Ze French Man

Ladies and gentleman I write to you this evening to inform you that I have had an upsetting baguette slap in the face this week in the realisation that the man I end up marrying will not - as I had always dreamed and hoped - be a FRENCH man. 

And what God-awful creatures could have turned me so against this species you may ask? Well, I give you my terrible 3 personally experienced examples of zese 'Casanovas' who will explain for themselves just why I am now a firm preacher of the motto "3 strikes and you're out". 

Case number 1

French man X- The Cheater  

The French Cheater acts swiftly and with precision. He will make a beeline for his prey, seeming confident, bold. He will adversely dance like a gorilla in a strange, far out way that you kind of dig. You will dance and talk and... get on like a house on fire. He's cute and funny and eventually, he'll ask you to go back with him. You'll say no but he's a try-er. 

"I guess we won't see each other again after tonight."

"Oh yeah, why's that?"

"Because I don't really go to clubs that often."

"Well, you know, that's not the only thing I like to do. For instance, I like coffee...." (I am so sassy in France).

"We can go have coffee tomorrow morning."
"Oh yeah, on a Sunday? Nothing will be open."
"Yeah, we can have coffee tomorrow morning after you come back with me tonight."

Ah. Touché you witty, witty man. But still, no thank-you. And so he will not ask for your number because you do not agree to coffee in bed, and yet you still hope that you will secretly bump into the guy in the streets one day and it will be like a fairytale movie scene because, treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen and all that. 

And then there will come a day when you check the snowy pictures on the University's Facebook page and you will see THE GUY in the picture. Alas! You have found him. As beautiful as ever. 

And BAM

The Cheater has a girlfriend. 

Case Number 2

French Man Y- The Coward

The French Coward is not so much a boy as the other, he has a real job. In fact, he is a teacher. Dresses smart and reminds you a little of the class of an Englishman. He's shy, seemingly harmless, and loves the mountains, just like you hey?! The downside: your paths don't cross that much. 

You realise you know a grand total of 2 young French people well, besides the fact that you are living in France. This guy seems normal and approachable, so you're going to go for it. With the goal of friendship in mind (really, for now... really!) you put a note in his pigeon hole at work, saying if he ever wanted to meet up 1 day to do something, then you'd really appreciate meeting some more people here. Here's my number, call me maybe....?

And nothing. And you know he has received your note because IT IS NOT IN THE PIGEON HOLE ANYMORE. 2 weeks have gone by now. 

Case Number 3

French man Z- The leader on-er 

You go to a bar to watch a bizarrely formed group of middle-aged men play some live French music. You are dancing, grooving to the music. And suddenly, you catch sight of the most beautiful rugged man perched at the back of the room, and he looks at you too. You play a bit of eye footsy before the band's set comes to a close. You and Lydia decide to sit down at a spare table and finish your drinks, and who should come and sit down at the table and ask to join you, but Mr Beautiful with the unshaven beard. 

You'll get chatting. He's sociable and interesting and, did I mention beeeautiful? An architecture student too, arty. They're going to a 'party' after and would we like to join? (party comprised of 5 moody men) You go because you don't want to say bye to him yet- and you don't know many French people (as noted above). You have to be at work at 8am the next morning but "How often do these things happen to us?" says Lydia. 

So you go. And you talk some more. But it transpires that this amazing man is leaving tomorrow because he's from Switzerland and his internship is over. He'll be back in about a week though. As you go to leave at 1.30 he asks you for your number, so you give it to him. And he suggests that maybe we could go for a coffee in the morning before he goes. This sounds quite nice to you so you accept, but you can only do between 9 and 11 am. 

"That's fine" he says. 

You leave, doing a little happy dance with Lydia outside. And he rings you so you have his number, texts to check we're still on for 9am and where will we be meeting. And then you go to sleep.

You go to your 8am class, and soon enough 9 am comes along. You go out in front of the school to meet him but he's not there yet. So you go to the bank whilst you're waiting- maybe he's found it difficult to get up so early. You don't want your students to see you waiting like a loser for some guy. You go back and still no sign, so you call your mum because she'll know what to do: give him a little call to see if it wakes him up (if that is the case). And so you call once and he does not respond and so you go back into work and work on your dissertation, and you never do hear from the guy who went to so much effort to build you up without ever having the intention of seeing you again. 

...

Perhaps my future man will be an Italian, or a Finnish man, or Chinese. Any nationality where I can't understand the brush off will work just fine for me. All I know is, he will not be French.  

And yet, Mr and Mrs Carrot (the real surnames of the lovely market sellers that call me Little Red Riding Hood) have a lovely, KIND-looking son. "Jamais deux sans trois" as the French say. And if there's never 2 bad things without a 3rd, maybe I've had my fill of horrible French men. Is there a rule for the 4th 1 you encounter? 

Perhaps I may not rule each and every single 1 of them out after all...

Until next week's issue of French 'amour' disasters!
Gros bisous (because I can still find love in my heart for you all)

Grenoble Girl
X

STOP SNIFFING MY HAIR! And how do you know I'm English?!

HiHiHi everybody!

I'm back in France! (with 3 weeks de retard!) I do apologize for appearing to have fallen off the face of the blogging Earth in the time that we've been apart- an event prolonged even further by the fact that I forgot my blog login details... So far my time in France in 2013 has been spent re-orientating myself with my beloved Chambery, and recapturing that 'at home' feeling that I had here before Christmas. A fickle character, I feel at home wherever I go really: Chambery= home, Kent= home. Such a floozy.

So Christmas, so long ago now it seems! And yet, that hasn't deterred the Frenchies from leaving up their Christmas decorations and lights paving the streets of town. Have they not heard of the after-12-days-of-Christmas bad luck?! Classic French 'est-ce que je suis bothered' attitude.

En Angleterre, I was reunited with my one... my only... scatty ball of fur...

Ozzy boy!!!!

And of course my beloved friends and family of the human kind....  

                                                                            Lau

                                                                            Sissie Grace

                                                                             My family <3

                                                                         
                                                      Nan's profiteroles, made 'a la maison'......

                                                                          Delicieux!

                                                You can guess what we got for Christmas.....!

                                                                         Binz and Tash

And my other besties who I did not document to camera for some sad reason, but it meant the world to me to see you again.

My brother Elliot (pictured above) is such a charmer that he informed me during the holidays that my blog was too long. As I have almost 4 weeks' of events to update you on and fit into 1 post, I think I'm going to have to be a cop out and give you the brief, bullet pointed version of French happenings that have taken place in that time. I'll be lucky if he's even made it this far in the lecture....

Alrighty, here it goes, in 1 long breath now:

• I was voted 'Character of the year' by 1 of my classes. Even though I didn't win a prize, the sentiment touched me a great deal. 
• Counter to this 'nice' persona, I sent my first ever student out of a class. 15 and 16 year olds sometimes suck, and saying you 'don't care coz it's the last lesson with me' in French won't wash with me anymore: OUT. A shame as he isn't a horrible boy- we have quite a laugh together really- but it tainted our parting with sadness. 
• My 12 hours of work a week are not enough to spread round the English faculty: people want me to work with their classes more and more, and the number of students in my voluntary classes is on the up. :D
• The boys I look after on a Monday got scooters from Santa for Christmas, on which they are much sturdier than their 2 feet: no longer do I have to run after them like a crazy bag shepherd lady to prevent them from tumbling into the road. 
• I got my fringe cut, properly this time.
• My skis were finally taken out of their corner in my room and introduced to the snow. Espace Diamant, Les Arcs, Tignes and Cibel this weekend, I <3 to ski! 

                                                                .... as do Lydia and Cat!

                                                                         .... and Chess!

                                                                   

• Me and Lydia also like to eat. Clearly a pizza with potato on top required a side portion of chips, and a side portion of a second pizza. The occasion? A night of watching P.S. I Love You, because Lydia had never seen it?! Americans ay?
• Guess who came to see me in France???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Laura did! 

      And we went racket walking... or a modernized version of walking with tennis rackets on your feet.

• Many dinner parties have been had, so French! 

                                                                              Raclette.

                                                                     Cheeeeeeeeeeeesey

                                         (American/ English hamburger soiree, pre-Laura visit)

                                  Skiing with Laura (the pole-breaker) and Masakazu, such fun!

• Speaking of Masakazu, he has since moved out to his own place, and we have a neeeew French housemate. 
• Me and Lau also went for coffee with some of my students, new best friends for life.
• As of yesterday I am following a 19th Century literature class at the University, where I will coincidentally be studying 1 of the books I am basing my dissertation on. Fate answered my calling when I decided to go to this 1 and only class that worked with my timetable at the lycee. Listening to French for 2 hours solidly and keeping up enough to take notes really takes it out of you, but I feel so much better for actually doing something in my target language for once. You won't believe how hard it is to find French people to practice French with here, regardless of the fact that you're living in France. 
• Ironically and somewhat inappropriately to my next point, French men do only seem to have that 1 infamous kissing technique. When in Rome and all that...! I guess I did find 1 French person.

