Firstly, Id like to say how I incredibly sorry I am for my slackness over the past few weeks. I have been quite busy, plus I know longer have a computer, so its been a little difficlt to find time to write. But here I go. Ill try and make it longer than usual, to make up for lost entries :)
Okay, so lets start back at the holidays. The first week kicked off with La Cavalcade in Escurolles. It is the annual fete of my little village and is a very important event for them. EVERYONE in Escurolles comes out for the cavalcade weekend... I never knew there were so many people living here.. and so many children. Anyway, La Cavalcade involves the main street of Escurolles being over taken by gypsies, with there mini rollercoasters and crepe stalls set up all along the street. Its so colourful and ambient and wonderful, especially from about 9pm onwards. EVeryone comes out then, even little 3 year olds, and go on the rides and eat waffles with nutella (YUM!) and dance drunkedly (word??) to traditional music. Agnes and I hit the town, just walking up and down the street really, eating the occasional waffle or crepe (with nutella of course). The next morning I wen to watch the parade. There were all these.. um..floats..? Like cars all decorated in crepe paper, with little kids standing on them, throwing confetti at the crowd. C'etait tres mignon. All the floats were pretty well done, but my favourite would have to be the gigantic Bob Marley head. It was HUGE and made out of papier mache, with bulging eyes and a glowing cigarette sticking out of its mouth. And the guys in the car (painted in rasta colours) were all dressed up with baggy pants and sunnies and dreadlocks, and had "3 Little Birds) playing very very loudly. Ill add a photo. It was fab.
Anyway, Agnes went bck to Lyon and I spent the first week of the holidays doing nothing really.. walking around Escurolles, taking photos of flowers and then deleting them.. exciting stuff actually.
Then, on the Friday, I caught the train to Lyon to visit Agnes for the weekend. She lives in la place Bellecour , which is like famous apparently, though I dont knwo why... its pretty ugly. Anyways, I love Lyon. Like absolutely. It is beautiful! I cant really explain it. And maybe once Ive seen Paris, I'll find it less amazing, but for now I just think its spectacular. My favourite things about Lyon were:
1. How all the people acted like it was a summer in, I dont know, Byron Bay, not semi-winter in a city. At 10pm the riverbank was bustling with people. Serously, just hundreds of groups of young people preparing for a night out. They were all lolling about in the grass, with barefeet and cigarettes, lots of beer, and the occasional guitar or tambourine. I dont know why, but thats just my picture of perfection, ambience wise. Perfection.
2. The markets. I am not even going to bother explaining. I just love markets. Surely you know that by now.
3. The little cobbled streets, lined with cute fashion boutiques, cosy book stores, and weird hippy shops over flowing with Indian jewellery, hemp balloon pants, and herbal remedies..and its really cool because there are these doors you can find, all over the city, and they take you into a "secret" passage, that is sort of withing the apartment buildings, and you just follow them, not knowing where you'll end up.
4. The Roman Theatre. Not only was it old, and crumbling, and cool, but there are occasionally rock concerts there. How cool is that???!
3. Okay, my favourite thing about Lyon was definately the massive park. Seriously it was huge. There was a lake, and a sort of zoo thing (big cats, elephants, giraffes), as well as huge, early 20th century (I'm thinking..) glass greenhouse. Again, the atmosphere was just amazing. The park was packed with people studying, sunbaking, excercising, drinking, playing music.. packed, and yet not stressful.. I love the park. If I lived in Lyon, I would spend my entire week there, lazing about in the grass, drinking Vitamin Water and listening to my ipod, and eating Granny Smith apples. Its the perfect place for people watching. There is such a variety of people and all off in their own little worlds. Its gorgeous. It was a really beautiful day too. We just lay about in the grass for a while and laughed at the little kids playing hide and seek by the statue, and the show off footballers playing noisily. There were coloured kiosks filled with sweets and crepes and icy drinks and fairy floss. There were clowns handing out outrageous balloons to children who passed by. There were families roller blading, side by side. There were groups of teens, drinking beer, and orange juice straight from the carton, and laughing over a game of cards, and juggling. I even saw a guy walking along with a live cat perched on his shoulder.
GOSH! I LOVE LYON.
