I Am My Mother

I've turned into my mother, and not in a good way.

During my youth, it was always my mother who was responsible for getting rid of bugs in the house. Unfortunately my mother has a "live and let live" policy towards creepy crawlies, so my sister and I were instilled with the belief that you really have to catch the stupid spider or whatever and throw it outside instead of just spraying it with something horrible and toxic and moving on. Anyway, my mother is a real expert at throwing bugs outside. She shows no fear whatsoever, even in the face of the biggest spiders you can imagine.

After we left home, my sister and I lived together in Sydney for ages, and we both became a bit more proactive about bug catching (although I'm willing to admit I was always more wimpy about it than she was). We may even have had a brief flirtation with Mortein (only against cockroaches!), and I definitely went through a long phase of denial (one of the rooms in our house was a particular haven for huntsman spiders, which are so enormous and horrible that my main strategy against them was to close the door to that room and not go in there again for as many months as I could manage).

Now, in the brave new world of married life, I've somehow become Bug Catcher Number One. Not that this is even remotely surprising, since Reto has a pathological fear of everything that's not human (that's a complete overexaggeration, but he has a major bee phobia, which is funny because a) he is frequently spotted cowering away from something that you can't see, which is odd, and b) his dad is a bit of an apiarist and as such his garden is chockers full of bees all the time). Anyway, Reto's a big wimp and I have to be all tough in the face of danger (and bees). Happily, this isn't at all hard in Switzerland where, in spite of the non-existence of fly screens (which is ridiculous, by the way), there's rarely a bug in sight. The other night, though, I was brushing my teeth and there was a pitiful cry from Reto in the other room and upon investigation I found that he was scared of some incredibly small, possibly wounded, bug that had taken refuge on the wall. While I was off getting a plastic container so I could throw it out the window, it vanished mysteriously. And that's about as exciting/(scary) as it gets.

A huntsman spider. Hopefully we'll never see one of these in Switzerland.

Nice

Just when I was being all cranky because we were being ignored by a waiter in my current favourite cafe ever (first he didn't come to take our order FOREVER and then he didn't bring us our order FOREVER, which, since the cafe was mostly empty and we'd only ordered coffee and a slice of cake, was pretty rude) he noticed that he'd ignored us and came over, apologised ridiculously profusely, brought us all our stuff and then insisted it was on the house. Which was completely unexpected, and really rather lovely.

Telly

Something stupid's going on with our telly. Because we live in frenchy-Switz we have the stoopid french version of pay TV, and so, unlike the german-livers, who gained something ridiculous like 9 extra english channels the other day, we seem to have lost Film 4. Actually, we might not really have lost it, but it does seem to have vanished from our TV guide thing. Not that I should be encouraged to watch more telly, but if we were going to lose a channel, why couldn't it be one of the ones that just seems to she Antiques Roadshow all day every day?

In other TV news, I've just found Buffy on a french channel! It's like homework and fun all at once!

On The Bookshelf

I've recently finished reading my first ever proper book in french. By which I mean something that was written for adults, and didn't have any pictures in it (all those Asterixes and Tin-Tins don't count, apparently). Bonjour, Tristesse, in case you were wondering. I feel a certain sense of achievement.

And now that that's over, I've possibly lowered the tone a bit by moving on to the His Dark Materials trilogy, which may be considered children's books. Or maybe "young adult". And I'm reading them in english (and by the way, I bought them for the bargain basement price of 1.50 chf for the three at my favourite Swiss second hand bookshop, which is so outrageously cheap it must be worth mentioning).

Festy cont..

These Switzies, they're so foreign.

Going to the movies here is weird enough what with the allocated seating, different ticket price for different areas in the theatre, intermissions, and outrageous enthusiasm for dubbing instead of subtitling. Actually, I've found that only the dubbing part of that is relevant lately (maybe I'm just going to the right movie theatres, but I haven't had an intermission in ages), but I think all the years of indoctrination with allocated seating might have had a permanent effect on the movie-going habits of many Swiss folk. In my experience, ticket-sellers at Swiss cinemas, when they have to allocate seats, tend to allocate everyone into the smallest space possible. Even if there are only 10 of you in the whole theatre, you'll all be wedged into the middle, nary a spare seat between you, and your Charming Swiss Companion will be surprisingly hesitant to agree to move with you to other seats so that you can have some elbow room. If, unlikely as it is, you do happen to use your initiative and move to a seat other than your allocated one, you can be sure that someone will come in and say "excuse me, you're in my seat". Everyone cares that much about being where they're supposed to be.

Even now, in the brave new world of "sit where you like! All the tickets cost the same!" a lot of people can't bear to see a seat in the middle go to waste. At pretty much every movie I've seen in the last few days (which is about 10) I've seen people come into the (usually mostly-empty) theatre just as the lights are going down, spot a single reasonably-central spare seat (usually with coats/scarves/bags on it) between groups of other people, and squish past everyone else in the row to ask "is that seat free?" rather than just taking a slightly less central seat that perhaps has spare seats around it. I'd rather sit at the end of the row and have a bit of room to myself and be able to whisper annoying commentary to my Charming Swiss Companion (that's Reto, by the way, not some Mystery Swiss Companion) without annoying other people as well, than have the "best" seat in the house. Apparently no one agrees with me.

Festy

The Fribourg film festival started yesterday! It's an annual thing, with a general theme of movies from asia and south america and africa. Last year, while anticipating this year's festival and when I was much crappier at french than I am these days, I was a bit worried that it might all be a bit french (language) and inaccessible for me, but happily I have discovered that pretty much all the movies are shown in their original languages and sub-titled into english. Wackily enough, there is also the offer of simultaneous translation into french for many films, which involves a translator sitting in the back row of the theatre, and her french translation of it all being available on headphones that you can get upon your entry to the theatre. Which is something I've never seen before at the movies, and no doubt extremely handy. And also kind of annoying, because in quieter moments (like when there is text on the screen and no sound) you can hear her muttering away in the background.

So far we've seen Terminal Island (an american flick from the 70s or so, which is in the festival under a "revanches de femmes" theme, although I'm not really sure if the women in the film were actually the agents of their own revenge or if they were there more to take their clothes off a lot and be rescued by their menfolk (rescued from the other menfolk, whose intentions were nowhere near as gallant).

