'Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes, Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes...'

Those of the first two lines of the famous French poet, Paul Valéry's poem 'Le cimetière marin', which is about the cemetery in Sète, which is just down the road from my apartment. Paul Valéry was born in, and lived a lot of his life in Sète, and so is much celebrated here, with many roads, a square, and even the local lycée (school) named after him.

 So being the 'nouveau Sètois' that we are, we decided it was time we did the obligatory Sète visit to the Musée Paul Valéry, which has an exhibition dedicated to him and his life's work. The museum/gallery also had lots of artwork, mainly of Sète which was interesting to see, especially as we now know the area, and so could recognise the paintings. Sète is a very picturesque place, so the paintings were beautiful. 

There was also a exhibition of paintings by Miró, a famous Spanish artist whose works have excited the locals here in Sète and Frontignan immensely - I have been asked by several people if I have been to see it. Personally, I found his artwork to be too abstract for my liking, and as much as I hate it when people devalue paintings by saying, yeah well I could have done that, I did find myself saying that when looking at an image of what was supposedly a woman in the street, but all I could see was a round blob with lines sticking out of it! Despite that, it was a good experience, and it was great to learn more about the famous Paul Valéry.

This is the cemetery with the gorgeous view that Valéry writes about in his poetry.

Amy and I have also made several trips into Montpellier over the last two weeks, visiting the big shopping area just outside of town called the Odysseum, which has so many nice shops - I can't wait for my Erasmus grant to finally come through! We have also been to the cinema on La Place de la Comédie to see the new Woody Allen film, Magic in the Moonlight, with Colin Firth and Emma Stone, which was quite an odd plot, but was good to see, even with the French subtitles! We also made a trip to 'The Shakespeare', an English pub in Montpellier, which was fun to take Amy to, although I will still have to take her to one in England to get the full experience!

My teaching has been going well so far, and I have been having fun teaching the children the words for family members and body parts. The royal family facemasks were popular, although I was surprised that they didn't really recognise them - not even Kate Middleton, who seems to be on the front page of most French magazines! I also did the English alphabet with my youngest classes, and they were completely adorable in their attempts to spell out their names in English to me!

I also met another English lady who helps to teach in one of my schools who is married to a french man and has 4 older children. Her second eldest, her son, is at Warwick Uni doing engineering, so she was very excited to meet me! They live in Frontignan, so she invited me over after school for a cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge made by her which was very nice, as although the French make amazing pastries, they don't quite make the same quality of cake! So I went over and met her husband and her youngest daughter who is completely bilingual, which was nice, and spent about an hour and a half talking about home, uni, and how my life in France is going so far.

They also told me that on one weekend in December, a temporary ski slope is built on one of the roads in Sète out of real snow, so I will be looking out for that in a couple of weeks time!

In the meantime, au revoir!

Les Vacances

It would seem that the French really don't like to work much, what with their two hour lunch breaks, and now a two week holiday simply for 'Toussaints' which is All Saints' Day, the day after Halloween. As much as I really didn't need a holiday yet after only actually working for two days in my schools, it has been nice to use the opportunity do some exploring and have some visitors too.

In the first week of the holidays, my friend Emily from uni, who is in Angoulême for her year abroad, came to stay and so I took her around the many sights of Sète and Montpellier which was good fun, particularly with the beautiful weather that we have been having!

Obviously having lived here for a month now, I had already seen a lot of what we went to see, but we did go up to the top of the famous Mont St. Clair that Sète is built on, which is somewhere that I hadn't had the chance to go to yet, despite many people recommending it to me! Those people were definitely right to recommend it though, as there were beautiful views of the whole of Sète, the Étang de Thau, and even Frontignan. La Croix de Saint Clair which is found at this viewpoint was also very striking, and was next to a pretty Medieval Catholic Church which people apparently still go to, despite it being right at the top of this very high hill! 

We found the most beautiful houses on the Mont St. Clair, which were fully equipped with huge swimming pools and gardens to accompany the amazing views that they were fortunate to have - it is clear to see that there are some pretty wealthy people living in this part of Sète!

On one of the evenings we went to the local cinema in Sète to see a new French film called 'Samba' which was about a Senegalese immigrant called Samba, and his fight to gain citizenship and the right to work and earn money in France. I know it sounds very serious, but it was actually very funny (in the way that only a French film can be!) as well as providing and interesting insight into French immigration policy, which combined with a cute love story and some Senegalese culture made me very happy!

We also toured the historic parts of Montpellier, which of course also included a tour of a few different eateries around town! It is safe to say that if you ever want a great crêpe of frozen yoghurt in Montpellier, I know exactly where to take you!

In the second week of our holidays, Amy and I took a trip to Bordeaux with two other American girls called Olivia and Rachel, who are also English language assistants in secondary schools around Montpellier. The others were staying for the whole week, but as my parents were coming to visit, I could only stay for a couple of days, and we all stayed in a youth hostel near to the centre of town which was great -after having tried and tested several different youth hostels across Europe in the summer, this one rated pretty highly on the scale (and not just because of its free petit déjeuner!). As Angoulême isn't far from Bordeaux, Emily met up with us for the day, and we had a lovely day of Bordelaise food and a bus tour of all the sights of Bordeaux. It really is a very beautiful city, with its Eighteenth century buildings and the Garonne river; I would definitely recommend it as a great city break! 

Next up was a mammoth train/tram/bus journey straight from Bordeaux to meet my parents at Montpellier airport. We did all the usual touristy things in Montpellier and Sète, and even went on 'Le Petit Train' of Montpellier which was great to see all the main attractions of the city, going into parts of it that I had never been to. I also took them to our local hypermarché 'Auchan' which was a fun experience! On their last morning we drove to Cap d'Agde which is near Sète, end of the sort of island that we are on - I'd never been before, so it was good to go somewhere different, although Amy and I decided that we still preferred Sète (but then we are biased!!).

Now we have finally finished our two week holiday, and are looking ahead to starting the next term of actual, proper teaching, so I have been preparing some fun lesson plans for the children, including one with royal family face masks that I am particularly looking forward to!

I am sure that will make for an interesting blog post for next time...