Posts Tagged ‘south’
{ December 21, 2008 @ 1:59 PM }
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{ Deja Moi Comme Ca }
{ Tags: accent, Africa, anglais, craving, English, freaky, French, friend, How's it?, ice-skating, mind boggled, odds, ready, south, South Africa, South African, Venetia, Zimbabweans }
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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 =)
{ December 18, 2008 @ 10:09 PM }
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{ Deja Moi Comme Ca }
{ Tags: angel, anniversary, awake, back, bells, Bianca, blog, blogspot, brilliant, candyfloss, centre, Christmas, coal, concept, crepe, decorations, Deja Moi Comme Ca, dormant, eat, eighteen, elf, end, enjoy, entirety, everything, few, finished, fir, first, five, forest, France, Gadget, gianormous, girl, glittery, golden, good, gorgeous, great, grotto, idea, ill, jingle, jingle bells, Kiss My Fishy, kitten, last, lights, link, lounge, Matchstick, Matchstick Girl, mid-air, miniature, moving, new, news, nibbles, noise, number 13, pair, parents, perfectly, play, pretty, room, round-about, running, sad, santa, set, seven, shed, sitting, sleep, slinking, sore, sound, south, south-west France, story, strands, sugar, sunglasses, tags, tale, tangled, terrible, thirsty, traffic, trail, tree, tummy, twinkle, understand, wedding, west, whether, wordpress, world, wrapping paper }
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Hey guys!
The entirety of my day today (Since 8AM :-O), was spent checking out another blog host called WordPress and so I think that I’m moving Deja Moi Comme Ca there, I know that I’ve just moved from Kiss My Fishy but that was necessary… Mmm Hmmm! : P
I’ve also started it correctly by actually adding tags, heehee… Well I stopped half-ish way through because it took something like four to five hours just to do the tags for eighteen of my posts! I will continue with them sometime though! It’s also already got quite a bit of traffic, so I think it’s a good idea and if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world… Right? : P
I’m not sure whether or not I should delete this blogspot because otherwise it’ll just be left dormant like Kiss My Fishy… So shall have to decide that! Anyway, for now, here’s the link to the new blog: www.dejamoicc.wordpress.com .
Okay, so to the news! Two days ago we finally finished putting up the Christmas decorations in the lounge… It’s just so glittery… It’s like, “Woah! Where’s my sunglasses?!” : P… Brilliant! I’m really looking forward to Christmas, especially because it’s going to be Gadget’s (my kitten’s) very first and he’s always so curious about everything, so it’ll be brilliant to play with the wrapping paper… Or the coal :/ with him : P.
Like I said in my last post, on Saturday the 13th it was my parents wedding anniversary. So before we went to dinner we went to town first. Our little town in south-west France goes completely out for Christmas. All of the little lights are all a-twinkle anywhere you look and even the round-abouts are all done up, it’s just so gorgeous.
In the very centre of town however, the whole place is turned into a Christmas forest sort of thing. The smell of fir trees is in the air and the atmosphere is great! When we were out we saw Santa and even an elf. In the centre, every year they have a little story laid out in a trail of miniature wooden grotto shed thingies.
This year it was the story of the “Matchstick Girl”. It was such a sad story but they had set it up perfectly and when she became an angel at the end… Or rather “Grotto number 13” everyone seemed to enjoy the tale. So it was good, all in all. I even got a sugar crepe and a GIANORMOUS candyfloss… So, in fact, it was GREAT! : P
Oh yes, the only thing that I keep worrying about with Gadget this Christmas is that he doesn’t quite understand the concept of Christmas decorations. I’ve caught him a few times trying to EAT the little golden strands from the Christmas tree. So I’m a little bit worried in case he gets curious, nibbles on something, it gets tangled in his tummy and he gets ill…
So every time he’s slinking around by the tree he gets a hissed at. Recently though we found out that he’s petrified by the sound of jingle bells. You see Venetia took a pair of these really pretty decoration ones that we have and went shaking them around the house… When she came to her room, suddenly Gadget was awake from his deep sleep on her bed and running mid-air to get away from the noise! It was so funny! Venetia felt terrible afterwards for scaring him though, of course but she didn’t know.
Okay guys, I’m getting thirsty and my back’s getting sore from sitting in front of the computer all day, so I’m going to leave it at that. Hope to hear from you guys soon! Seven sleeps until Christmas!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:02 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Alfonso, Bageria, barbeque, Bianca, birthday, brother-in-law, domani, England, experience, father, fiance, foreigner, France, Giovanni, gorgeous, green, high, hmmm, incorrect, internet, job, Jovanna, kill, lines, lucky, lunch, May, Mazara del Vallo, offer, patio, phone, phone booth, planted, poisonous, ramshackle, refresh, serpente, slithering, sly, snake, south, south-west, South-west Sicily, spade, spirits, summer, telephone, tile-less, tomorrow, unorignial, west, wheelbarrow, words }
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Hey everyone!