And then we saw Garapa, a doco about malnutrition and starvation in the slums of Fortaleza (a town in northeast Brazil). Which was relentlessly depressing, as you'd imagine, and really interesting. "Garapa" is the name of the sugar water that people give their children to drink when they have no other food available, which seems to be an awful lot of the time, in spite of the government's "zero hunger" programme which seems to involve giving money for food and/or milk for children under a certain age. While the lack of work/money/food is obviously a major problem, one of the more interesting bits of the doco for me was near the end when the filmmaker asked his subjects if they wanted to have more children (more than the 11 that one family already had!). Some of them sort of said "no", but overall the mood was more one of resignation; that there's nothing you can do to prevent it, that you're equally likely to have another baby whether or not you use contraception, and that if you do have more children, you will always find a way to feed them. But of course that way is frequently with nothing more than sugar and water, which really isn't doing anyone any good. Lordy it was depressing.

No Vampires On Me

I just had a nice bowl of porridge for brekky. Nice until the last mouthful, anyway, when it turned into pure garlic. I'm a big fan of garlic, just not first thing in the morning, apparently.

I think the moral to this story is not to use the same chopping board to cut up the almonds that go in my porridge that Reto used last night when he made garlic bread.

It'sTrueThatISpeakTooQuickly

Yesterday I had lunch in an Indian restaurant in Lausanne with a friend. We were chatting to the waiter and he asked me if I was English. "No", I said, "I'm Australian" and he said "Aah, that's why you sound like Ricky Ponting". As it turned out, what he meant was that I speak incomprehensibly quickly, not that I talk about cricket a lot.

Look What I Made!

I made a crocheted blanket! For me! And it only took me about 4 months!

How Complicated Is A Teapot?

More than you'd imagine, apparently.

At our Excellent Breakfast Frenzy at our Swanky Anniversary Hotel, there were about 12 different types of tea on offer, all loose leaf. There was a plethora of teapots,

(sort of like this)

some of them with tea leaf straining thingies inside them,

(pretty much exactly like this, but inside the teapots)

some without, and there were a bunch of tea strainers like this

(but less fancy. With the strainer and the thing you rest it in, though)

next to the teapots as well.

I've never really noticed people here drinking much tea at all, but people were going for it very enthusiastically at breakfast and in a variety of confusing ways. Basically, everyone wanted to use the outside-the-teapot strainers as inside-the-teapot leaf holders (which they were all wrong for and it meant you couldn't get the lid on your teapot and it unbalanced the whole thing). People were taking their inside-the-teapot strainers out and replacing them (inside the teapot!) with outside-the teapot strainers. I saw one woman put an outside-the-teapot strainer into her teapot then fill the teapot with water and put the lid on it and walk away. With no tea in her tea! I mean, drinking hot water is an odd but acceptable habit (hello, Mum!) but does it really require a teapot and strainer?

I thought everyone ws being weird and misinformed until later when I had a cup of tea from a cafe place there (ie. staffed by hot beverage professionls who should know how these things work), and the waiter brought me my teapot with an outside-the-pot tea strainer in it. Which has led me to wonder if I'm suffering from some ridiculous cultural confusion where all these loony Europeans do things ridiculously. By which I mean differently. By which I secretly still do mean ridiculously.

Anyone have any ideas?

Happy Anniversary, Everyone!

Ange and Jonno, specifically, and me and Reto too since it's always nice to share in the furriness of a celebratory cat.

Happy Birthday Tawny!

I haven't managed to put this up in time for your time zone birthday limits, but in mine I've still got heaps of time! I hope your day is still going well!

Happy Anniversary, Me and Reto!

We've been off swanning about in swanky hotels in celebration of our first wedding anniversary over the past few days, and lordy isn't it sad to be home again? Highlights included:

The terrifyingly narrow/snow-covered/winding road we had to take to get there. Which was flanked on one side by the edge of a mountain, and on the other by an enormous yawning chasm that ended in the iciest-looking river you've ever seen. Fortunately we were protected at most times by the uselessest of safety barriers, which was about shin-height (ie. not much help when a bus wants to topple over the edge) and made of wood. Wood, for crying out loud. Old, pathetic wood that has been out in the weather for too long. Oh, and the horn thing that the buses honk when they approach blind corners and want to warn any oncoming traffic that THE RISK OF A PLUNGY, ICY DEATH IS IMMINENT is not charming and reminiscent of childhood, as Reto seems to think. It's alarming and noisy. If I was an oncoming driver I'd probably panic, veer to the wrong side of the road and either die a horrible death in the chasm or t-bone the side of the mountain and block the road meaning that the bus would have to reverse its way to safety. Great.

The food. Oh, the food. We had 6-course dinners both nights we were there, and we had giganto breakfast buffets that sadly I don't think I really did justice to, and we had lots of delicious home-made chocolates in our room that they kept replacing while we were at dinner (not that you get back from a 6-course dinner and think "hmm, what else can I eat?") and there were apples everywhere, really crispy crunchy ones, which was lovely. And .. oh, at dinner one night I did a bit of a salt degustation. There were about 8 different types of salt on offer. I always enjoy buying fancy salt, but it always takes me forever to get through a packet of it so I can never really compare them and tell which ones I like best. At dinner the other night, though, I tried the murray river one from Australia, one from the red sea (guess what colour it was!), one from the black sea (guess what colour it was! I don't think I could seriously use black salt on a regular basis, though. It looks odd), a hawaiian one, and a few from France. The conclusion, however, was disppointing - they all tasted kinda the same. The Australian one wins for reasons of patriotism, though, and also because it was such an attractive shade of pink. Now I just have to finish this stupid enormous packet of Maldon salt I have at home before I can buy some. Other memorable food moments included the baked saffron icecream with sweet pesto (which was weirdweirdweird) and the cheese trolley.

The thermal pools. It was a thermal pool hotel place that we went to, so you'd hope the thermal pools would be a highlight. And they were. We went midnight-thermal-pooling and we went crack-of-dawn-thermal-pooling and we went civilised-middle-of-the-day-thermal-pooling and it was all fantastic. The low-point being after you get out of the thermal pool and you realise the water has sucked all the moisture out of your skin and hair and that you've wildly underestimated your conditioner and moisturiser needs for the weekend. Seeing all the hotel guests wandering between their rooms and the pool in their hotel-supplied bathrobes was funny, though (when do you ever see people in bathrobes?), as was seeing the same strangers you'd seen in their togs all day in the pool wearing real pants at the next table at dinner.