Here, I come to the penultimate subject point of my title:

• Why do you keep sniffing my hair French boys?!?! You can guarantee that on every night out- whether it be in a bar or in l'Opera (the happening nightclub here)- there will be at least 1 point during the night where I will feel someone touching my hair. And I shall turn around in time to catch them sniffing it. Or saying 'Schwarzkopf'. How weird is that?! Just because it's a different colour to most of the French population's doesn't mean it's made from anything different, or smells any different for that matter. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

• And yes, I am English, and apparently the whole of the French population seems to know this too. Me:"Un ticket s'il vous plait", Bus driver: "Where are you from?"   

Me: (attempted French) "Can I follow your class just as a casual student?"

Lecturer: "Of course, where are you from?"

Crazy man in the street today: (French) "Do you need a map to cross the road, or maybe you can hold my hand to cross, then the cars will stop."

Me: Awkward laugh

Cray man: "Oh, you are English, you are very nice." 

You see!!!!! Most of the time they know just from 1 single uttered word. I don't know if I'm not making enough euhhhh bahhhhh noises when I speak French, or my hair's too blonde, or my red coat is just not conforming enough to the black dress code for French women, but either way, I. MUST. BLEND. IN. Any suggestions will be gratefully received. 

Other areas where help is needed include classroom games I can play with 11 17 and 18 year old students. Taboo has already been played and was probably the only activity I could get them slightly interested in. Any ideas that will get them talking as much as possible will save me from some really awkward never ending, stretching, infinite hours...

...

Well, this has turned into a longer blog post than I probably would've written had I written it in the usual style, sorry Elliot! I'm off to send an e-mail to a local newspaper about some possible work experience in the journalistic/ publishing world. You never know... 

To finish, I just wanted to wish 1 of my oldest friends a happy 21st birthday for today! I know she'll be reading this and I so wish I could be there to celebrate with you. I hope you're having a day as special as you are. Love you Tash! 

And thank-you to Franybabes for your lovely poem that I received when I got home from walking past a gazillion shops with Valentine's Day flowers and gifts. I may not have found a nice young Frenchman for the occasion, but it doesn't mean I won't get a heartfelt poem nonetheless from someone I love ;) 

I hope you're all having a lovely week, and I'll write you soon.

Gros bisous

Grenoble Girl

I'm going home!!!

                                     
Getting the train home for Christmas
Oh, I can't wait to see those faces
I'm getting the train home for Christmas, yeah
Well I'm moving down that line
And it's been so long
But I will be there
I sing this song
To pass the time away
Sitting on the train 
Getting the train home for Christmas

So all that's left to say (and all I have time to say!) is a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all, may your days be merry and briiiiight. Catch up with you after Christmas, or over Christmas! Come and see me, I've missed you all so much.

A tres vite! 
Gros bisous
A very excited Grenoble Girl

Happy (first 13 days of) Advent!

Coucou one and all,

A happy advent/ start to the Christmas celebrations from France!

1 decorated French kitchen

2 young children and I constructed the world's greatest ever 'igloo' Monday evening thanks to number 3 in my advent calendar. 

                                3 days of heavy snow experienced in my time in Chambery so far

(plus 1 Lydia in the snow, cutie!)

4 items of ski equipment bought for a grand total of 165 euros, bargain!

5 plates of sandwiches made for our festivities by yours truly (and 2 lovely ladies) 

6 assistants all wrapped up at the Christmas market of Lyon 

7 pictures from la fete des lumieres at Lyon this weekend. Incredible! 

8 days left until I come home for Christmas :D 

9 (or more..?) of these home made 'Christmas' cookies eaten last night. Check out Masakazu's fancy volcano cookie! 

10 people in our Italian 'family photo'. Italia!!

On the 11th of December, I finally had a French haircut and got French highlights! I think it went well, managed to persuade them not to put dark brown or red streaks through it and it's still long enough to keep me warm in the winter cold, so all in all a success. Wish I'd had the courage to ask for my fringe to be cut a bit shorter but hey, there's always the good old-fashioned method of a pair of scissors and a mirror. D.I.Y! 

2 hours minus 12 minutes until I meet the younger sister of a boy at the lycee whose mum wants me to tutor her in English. 3 jobs, say whaaat?!

13 grapes bought from my 'regular' fruit and veg stall in the market this week where the lady calls me Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) and says she loves the way I say 'pomme'. 

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeee. 

More 'windows to be opened' very soon! 

Christmas cheer and love to you all, and I'll be seeing you in no time at all now. 'Window number 21' of the advent calendar, you know who it is ;) 

Gros bisous with a sprig of mistletoe

Grenoble Girl

X

P.S. I just wanted to thank each and every one of you for following my adventures in France and caring enough to see how I'm getting on. I have reached 1000 cheeky blog views and am more than touched by every single 1. I hope you enjoy reading my entries as much as I enjoy sharing them with you. 

Oh, and a special shout out to my readers in the Philippines, whoever you may be!