Trying to think of where we were last 
… oh right yeah! Okay well once my mom left for England, a week or two later my dad got a job offer. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you this before but I’ll just refresh your memories… and mine !
In our Sicilian house since we were in what they called the country side and too far away from any phone lines so we didn’t even have a telephone or the internet in that house! Giovanni promised it would be within the first week… then domani, domani, domani (tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow). Per sempre domani (always tomorrow)!
The telephone guys came, looked and said “Yes, too far away for a telephone line”. We’ll need to put more in. The next time they came, they measured the distance, then after 15 minutes of being at the house went for a two hour lunch break!
They never came again, so the whole time in Sicily we didn’t have internet or telephone. Except for when we went to an internet café or telephone place. So anyway to get on with my original story, my dad received the job offer in a tiny, ramshackle-like telephone booth place since it was the closest to our house… and generally like most of the telephone places in Mazara del Vallo.
And of course in case you haven’t noticed or read in previous posts it was in south-west France 
. My dad accepted, and then my mom booked us tickets out of Sicily for the forth of May. You see my mom had to be in Sicily or we had to be in England before the eighth of May because it would have been my sister’s 18th birthday.
I was barely able to bring myself to stay in that house for the last three weeks. It was so boring!
We did have a little bit of fun though, even though we were stuck in the middle of a family fight between Jovanna, Giovanni’s fiancé, also given a random name made up by, yours truly… me! Okay, okay I got it off an Italian girls name site … and it’s just the girl version of Giovanni… I know I’m so unoriginal… and Jovanna’s brother-in-law. They wanted the house for summer… don’t ask me why they’d want that house, but whatever their reason was, they wanted it.
I’m using the word “they” because it was Jovanna’s brother-in-law’s father as well as the brother-in-law. Those two were really sly things. First off they made Jovanna’s mother pay them to fix up the house for us… which they did NOT do such a great job of… in my opinion. Is there actually a point to painting the outside of the house… and then just leaving the kitchen floor tile-less because they’d done “their work” . Secondly they planted a snake in our garden! Yes it was them… I reckon so anyway.
They came to paint the walls on the patio one day and went into the garden to get the wheelbarrow, but when they left they just stood around waiting for my dad to come up and they left the wheelbarrow outside the garden instead of putting it back.
That day, my dad and Giovanni were sitting in the garden. My dad spotted a giant green snake slithering across the ground, calmly told Giovanni… Giovanni jumped up looked around then ran to my dad’s side… I hope you know the descriptive word for Giovanni that I’m thinking because I’d really rather not write it out .
My dad asked him if he should kill it, if it was poisonous. Giovanni said yes. So my dad got the spade…. And you can imagine what happened next I’m sure.
Later that day Giovanni said that the last time he saw a snake was at a barbeque seven years ago… and THEN told my dad that green snakes aren’t poisonous… this from the guy that ran to my dad when he saw the snake and told my dad to kill it!
A few days later Jovanna’s brother-in-law… I can’t even remember his real name… so let’s say Alfonso. So Alfonso came around with his wife. My dad said in Italian “I found your snake!” he said “Mio serpente?!” (my snake) “Yes, your snake”, was my dad’s reply. So now Alfonso didn’t know if it was just a foreigner to the Italian language with the incorrect words… or of course that we knew it was him who placed it there . Mind boggling!
After he got over the confusing-ness of my dad’s comment he asked what colour it was. And then proved that it must have been them because his wife and he said “Oooh green, it is very, very poisonous! Brown is okay but GREEN!”… So who to believe now… hmmm.
My dad told Giovanni about them saying this and he said… yes… but no it was not green it was brown! Since it was clearly green . We went down to the farmer by us and asked him. Green is not poisonous. We decided to believe him .
So now you can see that we had good enough reasons to leave Sicily. Even though it was gorgeous… some of the people that we met weren’t. So I guess if we had had a better experience and had found a nice house, we would never have left and I wouldn’t be writing this… lucky I had that experience then, eh?
(South-west Sicily, Bageria)
Tomorrow I’ll write about leaving Sicily . See you all then. Hope to hear from you soon (spirits still high ).
- Bianca
ojp
{ December 18, 2008 @ 10:56 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Africa, Bianca, comments, dad, destination, drive, England, experiences, flop, France, gite, house, ireland, Italy, lake, long, Mafia, March, Matabeleland, Mediterranean, mom, moving, myself, Northern Ireland, october, permanent, Pyrenees, rainy, September, shower, sicily, sister, soap, south, summer, symptoms, three, time, weeks, withdrawal, wondering, Zimbabwe }
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Thursday, October 4, 2007
Hey everyone!
Well on the first of September, we moved to our permanent house in France. About time too, you see… moving about all began a VERY long time ago (well.. 6 months on the first… but that seems like a very long time to me, so just let me have my rant!)… So on the 1st of March 2007, we departed Ireland only after deciding 6 weeks earlier that we were going to move to Sicily. Yep, that’s right not France, Sicily (confused, eh? )! My dad’s dad had lived there, and Ireland was so cold, EVERY single day it was like “What’s the day like?” “Umm… rainy and cold…” on and on and on.
We’re not used to cold weather (I’ll get to that part later). So we all made a decision to give it a go, (for those of you that never concentrated in Geography classes, Sicily is the football of the boot (the boot being Italy), it’s also know as “The Land of the Mafia”… actually I just made that last bit up, but it is where “The Mafia” originated from, with only ever visiting it once.
So you’re wondering how we ended up in south-west France? After having a lot of bad experiences there, my dad got a job offer in France and so he accepted. I left Sicily after living in it for two months and flew all the way up North, just stopping short of Northern Ireland in South England. We came here first because my cousins live there and it would give us more time to find a decent place in France.
One month later we left and after only finding a “gite” – like a summer house (that’s where the lake was and where the pictures below were taken at) – we arrived in our hopefully last destination… for a while! Then of course we moved to this new house. Sadly it has no lake near it 
, but it is very nice and only five minutes from town, an hour from skiing in the Pyrenees and an hour and a half’s drive from the Mediterranean !
We’ve been living here for a month and the fishing withdrawal symptoms are starting to set in! I find that when a bar of soap drops in the shower, I’m mildly surprised it doesn’t flop around for a bit, before becoming still!
Oh right yeah, just read through above and realised that I forgot to tell you why we’re not used to the cold weather, well we (my mom, dad, sister and of course myself) were all born in Zimbabwe, Africa, I was three when the country became too corrupt to live in and we had to leave for Ireland. Right well, I’m away until next write up .
Hope to hear comments SOON !
- Bianca
How we came to be so far across the pond! (Ireland to France)
{ December 18, 2008 @ 10:56 AM } · { Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Africa, Bianca, comments, dad, destination, drive, England, experiences, flop, France, gite, house, ireland, Italy, lake, long, Mafia, March, Matabeleland, Mediterranean, mom, moving, myself, Northern Ireland, october, permanent, Pyrenees, rainy, September, shower, sicily, sister, soap, south, summer, symptoms, three, time, weeks, withdrawal, wondering, Zimbabwe } · { Leave a Comment }
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Hey everyone!
Well on the first of September, we moved to our permanent house in France. About time too, you see… moving about all began a VERY long time ago (well.. 6 months on the first… but that seems like a very long time to me, so just let me have my rant!)… So on the 1st of March 2007, we departed Ireland only after deciding 6 weeks earlier that we were going to move to Sicily. Yep, that’s right not France, Sicily (confused, eh?
)! My dad’s dad had lived there, and Ireland was so cold, EVERY single day it was like “What’s the day like?” “Umm… rainy and cold…” on and on and on.
We’re not used to cold weather (I’ll get to that part later). So we all made a decision to give it a go, (for those of you that never concentrated in Geography classes, Sicily is the football of the boot (the boot being Italy), it’s also know as “The Land of the Mafia”… actually I just made that last bit up, but it is where “The Mafia” originated from, with only ever visiting it once.
So you’re wondering how we ended up in south-west France? After having a lot of bad experiences there, my dad got a job offer in France and so he accepted. I left Sicily after living in it for two months and flew all the way up North, just stopping short of Northern Ireland in South England. We came here first because my cousins live there and it would give us more time to find a decent place in France.
One month later we left and after only finding a “gite” – like a summer house (that’s where the lake was and where the pictures below were taken at) – we arrived in our hopefully last destination… for a while! Then of course we moved to this new house. Sadly it has no lake near it
, but it is very nice and only five minutes from town, an hour from skiing in the Pyrenees and an hour and a half’s drive from the Mediterranean 
!
We’ve been living here for a month and the fishing withdrawal symptoms are starting to set in! I find that when a bar of soap drops in the shower, I’m mildly surprised it doesn’t flop around for a bit, before becoming still!
Oh right yeah, just read through above and realised that I forgot to tell you why we’re not used to the cold weather, well we (my mom, dad, sister and of course myself) were all born in Zimbabwe, Africa, I was three when the country became too corrupt to live in and we had to leave for Ireland. Right well, I’m away until next write up
.
Hope to hear comments SOON
!
- Bianca