Oh, and I discovered that I can't float. I'm sure I used to be able to when I was a youngster. Reto spent lot of time floating about all over the place (although he seems to think he can only float when he uses his special floating technique of stretching his arms out above his head. Not above as in upwards, obviously) and being smug while my legs sank and I got water in my eyes a lot. No one likes a gloater!

All the romance was nice. Which you would hope, for a first-anniversary holiday.

And then there was the bus back down again. After all that new snow had fallen (and continued to fall and made the road EVEN MORE TREACHEROUS. But we survived, and even better, we forgot to take the bottle of fancy champagne that my sister and her boyfriend got for us for our anniversary (not that we would have had time to drink it in between all the swimming and eating anyway), so we've decided to drink that next Fridy in celebration on Reto being unemployed! Because he quit his job and his PhD a few months ago, in case I didn't mention it. We'll be a no-income family, and what better way to celebrate that than with a bottle of Moet? Hurrah!

Wheel Of Fortune

I've just been watching the French of Wheel Of Fortune on telly, and what a cultural experience it was! It was like going to KFC in another country and finding that they offer a different type of sauce or something when you order the nuggets. Not that I go to KFC in Australia, and not that they have KFC here (as far as I'm aware) but once long ago I went to KFC in England and I'm sure they had a surprising Indian twist to their menu there.

Anyway, I've learnt that French people are apparently cheats, either that or the French wheel (of fortune) is ridiculously heavy. One of the competitors, an old lady, apparently had some terrible arm disorder that prevented her from spinning the wheel much, but the other two (able-bodied youngsters) didn't really spin it much further than she did. Most of the time they just gave it a gentle nudge so as to stay as far away as possible from bankruptcy. Boring.

The Lovely Assistant was sort of a departure from what I'm used to, and sort of the same. She was tall and blonde and flashy (normal), but she also looked sort of plastic (in a plastic surgery way. When I say "sort of" I'm being extremely generous. She looked extremely plastic) and she was at least a head taller than the host (who was small and featureless but not at all charmingly Tony Barber-ish). And her dress looked more like a nightie than a dress. At the end of the show, she danced with the winner (who, strangely, looked a bit like the Lovely Assistant, but shorter and less flashy. Just as blonde though)

The French version has a dog. He doesn't do anything, but he's always there watching.

And, most unexpected of all, the French version of Wheel of Fortune is educational. I now know that there's an expression "entre la poire et le fromage". I don't actully know what it means, but I like to imagine that it's the French equivalent of "between a rock and a hard place", except the French think that being caught between two soft places (like a poached pear and a camembert, perhaps) is the worst possible scenario. Or maybe it's like being caught between a beurre bosc and some parmesan. Which could well be delicious.

Alone At Last

It's our first weekend spent without hordes of my relatives hanging around since the end of November (!) and we've spent it doing absolutely nothing. Which has been quite nice. And it snowed all day today, enough to look charming but not enough to be annoying when we ventured out for a coffee and a piece of cake.

Happy Australia Day!

Happy Australia day! We haven't really done anything to mark the occasion, but Reto did make his own little public holiday (ie. took the day off work) and I'm not at french, so that's in the right spirit.

Happy Birthday, Mischa!

Confusion At Coop

Why is it that Swiss checkout chicks (if you can call them that; I think the average age might be a bit too high) are obsessed with tying knots in my bags of veggies? There I was at the checkout yesterday with a (scandalously unknotted) bag with various carrots and zucchinis and things in it, and the checkout woman glared at me and aggressively double-knotted the bag (so enthusiastically that I actually couldn't get the knot undone again when I got home) before she scanned the bar codes. Possibly there's a small risk that a carrot might fall out while they're doing the scanning (oh no!), but why do they care? Is it really worth getting all narky and knotting the bag for the sake of those 2 seconds or so while my bags of veggies are in their care?

Really?

In french today we spent aaaaages talking about punctuality and what it means in different countries and when it's polite to turn up a bit early and when it's polite to turn up hours late, and after this looong discussion where we all acknowledged that there is usually lots of scope for disagreement and individual differences and the fact that rules really aren't set in stone*, the teacher asked us "who here really thinks that punctuality is important?", and instantly, absolument sans hésitation, the two Swiss (german) girls, and only them, shot their hands in the air and said "me!".

And then we had a loooong conversation about cultural stereotypes.


* except possibly in Japan, it seems, where, according to the Japanese chick in the class, it's less insulting to phone up and give an excuse and reschedule a work meeting than turn up 15 minutes late

Things That Were Annoying Today

1. Ice. Ice has been driving me nuts for a few weeks now, ever since it snowed a lot and no one cleared the streets properly and we've all been slipping and sliding all over town ever since. Today I went out the 'burbs of Fribourg (to get my Swiss drivers license if you must know, tick for New Year's Resolution Number One. And even better, atrocious misreading of (what as it turned out were actually atrociously ambiguous) instructions meant that I didn't even have to do the theory test! Reto had to phone up to confirm that, though. It really was very unclear on the website. To think I wasted all that time unnecessarily learning the road rules when actually I was free to take my bung eye and my habit of driving on the left and a total ignorance of the road rules and get straight out there!). Anyway, there I was in the middle of nowhere (walking to the RTA-equivalent, which apparently isn't the done thing. They have the biggest carpark ever) bumbling around on the footpaths-masquerading-as-skating-rinks like a moron. And getting rained on at the same time, funnily enough. Warm enough to rain,not warm enough for all the ice to have melted.

2. Morons waiting for the train who have 2nd class tickets, but who get into the 1st class carriages (because it's always quicker to get into the 1st class carriages because there isn't a huge queue of people in there waiting to get out) and then go through the door from there to the 2nd class carriage that I'm queueing (with a million other people) to get into, thus managing to get in and get a seat first. Cheats.

3. Having an argument about something remotely serious in french but being unable to express my opinion in a relatively coherent way because my vocabulary is dismal. I think I may have ended up being construed as a militant vegan, which would have been fine but it wasn't what I was saying at all.

On a more positive note, I got my Swiss license (yay!), I managed to have a decent argument in french (maybe it was just everyone else misunderstanding me, not me being incomprehensible), I didn't break my leg on the ice, it wasn't freezing, I had a rather excellent salade nicoise for dinner, I got something pleasant in the mail (rather than just boring letters from my health insurance, which is what it usually is) and Reto didn't hog all the blankets last night. Which is the first time in ages that that's happened. Assidouously poking him in the ribs all the time every night seems to have finally paid off

BETRAYED

I've been BETRAYED.

