I’d won a couple of haka competitions in Parisian pubs as part of the France NZ Association’s welcome for the world cup crowds. The NZ Herald came to one event, then Sky Sport and finally TV3. But it didn’t stop there…

My photo shoot for Adidas was up in Monmartre. They were going to write a little piece on each of us and seeing I’m in the wine game over here that was their pitch on me (I still need to tell you that story). I stood there in the rain for 10 minutes or so while the photographer snapped away and they held flash devices near my face to get the right lighting. A crowd of nosey people started to hang around and two old kiwi ladies rocked up and wanted to take a pic of me with their cameras AHAHAHA!

Then my phone rang again, Claire had been contacted as a radio/tv station wanted some kiwis to go and do the haka for their breakfast program. I woke up super early and they sent a taxi to pick me up. I was laughing to myself as the taxi drove up the Champs-Élysées towards the Arc de Triomphe. I was thinking ‘shit me, I LIVE in Paris, I’m in a taxi heading up the Champs-Élysées first thing in the morning going to a TV STATION!!!’.

(At Fun Radio)

You can download the footage here (MerciXavier)

They took the piss a bit but it was great fun, I gave that haka my all, they seemed to like la rage)

Next I did the haka for France 3 just before the NZ France game. The camera crew interviewed me and my French friends before the match. They hung around and spoke to us at half time. Then as soon as the match was over the camera was thrown in my face, bright lights etc and “Que pense vous” or something along those lines. I was in a bar which was sponsored by Air New Zealand and 42 below. There were about 25 kiwis and 60 French people. It was the most humiliating moment of my entire life, but I’m over it now! The weekend after I had my face painted with the French colours and I was shattered once again when they didn’t pull through. I told that French camera crew that France was my home too now so I’d support them for the next match.

Some of the France 3 footage is here (Merci Jeff)

Then I did a little thing for BBC Breakfast, but bugger doing any more, I’ve had enough, they’d have to start paying me! I really gave that last haka a bash and it killed my foot, ha!

Anyway, there’s one last thing to do, one last haka to wrap things up! A French chemical company (Henkel) got in touch with me and they want me to teach 30 of their staff the haka. So tomorrow I’m going out to Stade de France to teach 30 French people how to do Ka Mate!! What a classic haha! I find it quite amusing, they are paying me extremely good money for it though.

So what else is up? I work with a great little team at Ô Chateau, check out the site! I do a mixture of things, I’m part Sommelier, SEO/marketing, and all things IT related. So that’s all going well, we’re about to launch an internet T.V channel so it’s project, project, project at the moment, I’m loving it. I have the pêche! I have many great meals at Xavier and Kristine’s, I run, ride bikes, and my life is becoming more and more bilingual – it’s brilliant! This weekend I’m off to SWITZERLAND!

(Claire AU, Iema Germany, Devi Gerogia and I)

(James, the reporter from TV3 and I)

(Yikes! Looking a bit rough here, I need a shave!)

London (Londres). Let me start by saying how fantastic it was to see Jesse and Helen (my brother and sister who live in London), and my friends Renata, Sharne and Malcolm again, that was TOPS! Initially though, I wanted to go back to Paris….

I must mention now, I’m bashing out this post tout de suite and won’t have time to check it for errors/typos :p

I managed to get onto the plane with my big tramping pack, I was chasing the clock to the airport and couldn’t see a check-in counter anywhere. I already had my electronic boarding pass so I just lined up for the flight and took it on with me! The airhosts gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything (ripper!). I hit the tarmac in London an got stuck behind a plane load of asians at immigration (yay). They were all shuffled through the health inspection door and I was soon greeted by Jess and Ren at the arrival gate.

Two trains later we were walking to Jester’s house. That was the first and last time I fly to London, next time I’d take the train. Why piss about with flying,5hours for the whole drama when you could take the Eurostar (train) and be at Waterloo station in 2hrs15min!

We missioned it into the central city to meet up with Sharne and Malcolm for drinks and dinner. It was FANTASTIC, my old buddy from uni days, brother, sister and friends sharing a few pints on the side side of the world.

So what did I think of London? Not a lot really, though I’m told ‘It grows on you’. As I mentioned, it was great seeing everyone again but London didn’t really blow me away. I had been thinking about moving there but it was a lot different to what I expected. Everybody was speaking English, I know you might be thinking “no shit” but seriously it was weird for me I’ve got used to hearing French everywhere. I also didn’t realise just how big London was, waaaay bigger than Paris!

What I loved: The market Jess took me too on Saturday morning, chowing down a bacon roll while nursing a slightly sore/tired head. Seeing everyone!!! The food I ate, brilliant curries!

What I didn’t like: It felt like everyone were drones, ants in an ant farm. The size of the city. The fact that everyone spoke English and not French :p

Would I live there? Maaaaaayyyybbbeeeee

I came back to Paris and it hit me, this is my home now, I know more people here than I’ve known in any other place on this planet. I was standing outside Norte Dame yesterday in the sun, clear blue sky, crisp air as winter is nearing. I thought to myself “Shit, I live in Paris!!! HOW GOOD IS THIS!?!?!!”. I think it’s important to think about stuff like that on a regular basis. I’ve had this revelation before in Paris, I had it in Sydney too and probably Auckland aswell. I was speaking with Trev yesterday and he said “I think that sometimes too, ‘I live in the sounds, how neat is that’ “. He’s right too, the Marlbourough sounds is a bloody good place to live. The air is certainly clearer than it is in Paris, but Paris certainly has it’s beauty too.

I’ve got more to tell but the rest can go in the next post, I’ll write it now and post it later in the week.

(Me outside Notre Dame yesterday afternoon)

(Ren, Helen, Jess, Sharne, Malcolm, Ben, Sharne’s brother)

If you haven’t seen the latest video clip of him, watch it now. “We are in France, We speak French” well ‘here here’ but maaaaate, lighten up! Ah well, he’s certainly providing entertainment for our office…

Amsterdam:

I visited Amsterdam last week. Known for it’s drug use and sex trade… I found that if you choose not to get wasted and fall asleep for a few days in the red light district, there is a brilliant city with green green grass and much less pollution than Paris! The first thought that popped into my head while I was cycling through the Dutch country side was ‘Wind in the Willows’. No one wears helmets in Amsterdam (mind you, they don’t in Paris either) and there are certainly hundreds more bikes than cars in that city! Tout le monde (everyone) rides bikes everywhere, and chains them up will 2-3 locks in attempt to stop the full time thieves. Stealing bicycles is apparently a nationwide sport in Holland. The one thing still lingering in everyones mind after the war was the fact that the Germans took all of the Dutch bicycles as they needed a means of transport!

It’s brilliant when you go to a foreign city and you have a friend there who knows the place really well. My friend Andrew lived in Amsterdam for a year and is there at the moment on a conference so I was really lucky to have a personal tour guide! No worries about which tram or metro to catch, where to eat etc.

(A few snaps from Amsterdam, click my photos link on the right for more)

The Haka – Paris style:

The France New Zealand Association held a pub crawl in Paris, the first of two crawls for the kiwis visiting for the world cup. I dragged myself along with a cold but with high spirits and met the group at the second pub. The kiwis were in fine form and Sky Sport NZ were there with their reporter and camera crew. I had thought on the way there ‘I’m nooooot going in the haka competition’, but after a short bit of nagging by some of my fellow country men I gave in. I’d actually done a fair amount of haka practice in the past. At boarding school we had a school haka and we had to practice that after dinner on a regular basis.

With the cameras rolling and a couple of beers in me to try and squash the sick feeling out I got stuck in and ended up winning the competition ahaha! RELEASE THE FURY!!!

(The kiwi Haka in Paris)

et donc, c’était the Haka. One thing’s for sure…there certainly is one hell of a proud bunch of kiwis living in Paris at the moment.

French meals:

If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt about here in France, something that I really love – is meal time. The French really know how to eat well they do it together, with friends and family and they do it often. Be it in a restaurant or at someones house the evening if full of lots of yummy food, wine and a bunch of a lot of laughter. On Wednesday night Xavier, his brother, Christine and I went to an Indian restaurant. We ate from a huge selection of curries, had a few wines and laughed about cultural differences between the French culture and mine (and I did bring up the Rainbow Warrior bombing but in a light hearted sense…I must mention though that that has been referred to as “the dumbest thing the French Government has ever done”. It was brilliant! Last night was another good dinner at home with my flatmate and his girlfriend. The food in this city is outstanding, and I find it cheaper to eat out there than in Australia or New Zealand.

…and I’ll leave it that, I’m off to catch a plane – stay tuned to find out where I went! I’ll leave you with a couple more photos:

(Andrew and I in Amsterdam)

(The KIWI’S!!! on the France NZ Assn’s pub crawl)

(Some of my friends in Paris) C’est une chouette vie à Paris!

I’ve been living in this amazing city for just over four months now so I thought it was about time I put a stake in the ground and write a bit of a round up. Paris is a wonderful place to me, a gift infact. But not one that has come without a few knocks and effort but you’ve always got to look on the bright side. I remember the moment when I decided to quit my job and buy a one way ticket to Paris…

I knew that an O.E. was one of my life goals and so was learning another language and culture, I’d always had a soft spot for sound of the French language but I knew little about Paris and France. The fact that I was moving to a foreign country and that I only spoke a few words of the language, didn’t hit me until the métro train I was on stopped in the south of Paris at 11.30pm a week after I’d been here. The lights were off and I swore as I thought ‘Okay, I’m in a foreign country, I didn’t understand that message which just came over the speaker system, I’ve only got a few cents in my pocket, I’ve left my credit card at home and I don’t have a map of Paris with me’ MERDE!

*That* was pure fear, but 10 minutes later the métro started moving again and I relaxed…. Those first weeks were those of understanding very little. Forcing myself to just speak French (no English) with the frew words I knew. I quickly got sick of eating bread and pastries. I got shafted on currency exchange, got on the wrong train, and thought of the ease of life in New Zealand and Australia in comparrison. I very nearly jumped a flight home but shock myself and thought what a stupid idea that would be.

(Phil and I, one night at an Irish pub just off the Champs)

But through that time I met people, Pauline FR, Phil UK, Kelsy US, Brian UK, Claire AU, Claire NZ, Mathias FR, Momo FR, Xavier FR and Christine FR… I started to pick up more and more French and suddenly started to feel like I was intergrating with the locals. It was definately not all that bad, especially once I broke my little ‘no speaking English rule’. I think I started to learn more once I began chopping and changing between English and French!

I felt a bit like a charmeleon dragon for a while (if that’s the one that changes colour), changing jobs a few times. I’m now working in a fantastic little company in the wine industry. A great team and the work is very enjoyable…more on that later.

A lot of foreigners I’ve met in Paris have told me stories of sleepless nights and heartache as they attempt to battle various French systems to get social security and bank accounts. I am *well* aware of the dark jungle of French beurocratic bullshit which you have to dive through to get things done here. It’s full of never ending document requests, long lines, lots of flying paper, confusion and LOTS of waiting. My attitude towards this has been “why walk into the fire unless you have to”. I have avoided the jungle as much as possible by having: a prepay cell phone, personal medical insurance, living in my apartment while it gets renovated etc.

Christine and Xavier

How’s my French? It depends who you ask and who I’m speaking with. My new Georgian flatmate Devi (country, Georgia) and I only speak in French, if you say anything in English you have to put money in the jar! We understand eachother though there is a limit to our conversations. At work I don’t speak as much French as I could and I think it’s because to me work is a serious place. I’m there to do a job not to piss around with another language. Though that’s starting to change a bit now, the words are coming out. I speak French with my friend momo and other locals near my apartment. I have two lesson exchanges each week with Xavier. When I went to the dutch speaking regions of Belgium I was dying to get back to France where I could understand more of the language. My French has gone from being able to speak more than I understand, to being able to understand more than I can speak.

Today when Davie and I were having a coffee at the edge of the Park I realised that I was actually thinking in French but only to the point that I had vocabulary to flow with. Usually when I speak in English my mind is always thinking, of lots of things. But I’m finding now with French that there are simply areas of silence when I don’t know what to say – rather than thinking half in English and half in French. So the conclusion is; I don’t understand everything yet but I feel at peace with French, it doesn’t bother me, I’m still studying and I’m loving it.

Little snippets: French girls!…lovely but with very different psychies. The food here, simply fantastic! – even my cooking has improved. The French Wine, superb! The buildings and general asthetic here is just unreal. Biking and running in Paris rocks but the pollution sucks. The speed of the city, brilliant. I’m reading two books written in French, Le Petit Price and Le Petit Nicolas, one in English called A year in the merde – book reading for me is rare. Happy, yes. Smiles, absolutely. Laugher, daily.

So do I miss NZ/AU? Hell yes!! and all of my family and good friends, my old job, clean clean air, waterskiing, all of the banter and crazy missions. Though I’m not ready to come home just yet, I know you’re all still there.

This week: Another boomer of a working week! Catch up drinks with friends tomorrow evening and Tuesday evening, on Wednesday the Black Seeds (WGTN NZ) ARE PLAYING IN PARIS!!! Thursday, a concert in a Park, Saturday my friend Andrew arrives to visit.

Alors, GO ALL BLACKS! Have a GREAT week everyone, LIVE IT!

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In République I saw a bill board advertising the sports drink ‘Powerade’. The writing was in French, and translated into English it roughly reads “Powerade contributes to the strength of the All Blacks”. So…lets look at that for a moment. A bill board written in French, in Paris…you would think they’d be backing the French team. But NO!…

I told my boss about it as I popped into work for a few hours. He said the French have great respect for the AB’s (and obviously little faith in their own team, quite sad really but hey!). I have to agree with him though as when I was working at the bar a rugby team from the south of France got down on their knees and bowed at me when I told them I was a kiwi!

This love for foreign might extends further. Recently I’ve seen lots of people wearing All Blacks jerseys, the first three times I yelled out “hey another kiwi!!!”. I restrain myself now as all I got was a funny look and a “soooriieee eiii doownet speeek Eiiinngleesh”.

Conclusion: Using this as one of many examples, a lot of French people in Paris are not proud of being French.

I won’t be at the stadium in Paris watching the All Blacks play during the world cup as the only time they’re playing in Paris is when they make it to the Quarter, Semi final and final and the tickets range from 400-2,000Euros!! (800-4,000NZD).

Small town feeling, big city:

I had to jump out of my seat the other day when I saw a couple of French lads a mate and I had been talking to the night before outside the movie theatre at Jaur̬s. How often in a big city do you bump into people again! Not only them, I turned around while talking to them and my flatmate and his girlfriend were right next to me Рtoo bizzare!

Things people have taught me in the past week:

Drinking water imediately after finishing a run is bad for you, it’s worse if the water is cold and having a can of soda is a shocker. The correct thing to do is to wait until you’ve recovered and then drink water at room temperature (!!!!!) Well I’m sorry, I doubt that’s thing on Frances cultural list but I don’t buy into it!

Solutions for life:

Before my flatmate Mathias left on his adventure to Germany (then to live in Holland) I hit him with a question. “What do you hate most in life?”. I told him that what I hated most in my life was being tired. Easy solution – get 8-9 hours of sleep each night. Mathias pondered for a few moments and then said “I hate pigeons”. I asked him to justify his statement and he told me that when he was living in his old apartment they flapped and mated outside his window and made so much noise that they drove him up the wall.

So, the opposite of tiredness is being awake, and getting sleep will sort that one out. So I said to Mathias that in order to find the solution to his life’s problem he must “find the opposite of pigeon”.

BBQ’d corn in Pantin:

Well…enterprising Pakistani’s are skattering around the city, setting up camp outside métro entrances. The setup is simple, a shopping trolley, fire in a tin, a big bag of corn – a light fry and it’s one euro per cob, ha!

I caught the TGV from Gare du Nord to Brussells. It was fast and painless, better than flying. My friend David met me at Brussells-midi, a few taps on the GPS and we were off to drop my bags off. I’ve known David for about eight years over the internet but this was the first time we’d met IRL (In Real Life)…

Little did I know at the time, we would visit four cities in the three days I was there!

Leuven was our first stop, David lives there, it’s the home of Stella Artois! Though in Belgium Stella is the standard tap beer just as Tui or Export are in New Zealand. In Belgium if you want the standar house beer in a pub you hold up your pinky finger (or two pinkies for two) which I thought was a little random – it’s true though, lots of people do it!

Belgium’s made up of Dutch Speaking regions (Flanders) and French speaking regions. David and Stephen (my other friend) both speak French but they don’t like to. As I found out, most people in the Flanders regions would rather speak English than French!

That evening we met up with Stephen (another friend of mine) and his girlfriend for some drinks. It turned out that weekend was a big one for Belgium, their national holiday was on the Saturday and there were festivals going on in every city. One of them was a 10 day job!

I saw castles and magnificiant gothic buildings (extreme detail), David gave me a good rolling commentry on all of the history and also some impressive ‘on the fly’ real time translations of Dutch songs played in a night club.

The next day we were on the road by 11am heading for Bruges (a.k.a The Venice of the north). I had said the word ‘brilliant’ at least 50 times by now. Because I tell you, holy moly! The buildings there just blew me over they were so fantastic (yes it’s common for me to say brilliant in Paris too).

Bruges was a little more low key on the festival side but you could tell they were getting ready for a big night in the town square. We jumped in the car again about 5pm and drove to Gent (Ghent). Gent was my favourite place out of the four cities (Leuven, Brussells, Bruges, Gent). There were at least eight stages setup in various spots around the city centre, amoungst buildings from the middle ages including a castle. At night everything was lit up, I didn’t really know what to say, I was totally blown away. You have to see if for yourself, even the photos I have don’t do it justice!

Back in Paris, big days! starting at 7am, off to school for a couple of hours then I’m on the métro to work until 8pm. I have a new job now and will post a blog on that soon. I’m loving it, learning heaps of new stuff and using prior knowledge too.

What I hate: The fact that I wasn’t able to go to school for a month, it’s okay though as I’m back now. That’s the only hate for now!

What’s brilliant: Ratatouille (movie), Belgian beer, Restaurants near my office, I can stay in the apartment I’m in now! All of my new friends here, new experiences and challenges EVERYDAY!

What’s coming up? I’m going to Amsterdam and London, I’ll be catching up with some friends from AU and NZ who are in Europe!

More photos: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lachouettevie/Belgium

(Xavier/France and Phil/Birmingham UK)