"The rain rain rain came down down down, in rushing, rising riv'lets"... Anyone would think I'm not even in the South of France!

So everybody thinks that soggy November days and countless flash floods are a curse that only befalls Britain. Well, I can officially now say with confidence that such an assumption is completely and utterly false.  To say that the past week in Montpellier has been 'damp' would be a giant understatement.  But before you start silently rejoicing and telling me that I am finally getting my comeuppance for my smugness during the thirty degree heat in October, hear me out on this one - this is no ordinary spot of rain.

Place de l'Europe.  Image taken from the BBC

On the 4th of November it was reported that over a year's worth of rain had fallen over the Hérault department of the Languedoc-Roussillon region since the start of November.  That's 700mm of rain, or for those of us still fervently sticking with imperial measurements, that's over 27 inches.  Predictably, Montpellier can be found in the aforementioned Hérault department.  What started out as "alerte orange" being announced on the local news and weather programmes, very quickly became "alerte rouge", and has remained at 'rouge' for several days.  "Alerte rouge" means an absolute vigilance is necessary; dangerous weather conditions of an exceptional intensity are expected.  During "alerte rouge", parents are expected to collect their children from school, and every one is advised to be very careful when travelling, avoid outside leisure activities, and take shelter away from wooded areas.  Its basically an equivalent of what everybody is advised to do if there is a particularly heavy snowfall forecast in Britain, minus the bit about going to the woods of course.


Ironically, I can still remember when the rain first made an appearance a couple of weeks ago.  I was walking from the centre of Montpellier back to the flat when it started spitting, and as I hadn't seen any rain since I moved to Montpellier on the 20th of September, I hadn't anticipated it and therefore found myself brolly-less.  Nonetheless, it would seem that you can take the girl out of England, but you can't quite take the English out of the girl; I actually enjoyed walking along in the rain with my iPod on.  The French who were all scurrying past, hoods up and heads down, seemed to look at me with a particularly incredulous look as I practically skipped past smiling to myself.  There's something comforting about a spot of rain after four, maybe even five weeks, of solid sunshine.  Particularly when you're in one of those moods when everything doesn't quite seem to be going your way; the constant sunshine sometimes felt as though it was mocking me somewhat, but the rain seemed to put Montpellier into a bit of a grump, much to my satisfaction.

Tram ploughing through the water

Having said that, one afternoon of showers and my British desire for a spot of rain had been quelled.  Sure enough, the sunshine did return for a little while after that.  What I wasn't expecting though, was for the sunshine to disappear just as quickly as it had re-appeared, only to be replaced by a week and a half of solid rain and thunderstorms.  I know I haven't been brilliant at keeping track of time since getting here, and time does have a nasty habit of dragging past at snail's pace, but when I say that I can't remember the last time we had a dry day, I really do mean it.  The rain has simply been relentless.  Every now and then it gives up leaving a small window of respite, but before you know it, it will be pouring again.  It's not just the rain though; its the thunder and lightening that goes with it.  I think everyone has become accustomed to the sound of rolling thunder in the afternoon, and flashes of sheet lightening that illuminate the night sky of an evening.


From a day-to-day point of view for me it has provided some minor inconveniences; getting to the supermarket has become quite the effort, going to the pub in the evenings is pretty much impossible without risking life and limb, and given that I only have one pair of waterproof shoes with me, outfit choices have been somewhat narrowed (there's only so many items of clothing that will go with bright pink patent Dr Marten's).  That's not exactly much to grumble over when you consider that many of the towns surrounding Montpellier are currently flooded and without power, whilst school transport has been cancelled and roads have been blocked by falling trees.  This might sound like a fairly standard week for a village in the South West of England, but it would seem that its not entirely normal for Montpellier.  

