This is the last of my long-winded, rambling writings on life here in sunny Sete. One of the reasons for us changing our website is so that I (as opposed to Steve) can update it easily, when I want. So from now on there’ll just be shorter bits and pieces as and when exciting things happen (is this not what facebook and twitter are for I hear you ask?). Hmm, maybe…
It’s February…and that means that we are halfway through our ‘5 year plan’. Our 5 year plan being that unless we had stayed for at least 5 years then we hadn’t given our French experience a proper go.
So, this 357 page document is going to sum up if our expectations of life in Sete have been met, plus various other trivia.
Our aim: Children who can speak another language in addition to English (and maybe us - a bit - as a by-product)
The reality: Imo is pretty much fluent but obviously there’s still loads of vocab she will gain as the time passes. Her friends tell me that her accent is faultless, but that she makes errors with ‘le’ and ‘la’. Mooshi apparently speaks French at school but seeing as she doesn’t speak French at home we can’t vouch for that! (Although she had her first playdate before Christmas and I was really surprised to hear her chatting away in French to the friend and her mother.) She’s very aware that there are 2 different languages, and she doesn’t mix the two.
Steve is doing his best to put me to shame by enrolling on an advanced French course. His grammar is amazing, and mine, well, mine is lacking… I am very much the laggard as far as the acquisition of French is concerned. I promised myself that once Mooshi started school I would study some French grammar basics, but somehow that task always falls to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list.
Our aim: Good Weather
The reality: Like the rest of the world, recently the weather here has been unpredictable and has even caused the locals to scratch their heads, not to mention new arrivals such as ourselves who had been told ‘it never snows and it never goes below freezing’. (yeah right!!!) The winters have been harsh. The cold, cold wind blowing from the north and no warming Gulf Stream. As soon as it’s cold here everyone teases us that it is English weather. I have tried to explain a hundred times that UK winters are usually warmer than here. The upsides of the winters here are that they are shorter than in the UK, it is invariably sunny and the sun is so much warmer than in the UK so that (wind permitting) it is quite possible to sit outside in the winter sun and feel warm. One indicator for us of how clement the weather is is how often we eat outside, and this year has been down big time as compared with the other years.
The summers have been fabulous. The Autumns wonderful, although we did have a really cold spell in October which knocked us sideways (weeks and weeks of 20 + degrees followed by a week of 3 degrees before bouncing back up to the teens). The two springs we have had have been a very mixed bag, with fantastic days interspersed with some pretty lousy weather.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, the HUGE diurnal variation is so very different to the UK; especially in the Autumn when night temps start dropping to single figures but the daytime temps still soar to the mid-20s. I may take the girls to school wearing tights, skirt, top, jumper, coat but they can go back after lunch in summer dresses and no coat or jumper.
Our aim: Something ‘Foreign’:
The Reality: Although we feel at home here I still get a kick out of all the foreign things we see on a day-to-day basis. The trees are the most obvious; we look out of our window to mimosa, fig, olive and eucalyptus trees, and on our way to school pass almond, orange and oleander trees – and of course normal ol’ boring palm trees. The fauna is also an unexpected delight – one day I walked into the bathroom to see a gecko, about 12 cm long, leaping on to Steve to join him in the bath. I think it had been sheltering in the towel on the towel rail. The downside of the fauna is the presence of mosquitoes. But sleeping with mosquito nets still feels very foreign (especially with the sound of the fan whirring on warmer nights).
Driving on the right no longer feels foreign, but some of the driving is definitely from another planet. There is little regard for speed limits, seat belts, child seats, zebra crossings, the use of indicators etc… Yesterday, driving to Montpellier I saw a big sign for an ‘école d’Auto de la comédie’ – I though that rather nicely summed it up!!!
The centre of Sete positively bristles foreign. The streets are a mix of French and Moroccan; rows of buildings with ornate, carved wooden doors, pretty verandas overhanging the streets, weekly markets where Arabic is the lingua franca. The canal system is Venetian and the boulangeries definitely French.
By choosing Sete we had hoped to avoid EES (Ex-pat Enclave Syndrome), and in this we have largely succeeded. Sete has a population of 40,000, and we have met about 4 British people and know of the existence of about 3 others. I’m not anti-British but we wanted to immerse ourselves in the French experience and did not want to be like others ex-pats who find themselves, unwittingly or not, living in villages now populated largely by Brits, and socialising only with Brits. (That said, I can now see how fish ‘n chip shops and pubs flourished in places like Torremolinos.)
We hang out mainly at the:
1. school gates (all French except one Russian mum, and one German mum)
2. tennis club (French, French, French although people from Paris or Lyon are considered foreign and there is a lady from Switzerland and a lady from Holland but they’ve both been here for yonks and are totally fluent and accepted etc.)
3. beach (in the summer) – very French, with a handful of English, if that, and a surge of German visitors at the end of the summer season.
