Today I swam in the Caribbean Sea AND the Atlantic Ocean. We hired a car. Or ‘rented’ one if you prefer - Courtney, Nick and I have spent the last few days discussing the idiosyncrasies of American and British English. You know, trousers, suspenders, fanny, pants, and so on. Nick and I have been teaching Courtney some choice English expressions too, such as, ‘to shake one’s lettuce’ and ‘chuck us the... (insert any noun here)... will ya?’, and in return we have learnt some rather splendid ones from her such as, ‘To cut the cheese’, which means to fart and the delightful ‘Bumblefuck’ which can be used to describe any derelict or deserted place in the middle of nowhere.
Our rental car, a rust bucket Suzuki Alto, looks a bit like a fancy blue wheelbarrow with an engine in it and can reach a staggering 70km per hour (as long as we’re going downhill). Yesterday we drove to Fort de France for a dull morning of pedagogical lectures. Then today we went to Anses d’Arlet in the South to swim in the Caribbean followed by Tartane in the North for a dip in the Atlantic, just because we could. After weeks of only being able to drag myself a couple of kilometers without dying of dehydration, it suddenly feels very liberating to be able to get around and see more of the island.
And I’ve been teaching my car compatriots all the in-car swearing I’ve heard from taekwondo Jessica over the last few weeks - ‘Ta geule conard!’ and ‘Bouge ta fesse putain!’- all of which have proved very necessary for us, as new contenders in the Martinique Road Rage Olympics.
Speaking of Jessica and taekwondo, last night’s training session was VERY tough. I took Nick with me (he’s staying chez moi this week so he can get a lift to Fort de France for the training workshops). It was Jessica who was taking the class, and quite honestly I don’t think I have ever felt that close to dying from exercise pain before in my life. Nick looked over to me at one point during some interminable circuit training which included some form of torture called ‘le canard’ or ‘the duck’, which was basically running in a squatting position while trying to keep your back straight. He was swaying slightly, drenched with sweat and mildly green in the face, and told me with a weak smile he thought he might go into cardiac arrest any second and that he hoped I could do CPR. I knew I looked as bad as he did – I could feel a fountain of sweat pouring from my hair down my back and into my pants (the British kind) - but somehow we struggled on, and despite needing to drink enormous volumes of water and eat our own body weight in food when we got back, we both felt an enormous satisfaction afterwards, although it’s possible we were simply rejoicing the fact that it was finally over.
Tomorrow we’re off to Fort de France again for more pedagogical pointlessness - I would most certainly feel more inspired by these workshops if I didn’t have to get up at 5.30 in order to get there on time. Oh well. At least we have wheels this week, even if they are attached to an old rusting crumbling heap of crap!
No comments:
Post a Comment