Unlike almost everyone else I have ever known, I've always had great vision. No glasses, no squinting at computer screens, no whining about having to buy prespcription sunglasses, no agonising over that laser surgery.

Anyway, I've just been off for an eye test for my driving license here, and I discovered that MY RIGHT EYE IS PRACTICALLY BLIND. When I had to read the letters on the sign, I could read the bottom line with my left eye no worries, but with the right eye I had to move up a line (and even then I had to guess a bit).

I'm actually finding this really quite disturbing. It's like the beginning of the end. Next thing you know my hair will turn grey and I'll have to have a hip replacement.

Happy (Fake) Birthday, Me!

It's the anniversary of my new surname! Or at least, I've decided it is since it was today a year ago that I picked up my new birth certificate. So happy fake birthday me!

No, This Post Doesn't Come From A Duty Free Shop

No, enormous novelty Toblerones haven't vanished from the face of the earth. Someone gave Reto's mum one for christmas, and then rather than eating it herself, she gave everyone a triangle to take home. Here is ours (with ACTUAL PEOPLE for reference*):

Apparently it weighs more than a kilo.

If only I liked Toblerone.

* Don't be fooled, they're actually the king and lady king from yesterday's hard-won religious bakery item

DOES IT HELP IF I SPEAK LOUDER?

In an effort to show my parents a little bit more foreign strangeness before they left, I decided to buy one of those couronne des rois things at the bakery today (bready item being sold in order to celebrate epiphany. The idea is that everyone takes a bit of the cake/bread/whatever it is, and whoever is lucky enough to get the bit with the wee metal king in it (and possibly break their teeth) gets to be the king for the day. Although I suspect it might be rigged towards those with very small heads, because the wee cardboard crown they gave us was very, very small).

I went to the bakery. It went something like this (but all in french):
Me: Can I please have a couronne des rois?
Her: Pardon?
Me: The bread thing being sold specially today? A couronne des rois [note that I wasn't actually sure what the things were called, but this bakery had a big sign outside saying "couronne des rois", so I was going with that]?
Her: I'm sorry, I can't understand you at all. You're making no sense to me.
Me: The special bread thing because today's the 6th of January ...
Her (to colleague): Can you understand what she is saying? I can't understand anything she says.
Me: You know, like a crown [gesturing at my head] ... for kings .... [petering off]

And then someone else helped me. Who miraculously understood me. Really, I'm not that incomprehensible. It was annoying.

As it turned out there were 2 kings in our galette des rois (it was more like a collection of cinnamon snails than anything properly bready. And one of the kings seemed to be a lady). I got one of them, but the crown didn't fit. Sigh.

Resolutions

.. or possibly just a list of things to do...

Get a Swiss drivers license (before March, but preferably before February)
Be more proactive about doing things in french (like going to the dentist/doctor/small shops where conversation is unavoidable. I was going to add hairdresser to that list, but since my hair is looking really quite respectable at the moment and I haven't seen a hair professional since March, I've decided not to)

.. Hmm. No doubt there are many more things I could add about getting a job and being a responsible adult, but I don't think I will. Better to keep it all pleasantly achievable.

Blog Nerdery, part 2

It's that time of year again, when I pinch someone's idea about putting together the first sentence (or sometimes two, if the first sentence was useless) from the first post of each month and see what my year was like.

Last night at the NYE party that I went to we were all thinking of what our highlight of 2007 was.

Well, I'm back.

Well, depending on whose opinion you listen to, it's either not summer any more (yay! That's my opinion), or it's still winter (also yay! That's Reto).

Congratulations to Reto, who is rejoining the world of employed people today!

All my best intentions of sleeping in were thwarted this morning, not only by my mock-insomnia, but also by the band (as in group of people with uniforms and instruments) of morons (as in people who go wandering the streets at 7am making a racket) wandering down our street and making a racket!

The potatoes have had their day, look who coffee is celebrating now!

Sigh. Reto's been off killing people (or whatever it is they do in the army) for a good day and a half now, and I am apparently incapable of coping without him.

Note that I chose that cat for its William-Tell style enthusiasm for apples.

I'm orf on my honeymoon.

Happy temporary unemployment to Deonie!

Well. Recent(ish) reasons for not doing any blogging: nothing much has been happening except me being full of french-rage, and that's not very interesting.

Just when you thought you were getting a coffee set for 6 people for your birthday, it turns out there's actually a possibly drunken cat in the box instead!

Hmm. I think I preferred last year's verision. Although it's nice that 2008's list started and ended with nice things.

More Of The Same

Well, it's been more of the usual lately. A quick trip to France with my parents and sister to find the grave of my great grandfather who died near there during the first world war,a bit of enjoying people's insane christmas lights (these ones were opposite the hotel we stayed at in Rouen, and involved Santa in a hot air balloon, santa in his toy factory and santa with his reindeer, as well as an inexplicable dancing pelican), looking at space cabbages (I don't know what they actually are. They look sort of like cabbage-related items, but they're CRAZY, and everyone knows that CRAZY things probably come from space) and various other charming sights in Paris.

In other news, I read American Psycho while I was away, and it was the most horrible and disturbing thing I've ever read. Normally violence in books doesn't bother me so much, but this was so grisly and so graphic and so lacking in humanity ... aagh, don't read it.

Age-Defying

I was just out buying a bottle of wine and a bottle of kirsch for a fondue tonight (part of the ongoing process of Swissifying my parents, and now also my sister who is too jetlagged to object. Interestingly, yesterday when I suggested to Reto that we have a cervelat salad for lunch he made a comment about how swissish I've become. Which was odd) and the woman in the shop asked me for ID. Hee hee. That hasn't happened for ages.

In Recent News

1. I just got my results from my DELF exam, and happily I passed. Quite badly in the oral bit, quite well in the other bits (which reflects the reality of my french knowledge/usage). The results weren't due until the end of Jan, so that was a surprise. Unfortunately passing that test doesn't really mean anything useful for me (like that I'm a proficient french-speaker), but I do have a piece of paper. Or I will have (when they post it to me).

2. It's been snowing here non-stop for almost 2 days. Not very heavily or anything, but constantly, so it's really accumulated and every trip outdoors involves inadvertently standing in a puddle of slush that you thought wasn't there. Don't forget your waterproof shoes, Steph.