Three times now we’ve been to a 2nd hand English book sale. This is held in a café in Pezenas (about an hour by car from Sete); it is weird to live our French lives here in Sete and then be thrown into Angloland. Everyone (er, most people… ) are friendly but it’s good to get back to France when the sale is over.
As the time goes by we keep discovering more and more things we can do – many of which are on our doorstep. Last September we cycled along a new cycle path which goes right along the beach, 12 kms to a campsite, and found a couple of beach-front restaurants which could have easily been on some lazy, coconut palm-fringed beach in the Carribean. In November we visited the dinosaur park in Meze (about 15 kms away) for the day and last week we went for a walk just 20 minutes from us by car, around the Etang (Lake) and saw hundreds of flamingos doing their thing, er, that’s standing on one leg. In December we had the ‘Ski a Sete’ for the 3rd time – watch the video of Imo skiing on her webpage. And this weekend Steve is popping down to Barcelona by train to watch a footy match (like you do...).
Results!!!!
So scores on the doors for our expectations:
1) Speaking French: 8/10 for the girls, 5/10 for Steve and 3/10 for me!
2) Weather: overall 7.5/10 (but the summer gets 9.5/10 and the winters 5 or so)
3) Foreign: 9/10
Other news
Birthdays: Since I last wrote in August 2010 Mooshi has turned 3 and Imo 7. Mooshi celebrated her birthday with us (and special guests Granny, Grandpa and Uncle Tom) and was thrilled to have balloons, blow out her candles etc.
Imo had her 7th birthday, and for her present I turned the attic into a hideaway for her. She loves it so much that at first she wouldn't come down - only for food. The access to it is via a not-very-stable ladder, and so far we have managed to keep it secret from Mooshi, as once she discovers where Imo skulks off to it’ll be hard keeping Mooshi from trying to climb up. Imo had a party here with 6 friends and lots of good old-fashioned games which I found from the 1970 paperback, The Whitbread Book of Party Games (no, they're not beer drinking games).
Mooshi at school: Mooshi started school (Petite Section, equivalent to Pre-school in the UK) in September, aged 3 years, 3 days. This was a totally novel thing for her as she hadn’t ever been in creche, or away from me before. On the first morning the parents were allowed in to the classroom. Mooshi was very content and sat down and started doing some colouring and then said ‘go away now mummy’! Gulp! Anyway, 3 hours later I came back and she was all smiles, and has gone back happily each morning since. This is French school though so it’s 4 days a week (not Wednesdays). Most of her class go in the afternoons as well but seeing as all they do is sleep in little beds in a dormitory for 2 hours I’d rather have her at home doing something else.
After about 3 weeks at school the teacher asked if we could start calling Mooshi Lucia. Only reasonable I suppose. So we took the brave step of saying ‘yes’. And the next day at lunch I asked ‘where is Mooshi?’ and she said ‘gone’. Although not for long, and she is now very much Lucia at school but Mooshi at home (or even Mooshi-Lulu).
Mooshi’s language is coming along, in both French and English but whereas Imo arrived here with a good grasp of written and spoken English Mooshi did not, so she is learning in a different way and at a different pace. For example, she told me that she fell over in the playground, I said 'Did Perrine (the teacher) pick you up?' and she said, 'No, Mooshi pick me up me self'. And similarly, when Steve goes off to his French lessons on Tuesday afternoons Mooshi says, ‘Will him take himself to school?’.
Imo at school: Imo started her 3rd year at school in France, now in CE1 (Year 3 UK equivalent). She has a really good teacher and lots of friends. One of my intentions had been to learn French at the same time and tempo as Imo by helping her with her homework. Fat chance. 1. Homework time is at 5.30pm after Imo is home from school, and that’s when I’m starting to cook, and 2. It’s all already way over my head. The level of grammar is high, she’s probably at about the level I was for my ‘O’-level English. So Steve is her homework guru and he and Imo must be doing OK as she came top in French last term!! She’s dance mad and dances at every available moment, including in her dance class on Wednesday mornings. She plays tennis about once a week, weather permitting in the winter, especially as our club has red clay courts which are not the most practical in a wet, cold winter. For a reason which is totally beyond me Imo’s class goes on Classe Verte again in May, where they go up the Alps for a week to learn about nature etc. Imo is thrilled and can’t wait to go. Her eagerness to go and her independence are both good, but also disheartening…
My spare time (also entitled ‘progress on the house’)
Everyone has been asking me what I have been doing with my 10 hours spare time a week (first time in 7 years to those of us who count childcare as work thank you very much). Well, during September we had visitors, so I was busy doing hostess duties, and then, this being France, we had a run of greves. In fact I think we were quite a long way into term before Mooshi actually had a whole week in school due to greves. But then finally I got my 10 hours!
