is now awaited ‘avec impatience’ from many an eager Frenchy (aka the overjoyed café owner desperate to fill up her programme and a couple of dears from my Tuesday night Languages Cafe).  We even have flyers.

                Now, this all sounds good and dandy, except for one slight problem. Preparation. So far, our rehearsals (all three of them) have consisted of chatter, panic, and a lot of food, be it pizza, fajitas, or crepes. However, we have had the odd brainwave between mouthfuls, meaning somehow a mish-mash show has been slotted together. Acts include a take on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, various American poems, and even some of my own work! I’m hoping we’ll be able to pull it out of the bag, so watch this space. As they say, it’ll be alright on the night!

             Of course, all this planning means a lot of paper, which in turn involves endless trips to the Bibliothèque Municipale for use of my daily 5 page printing allowance. It has recently come to my attention just how fruitful a location this local library is for blog material, most notably last week when I spotted a woman bawling her eyes out at the computer workstation opposite me. Now I know what you’re thinking.... ‘Crying....not the greatest form of comedy Ella...’, but we’re not talking normal ‘I’m-crying-in-a-library-so-must-be-subtle’ style behaviour. Oh no. This lady was really taking measures to ensure everyone was aware of her distress, from intakes of breath so loud and sharp they were reminiscent of a near-drowning dog, to over-exaggerated wails which quite frankly were almost ghoulish! Many a comradely glance was shared between those around me, yet a couple of kindly attempts to pacify said woman only resulted in worsening the situation and the emission of a fire-alarm pitched yelp. However, the most common reaction seemed to be a simple feigned deafness (incredibly difficult given the ever-rising sob volume), yet even I couldn’t help but smile when I witnessed the next move...namely the removal and steady munching and crackling of a packet of peanuts from her handbag. Clearly the best way to deal with overwhelming grief in France is by whipping out a hearty snack, perhaps something I should bear in mind. Next time a class gets that little bit too much for me....out with the Pringles. Sorted.

                        Speaking of food, my current health kick continues. I am now taking exercise classes up to three times a week, and salad is my new best friend (albeit with oodles of Caesar dressing). The most recent addition to my regime is BodyBalance, or as most of us like to call it...yoga. Unfortunately, I took the regrettable decision of a morning session, meaning I was one of just seven people; the other six all well within the over 60 age-bracket, despite their slinky tops and (too) tight leggings. Whilst I was left pondering whether lycra and retirement are a socially acceptable combination, the coach walked in, and well...attractive does not even cover it. I’m not often one for schoolgirl crushes, and in fact haven’t been since the photo of Gareth Gates in my school locker aged eleven (in an inflatable heart-shaped photo frame may I add), but in the words of ‘Mean Girls’, ‘this one hit me like a big yellow school bus’. I’m not sure if it was the fact he teaches yoga (sensitive side), his drawling French voice reminding me to ‘inspirerrrrrr’ or sheer good looks, but it’s safe to say my fellow assistants and I are smitten. So here’s hoping he doesn’t speak English and/or come across this declaration (although just in case- marry me...?)

                              Moving on before I start to swoon.....I even went for a run along the beach on Sunday! As the girl who only went running twice in two years with her housemate and complained the whole way each time, I feel this is immense progress for me, and despite my dodgy hip flaring up after BodyBalance (oh the irony) I managed a pretty decent distance. So decent, in fact, that my friend and I decided to reward ourselves with a cooling and celebratory dip in the sea to finish off. In my last blog, you will have noticed my insistence I swim (in) the Channel before leaving Le Havre, however the deed itself lasted no longer than five minutes and involved me and my sports bra, a stunned crowd, a lot of numbness, and a very wet seat on the bus ride home. Still, it’s ticked off the list, but I think I’ll wait for the French Riviera before my next dip!

                             In other (completely unrelated) news, I’d forgotten how funny this sketch is (Thanks again Leyla!!). Enjoy.