Everyone likes to learn in different ways, my mum is the opposite of me and likes to learn by instructions. Not many people know that she is very good at art, she's sort of a closet artist. She does watercolour and she buys books about art techniques and she went to lessons once. She likes to follow step by step guides to doing stuff. She's the kind of person who reads all the instructions and counts all the bits before making furniture from Ikea. Once when she bought me my first oil paints as a teenager she also bought me a book of how to do it. I didn't see the point. If I wrote a book on oil paint it would say this:
Chapter 1. You can't wash your brushes with water.
Chapter 2. It takes about 2 months for you paintings to dry so make sure you have somewhere to store them in that time.
Chapter 3. Now have fun!
My way of learning is trial and error. And occasionally I say I can do something that I've never done before and then that sort of pressures you to do it. In 2010 I worked for a year for this company that sent me into schools to do workshops. Then in the summer holidays I got married and got a mortgage, and expected to be starting work again in September. But no work came in, after a few weeks of waiting patiently for work, I phoned up to enquire and was told they were focusing more selling solar panels to school than selling me. Cheers for the heads-up. So then I had to either find schools that wanted me to do workshops or find a new job. So I emailed a few schools and only one got back to me after a lot of back and forth they asked if I could do mosaics. I said "yes" because I had a friend who knew how to do them and I had youtube.
My friend once told me how she was grouting a mosaic in a school and cut herself badly on the glass and when she came back to the class after sorting that out all the grout was dried on her mosaic meaning she had to spend days drilling it off. I was terrified of ruining it when it came to that part too but luckily it went well and eventually mosaics became my most popular art project.
And last week I said yes to a new thing I don't know how to do. I emailed a local comedy club and said would you like a short comedy set in French? and they said yes! So I'm going to be learning french really quickly!
I've had to write all new material for it I don't think my old stuff will work to just translate it, So I've started writing new material about coming to France and learning french, and then I'll have to learn it really well and hope that I won't get heckled otherwise I'd have to give a really primary school level reply like "your mum is a cow" but I don't even know if your mum jokes are a thing here.
The other completely different thing I'm going to try is face painting or as the french call it "kid's make-up." This should be a lot more in my comfort zone because I already paint canvases and walls so this would just be like a small less flat canvas. but I thought it would help me firstly to get to know people because I can volunteer to do it for the school fair or for church stuff and it's just a nice way of being part of something with minimal language skills required. and also I could maybe do it for money and money is a handy voucher that you can swap for most things you need. (you might already know that.) I've never really done face painting before but if I had to write a book on it it would go like this:
Chapter 1 if it goes well great well done.
Chapter 2 if it goes badly just make sure no one has a mirror.
I ordered the paints from amazon. and they have been arriving one by one, first I just had orange so on that day I could only paint your face if you wanted to be a carrot or Donald Trump or an Oompa Loompa. which are the 3 least commonly requested faces.
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| The road by mine that I go running on |
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| I hardly ever ran in England. I only feel like it with these views. |
Other than choosing two new career ideas (French comic and face painter) I've finally started more french lessons this week. I had to wait two months since I passed the A1 (basic french course) but now I'm onto A2 with a new random selection of immigrants. This time we have a Russian and a Ukrainian which was a little awkward. Especially when we had to write anonymous list of three things we liked and didn't like and the the teacher read them out. She read out "I hate the Russian president" and everyone guessed it was the Ukrainian but actually it was the Russian. I hope this class will provide great comedy material for my upcoming gig. I feel like a load of foreigners trying to learn to integrate might make a good sitcom.
Lunches there are very unpredictable, I feel like in a uk staff room I could make an accurate pie chart of peoples pack lunches. In fact I will:
You've always got that weirdo eating cottage cheese spread on Rivetta as if putting the worst kind of cheese on the worst kind of carb makes you thin.
Anyway international lunch rooms are so much more varied, theres a lot of delicious rice based stuff. The girl from Tahiti eats battered chicken. I don't know if all girls from Tahiti eat battered chicken for lunch but she must represent at least 1% of the population of Tahiti right? and then a Moroccan ate beetroot and raw onion. yuk! maybe that the Moroccan version of weird diet food I don't know. I need more data to make a new pie chart. They also all share all their food. So far I just made one guy from Afghanistan drink some British tea and they were all shocked it had milk in it. He was trying to be polite but I think he hated it.
Whats the weirdest thing you've ever taken for a packed lunch? Let me know and I'll make a pie chat.
