Today I was mistaken for a fourteen-year-old by the secretary at the conservatoire (music school). I brought some papers along so I could sign up for the Jazz lessons, and she was very surprised to learn that I was employed by the national ministry of education as an English assistant, and proceeded to take me into the office to quiz her colleague, with much delight, on my age. That said, I haven't had as many "oh sorry, I thought you were one of the pupils" moments at work as the last time I was an assistant, though this may be due to the fact that I was introduced to more members of staff on my first day in each school than in Annecy. I'm working in two schools here, with pupils aged 11-15, and in general, all is going well. I'm keeping up a pretense of being unable to speak or understand French to try and give the pupils a real reason to communicate in English, and a lot of them seem genuinely fascinated that this English girl with no French has come to a place like Réunion! I haven't yet had to do a lot of independent lesson planning, which is kind of nice, but I usually bring a few little extra activities and stuff just in case. The family photo came in useful the other day when there were ten minutes left in a lesson on physical descriptions: "What can you see?" "Your brozer 'as got 'air of Justin Bieber!"
As the proud tenants of a large, conveniently-situated flat in Saint Pierre, my housemates and I are duty-bound to host the majority of assistants' parties, so Hallowe'en was on us. What we lacked in furniture and decorations we made up for in fancy dress, snacks and floorspace (I think 12 people slept over afterwards!). I was a murderous shark constructed largely out of cardboard, and my flatmate was a surfer who I'd mauled; the other two were a zombie and half a palm tree - bear in mind that Americans think that fancy dress at Hallowe'en should be completely unrelated to scary things, as I first found out when my flatmate in Annecy announced that she was going to dress as an 80's dance teacher. The night continued at a club on the seafront, where one of our friends was refused entry because he was wearing shorts...despite the fact that the rest of him was covered in toilet roll trying to pass as mummy bandages, and the rest of us were in equally ridiculous, unclub-like clothing. Fortunately, none of my shark attire was confiscated, and the head provided much amusement all night.
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The four of us in our costumes
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Apple-bobbing!
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The next day, "La Toussaint" or All Saints' Day, was a bank holiday...on a Thursday. We made the most of it by going to étang-salé in the afternoon, where there is an amazing black sand beach and open sea instead of a lagoon bordered by coral reefs. One section of the coast there is dedicated to surfing but further down there are no rocks and it's perfect for playing in the incredible waves, but getting there is more of an ordeal than you'd think! Obviously, we were going to the beach so we were all wearing flip-flops. Big mistake. There was no cloud cover, and the sun had been shining down on the beach all morning, so getting down to the sea from the sparse "forest" by the road involved a careful walk (intended to avoid sinking your flip-flops into the sand) followed by a mad, painful dash across the burning sand. It's worth it, for the huge, beautiful waves, but I will definitely wear trainers next time!
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