Posts Tagged ‘English’

I have a terrible weekend sleeping pattern -_-

{ December 21, 2008 @ 1:59 PM } · { Deja Moi Comme Ca }
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Hey people!

Today was so freaky! Well see, it was all normal, I got up and was ready for ice-skating… And then was dropped off at ice-skating, so all normal UNTIL… After an hour or so of being there, my French friend introduced Venetia and I to this guy who was described as being “anglais” (English). When he started speaking though Venetia and I were absolutely mind boggled (This isn’t anything new but anyway : P)… He had a South African accent : O!

It’s like, what are the odds of two Zimbabweans moving to a little town in France and then being introduced to a South African… by a French friend… I just can’t get over it! It was just so nice being understood and actually understanding everything! Even phrases like “How’s it?”… As Venetia had the strongest craving to say and then said it, of course : P. If you’re from Zimbabwe or South Africa you’ll know this means “How are you?”.

It makes sense and you’d probably be able to guess what it means even if you’ve never heard of it but the amount of times that it slipped up when I was conversing with friends in Ireland and all that I got was a blank stare was unbelievable : P.

Although… it was actually a little bizarre not having to think to reply to someone, of course I speak English at home and I watch English television a lot more than I’d watch French but it’s just different speaking to someone that you don’t know very well, so easily. When you don’t or haven’t lived in a foreign speaking country, you just don’t appreciate how little you have to use your brain when doing simple daily things : P.

Look! I even use my brain with French when it’s not necessary… For instance… As I was typing “daily” immediately the word “quotidien” popped into my head… It must be absolutely overloading if you speak a tonne of languages : P. It is cool though ^_^.

Oh yes, see his description was donned as “English” because that’s what anyone who speaks English is called by most of the French. I’ve had to correct people so many uncountable times and ten minutes later they’ll be back to saying “anglaise”!

Owww! I just placed my hand on the side of my chair and was ATTACKED!! Gadget was, oh so kind enough to leave little (But PAINFUL) punctures on my knuckles, nice! Now he’s killing an unlucky piece of paper : (.

My accent is hopeless… I have no idea what it is. It has hardly any ressemblance to my prefered accent, Zimbabwean… It’s definately not Irish… I pronounce my “S”’s like “S”’s not like “Z”’s… So it can’t be French… Oh and actually, when the French speak English that’s not what they sound like /: |, anyway it doesn’t sound like the stereotypical Frenchy… I don’t roll my “R”’s so the two months spent in Sicily did no dent into my unidentifiable accent. Well, this is all that I can tell of it anyway : P.

It’s 1AM and I want to go watch “House (M.D.)” now… I know, I have a terrible weekend sleeping pattern -_-. But hey! Now I have the 21 on my calendar coloured in as well : ). Late night writing rocks!! : P

Catch you all later! Four sleeps until Christmas!

- Bianca =)

They speak English!

{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:25 PM } · { Kiss My Fishy }
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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Hey Everyone!

So yesterday we arrived in England… well I wrote about it yesterday anyway :-P . Seeing my mom, Gizmo and Karen was great. But then there were MORE great things to come on the second day of being in England. My sleep wasn’t the best because I was staying at my grandmother’s (Karen) house… and her son and daughter-in-law live with her too… they have a cat. I absolutely love cats but there’s a tiny problem I have with them… I’m allergic :-O!

But never mind that because after four days of suffering, oh woe me :-P , no it wasn’t that bad, we moved into my cousins, uncle and aunt’s house which is literally across the road… okay around one road, down another, around one more and then there it was :-P .

Oh yes, the MORE to come on the second day was that I went to the super store with my mom and (:-O. You have no idea how happy I was to be understood and that I could understand people there! They speak English… I know, no duh you are in England but that’s not the point!

I had missed it so much… I just couldn’t stop smiling, it was when the guy at the till said the price and bid us a good day that I realised how much I had missed it… he seemed pretty confused at why I had a grin from ear to ear on but, I didn’t care, at least he spoke English! It is something that I still miss even living in France where there’s more English speakers here than Sicily but it was amazing. I never knew how easy I had it and I actually can’t remember any other “shopping experiences” (like talking to people at a store…) before I’d moved to a non-English speaking country. So it’s so true! You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Then again… I did miss the weather in Sicily too… I mean I really, really missed it…. And I had really, really appreciated it there as well :-P ! It was absolutely freezing in Farringdon… but my two little cousins loved playing outside and so I had to bite the bullet and stick there with them, in the end I tempted them to come back inside with milkshake! Mmm milkshake, it fixes everything :-P .

