I fell asleep in a chair in front of the telly this afternoon like an aged grandma. So I decided not to bother going to taekwondo seeing as it had been such an effort to even stay awake. Well I did have a very tough morning – I went to the post office AND the beach! Yes... it’s a hard life you know...
School is going very well. I even seem to have charmed Monsieur Lazimo, an old man in the reprographics department at Pointe Lynch, who seemed barely unable to conceal his hatred of me the first time I asked him for 200 copies of a colour-by-number Union Flag.
After a few icy encounters with M. Lazimo in the first week I finally decided enough was enough and plucked up the courage to start a conversation with him – I chose Créole music for my topic since he was playing some in his room at the time, and after a moment’s suspicious hesitation he wrote down the frequency for the best radio station for me to listen to.
The next time I saw him I asked him about earthquakes (minor ones are quite frequent here and there was one last week that made Courtney wake up, terrified and clinging to the bed ...and which I happily slept through) and he was quite keen to share his knowledge with me again, telling me thay had earthquakes all the time here but that he wasn't scared of them. No way.
And then yesterday when I went to get my copies of ‘How old is he/she?’ worksheet, he told me if I ever wanted to go out dancing any time he’d come and pick me up and take me. So that was a bit of a turnaround. I only wanted a friendly smile and instead I got an offer I have to admit I’m slightly suspicious of.
In case you’re wondering about today’s title, I found it in a book of Créole expressions and proverbs that I bought the other day. It means ‘A dog has four legs, but it doesn’t take four paths’ - in other words, ‘Don’t try and do everything all at once’. Some others I enjoyed include ‘Ou bel kom zépina pousé an kaka’ which roughly translated means, ‘you’re beautiful like spinach that grows in shit’ (any interpretations of that are welcome as I’m completely baffled...) and ‘Lajan ka kasé fé’ or ‘Money can destroy fire’, meaning money is all powerful. I’ve decided to do my year abroad project (for uni) on the importance of Créole language for Martiniquais identity so I thought it would be good to start trying to learn a few words here and there.
I wish I could tell if my French has improved. I feel as if it ought to have, but then whenever I speak to people I still feel as if I’m struggling to get words out, and while my circumlocution is coming on in leaps and bounds it’s very frustrating not to be able to just say what I mean without going all around the houses in the process.
I have to make a very annoying trip to Fort de France tomorrow. I need to get a medical form signed by the doctor (everyone that trains has to do this so that the taekwondo club is not at risk of invalidating their insurance) but I can’t go to the doctor until I get my Carte Vitale from the Securité Sociale. I sent the Securité Sociale my HUGE pile of forms more than a month ago and still haven’t received the Carte Vitale, so I called them today only to find out they’ve LOST my forms and that I have to go to the office in person to redo them! Aaaargh! Everyone here is so disorganised and laid back and yet every piece of administrative material has to adhere to a strict set of French bureaucratic codes. I really can’t understand how anybody ever gets anything done here.
...I’m either going to come back in July incredibly chilled out or a complete nervous wreck!
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