Tourist Frenzy

Oh how I am looking forward to my day off tomorrow. Since mum and dad arrived (a week ago) I have given them the grand tour of Fribourg (which comes in several parts and as it turns out can take days to complete. Jet-lagged, luggage-free days, but still), I've taken them to Grindelwald and the (invisible due to cloud/fog/snow) Eiger*, to Zermatt and the (pleasantly visible) Matterhorn, we've done the "here's our former home" tour of Aarau, and we've spent a few days seeing christmas markets and raclette and Stein am Rhein with R's parents (only half of whom share a language with my parents, which makes things tricky. Although I have to say, Reto's parents cope extremely well with the fact that two of their three children have married native english-speakers who are both a bit other-language challenged (since french is definitely my dominant non-native language now and not a very useful one in the in-laws setting) and whose parents are all uselessly monolingual. Fortunately the remaining unmarried sibling looks likely to stick with his Swiss girlfriend and thus save his parents from too much more intercultural incomprehension and expensive plane fares). Tomorrow it's officially been decided that no one's doing anything, which means I will be staying home, doing laundry, trying to read my stupid french road rules book and maybe going to Ikea to buy some curtains for the spare room before my sister arrives and has to sleep there for a month.

Not so relaxing after all, then. Grr.




* Sorry Steph. We heard that you wanted us to wait so we could go there with you in the evening after we'd got back. I'm sure we can go again, though, since we saw NOTHING the first time round. And maybe mum n dad will be such experts by then that I won't even have to go with you!

Happy Birthday Léo!

Just when you thought you were getting a coffee set for 6 people for your birthday, it turns out there's actually a possibly drunken cat in the box instead!

Hurrah! Just what every 1 year old needs!

Biscuit Crisis

About a month ago I saw that possibly the only christmas-themed biscuits I really like (pfeffernusse) were being sold by the bucketload in the supermarkets here. I thought to myself "It's far too early to be buying christmas-themed things! If I start now it'll just turn into a non-stop 2-month-long scoffing frenzy" and sensibly I decided not to buy any until December.

And now they've vanished from the shops. Where have they gone? The shelves are flooded with every other imaginable festive biscuit and I'm tormented daily by Reto's hideous zimtsternen (which he loves and I hate) and IT'S MADE ME REALISE THE TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF SELF-DENIAL. I won't fall for that one again then, will I?

No Photos

R and I went to Locarno this weekend (celebrating our last weekend of freedom before my parents arrive for an extended visit. They're supposed to be flying via Bangkok but fortunately have been rerouted) and had we remembered to take a camera I would have so many pretty photos to show you. There would have been heaps of the HUGE amount of snow we came across when we popped out of the tunnel in Ticino and all the huge snowflakes that were falling and of all the excellent fog that prevented us from seeing more than about 10m away (which doesn't necessarily make for a good photo, I suppose, but it was ridiculously beautiful nonetheless). There would have been some of the skating rink (complete with mirror balls and unattractive christmas decorations) that they're in the throes of putting up in the main square of Locarno. There might have been one of me in this ridiculously furry hat I'm thinking of buying (actually, there's no way I would have taken a photo of me trying on a hat in a shop, but you don't have to know that). There would have been some of these excellent trees we kept seeing, which were all brown and leafless and wintery-looking, but they all had mysterious orange blobs on the ends of the most inconveniently-located branches. I assume they were just apples or something (although they were much more the colour of oranges) that the tree-owners hadn't been able to reach, but they looked hilarious.

And there might have also been a photo of me looking all cranky and cold and being rained on. It's nice to be home (where there's almost no snow and absolutely no rain).

Asia Meets The Mediterranean

That's twice now in the last 2 weeks or so that I've mistaken the balsamic vinegar bottle for the soy sauce bottle. And not in a pleasantly "I'll just slosh this into an empty cup and make a sauce and then add it to everything else that I've already painstakingly cooked" kinda way. More in the "straight in the pan with you, soy sauce!" way. Which causes problems.

Soy sauce might start living in the fridge from now on. Although the fridge isn't really big enough to accommodate the bottle. Oh, Switzerland.

Happy Birthday Ange!

Miaow!

Bien Conduire? Hah.

Sigh.

I bought the road rules yesterday (you actually have to buy the book! You have to pay to be able to learn the road rules!). As it turns out, there's an awful lot of vehicular vocabulary (in french) that I don't know. And I have to learn it all and pass the test (in french) in order to get a Swiss license, and I have to do it all within the next few months.

In case it's not clear what I'm talking about, apparently Switzerland changed the rules a little while ago (like a few months or so). Before the rule change, I would have been able to get a Swiss license by just turning up with my eye test results and saying "gimme a license, yo" or something like that, but now I have to not only do the eye test and say "gimme a license, yo", but I also have to pass a theory test in a national language. Which for me means french. And I have a relatively limited period of time to do it in. Fortunately we Australians are exempt from having to do a practical test, which is both idiotic (changing sides of the road? If I do ever get around to driving a car in this country I'm sure it will be in a VERY UNSAFE MANNER, even if I do know all the road rules) and great (I don't want to have to do one).

Happy Birthday Taylor!

But for yesterday,which was when you were born!

Happy Birthday Grandma! And Nat!

91!

Things I've Learnt This Weekend

England is grey, miserable and rainy. Huh.

There's a bunch of people in London. I live in a tiny town in a tiny country.

Just because the flight is only an hour and a bit doesn't mean it's quick and easy to get there. 7 hours passed today between leaving the Hotel Kizzy and arriving back at our place.

I'm an atrocious public singer.

No big surprises anywhere, then.

Long Weekend

I'm going to London any second now! For the hen's night of a friend (which is filling me with a certain amount of terror, but more about that later)! It's going to be super, I think - speaking english to EVERYONE, buying newspapers in english and for a reasonable price (as opposed to the 7 francs I very occasionally pay for the Guardian International weekend edition or whatever it is. Which is an outrageous price and the paper is usually chockers full of middle-aged paranoia about private education and ethical gardening and stuff like that. I used to be such a paper-reader in Australia, but here I've turned into the sort of moron that relies on 20 Minutes (and the internet, obviously) for her news)! Seeing people I know! Errm ... I'm not really sure what else one does in England that one doesn't do here, but either way, I'm sure it will be super.

Getting Older

Today I killed the gnome that Reto gave me for my birthday. I dropped it on the neighbour's (2 floors down) balcony.

The other day some of the groceries I bought at Migros didn't make it all the way home (who knows what happened. Maybe they fell out of my bag, maybe I never put them in. Who knows).