Aqueducts pre-flooding

As it turns out, the entire of Montpellier is actually built on a flood plane, and to deal with this, there are aqueducts criss-crossing across the length and breadth of the city.  The fact that they have even built the aqueducts signals that flooding probably isn't entirely out of the question, yet it still feels as though this latest deluge of water has come as some sort of a surprise to the Southern French residents.  Perhaps it is uncommon for this time of year, but my housemate Marco has assured me that it does normally rain quite a lot in November.  Then again, when he says it normally rains quite a lot, he might mean once a week;  the French idea of 'quite a lot of rain' is probably pretty different to the English one.  For now, I think we're fairly safe where we are.  I may have accidentally stumbled into a few ankle deep puddles (it was dark and I did swear quite a bit about the fact that I would spend the rest of my evening wearing a soggy sock), and remarked that the water level of the near-by river is exceedingly high, but I don't think I'm in danger of floating away in my bed overnight.  Then again, this rain isn't due to give in until the middle of next week, so I may be needing a dinghy yet...


(For more of the BBC's images, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-15613133)

"No time for losers, cause we are the champions - of the world"... OK, so it felt like the world, but honestly, we were just champions of the pub quiz!

Its been two long months of pub quiz attendance at The Shakespeare (well, a month and a half for me because I arrived later than the others) and Tuesday was here again.  Tuesday the first of November, known to most of the French speaking world as "Toussaint"; a national holiday, a day of rest, a day of family time, and for the members of the Quizpy Fried Duck quiz team, it was a day of victory!


We arrived to a slightly more empty pub than usual.  I've become accustomed to associating Tuesday nights in The Shakespeare with stifling temperatures, a fight to get to the bar, and a distinct lack of seating.  Last night seemed somewhat more refined though; we had a table towards the back of the room, and all members of our team were comfortably seated.  As usual I was the last to arrive and even I managed to get a seat.  Not to say that the pub wasn't busy of course - for a Tuesday night after two days of national holiday and the prospect of returning to work tomorrow, it was still fairly busy.  Busy enough for there to be thirteen teams in fact.  I did note that our team was looking a little depleted though; usually, the ERASMUS kids come out in force for the quiz, but we decided we would be fine to soldier on with a team of eight.


At around 9pm, the familiar bell sounded across the bar to signal that the quiz was about to commence.  One member from each team immediately leapt up to go and collect the answer sheets, whilst the quiz master ran through the rules from his usual spot atop the bar.  For those not familiar with the infamous Shakespeare quiz, it consists of four rounds.  The first is a picture round in which you are given ten images of famous people and you have to name them.  The second is a general knowledge question round, normally consisting of ten questions, with the odd bonus point thrown in here and there.  The third is another question round, but this time with a twist; there is normally one or two themes that run through the questions for this round, and in the case of last night the two themes were 'buildings' and 'numbers' (five questions on each theme).  Finally, the last round is a music round; they play ten clips of ten different songs and you have to name both the artist and the song title.  Simples.


The picture round went surprisingly well, with us only missing three answers.  For the first time in quiz history I even managed to successfully contribute a correct answer... Many hours of watching Hellcats last year instead of writing essays had finally paid off as I identified number four to be a blonde Ashley Tisdale.  Sadly "Paco Rabanne advert man" didn't quite cut it as the answer to who the chiselled, attractive man was, but you can't win them all!  Despite Sean's heroic efforts, we still didn't get the name of the blonde pouting woman either.  I think she was an actress, but frankly I'd never set eyes on her before.  Sean was our guest team member for the week - he's Liza's boyfriend, thus it was necessary for him to have travelled nine hundred miles to attend a quiz in a distinctly English pub.  Not that he was complaining.  He very swiftly entered into the spirit of things, and since they announce the questions in both English and French, there weren't any language problems either.  He also coined the phrase of the night:  "I'm back".  This was said each time he got a question right, and soon dragged us into a slightly alcohol fuelled association of "I'm back" with the nineties hit "Backstreet's Back".  See, whoever said pub quizzes aren't fun has clearly never been to one with us.


The first round also brought the dilemma of the team name.  Some debate over the name of the Asian duck dish had arisen before the quiz began; some said "Crispy Fried Duck", some argued "Crispy Aromatic Duck"... