Things that I think of when I think of France

I've been wanting to do this post for a while.  I've taken a whole lot of pictures of things that when I see them I think of France, or things that make up daily life here.  So here's my collection of pics with little commentaries.

The shower/bath.  Often showers are in baths and you have to hand hold the shower head.  I didn't realise there was a reason for this until recently when a friend of mine explained that often French people sit in the bath to take a shower and run a little bit of water to sit in and then use the nozzle to shower while sitting down.

French electrical plug

Bonne Maman - many good things are made my Bonne Maman.  This is chocolate mousse. MMmmmmmmmmm. Miam miam.



A type of roast chicken spread thing that is yummy on crisp bread.  You can get it in pork too.

One of my all time favourite cheeses here in France.  There are lots of budget brand imitations but you just can't beat the real thing.  You can buy this in NZ in certain stores for over $11, its about 2 euros here!

Palmiers - one of my favourite pastries. Mmmmmmm.

Nutella - the French love Nutella, it's everywhere.  It's great on crepes!

French bread stick - nothing more to add.

Sparkling water - Badoit, a classic French brand.

Orangina - fizzy, orange juice.  Another French classic.

Sponge - why is this here? - because I'm yet to find a scrubbing brush in the supermarket to wash the dishes.  The trend seems to be one of these sponges.  I don't like it much, but that's how it is!

Dehydrated pureed potatoes.  Yummmm!!

Baking ingredients - this is yeast, below is baking soda.  They just aren't the same here (and obviously don't come packaged the same), it makes baking challenging.

Typical things to accompany a meal. Bread, red wine and pastry desserts.  Look at the cute packaging the pastries come in from the Boulangerie.



A typical post box.

A long, round pillow.  Pillows here are often long and round like this or square.  You do get rectangle like we are used to back home but square is the most common.

Volets or shutters.  Virtually every dwelling will have these, whether they be old, wooden ones or metal ones or these new modern ones that roll up and down.  They are fantastic for sleep-ins and siestas as they block out all the light.

Squared paper - for some reason people like writing on squared paper here and most of the time the kids workbooks are squared.

This is the view from my apartment over the school.  The teacher's staffroom is in the building to the right, the canteen is to the left, upstairs. The girl's dorm is the building in the background and behind the building to the right is another building where I work and where there is also the boy's dorm.  Students who live at school during the week eat all three meals at the canteen.  Apparently breakfast is a real buffet!

Teacher's staffroom.  Things about school here.  If a teacher is away, there are no relievers so there is just no class.  If there is a strike teachers choose if they strike or not, they are not obliged to strike.  There are lots of strikes.  Students still have to come to school in case their teacher isn't striking.  The system for employing teachers here is complicated and I still don't have my head around it. But one aspect of it is that people don't really get to choose where they work and they can be placed in more than one school.  I have quite a few friends who work in one school and in the same day have to drive 30 or 60 minutes to work in another school in another town.

This is where the students hang out.  Its great because this building is their zone.  They come here if they don't have class, and if there is a wet lunch time (which is often!) they have somewhere covered to hang out.  Students don't have to sign in or out here, they can come and go from school as they like.  They aren't allowed to smoke in school grounds anymore so they all hang out the front of the school smoking.  Teachers don't do duty here.  There are people specifically employed to supervise students, do duty and deal with discipline/detentions etc.

This is the hallway of the building where I work.  Very sterile. Very 1970's.  My high school also has a kind of trade school side to it too.  There was an open day this weekend and I looked around. It was very interesting.  Here they can do pharmaceutical training to make lipsticks, shampoos, creams etc. There is food tech, electrical engineering, machinary and many other detailed crafts/trades.  Students decide for Year 11 if they want to head down this path and spend their senior high school years working on this qualification.  Its kind of a type of polytechnic.

My classroom - again rather sterile.

A typical sign.

Classic flush for the toilet where you lift the button up.  These are becoming less common being replaced by the push button we are used to.

One of the ways to have the window partially open.  My first week here I had the window open and it fell out like this.  I was freaking out it was broken until I realised it was a feature of the window.