And I've lost my favourite beanie. Now I only have the blue one that makes me look enormous-headed.


Normally I never lose anything. Possibly I'm turning into my sister. Did I ever mention the time she lost her glasses and I found them (undamaged!) in the gutter, hidden under leaves, on a major road about 5 blocks from where we lived?

Food

Well, it's mandarin season. Which means that we buy some, I eat perhaps one, and just when I think "hmm, another one would be nice" I find that there are none left because RETO HAS SCOFFED THE LOT.

In other news, my current favourite recipe is this chestnutty/brussels sprouty pasta (apologies to southern hemisphere people who aren't currently drowning in chestnuts and brussels sprouts):

An onion, sliced
Some bacon, chopped into wee bits (I use maybe a rasher or so, but I don't particularly like bacon)
Brussels sprouts, yuckier outer leaves peeled off then the rest sliced (I use about 200g, possibly)
Chestnuts (cut a cross onto the flatter side with a sharp knife. Bung them in a saucepan of cold water, bring it to the boil and as soon as it does (boil), take it off the stove. Take them out of the water a few at a time and peel off the shell and the skin. It gets harder when they are cooler (ie. it's harder to get the skin off), but when they are hot you burn your fingers. So you really can't win. Then slice them up a bit. I use ... maybe 12)
salt, pepper, a splash of oil

Chuck all the ingredients into a frying pan. Cook them until they look delicious (10 minutes or so?).
Meanwhile, cook some pasta. Serve in the traditional fashion (probably with grated cheese, too. I like gran padano). Yum.

Background

Remember how ages ago we went to Leukerbad and saw a former Miss Switzerland swanning about in her togs and being filmed by a camera crew? Well, it's an ad on telly now for Leukerbad! And sadly/happily, we're not visible at all.

Crafty-Like

In case I haven't already outed myself as a grandmotherly-type saddo, here's a blanket I'm currently crocheting:

It's taking me forever. I started months ago and am progressing slowly, so I imagine it should be finished by the time summer rolls around (which is handy). I started crocheting years ago when a friend of mine had a baby and I thought it would be nice to make her something as a present. Since then I've decided to give up on baby blankets, because a) I don't know that they're particularly useful, and b) I think I appreciate me having a proper-sized excellent blanket far more than some baby appreciates having yet another thing it can vomit on (or whatever it is that babies do).

I also do a rather awesome range of crocheted finger puppets, though, so if you're a baby-owning friend of mine you may well end up with that as a present one day. Try to look surprised.

Stuff Lately

Well. Recent(ish) reasons for not doing any blogging: nothing much has been happening except me being full of french-rage, and that's not very interesting. More recent reasons for me not doing any blogging: I've been far too busy being on french holidays (as in holidays from french) and doing charming things to waste time here with you lot.

In reverse chronological order, I've been: off at film festivals. Just the one, actually, a short film fest last night, which we left early because we were both knackered and it was never going to end (really, we left at 1am or something and there was at least an hour and a half left). But it was super, and we saw some excellent flicks including quite a few Swiss ones, which was nice (because normally you never see anything Swiss, or if you do they're normally crap/weird/incomprehensible. Sadly enough, possibly the only Swiss movie I saw before moving here was this odd thing about an insane woman who was in some sort of rambling manor house type place in french Switz and there was a would-be-murderer and some possibly-incompetent policemen and a lot of fog and they all ran around like nutburgers. If anyone knows the name of it, please tell me). Anyway, that was nice but verrrry,very smoky and today all my clothes stink.

We went to the thermal pools at Yverdon-les-Bains, which was a lot less charming than it should have been. We went on Thursday, when it was freezing, but sadly not freezing enough to be snowing, and if there had been any snow in Y-l-B it had all melted by the time we got there (which decreased the potential charm enormously). Because I'm a relentless optimist I didn't take an umbrella. This was a bad decision, because apparently the bus system in Y-l-B is atrocious, so we ended up walking around in the rain for aaaages. Anyway, the pools themselves were okay, but not really warm enough, which is a strange problem to have in thermal pools. When we were in the outdoor pool (in the cold cold rain), I was cold. Sitting in a thermal pool and having goose bumps from the cold? Stoopid.

I've eaten mountains of chestnuts. By which I actually mean I've had them about 3 times in the last week, which really isn't very much, but in relation to the number of chestnuts I've eaten in my entire life it's heaps. The first time I had chestnuts was when I was about 15. I was in London and for some idiotic reason I thought they were horrible. The second time was probably about 10 years later, in Germany, and I thought they were great. The third time was probably last year, and I haven't looked back since. Living in a country where they are readily available certainly makes a difference. That being said, I hate the way that pumpkins are considered primarily to be decorative items in this country.

I bought 2kg of Lindt balls from the Lindt factory shop the other day. Then I hid them from Reto, becuse if I don't he'll scoff the lot before I can get a look in.

Promotion

I actually have every intention of doing a proper post at some time in the semi-near future (tomorrow, perhaps), but in the meanwhile, let's all enjoy the fact that I just got an email that addressed me as "Sir". This email wasn't even spam! It was from a hotel, confirming a booking that I made, and I specified for them at the time of booking that my title is Ms (or possibly Mme. I think they only gave me french options).

Sir. At least it's a promotion from Mr.

Unusual

Unusual things I did today:
Had porridge for breakfast. For the first time in years, and it was super. I had it with sliced banana, milk, sugar, a smidge of nutmeg and some chopped almonds. Yum.

Had a pleasant post-lunch rendezvous with people from french (class) and had a surprisingly lovely time. Not because they are normally not nice people to spend time with (far from it), but because I am normally so packed full of french-rage that everything associated with it annoys me. We're on holidays for a week, though, and this was lovely.

Bought a magazine about philosophy. In french (as in the magazine is in french). Look at my non-rage!

Blergh?

Reto just came back from Coop (supermarket) with a surprise for me - a seasonal orange and pumpkin (!!) flavoured yoghurt. And it was surprisingly non-disgusting. Huh.

Pigs Might Fly

Today a couple of friends of ours came and visited us, and we took them on the tour of the town and discovered a charming cafe that somehow I've never noticed before (in a chocolate factory, no less. How come I didn't know there was a chocolate factory here with a lovely cafe and cheap chocolate for sale?), and we had an excellent lunch (with booze, which is always nice, drinking in the daytime), and we walked all over the place and made silly conversation and it was all really lovely and charming and stuff, but ..

.. the high point of the day was still, without a shadow of a doubt, the bit where a helicopter carrying a life-sized sculpture of a giraffe flew over the town. I can't begin to tell you how sad I am that I didn't have my camera with me.

Moron

What's the etiquette about dakking strangers?

Not that I want to sound like a whiny old enemy-of-the-youngsters or anything, but today I saw a dude at the train station who was wearing his pants practically around his knees (in this manner, although admittedly not quite so low. That "knees" comment was an exaggeration:
). Which, as I explain for my mother who may well read this, is the fashion in some circles. And much as it may be a stupid way to dress, I'm hardly going to go around getting all huffy about it and carrying on about young people today, but this guy at the station, his pants were actually falling down a bit with every step he took.


Had I been a totally different person, I would have dakked him. It would have been a sensible thing to do, and it would have made a good point. Reto doesn't agree.

Stupid Heating

Our heating is stoopid.

When we got back from Norway (just after it had turned FREEZING here, although as it turned out that only lasted for a moment and now it's high-teens or so every day), we found that our heaters had been turned on. I don't really know what's considered normal in this country, but in our flat our heaters aren't really under our control. You can turn them up or down but never entirely off, and so our flat is always heated in the months officially dubbed "cold". You wouldn't think I would have a problem with that, what with my constant whining about being perma-freezing and having numb fingers (which I home-diagnose as Raynaud's disease, by the way) and so on, but as it turns out I do.

It's not cold at the moment, we don't need heaters, and as it turns out my problem isn't that I'm always cold but that I have no powers of homeostasis. When it's cold, I'm cold (and I get colder and colder and never warm up), and when it's hot, I'm hot (and I get hotter and hotter and never cool down. I like to put my feet under the cold tap before I go to bed in summer because otherwise my feet feel like they're burning).

It's too hot in our flat. I'm sleeping really badly and having a lot of idiotic nightmares (which happens when I'm too hot). I'm drinking about 8 tons of water a day and still feeling dehydrated. And I totally disapprove of me getting around in a tshirt (and jeans) in the middle of autumn.

Then again, it's still better than being cold.

Karaoke Kwestions

If you found yourself in the unlikely situation of knowing you were going to have to do some drunken karaoke in a few weeks, and HAVING TO CHOOSE THE SONGS IN ADVANCE (which I put in capitals because IT'S SUCH A STUPID WAY TO DO IT), what songs would you choose? Bearing in mind that you're probably a fairly atrocious singer and have no desire to hog the limelight. Oh, and also the songlist seems to be really England-heavy, ie. full of bands and songs you've never heard of.

At this stage, ABBA and show tunes (from Annie Get Your Gun, because I'm still in the As) are looking like the best options.

UPDATE: No, the song list seems to have EVERY SONG KNOWN TO MANKIND, including Hats Off To Larry (which I always said would be my karaoke song because I was always sure it would never be on any karaoke song list. I'm pretty sure I stole that idea from my sister, actually, song and all), and songs from the musical episode of Buffy. Huh.

Moléson

We spent a charming weekend in Moléson, which is a town/mountain about an hour from here (on bus/train/bus, or bus/bus, anyway. If you drove yourself it would probably only be half that, but then again, if you drove yourself you might have got caught in the big stupid traffic jam on the way home and spent ages being annoyed. Our bus driver knew better, though, so we didn't miss our next bus and we could spend our time being tired instead of annoyed) with little to recommend it other than mini golf (closed), some sort of bobsled/luge thing (closed), a fromagerie (closed) and a bunch of nature (not closed). Oh, and free accommodation, of course, because we went with a friend who has a flat there.

We didn't do a whole lot. We walked up some mountains and down some mountains

not those ones

we did walk up here though

We looked at parapenters taking off.

We went in a funicular (or something) and a big scary cable car.

We ate a lot of fondue (no photos of that, unfortunately, nor of the sad, sad ending where no one could manage to scrape the delicious burnt cheese off the bottom of the pot. I don't know why it happened, but my theory is that it had something to do with the fact that the caquelon was made of metal instead of ceramic). Also no photos of us watching "Benissimo" which is some crappy Swiss lottery type TV show that's apparently on every 6 weeks or so, and is hosted by this Beni dude who seems to be the Daryl Sommers of Swiss (german) telly. Reto and Cécile seemed to think that making me watch Benissimo would make me more Swiss, but really ... if that's what being Swiss is about, then I don't think I'm interested. I did enjoy the fondue though, which I suppose is a step in the right direction. Or at least in a direction.

One of the most civilised things about Switz: on top of every mountain, there's a restaurant.

Anyway, all in all we had a charming weekend that felt like it was miles from everywhere (certainly miles from home) but was actually still in the same canton.

Happy Birthday Kristie!

But where's the cat? And why do I never do real posts any more? Have a super day!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

I hope you have a super day! And not only because I'm going to be there for a significant proportion of it!

Yay! Boo!

Hurray, it's over! And also, boo, it's over! The film fest, that is, and although it's not actually true, because the fest doesn't finish until Sunday and I still have one flick to see tomorrow, it feels like it is.

I've seen 16 or so movies. I've spent about 25 hours on the train travelling between Fribourg and Zurich (including last Friday night when something stupid went wrong with the train signalling or something and I spent 3 hours on the train instead of 1.5 getting home again, grr). I've spent a lot of time embracing the awfulness of being a refugee or hoping to be recognised as one, of being stalked by psychopaths in the dwindling hours of life on earth, of being in flailing relationships, of having mentally unstable family members, of being in comas, of being a Dutch teenager stuck between cultures (that one was really crappy), of being a Norwegian train driver (there was no awfulness in that one. It was charmingly bizarro and pleasantly familiar, what with having spent so much time on Norwegian trains lately), of being kinda nutso and prone to bursting inappropriately into song, of getting too involved with other people's lives of crime, and now I'm looking forward to getting back to the non-horror of my life.

Which sadly means getting back into all-day french lessons and becoming paranoid about this stoopid exam thing I've signed myself up for. Sigh.

I miss the film fest.

Happy Imminent Unemployment, Deonie!

Happy temporary unemployment to Deonie!

obviously this cat has recently resigned

By which I really mean "happy last day at work!". Although it's actually tomorrow that's her last day at work, but in my defence, 1) it's already tomorrow where she is, and 2) by the time I get a chance to post this post tomorrow my-time, it probably won't be tomorrow her-time any more.

Happy leaving! Happy post-job holidaying!

