A Year in Villefranche sur Mer - Moving to France

Day 23. (Friday) The aim of today’s class to learn how to ask questions and for homework last night we had to write five ‘quel/quelle/quelles questions, which I thought would be easy but it wasn’t. In English we don’t generally ask many ‘what is’ questions other than stuff like what time is it? What’s your nationality, all of which only require short answers so I really thought about this and came up with questions that I hope will elicit longer responses. I had ‘what is your favourite holiday destination? What is the best bar/restaurant around here? And so on. When it came to asking each other our questions it worked really well and Annick was happy to announce that we were speaking French each other. Then it was Vlada’s turn and she asked Annick ‘what’s the time?’ do you see what I mean? There is no need for this crap! There is no room for a precocious brat with a limited concentration span in such a small group. Alison made the mistake of asking me how many countries I’ve been to...

Day 22. (Thursday) Huw came into Nice with me to go to the office and the w eather was perfect this morning, the little storm yesterday has blown the humidity away – hooray. Michael is not in class today as he’s gone to Morocco for work so it was just the girls. Annick asked if I’d bought my shoes in Morocco, they are Moroccan but I bought them in Villefranche’s Saturday market! She then talked about how colourful I am saying I lifted her mood – how lovely – the girls all agreed. She asked me how I coordinate so well and in my best French I said ‘it’s easy I only have a few colours, orange is the main one then I also have cerise pink, some purple and red. I occasionally wear black and white, but not often. I worked in a design college in London for more years than I care to remember and if I went in wearing something dull or black I was told off because everybody expected colour, I felt under pressure on some days thinking ‘I’m not colourful enough today’ and now I think it’...

Day 21. (Wednesday) Wednesday market was setting up and the Thai food man said bonjour, it’s very exciting that the locals are realising that we’re still here. In class today we did role play again to practise formal and informal greetings and goodbyes. Michael was the director of a company, Shanna and Alison were accountants, Vlada was HR and I was an important client about to sign a huge contract – better than being a short alien I guess.     We then went on to learn how to present ourselves to new people saying stuff like my name is, I am a teacher, I study French etc. and got two new words – married is marie(e) and single is celibataire. There was a slight awkward pause as three out for five of us are native English speakers; I couldn’t not say anything so I asked if the word for single in French has the same meaning as in English? Annick didn’t get it at first so I said ‘catholic priests are celibate.’ She thought it was hilarious when ...