The first priority was varnishing the shutters and doors outside before the winter set in, this takes sooo much longer than I had imagined. Plus, all the varnishes here tend to be for use between 12 and 25 degrees, and because of our climate here it’s often less than 12 in the night but far more than 25 during the day. Anyway, that task done I set about making a ‘sleeping space’ (in lieu of a bedroom) for Mooshi. Unless you’ve been here it is impossible to explain, but basically where the old upstairs kitchen was, outside our bedroom, is now a largish landing with a large wooden beam running across it. I’ve re-vamped the flooring, put in some shelves, replastered where the old kitchen tiles were, painted the walls, and hung a large thick curtain along the beam to separate off a space for Mooshi.
That job done (and Mooshi very happy in her new ‘space’) I set about re-decorating the guest room and en suite. This felt like a mammoth task as it is a half-below-ground room, with a sort of damp, uninviting feel to it, and was in a very poor state, lots of peeling paint etc especially on the ceiling. The room now also has a new floor, and the disgusting cold ‘hospital tiles’ have been covered – albeit with lino squares but oh so much warmer on the feet and more pleasing to the eye. After Christmas I decorated our bedroom (new floor and paint job), and that for now is all I’m doing inside the house.
Next stop is the garden and the exterior of the house, but I’m waiting for warmer weather to start on that…
And with the rest of my time, just the normal day-to-day cleaning/cooking chores which have been so much more easily accomplished without Mooshi helping.
NB Hurrah, we also now have a new boiler to replace the old and broken one which I put up with for 4 months, but began to draw the line in October when I was having to give the children cold baths and wash their hair with cold water…ugh. Luxury now – one turn of the tap and the water is hot. (Although it’s a condensing boiler, and on days when it is cold and is being used a lot it doesn’t half produce a lot of water. I’ve got a 15 litre old paint tub under the outflow which I have to empty every other day to avoid it overflowing.)
Christmas 2010
This year we went back to the UK for Christmas. Our tickets (by train) were booked for 23rd December and up ‘til the last minute we were wondering whether or not we would brace ourselves for the long queues and possible chaos. We decided to brave it and were really very lucky as everyone else seemed to have cancelled and it was our quickest check-in ever and the carriage was barely quarter-full. So, we arrived in snowy Britain and drove the hire car to Uncle Nick’s in Hemel Hempstead. All was fine until the last street or two when the roads were covered with thick, compacted ice. We skidded (Steve said we slithered) to a halt outside Nick’s new house and, having been told that there would be no decorations (bah hum bug) were met with festoons of flashing lights and suitable Christmas stuff. We helped Nick celebrate his birthday on the 24th by singing Happy Birthday about, ooh, 57 times….. That night Pere Noel located our girlies and slid down the chimney to imbibe beer and chocolate, leaving some presents before heading off to the next house.
The thick snow remained on the ground the next morning so we went tobogganing down a perfect ‘nursery slope’ in a little vale about 50m from Nick’s house. Given that we (well, Uncle Nick) did not own a sledge, we tried various items – a metal tray (useless), a black bin bag (not bad actually), and one of those nearly see-through A3 chopping mats – which was excellent. It provided hours of fun, before retiring frozen back to the house at 5pm to open pressies. (Mooshi took about an hour to defrost.)
On Boxing Day we headed off to my parents plus all 3 of my siblings in Lee-on-Solent (or Solent-on-Lee as my Aussie friends prefer to call it). We had a bit of a spending spree there and filled up two huge boxes (later sent by Parcelsplease – very good service) with paraphernalia which is cheaper in the UK than France, plus our Xmas pressies.
1st January 2011
We came back to France on New Year's Day, via an early morning visit to Steve’s Aunt. And then on to Sete… The view from the window on the Eurostar between Calais and Paris was amazing – something like scenes from Dr Zhivago - just miles and miles of very bleak, snow-covered ground.
Time to reflect on those important little things missed by not living in the UK anymore:
1) Cheese & onion pasties at service stations
2) Mature cheddar cheese
3) Top Gear
4) Unlimited supply of, and access to, jars of sandwich spread (erm, now is probably the time to say that I bought one jar back with me, and er, ate it in one day, without telling Steve. It’s just too goddamn addictive.)
5) Fish ‘n chips
Other trivia (and you’re almost at the end so keep going, Dear Reader…)
Housework: one day I heard the hoover going and thought that Steve had decided to help out a bit. My joy (?total, utter disbelief) was short-lived, as he had merely tripped over it, knocking the ‘on’ button. Hey ho…
Charity shops: the French in general don’t ‘do’ charity shops. They’re experts at car boot sales, and flea markets, but just not charity shops. Recently I plucked up courage to visit the offices of the Secours Populaire, as I knew that they collected old clothes etc but wasn’t sure of the set-up. I had a bag full of washed and ironed, but no longer wanted, clothes. I got a very warm welcome and was shown a huge store house full of clothes, bric-a-brac-type stuff etc. I was then invited to go into the ‘shop’. This was a tiny room full of clothes which my nose deduced had not been washed…. Anyway, that aside, I got the impression that the clothes were for people who actually really needed them – poor immigrants, the homeless etc. The woman in the shop was helping out a Romanian man (almost in rags) find clothes for his little boy, and then she said to me: