bummer

Had a right bastard of a day. It started early when I came back from walking the dogs (dad had left Leo round at 8am) and broke the mirror in the hallway on my way back in the door.

Pierre had really bad toothache and came in from his trip to Nyons with an emergency appt. made for that afternoon. I phoned them to say I had a PDF of his dental X-Rays from his old dentist in Marseille and would they like me to send them through so the emergency dentist would have them that afternoon. The woman on the phone was as rude and impolite as could be and when I said "Sorry, it's just that my French isn't that great" (which is rubbish because my French is excellent, I was just hoping she might go a little slower and actually listen to what I was saying instead of being so shouty and impatient), she replied "Yes, that's why it's so difficult", to which I put down the phone. And then burst into tears.

If I'd been at home, that situation may well have occurred (we've all dealt with difficult people over the phone), but I would've felt a lot more in control, a lot more at ease with my command of my mother tongue, and a lot more able to glean the information I needed.

I don't know if it's a natural fish-out-of-water timescale where you reach different stages of homesickness, or of feeling a bit lost...but I'm just hoping it all becomes a bit easier soon.

The language is an obvious difference for a start. Yes, I can speak really good French, but sometimes you just want not to have to think about what you're saying. For the most part, I can do that...but when it's really important and I want to get some nuanced point across about a subject that's very dear to me, that's when it becomes an obstacle. Or when I'm having to deal with service-industry strangers who hear my accent and immediately tut and expect not to understand. It gets in the way.

Again, the cultural differences are really apparent just now. I'm feeling very different to those around me. Like I don't really fit in with everyone else's way of thinking. There's a casual backwardness here (maybe it's just because we're in the middle of nowhere?) that I'm constantly hitting up against...and it's tiring. It's also really pretty offensive (wrapped up in a "but it's only a joke" blanket).

We went to the dentist that afternoon. I resisted telling the Receptionist that I was the woman she'd been so rude to earlier on in the day. I'm sure she knew. I kept thinking "I should explain to her that it's just really difficult over the phone sometimes and that if she were a little more patient..." etc. etc., but I kept schtum. I actually just couldn't be bothered.

Poor Pierre then had a nightmare half-hour with a dentist that looked like something out of a horror film. A big-grinned, butcher-like, bear of a man with sausages for fingers. It was only afterwards that Pierre told me he also stank of fag smoke. Lovely. Ah well, at least he alleviated the toothache.

We brightened up our afternoon by going to the Mediathèque (the local library with books, CDs, DVDs etc.), signing up, and taking out a DVD: L'Irlandais. The film's called "The Guard" in English. We bought a couple of cakes in the Patisserie in the arcades (a millefeuille and a coffee-layered macaroon thing) and headed home. That evening we sat and laughed at the film and drank Irish coffees by the fire :)

It's funny for me talking about my life here now. I still don't feel like it's my home. It's weird to complain about it because it's what I thought I wanted....it's where the sun shines and there's good food and I'm no longer doing a 9-5. What is there to complain about? But it's different. It's all-change. I just need to find where I fit in to all that difference. If possible.