En plus

So I'm currently in Lourdes waiting for a bus to take me to the mountains, but I'll discuss that on another update.

So July is pratically over and I've been on my YA for a month already. Seem to have gone very quickly, strange to think that I'm already 1/4 through France and 1/2 through this placement already! Hopefully my French is improving enough, I feel that there IS an improvement, but reste à voir if it'll be enough :)

I've been given complete responsability of the reception desk now, in that I answer the phones and respond to all the e-mails. The police rang the other day and the policeman had the strongest accent I've heard so far so had to ask him to repeat but it was all Greek to me so I had to explain that I was very sorry but I don't think I quite got what he said so I'll pass him to my colleague who might be able to help, merci bonne journée au revoir. Jay off The Inbetweeners was right, you don't want to bother the foreign police! Speaking of the police, when it was Fête Nationale a lot of the roads were closed by police and I was a bit uncomfortable that every single officer, or so it seemed, had a gun. Same when I went to Vienna and the police were on the U-bahn with massive guns. I like how British police are mainly unarmed, it's much less aggressive and friendlier, but suppose you'd respect someone with a gun a bit more maybe.

ANYWAY, one thing I am struggling with at the moment is names, which means I'm forcing everyone to spell their name for me. I made a mistake when I thought I'd heard it and didn't ask how it's spelt and we got a bit confused when this man turned up at reception and said he had a reservation. Joyce asked who he reserved to and the man said itwas a man, so Joyce looked at me andvwas like does he have an accent and the man said yeah he sounded like an Arab! I was off the hook, until I realised it was actually me and explained. So I sound like an Arab...I have no idea how to take this nugget of information, like on one hand is it better than being identifiably English, and lots of Arab countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria are bilingual with French, so it's not the worst comment made, but if my accent could move the European side of the Med I'd be a lot happier.

We had a group of 16 Spanish bikers the other day and not a single one spoke French, so I explained everything to these luckily very patient Spaniards in Spanish, which was probably the scariest linguistic thing I've had to do so far. But we got there. It just reinforced the gap between my Spanish and the loves of my life French and German, but hopefully Vigo can try and sort that out. It's so cool working in a youth hostel because there's people from all over the world here; on one of my many coffee breaks I was talking to an Australian lad and a Canadian lad who were having their tea. Proper shows the spread of English from Europe to literally every side of the world. So we had a nice rant about the English weather and then about how French is taught. French is an official language in Canada but apparently it's still taught as a second language, except in Quebec, but everyone knows that's not real French ;).

We had a film night at work the other night and watched Les Intouchables, which I'd seen in German when we went to a cinema in Vienna. There it was called Ziemlich Beste Freunde. I copied it off the lad's USB stick on to my computor, so can watch it whenever now. I think it's a real shame that most British people won't watch a subtitled film because it's one of the best films I think I've ever watched. Basically, it's about a disabled man who employs a black man from the estates of Paris to be his carer, despite everybody telling him not to. Based on a true story too.

Right, had better go catch this bus. Speak soon! A plus!