Well, it seems like my pleading letter in poor French to
post-office customs worked, because I arrived home from a weekend away to find
a package awaiting in the mailbox for moi! How exciting. It’s safe to say my
inflatable Santa and ridiculous novelty sunglasses are pride of place in the
room. Cheers Lor! I even have three wrapped things to open on actual Christmas
day. It’s looking likes it going to be a bit of an about-a-boy sort of
Christmas. Me on my own watching movies, eating food and drinking wine, but
fingers crossed we are getting internet installed chez-nous this week so I
should be able to do lots of skyping to get over the loneliness. :S Either way,
a group of assistants are coming up on boxing day and then it’s off to
Paramaribo on the 27th to get ready for Miami- so don’t feel too sad
for me!
I ticked off another first this weekend. Hitch-hiking. And I
didn’t start at the shallow-end. Oh no, as a matter of fact in my first weekend
of faire-ing “du stop” I traversed over 500 Kilometres, met 9 friendly and
interesting drivers and even got one of them to drop me off at Macdo for a
much-needed and long-awaited Hangover maccy-d’s. Bizarrely, it has also been
one of the best opportunities that I have had here to practice French for a
long period of time with a small group of people (i.e me and Katy and the
driver). Here is a brief summary of how I saved 70 euro!
1)
First stop- we had to wait all of two minutes
for a car to stop and take us on a brief journey to a better “hitching-spot”.
He was a film-maker heading to the beach with his baby daughter Venus in the
back of the car!
2)
We hit lucky with the second guy, a Parisian who
was on his way to the airport in a swanky rental car after spending three weeks
working here, and thus he drove us over 200 kilometres, nearly all the way to
Cayenne. He even apologised for not being able to take us all the way... as he
was about to be late for the flight!
3)
This guy wasn’t even going the same direction as
us but he picked us up anyway, and after a slight detour to pick up and drop
off his friend (who gave us some yummy Brazilian food) he drove 30-mins out of
his way to drop us off in Remire-Montjoly about 10km outside of Cayenne. We
even stopped for a cheeky desperados on the way.
Way home:
1)
A nice portugese teacher again dropped us off at
a better starting point and wished us luck in getting ALL the way to St.
Laurent by “stop”. I think this was code for, you girls are crazy!
2)
After a bit of competition with a homeless
looking man also trying to hitch (we won obviously) a nice couple who have been
living here for over 10 years took us an hour or so to Kourou. They have lived
in all the major towns in Guyane so it was interesting to get their perspective
on the different places and the people that live there.
3)
Ok... so this time we had to wait like, a whole
10 minutes for someone to pick us up, and I was beginning to panic. I even let
down the hair and put on the shades and everything. Soon enough another swanky
rental car stopped and a woman agreed to take us the 10 or so km t the turn off
she was taking. She was new to Guyane having just spent 4 years living in La
Réunion. Why she came here I’m not sure. Turns out she got lost, missed the
turning and ended up taking us about 30km before having to turn around.
4)
After being dropped off in the absolute middle
of nowhere, the problem was not that cars were driving past us. The problem was
that there were no cars! Luckily, the very first car stopped for us and the
young girl drove us all the way home. Slight incident with the Gendarmes
because, she didn’t have an L-plate (apparently you still have to have them for
2 years after you pass or something ridic) and also, they couldn’t find the
photo in my passport. I mean seriously, its not that hard. And in record time
we were home, in about the same time it would have taken in the taxi.
Admittedly, the speedometer in the last car was broken and the girl herself
admitted “I honestly have no idea what speed I’m driving. Ha! I think its safe
to say it was well over the 90km limit.
Should probably explain why we went to all this effort in
the first place. Well, being the socialites that we are here in Guyane :S we
had two birthdays to celebrate in one night! The first one was at Olivia’s
house (cough: Mansion- don’t even really wanna talk about it... key words:
Jacuzzi, pool, 4 FRIDGES!) and it was a surprise party for Laure, another
assistant. We showed up with a bottle of rum and soon we were sat drinking in
the Jacuzzi catching up with everyone and celebrating our successful journey.
Drank some more Rum (quite a lot), had a pizza takeaway, a birthday cake, and
then we were off to the second party at Anne’s house. (She is the teacher that
came to Trinidad and Tobago with us). Oops- I guess we all forgot it was a
fancy dress party. Everyone else looked good though! Quite frankly most of us
were too drunk to care. I think I personally managed to drink enough rum for
everyone there, and had to have a cheeky sit down for 45 mins and be the DJ as
that was all I was capable of doing :S At around 4am – it felt like about
midnight in my head- we walked back to Olivia’s and everyone found a suitable
hammock/bed/sofa to crash on. My head was not my friend the next morning.
Neither was the sunshine. Or the heat. Where is the rainy season that we are
supposed to be in the heart of right now ?
In
other news, I’m happy to have made it to the last week before the holidays.
Most classes are going well, but some I am on the verge of giving up/ not
caring for a couple. If the teacher doesn’t care, why should I? I am not going
to waste 45 minutes a week shouting at them, so if they end up colouring for
the whole year and not listening to me, so be it! If nothing else, I have
learnt that I really don’t want to be a language teacher permanently. On Friday
though, i don’t have any classes as it is the school Christmas party, but if I
want I can go check it out. Apparently Santa is arriving by pirougue (big
canoe). That’s a first for me! But must just be how we do it here in the
amazon.
Anyway, so sorry to leave you all wanting more (i’m sure)
but Gavin and Stacey is calling me and its almost 11. (I have become a boring
old person who likes to be asleep by 11, has to get up at 7 and generally needs
at least an hour napping at some point in the day. )
Perhaps over the next week when I have lots of
free time (read: awkward Christmas loner with nothing to do) I can entertain/
educate you all with some fascinating and well thought-through insights into
this department and its functioning. Then again I could just stick to
rum-drinking and general bantering. On verra!
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