Tuesday 4th November 2008

Bonjour mes amis!
Ca va? Hope everyone had a bon halloween!
The Bioforce party was AWESOME, and I plan to tell you all about it!
We went to the Chateau de Passins, about an hour’s drive outside of Lyon, which was gorgeous, and they had rented the place from Friday night until Saturday lunchtime. I had arranged a lift with some friends, and arrived to find everyone busily putting up decorations and setting up speakers and kegs etc.
I had been worried that not many people were going to wear costumes, and hadn’t really found anywhere to buy something, so I’d hastily fashioned some ears and a tail out of a cheap hairband and some black socks (That’s the beauty of having been a primary school teacher!).
Anyway, lots of people were in costume, and so I transformed into a cat wearing my sexiest clothes, and frankly looked pretty damn good (if I do say so myself!).

I then made an enormous faux pas whilst attempting to practice my French (something I’ve been doing a lot lately!).
I should point out that last week my friend A informed me that for the last six weeks I’ve been pronouncing “Merci Beaucoup” wrong!
Apparently instead of saying “beau-coo” I’ve been saying “beau-cu” – a very slight difference in the oo sound, so that rather than saying “Thank you very much” I’ve actually been saying “Thanks, nice arse”!
Classic!

Anyway, back to my faux pas, at the party, after getting into my costume, someone asked me what I was (like it wasn’t obvious!). I tried to answer in French, and had intended to say “I’m a cat”, which should have been “Je suis un chat”. However what I actually said was “J’ai un chat” – I accidentally pronounced the ‘t’ at the end, so I in fact announced to a room full of people that “I have a pussy!”

Hilarious, but also rather embarrassing!

Anyhoo, the rest of the party was lots of fun, extremely drunken, and went on until morning – I think I went to bed around 6.30am and was kicked out of bed again around 9am to help clean up! Most people were still very drunk the next morning, so cleaning up was pretty funny too!

Le Chateau

I’m sad to say that despite the abundance of incredibly hot guys, and my unbelievably fabulous outfit, I clearly underestimated the attraction of the hot french girls, as I was utterly unable to get any of the guys to look my way twice!
However, I shall continue in my endeavours, – I don’t give up that easily!

Work continues, and we’ve now had two exams, but I don’t know how I did on either of them yet. The weather has turned quite cold after a beautifully warm autumn, and Minguettes remains interesting – the local teenagers have been causing trouble for some of the students, including my lovely neighbours, but it’s nothing too serious, and I was impressed by their ingenuity the other day.

There’s a bunch of about 6 kids (around 15-16) who always hang out in the entrance hall of our building smoking pot, and they quite frequently yell obscenities at me in French when I walk past. I usually pretend I have no idea what they’re on about, but the other day as I was waiting for the lift one of them shouted “You English yes? Fuck you bitch!”.
I almost laughed, because the fact that they’d gone to all that effort to learn some English just so they could swear at me more effectively was pretty funny.
I couldn’t help thinking that if they bothered to go to school once in a while they could put all that creative energy to a bit more use!

Anyhoo, that’s about it for now, so I hope you’re all well over there, and not too cold (I heard it’s been snowing in the UK recently).

tons of love to everyone,
Maya avec le “beau cul”
xxx