Okay, so after Lyon, Agnes and I caught the train back to Escurolles and spent the week talking crap and chilling in Vichy, and watching Skins, and taking ridiculously difficult bike rides up ridiculously long hills, and babysitting (on one occasion). It was great, and on the Saturday I changed families. Goodbye Chez Kante and hello Chez Rozier!
I love the Rozier Family. I live on a little farm just outside of Escurolles. Its gorgeous and green and surrounded by green wheat fields and yellow, floral canola fields. Oh, and my neighbour is a castle... Anyway, Im living with Madame Monique Rozier and Monsieur Jean-Jaques Rozier. They are 60-something, very talkative, very interesting (Mr. R works travels lots for work so the house is full of stuff from all over the world), and very very nice. They have a daughter, Anne, who is 35 but still great company. She is super lovely and very involved in all the charity events in the area (for countries like Columbia and Mali) as well as the cultural and musical festivals in the area. I've already been to a festival at Montlucon avec elle to help out with her Mali stall. It was really fun. We hung out in this massive tent, which was completely decorated in African ornaments. There was a Tunisian/Morrocan stall sharing the tent with us, so half of the tent was full of wooden, Malian statues, and the other half was set up with little poofs to sit on and pretty luxurious fabrics. And there was a lot of delicious Morrocan food.. for free! And Morrocan tea. YUM.
Okay, I'm running out of time so here are some dot points of things Ive done lately:
- I went to the theatre with Mrs. Rozier and saw this french comedian guy, in a one man show. It was really interactive and quite funny.
- I went to this beautiful flower place.. like where they grow flowers and then dry them and make pretty dried bouquets. We went there for a concert (strings)and it was beautiful, lying about, listening to cellos, and eating crepes.. we always eat crepes.
- I discovered the French version of Aunty Leisey. Seriously. She was a semi hippy, listened to a lot of Neil Young and other 1960's cool music, had cool books about art and the environment and music lying about everywhere, and lived in a house where BBQs and beer and socialising are everyday things. It was so nice being there. It felt soooo Australian.
- I went to a Star Wars convention. There were Darth Vaders and Obi Wan Kenobis everywhere. And a little eewok. It was incredibly daggy yet incredibly cool :) And for some reason there was a guy dressed up as Doctor Who and he came up to me and asked if he could have his photo with me. Sure, he wasnt David Tennant, but almost!!
Okay, now last thing. Wooh, I made it.. are you proud? So this weekend it was the second Rotary camp. I was so syked to see Meg again. Shes my aussie pal, from down near Melbourne.. I caught the train with her on my first day in France :) Anyways, we were soooo excited. We even pre-planned what we were going to do for the "spectacle". We did an attempt at a corrobary, and before you go "God, Ive given birth to a rascist" please understand that we did it completely seriosuly and to show Aboriginal culture, not to pull the piss out the Aborigines. We even youtubed it and learnt actual Aborginal dance moves. We decided to talk about reconciliation and explain abit about Aboriginal culture, because it really is unknown here in France. The dance ended up being ok, though I think they all found our wallaby and emu impersenations a little wierd... It was vair embarassing to find that only one other person had prepared a performance though. We'd gone to all this effort because we thought it was compulsory! Oh well, still fun :)
After the spectacle, there was a sort of dance thing, like a mini club, where everyone went and pretended to be ragers. It was really fun, but all the music was in Spanish because ost of the students are from Latin America. And they are all amazing dancers, moving their hips all sexily and doing like full on tango and salsa and stuff. Meg, Mel, Kim, and I (aka. The Aussies) were trying to do the whole Australian "lets-get-into-a-crowd-and-jump-up-and-down" thing but it didnt really work to Reggaton. Thats why we got so excited when Jets "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" came on. We started screaming "JETTTT I LOOOOOVE YOOOUUU" and "WOOH! GO AUSTRALIA" and did full on slam dancing and air guitar. Haha it was so fun. And dont worry, it wasnt embarrassing, coz alot of the French and German kids danced reeeeaaaaalllly bizarrely. The Rotarians came and stopped our little party at 1am, so we moved into this different hall and Meg and I set up her Ipod with some speakers and had an Australian slam dancing sesh to the Hottest 100 2010. It was so fun :) We went to bed at a lovely time of 5am :)
Write again soon