Anyway on the forth day, this is now the seventh of May (Ha! I was a poet and I didn’t even know it… until I re-read the sentence anyway :-P ) I saw the rest of the crew – Luke (16), Matthew (13… Matt was born on the same day as me! He’s only 12 hours older. He was 6am I was 6pm :-P ), Darius (11), I know there’s an awful lot here ;-P, Daniel and Jett (who’s 4 and 3, aw how cute :-P )!

Just read over the Matthew thing, in case you don’t know our birthday’s the 1st of February… now you have no excuse to forget it and can’t not send me in a nice picture of you kissing a fish :-P . Pucker up!

On the 8th of May, it was my sister’s birthday! My aunt, Simone, baked a… actually two chocolate cakes for Venetia, you heard the list of names! One would’ve just been finished in an instant of it being brought out :-P . Oh yummy, those cakes were just… so yummy!

We took tonnes of pictures but most of them are of Venetia and I stuffing our faces with chocolate cake… or the one’s that were taken too early and we were trying to fix our hair! Quite a few random ones of a vase of flowers… I think these where taken by my one cousin when he got his hands on the camera :-P .

Most of the days that we were in England it was raining, so we didn’t really get up to much. I made sure I watched a good amount of English T.V. whilst I was there though :-P . In France it’s a very odd occasion that there’s English on the television. Except for the Nespresso, what else? ad, they don’t dub it :-P .

We stayed in England for a month, on the last Sunday Simone, David (my uncle), the boys, Karen, my parents, Venetia and I, wow quite a list there :-P , went to a few museums and galleries. In one of the museums there were little stuffed chickens, that was really sad but my little cousins didn’t seem to mind… I guess they’re boys :-P also fake dodo birds, dinosaur, giraffe, elephant and rhino skeletons and my favourite, the luminous crystal room! I was wearing converse so the laces looked so cool in the light. Of course we got pictures on my moms camera phone :-P .

Oh yeah before I forget! It’s winter now, no duh :-P , but that means that bees and wasps and looking for warm places to keep snuggled up. Yesterday my mom got stung by the wasp or a hornet on her leg twice and her hand at least four times! It was hiding in her trousers and then quickly flew away to the other side of the room once it had done the damage.

We didn’t know what to do so I put got the cream out, then my dad said to put vinegar on, the vinegar soothed the sting but today a few hours later it swelled up and today it’s still all swollen. Today I found out though that once you’re stung if you put a copper penny on it and hold the penny on the sting for 15 minutes it should take the sting away and it won’t even swell up!

Great to know, but a bit late now :-P . Well I’m going to leave it at that! Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca

Save The Bees!

{ December 18, 2008 @ 12:13 PM } · { Kiss My Fishy }
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Hey Everyone!

Every Morning the first thing I do on my computer is check Yahoo! News. This morning I found some really interesting videos. The bees are slowly dying! A beehive owner found his beehives to be abandoned one day, no bees in sight, not even dead ones! Apparently it’s because of a relatively new nicotine based insecticide that slows the immune system of insects including cute, little bumblebees. Yes they can give quite a sting, but amazingly their venom is actually good for you. It strengthens your immune system… unless of course you are allergic then… well the bees aren’t good news for you :-P .

Lots of fruits rely on bees (wow, this sounds like one of those boring things that you have to read and then answer questions about in school, urgh!)… for instance blueberries because of their difficult to get into urn shaped flowers, they are very hard to populate.

Now what was the shape of the blueberry flower? Yes, that’s correct an URN shape. Well done! No I’m only joking, I’ll carry on with some (slightly) more interesting… stories now :-P .

On our last few days staying in Palermo, we looked around at a few houses… these didn’t interest us much… well the one was absolutely lovely … but the guy who wanted to rent it would only be ready in six months time! So this wouldn’t really work for us…

So we went into an internet café, since we were staying in a bed and breakfast by this stage and they didn’t have an open access to internet options. We were looking for another B&B and “something” just seemed to take my sisters fancy to the west of the country, on an interactive map. We clicked on it and it brought up a list of B&B’s.

We found one that took our liking. On the website it said he could speak Italian, English (Woo Hoo!) and Spanish… we called him up and yes he could speak English… later we found out that he just put Spanish on for the sake of it and that he couldn’t really speak that. But it didn’t matter because he spoke English :-P !

