The major event of the last few weeks, which has had impact on everything else, would be the bike accident I had last Wednesday. I was pedalling manically up hill as fast as I possibly could as I was late for a train, when I cycled smack bang into the back of a parked car! Woops, I simply didn't see it, I had my head down and my helmet on (always necessary when cycling abroad!) and the first thing I knew was everything was white. I'd hit a white car and gone over all 6 handlebars that my bike is conveniently equipped with! In doing so I hit my knee on one of them (not difficult when there are so many!) and really hurt it. Fortunately neither the car nor bike was damaged so I pedalled one footed to the station and caught my train. My knee caned but I thought I might have just been overreacting from shock rather than actual pain. Oh no, when I arrived in Les Sables I couldn't walk, so went straight to the doctors. He has given me various medicines but has warned me not to do any handball or cycling for at least 2 weeks. Not that I would be anyway, I could hardly walk all of last week and I still can't manage stairs, or any real bending. He also informed me that I ought to remember that the French drive on the left, what a joker! The knee is a real pain though (in both senses of the word), it's cut my social calendar down rather!
However I was still able to make it in high spirits to our Thanksgiving party last week, which was great fun. Kendra's parents and sister came over from the states, so we (the Spaniards and Claire, an American friend of Kendra's) celebrated together. It was certainly unique: for us, as none of us had celebrated Thanksgiving before; and for them, as I don't think they've ever had a Thanksgiving quite like it...! Between the 7 of us who live in La Roche, we hardly have any possessions, so supper, cooked in a Baby Belling, was served on an ironing board and eaten with the best crockery and finest silverware: paper plates, plastic cutlery and cups, whilst crowded round a make shift table and perched on whatever we could find! It was some picnic and we all really enjoyed ourselves. The best bit was definitely the pumpkin pies for pudding, yum yum, who knew that the inside of a pumpkin is so scrumptious? (Well, Americans, obviously!). We served it with squirty cream, which unfortunately ended up everywhere, and certainly very little in our mouths! A really fun evening!
Staying with the food theme, I genuinely had no idea how mayonnaise was made until recently, it's always just been something in a jar in the fridge. However the Spaniards don't buy mayonnaise, they make it themselves, I've never seen anything like it! And on a less positive note, at supper we all steal the butter to use for our breakfast, as we can't keep a block in our rooms as we have no fridge. I then put mine outside my window on the sill to keep cold, although it has been known to disappear (and get very wet)! Anyway, one day last week, I thought I'd forgotten mine, no big deal. A few days later, I took a load of washing out of the machine only to discover butter everywhere! I must have left it in my pocket! Grrr!
At school the Comenius project has finally started, two teachers went to a meeting in Italy last week (lucky them!) and were surprised to discover there that the other schools started work in September, so this has knocked us into gear. They couldn't believe that the Italians and Spanish had been organised enough to start before them, I, on the other hand, knowing the disorganisation of the school, was not surprised! La maitrise was there and I think she's expecting me to take part in most things, which is good as I will probably be running out of tasks to do in the library soon, there's only so many displays that can be done, plus the real librarian is returning from maternity leave on Monday, so the one I've been working with is sadly leaving.
Thinking about la Maitrise and also the doctor earlier, an observation that I have made during my time here is how formal the French are. La Maitrise shakes my hand every time I bump into her; the doctor shook my hand on arrival and when I left; and whenever you meet someone in a shop, you greet them formally, for example, "Bonjour Madame/Monsieur". And of course there's the endless kissing!
Back to the topic of school, I had my third newspaper appearance/mention this week, they love dropping in that there's a Comenius assistant at the school, whatever the occasion! I've got a nice little collection of cuttings coming along. Lessons are ticking along fine, although I did have an awful lesson with one of the European groups, we had to listen to one Beatles song ("She's leaving") on repeat for the entire hour so they could write down the lyrics. I'm not adverse to Beatles music, quite the contrary I like quite a bit of it, but this really was not a good choice of song, it was like an hour's torture! Keeping on the music theme, some pupils in my other Euro group were rather confused, they thought Madonna's song "Hung up" was all about a telephone! Oh and that reminds me, I was reading their English magazine, and there was an article on Peter Ash (a boy who I was at school with) and his hamster mobile phone charger. I couldn't believe it when I saw his photo there, such a small world!
There are certainly a couple of downfalls of not being able to cycle, firstly there's the speed, I've been late for school twice this week, completely underestimating how long it takes by foot. Secondly on the times I have been on time, I arrive at the same time as all the pupils and therefore get mixed in with their rabble, I've even been part of a group told off by the lollipop lady, who is usually very friendly towards me! And thirdly, following on from the problems I had when I arrived, I'm always very careful about letting the pupils know where I live, so this means that I have been taking complicated and lengthy detours home! Also, I had a scary walk back from Manu and Marta's the other night. I was walking along the pavement at about 1 am and there was absolutely no-one around (La Roche is dead at 10, let alone 1!) when suddenly I realised that there was a large Alsatian sitting on the verge, eeeek! I made a large circle right round him, luckily he just lifted his head and stared at me and I marched on rather quickly. Absolutely bizarre, I have no idea what he was doing there!
I had a tap at the door the other night from Florien, a German who lives here, he'd heard about my knee and kindly brought me a cream to rub on it. However the cream is meant for horses! How strange! I went to a circus evening on Monday, I spent 2 hours practicing juggling, as I was unable to do any of the activities because of my knee, I can now just about manage 4 balls. Florien also knows how to juggle so he has promised to teach me some tricks, they all look really hard though!
Life at the foyer has been eventful this week, 2 guys have been told to leave over separate incidents, we had a security guard in our corridor consistently all of last night regarding one of them, where the boy 3 doors down from me punched a security guard and smashed up his room and the CCTV camera. I don't think anyone on my corridor got much sleep that night! Otherwise all is well here, we had a yoga session last night which was nice and relaxing and did my knee some good, I hope! It is so frustrating being injured.
Only 2 weeks left of term until Christmas holidays! Things are getting more Christmassy, on the first of December decorations suddenly sprung up everywhere and classes are becoming more relaxed at school, which is nice. Reports of heavy snow in Britain are making me jealous, we've had nothing but rain here (for a change!). Hope you're out enjoying it all on my behalf!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment