A Very French Day.

Yesterday was possibly the most French day of my life so far. Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this post.

I awoke at the rather early time of 7am, and opened the curtains to find the sun peeping over the trees, sparkling onto a dew-encrusted spider web on the window. For breakfast, I made myself a couple of cheese-and-ham croissants, and ate them while watchin Télématin (the french version of BBC Breakfast).


Delicious, but probably/definitely bad for me.

I had only one lesson, with the 3euro, the best class in the school. We talked about films, and described film posters, while sneakily learning vocabulary along the lines of 'foreground', 'background', 'next to' and so on...
After my lesson, I ended up talking about French literature to one of the French teachers from my school. She was impressed that i'd read Sartre's 'Huis Clos'. I didn't tell her we were force-fed it at university, but managed to hold a fairly reasonable conversation nonetheless.

After such a strenuous day at work, I caught the tram, and helped an elderly lady carry her shopping trolley onto the tram. We then talked all the way back to my tram stop - she told me about her grandchildren, and the time when she visited London with her husband, which was in the 1960s. At my tram stop, I got off, and popped into the bread shop, where they knew what I wanted. I feel like a proper local now!


Flower in the shed!

I ate my lunch (tuna baguette) in my little garden - it's March 5th, and already outside dining! Oh, and my narcissus is flowering now too. Spring! In the afternoon, I wandered off to town. The temperature was 15C, and i've never seen the sky so blue! The town centre was bustling with people, many of them sitting outside cafés in the sun. I joined them, and had an ice cream which looked like a flower. It was delicious!


The vanilla ice cream


Ridiculously blue sky. Exciting photograph.

In the evening, I went to a party at another assistant's house, which is actually above a church. A bit of a bizarre location, but it was a good evening. We got there a bit early, so we went to a nearby bar beforehand. It turned out it was very much a bar for local people, and we got stared at by the seven people at the bar, until they found out we were English, and therefore 'interesting'. We spoke to a few of them for about half-an-hour, then went on to the party. There were people from all over the world at the party, and the most communal language was French, so I spoke a fair amount.

I got back tot he shed at 3am, and made myself a nice cup of tea. The day had been so French that I needed a nice cup of PG Tips to remind me i'm still English. I even drank it with my little finger stretched out.


No idea who this guy is, but he's kindly demonstrating my tea-drinking pose.

Year Abroad in Nantes help.

I can see from the magical see-who's-looking-at-my-site program that there are a lot of people visiting this site after Googling 'Year abroad Nantes' or something along those lines.

If you're one of those people, I recommend going to this website:

www.assistantsinfrance.com

Ot has everything you need to know: what to pack, where to go, what to say etc., as well as a chance to talk to the other assistants who'll be in Nantes next year. Definitely worth a visit!

A bit of Londres.

I know the title says 'Gavin's life in Nantes', but I thought i'd say a bit more about the holidays I spent in England.

I went for a midweek-weekend in London with Frida which included a We Are Scientists gig, and a snazzy hotel.

The hotel was the Wyndham Grand, in Chelsea. Being a 5-star hotel, it's normally about £500 a night, but they were refurbishing the gym and the restaurant, so we managed to get it vastly cheaper. We weren't planning on exercising or restauranting anyway, so it made no difference to us!


Frida relaxing in the lounge area


One of the TVs


Masses of marble

The hotel suite was the poshest i've ever seen. It was almost too extravagant, with two flat screens TVs, a bathroom with more marble than Lord Elgin, and a bed roughly the size of Belgium.

The We Are Scientists gig was in a tiny venue called The Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen. There were about 200 people there, and many of them seemed to be press or radio DJs, as the show was part-previewing their new album.

Before the show, Frida and I spied the singer sidling past the bar, so we went up, said hello, and got our photo taken with him.


A rather blurry, but vaguely-alright photo of the gig

Frida, Keith Murray and Me

The next day, I foolishly decided to accompany Frida to Oxford street. For those of you who do not know her particularly well, she likes to shop. A lot. Luckily, i'm quite good at moaning, so we eventually compromised and went shopping, but for coffee. Yum.

From a teaching point of view, visiting London is good, as it seems to be one of the pupils' favourite post-holiday question: "Deed you go London et see ze qween élizabette two? ". This time, I can actually say yes, and tell them all that the Queen is very well, thank you very much.

Back in Nantes, again,

I've just returned to Nantes from my half-term holiday, which I spent in England. it was nice to be back in the country, and see various people who I haven't seen for a while.

Reading isn't exactly the nicest of places, by a long way, but it made a nice change from French life for a bit. I stayed with Frida, who lives in a studenty road near Reading University. It's a typical English-city area, clogged with cars, and with row upon row of identical brick-built houses.



Being in England also meant that I could do some good ol' English shopping. Sainsbury's garish orange bags have never looked so good. I thus returned with a strange assortment of food:

Dairy Milk chocolate
Hobnobs
Rich Tea biscuits
Twiglets
Mayonnaise
Mini Eggs
Fig Rolls
Nescafé Gold Blend

This looks like a reasonable list, except for the fact that I hardly ever eat any of these foods when i'm in England. I have no idea why I decided to buy them, but it temporarily makes my food cupboard look British, until the sneaky croissants start to take over again...

Fimo Fire.

Evening entertainment is pretty limited in Nantes. There are the bars, of course, but neither my liver or my wallet benefit from going to bars night after night. So, myself and another assistant, Caitlin, came up with the thrilling idea of making buttons and other assorted objects from Fimo.



Fimo, for those who don't know, is a clay-like plastic-polymer, which comes in a variety of colours. We bought red, purple, glittery-blue and granite, and then started to make various things with the Fimo. I made a beer can, a guitar, an elephant, and and an assortment of buttons. Caitlin made a mermaid, rabbit, more buttons, a butterfly and a ladybird.


Here's the elephant, unicorn, hearts, buttons, mermaid, musical note and starfish, in happier times.


I was particularly happy with my replica of a beer can.

It said on the packet that we needed to bake them in the oven for 30 minutes in order for them to harden. So, sitting them on a baking tray, we slid them into Caitlin's mini-oven, turned it on, and went to sit at the kitchen table.


Caitlin puts the Fimo in the oven, mere minutes from disaster...

Barely five minutes later, I suddenly smelled smoke. Thinking they were just a little bit over-cooked, I went over to the oven to take them out. Upon opening the oven, flames leapt out and started to lick at the cupboard door, quickly filling the entire apartment with thick black smoke. We looked for a fire extinguisher, but, being France, there wasn't one. We unplugged the oven from the socket, and closed the door, hoping to starve it of oxygen and put it out. However, there was still plenty of air getting in through the vents at the side, keeping the fire steadily raging inside the oven, puffing out gallons of smoke.

By this point, Caitlin and I were hanging out of the window, trying not to breathe in the dense smoke, and gasping for air. The fire was showing no sign of getting smaller, so in one last effort before escaping, I mustered as much breath as I could, opened the oven, and blew. This actually put out the fire, while simultaneously blowing a thick cloud of sooty smoke right into my face.


The smoke slowly starting to disperse.

With the fire finally extinguished, we once again took to hanging out of the window, waiting for the smoke to disperse a bit before surveying the damage. After about ten minutes, we decided to extract the offending Fimo from the oven. Everything we'd made, everything we'd spent hours carefully crafting, was ruined. Not just over-cooked, not just burnt, but literally carbonised. We now have a variety of interestingly-shaped pieces of charred Fimo:



Next artistic endeavour? Charcoal drawing.

Trams and the Sillon.

I recently seem to have developed a rather unhealthy interest in the Nantes Trams. I've never really been a huge fan of public transport as a rule - too expensive, too unreliable, too many strange people.

Then, I moved to France, and ecountered the TAN network. Sad as it may seem, I think it may be one of the things I miss most when I leave at the end of my year abroad. The Number 98 in Horsham just doesn't quite cut the mustard, i'm afraid...

There are three tramlines in Nantes, cleverly named Line One, Two and Three. There's also Line Four, which is not actually a tram, but a 'Busway'. Basically, a bus which wasn't cool enough to be a tram, but the other trams let him play anyway.

This is the basic map of the three lines:




I live on line three, by 'Longchamp', which i've marked in red on the map (blue line, top left). One of my schools is right by the other labelled stop, 'Sillon de Bretgane'. The word 'sillon' means 'furrow' in English, and so the stop translates roughly to something romantic about ancient ploughs and sweeping farmland. In reality though, this next photo is the 'Sillon de Bretagne' - a towering montrosity of 1960s council flats, and apparently one of the least desirable places to live in Nantes.


The Sillon de Bretagne - my school's tennis courts are the red blobs on the far left of the picture.

Needless to say, I didn't take this photo. Some of my younger pupils asked if i'm taller than the Sillon, but i'm not. Honestly.

La Cigale

I don't think i've ever gone out specifically for breakfast before. It's just one of those meals which is best had in the comfort of your own home. That is, unless you happen to live in Nantes, in which there is a much better location: La Cigale.


The front entrance to the brasserie


'La Cigale' is an art-nouveau brasserie which dates from 1895. As far as I could tell from the interior, it's barely changed in the last 115 years. There are frescoes on the ceilings, extravagantly-tiled walls, and the biggest mirror i've ever seen in my life. The decor, combined with the smartly-clad waiters makes you feel as though you've just stepped into the late 1800s.


Well-dressed waiter just walking out of shot...


The word 'Cigale' is French for 'cricket', and the ornate tiles are appropriately, but subtly based around the insects. It felt a bit silly taking photos inside a restaurant, but I managed to get a few before people started to look at me strangely...



A close-up of some of the tiles that were on every single wall


The breakfast itself was pretty good. I had a croissant, a pain au chocolat, two pieces of toast (accompanied with apple compote, caramel and marmalade), coffee and freshly-squished orange juice. Delicious!