Now the question was how where we going to get there. It was quite far down and we didn’t have a car yet. So we just took a long trip on a… long trip bus, stopping at a hotel for the night before we were booked into (Okay I’m going to give him a fake name, because personally, he doesn’t know I’m writing this and if he ever googles himself, like we know we all do, come on admit it, then that won’t be so great) Giovanni’s place (Italian enough name there :-P ).

The bus was supposed to drop us off, close enough to the hotel but we accidentally got off too early thinking that it had stopped for good and then off it went again we were like (:-O! So my dad and I went to find a taxi… later to find out that, what are the odds, this town only has one or two! Soon we found one; he was an old-ish guy sleeping in the front of his car. The newsagent man that told us that he was the taxi guy, yelled across the street and woke him up :-P . Then off we went to our hotel, phew!

Oh actually the first time we ever took the bus in Sicily we were kicked off it! Not because we were naughty or anything… mainly because we didn’t know we had to STAMP the ticket in the ticket machine. How mean of them! No-one actually does unless the inspector comes on the bus, because if you don’t you can just use it for a different bus journey.

Yes, so to carry on with what I was saying, we took the bus, stayed in a hotel for the night called Villa Favourita. It was really cool, instead of a big building with rooms… you had your own detached IGLOO! Yes an igloo… or close enough to one anyway. It was a giant white dome shaped thing… tonnes of them just plopped down in an open area with orange and lemon trees growing around, on the sides of the paths… Venetia and I also recorded there as well… we were just messing around though… no real footage :-P .

There was this thing on top of the netted football section by our igloo and we thought it was a slice of toast… don’t ask us how it got there it just did! So we tried to get it down by throwing our ball up and whacking it (how old are we :-P )… it just kept “rolling” back to the middle of the net though, in the end we realised that it was a just a stone… PRETENDING to be a slice of toast! It was so funny!

The next morning we were up nice and early, it wasn’t the best of days but it was nice enough. We had arranged for “Giovanni” to come pick us up from the hotel to take us to his place.

He arrived looking like any Sicilian does at this time of year. In an abnormally large black jacket and sunglasses. We packed up our suitcases and he took us to his place. Once we arrived he brought us upstairs, showed us our rooms then he dragged my dad downstairs and took him shopping for a barbeque that he wanted to have with us…

The one good thing that we learnt from Giovanni was that lemon juice on a sausage is… AMAZING! It has to be the nicest way to eat barbequed meat! Seriously you have to try it!

Giovanni was …. quite a character. He took us fishing once… it only lasted about 15 minutes… the worm that was destined to the hook BIT him as a desperate, final move! It was an evil looking thing (the worm was too :-P ). No really. The worm looked like something out of the movie Men in Black, it’s whole mouth opened wide and a new… I don’t know what you’d call it… a tongue maybe with incisors on it… it was really nasty…! They are sea worms. We’d gotten so many in the box and because of the fact that we had only fished for 15 minutes, we still had all of those biting worms. So Giovanni threw them all into the water and off they swam or stuck to a piece of seaweed.. they were really weird!

Right, well I’ll leave it at that, don’t want to freak you out too much. See I eventually got back around to fishing!

Hope to hear from you soon.

- Bianca

More on Sicily!

{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:46 AM } · { Kiss My Fishy }
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Friday, October 26, 2007

Hi everyone!

I don’t get it but because it’s a blog you have to start reading from the bottom and make your way up :-S. Noticed this a while ago just never thought to remind you guys :-P .

Right… now where was I with my last post… I’m not going to go by everyday in Sicily… mainly because I’ve forgotten a lot and I’ll only type up the interesting stuff :-P .

Sicilian’s (not all of them, but most) are very stubborn, they keep wearing their gianormous winter jackets and scarves, no matter what temperature the day is all the way up until June! Then they’re free to wear what they like :-P … of course I didn’t know this on my very first day of being in Sicily. I woke up and it was gorgeous outside, so as any sane person would do, after getting ready I put on LIGHT clothes.

Then again me coming straight from cold Ireland, it may actually have been cold for the locals and I just wasn’t used to it because I was so used to freezing temperatures… literally if Gizmo wanted to go outside in Ireland, I’d open the door just slightly let him out, struggle against the wind to close the door again, then run to a window and watch him… I was always afraid he’d get blown away :-P … we lived on a hill in the middle of the country side so… it COULD have been possible :-P !

