"Qu'est-ce que tu prends commme elixir de jeunesse?"

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.

The four of us in our costumes

Apple-bobbing!

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!

No longer homeless

Writing a blog retrospectively, I have discovered, is kind of hard work…so here’s a more up-to-date post about what I’ve been doing in the last week or so:

1. Signed for a flat (FINALLY!)

After visiting many agencies and viewing several different flats, and having our hopes raised then inevitably dashed the next day when we were informed we lacked certain documents or had to sign a six year contract, a man we had tried to contact about a week earlier got back to us about his flat. It’s big, central, but came completely empty: a toilet, shower, kitchen sink and two lightbulbs were provided, but the rest we are having to find ourselves! Fitting out the flat with furniture and the other necessaries (without spending a ridiculous amount of money) has been our major preoccupation over the last few days. Several people waiting for buses were amused on Monday by four “English” girls (I say “English”, because two are American) walking past carrying a bed frame, a bucket and some bamboo canes which they had just discovered - with much delight - in a pile at the end of someone’s drive, waiting to be thrown out. This was repeated several times, although usually with cardboard boxes of varying size. Our new flat is amazing! Even though the first day all four of us were actually there there was no running water. For about 24 hours. Not because this is some underdeveloped country in the middle of nowhere where locals live in mud huts...but because the day the water was stopped because the former tenant cancelled his contract, I went to sign up for it under our names, only to be told that we wouldn’t get water until tomorrow. When I asked for more details, I was told “before 4pm”. Great. Cue a visit to the local supermarket for bottled water…

First dinner in our new flat

2. Spent a weekend in Cilaos with other Language Assistants.

Cilaos is a small town up in a “cirque” – some geographical formation with either glacial or volcanic origins (I’m afraid I don’t really know any more than that). It takes an hour and a half of narrow, winding roads uphill in a bus from the nearest main town to get there, as well as a couple of frighteningly narrow tunnels. The landscape is absolutely stunning and well worth the journey!  The town sits in the bottom of a sort of bowl, whose sides are made of steep, jagged, rocky mountains. When we arrived, it was raining lightly and slightly chilly. The assistant I was sat next to on the bus immediately pulled out her raincoat. Raincoat?? I hadn’t even brought one…there are a large number of regional microclimates here, so while in the West and South there’s been a three month drought, it rains almost every day in the East, which is where she works.  The Saturday was pretty relaxed, and we all got to get to know some of the other assistants better and had a good laugh with some excellent guitar playing (and some not so excellent singing) around a fire. On Sunday, those of us from Saint Pierre got up bright and early and set out to do the “La Chapelle” hike. Our destination was a sort of cave in a cliff face which is said to resemble a chapel. On arrival, we realised it was actually a narrow gorge with a waterfall inside! We had great fun scrambling around on the rocks and daring to get under the waterfall…I didn’t make it right up to the waterfall – it became very difficult to breathe very suddenly when you got close.

The main view as we hiked to La Chapelle

Our destination

This is how close to the bus the tunnel walls were!

3. Ate cake made from root vegetables

In my first week here I got to try some “gateau patates”, a dense cake made from sweet potatoes which is odd at first, but really quite tasty. Apparently it’s a very popular creole cake, but there are many other types made from different vegetables: yesterday I went to the “Florilèges” festival at a town very close to Saint Pierre called Le Tampon (yes, I know…) and one of the food stalls in the midst of the very many plant and flower stalls was selling all sorts of cakes made from root vegetables. I don’t even know what the English names for these vegetables are…the most interesting one was probably “gateau cambar”: bright purple, and that’s without any kind of added colouring!! Doesn’t taste half as good as gateau patates, though. 

Creole cakes and sweets

Why

So I'm finally getting round to writing the blog I've been vaguely referring to for several weeks, and I don't know where to start. Hopefully, my blogs will improve with time, and you'll actually be able to enjoy reading them without feeling obliged to do so in order to keep up with what I'm doing!

For those of you who don't know (or can't remember), I'm spending seven months in the French overseas département of La Réunion, a small-ish volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, about halfway between Madagascar and Mauritius (go on, do a search on Google Maps..!). Why? I decided to re-apply to be an English Language Assistant in France (NB - I did this job 2010-2011 for the year abroad of my degree) as a "back-up" graduate plan, but the back-up somehow became my first choice when I was allocated the job in Réunion. Why wouldn't you spend 12 hours a week earning 1400€ a month on a tropical island with mountains, waterfalls, beaches and an active volcano?!

So after flying from Newcastle to Paris to Mauritius to Saint Denis almost two weeks ago, here I am. First impressions were that my nearest main town, Saint Pierre - reputed party capital of the island - was not all it's cracked up to be. Admittedly, I haven't been out to a bar or club, but the place seemed a little tatty, incredibly windy, and everyone seems to vanish at about half past six once it's dark. But it's growing on me: there's a beach and a fantastic lagoon which is great for swimming and snorkelling, and on Saturday mornings  the sea front is taken over by a huge, colourful market selling everything from live poultry to sugar cane juice to French cheese. One of my favourite things about being here, though, has got to be the fact that almost wherever you go, you get either a sea or a mountain view.

I visited both of the schools I'll be working in during my first week here, and have been staying with one of the teachers. My hosts have been really lovely, but unfortunately they live a little out of the way, so I am looking to share a flat somewhere in the centre of Saint Pierre with a few other assistants so that I'll be able to get the bus easily to both of my schools. Fingers crossed we'll find one soon...!