Festy

Festiness has begun! Yesterday I saw Ballast (a relentlessly depressing American movie about dysfunctional relationships and crime and poverty and so on. Incidentally, the programme seems to be full of relentlessly depressing movies, and also heavily concerned with suicide bombers. I think it's going to be an arduous week), and then Das Herz ist ein Dunkler Wald, which was also kind of relentlessly depressing but in a much more charming a wacky way. It was nice, too, to see a foreign (ie. non-english-language) movie for a change.

After the second movie, we were all hustled out a side door and into some crappy alley (nb. much less crappy than the State Theatre's alley) because there was a red carpet thing going on out the front of the theatre. Apparently Sylvester Stallone was there (because the fest is having some sort of Sylvester Stallone flashback retrospective) and they didn't want us rabble getting in his way. Flattering.

Sunlight? Overrated!

Good news!

I was having some sort of crisis of personality, where I was doubting whether I really wanted to watch that many movies, and whether I would be able to cope with going to Lausanne every morning and Zurich every afternoon, missing half my french lessons and not getting enough sleep, but ... happily I have now read the Zurich Film Festival programme in english (instead of struggling through the stupid german version that I found at the airport), and am REALLY EXCITED about lots of films, and I don't care at all that it will involve sitting on a train for something like 4 hours a day! Yay for me!

And in other funny festy news, there's a movie on at this fest (Beaufort) that I saw at the Sydney Film Fest last year. That's slow.

Happy Leaving Day, Olivia (and Fosty)!

I hope the flight is nice. I'll miss you both.

Norway

Well, as I said, Norway was super, and as I also said, it's a bit of a far-distant blur now. The story, therefore, will be heavily assisted by photos.

We spent a day in Oslo. Oslo is a city basically without charm, and I say this as Norway's biggest fan. We visited what may be the premier tourist attraction in Oslo, Frogner park, and found that the premier tourist attraction in the premier tourist attraction, the enormous statue of naked bodies all intertwined into a big phallic totem pole, was entirely hidden behind scaffolding for its once-in-a-blue-moon cleaning. So that was some fairly bad timing.
The good thing about this holiday, though, was that both of us have been there before, and so it really didn't matter.

So. That was Oslo, along with overpriced accommodation, surprisingly cheap (but still overpriced) curry, and lots of wandering around and failing to find this really lovely statue of some long-dead Norwegian king (I saw the statue last time I was there, and although I remember it well, I'm really not sure where it is).

Then we sat on trains and more trains and boats for a really, really long time. Which was far less arduous than it could have been.

And then we arrived in Stamsund,and spent a week and a half loafing about and doing pleasantly non-arduous things. We looked at a lot of sheep

Apparently the Lofoten islands are known for the delicious lamb they produce. I ate some, and I'm pleased to say it was delicious (although at those prices it really should have been. Everything in Norway is constantly shockingly expensive. Which we were expecting, but somehow that didn't lessen the shock. It was strange to arrive in Sweden after a few weeks in Norway and to think "wow, everything is so cheap!". I don't think Sweden is known for being a bargain basement holiday destination).

We sat around a lot.

That's obviously a cat loafing. When we were loafing, we were loafing properly, not taking photos of ourselves. And we weren't cats.

We said hello again to everyone's favourite Norwegian ice cream pirate.

Yes, he is very icy. He doesn't normally look so creepy.

I went fishing. And successfully caught 3 (or was it 4? I don't know) wee saithe,

not my fish

which were later contributed to the world's most delicious fish soup. The idea of fish soup has always seemed a bit horrible to me (much like fish curry. There's nothing I like less than fish curry) but this was really, really delicious. And made by a genuine Swedish chef, which probably helps.

We rented a car and drove around a lot. We saw a lot of white sandy beaches

and a lot of enormous rocky mountains

and a lot of charmingly colourful houses. If I was going to live there, I'd paint my house blue.

I wouldn't go for white window sills, though. I'd seriously consider dark blue

Obviously there's also the possibility that you could paint your house whatever colour you like wherever you live, but a) I don't have a house, and b) Reto tells me that in some places here there are rules about what colour you're allowed to paint your house. For example, apparently where R's dad lives, there is some sort of rule to protect the historical charm of the area and R's dad is basically obliged to paint his house white*.

We saw a bunch of fish-drying racks (minus fish).

And of course there were also all the northern lights. Which didn't actually look anything like they do in the photos, but were still ridiculously awesome.

In reality they were a lot less green. Plus, I think the photos were taken over something like 20 or 30 seconds, so that's a lot of accumulated light and movement in one photo.

I remembered how much I love Norwegian food, too. The butter there is unbearably delicious. And the bread, far more so than in Switzerland. And it's nice to eat jarlsberg cheese for a change. And I love all the fish and the blueberries. And we had whale a few times, which I feel like I should feel guilty about but I don't at all. Actually, I don't really feel like I should feel guilty about it, but I feel like everyone else expects me to. And I ate heaps of the yummy danishes that the Norweegies seem to be so fond of, and I finally got around to eating a hot dog there (apparently Norwegians eat more hot dogs than anyone else. And, even better, you're not obliged to eat them in one of those disgusting hot dog buns. I had mine in a lompe, or whatever they're called, a flat potato bread thing, and it was DELICIOUS. And I don't even like hot dogs!).

And that was about it. Then we sat on some more buses and trains and planes and thing for a really, really long time again,

Swedish trains: not as good as Norwegian ones

and then we came home and my head exploded.

It was super. I love Norway.

* Also note that I am paraphrasing from a vague conversation Reto and I had, and I'm not sure how much I was listening at the time because I was too busy being OUTRAGED at the idiotic amount of control Switzerland sometimes likes to have over people's lives.

Aagh!

Remeber all my holiday zenness where I was all relaxed and happy and optimistic about everything? No? Me neither!

I've been back for slightly over a day and in that time I've already been thoroughly traumatised at having to wake up at the crack of my alarm clock, I've managed to go to twice as many french lessons as I was expecting (apparently our tiny and relatively happy class has been melded with another one that's more advanced than us, so to catch up to them we're doing an extra 3 hours of classes in the afternoon!), I've been told that I'm doing some sort of DELF/DALF (or whatever it's called. Some sort of internationally-recognised french exam) thing in November, which is probably a good thing but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it, I've realised I actually have forgotten everything I ever knew, and I have discovered that I have no clean clothes.

Remember how happy I was last week? Sigh.