Once we’d had breakfast we went for a walk around the area we were in. After 5 minutes of looking around I got stopped by an elderly man, who started rambling on in Sicilian, making vigorous arm movements towards me and then the sky, then him… me and the sky a final time… quite confusing… then he tapped my bare arms and said in Italian this time “cold?”, I laughed and said “No, I’m from Ireland”. He kissed me on the cheek and wandered off… it was very strange but then again, I didn’t know the Sicilian culture…

On the first day we had to get a phone SIM card, so we went into a small electrical shop… it is the most obvious thing to do :-P . Anyway we really couldn’t get our message across but strangely enough a guy walked into the shop at this exact time, the shop keeper greeted him and then said something in Italian… he immediately started speaking perfect English… what are the odds! It turns out he’d moved to Sicily 11 years ago from Scotland, and was now teaching at the university near by. Anyhow we got his number and the SIM card :-) and left. This left my spirits slightly higher, but they were later crushed again when I found out that an English speaker who’s not a tourist in Sicily is very odd :-P … AHHH!

Palermo is an absolutely gorgeous city… it just has a lot of stray dogs which you know what that leads (HA! Leads!!! Do you get it? :-P . I’m SO funny!!! … if you could hear me now, you’d know this is said in a sarcastic way… so just read it like that :-P ) to on the ground :-P . Yeah! Some Sicilians don’t seem to love their animals as much as the French do. Over Easter there, some of them go on holiday and just set their dogs free to look after themselves, when they come back if their dog’s still there they’ll take it back… most aren’t though… on the motorway we say tonnes of little, fluffy, dead…dogs… it was absolutely heart breaking!

Our house that we found (I’ll get to this later), the garden of it, used to be the home of the guard dog of the house, before we moved in. Now the owners were supposed to take him away… they did. They just threw the poor thing into the boot, slammed it shut, drove down the lane and we thought that was the last we were going to hear of him. A few days later my sister and I took a walk down the lane only to find the poor thing tied to a tree on a short chain by the grape vines. We ran down to him and found that he had no water and today was absolutely blistering heat! We quickly walked back up to the house, got a few bottles of water brought them down to him and later that night we even brought him the left over from dinner.

The owners of the house, we noticed, came back and gave him some of those dog pebbles, but we still fed him sometimes… in the end my parents and I were even taking him for walks, we weren’t allowed to give him a name though because then we’d become too attatched… he was part pointer it was really funny to watch him chase a lizard, then run around the rock digging at where he thought it had gone even though it had long run away through the grass.

But not all Sicilians are like this with their animals, one day, actually when we were leaving Palermo to go to Mazara del vallo, which is to the south west of Sicily (I’ll also get to that later).We were waiting for a train and we saw an elderly man with a puppy that would literally fit in your hand! He would push the puppy gently away with his foot then keep on walking, but the puppy kept coming back and jumping all over him… okay all over his ankle… it couldn’t really reach much higher :-P . Anyway he sat down on a bench doubled over with his arms flapping about playing with it. At the end he walked around the fountain and the puppy got distracted and was looking down at something through the gutter. The owner saw, then ran and “hid” behind a pole watching the puppy like a little boy.

Soon the puppy realised that it’s owner had gone missing and began running around, looking frantically for him, eventually it spotted his owner, ran over then went crazy! It was the last highlight of my time in Palermo.

Yes the statues in Palermo city were absolutely gorgeous! In Palermo we met some of my father’s family. The first time we met them we went to lunch… they can eat A LOT of fish… actually Sicilians can just eat A LOT :-P . They invited us to their house a few Sundays and wow, we could hardly move!!! They also took us around quite a few times (I promise I’ll get back to all of these things in more posts to come!). A few places was Mondello beach… I have to say I hadn’t ever seen so many people out and about, playing football, walking, or just sitting around… and it was almost dark!… and very cold … even for me :-P !

Another one was the cave were Saint Rosalia was found. It was very pretty, built into the mountain and had a big, open area where the rain water came in and was captured into little pipes along the walls which ended at the Holy water area. Pretty scary being inside though because of the way the rocks just jut out in random places so you don’t quite know how safe it is :-P !

I’m sure I’ll go into more detail about these places and put up a few images soon. Going to leave it at that, don’t want to make you all TOO bored :-P . Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca