Much hand-wringing and moping from one Mr Graeme Oxley today. The rain has continued unabated today. "Aaah...there's not going to be any snow left!", he says. "Look Andy!" as he stands by the window (for the 12th time this morning). "It's washing down the road!". Hmmmmm ...thank goodness for the Ipod!!
Lots of french homework completed today. A good thing too, as Liz is back from her visit to the UK and we have our 2 hour lesson this afternoon.
Liz is a fantastic teacher. She prepares really well for every lesson and makes it fun. The time just flies by. As from today however, she no longer speaks to us in English (or at least 95% in French). However, when she is confronted with two completely cretinous blank faces, she has to relent and explain at least partly in English.
I am certainly getting better at blurting out a "semi" understandable sentence. My theory is ( much to Liz's horror!), don't worry about all those pesky, a's, aux's, la's, du's and les's etc, but just get those verbs, nouns and adjectives going. And if you don't know the french word just use the English one...but keep blundering on. They usually get the drift! More often than not, the person I am speaking to will concede and usually reply in english (really well, darn it!!). But my biggest problem is understanding the language when I receive a reply in French. Fortunately Graeme is much better at understanding the spoken language, but he is less confidant about speaking. As his mother describes the Oxley trait, "He's just like his father..afraid of his own voice!" I had hoped that watching copious quantities of French TV while we were sick might have helped me. Alas no!! (For the record, Graeme watched way more TV than me!!) Alors, Liz's new rules might help!
2/ Our lovely Liz with Muesli checking her work!!
The only other highlight today, was our first yoga lesson! Yes, you heard correctly! And moreover, it was Graeme's idea! Yes, I was surprised too. We are booked in for classes every Monday night, from 7 - 8pm. I had advised Antoinette our teacher - "Desole, mai mon mari et moi sommes debutantes. " I hoped she understood?
After french lessons, we "frocked up in our yoga garb", grabbed our yoga mats (aka known as foam sleeping mats that we picked up for E$4 each at Carrefours) and headed up the hill to gym. Quite a tricky exercise given the icy state of our driveway and the roads in general. Fortunately, Pepi Peugeot is unstoppable when we slip some chains on her!
Given the constraints of our severely limited wardrobe, and to give a very clear mental picture of what I mean by "yoga garb", let me explain further. Graeme chose to bring a Treble Cone branded windscreen ice-scraper and his ski waxing gear rather than a tracksuit. Consequently, the only pair of pants that's flexible enough for yoga was his long underwear! Now I'm not saying that he didn't look very striking in his form hugging stripey polyprop numbers... a bit like Rudolf Nureyev I thought! But unfortunately, Graeme was the only bloke in our yoga class and I couldn't help but notice that he was attracting quite a deal of extra attention from our lovely instructress Antoinette. She was very keen to help him get the stretch exactly right. All the other ladies also seemed very keen to help Graeme !
We will be buying Graeme tracksuit pants before next Monday night's lesson!!
And so ends a wet and soggy day in the French Alps. Please Lord, turn the temperature dial down, so all this grim rain turns to lovely snow!!
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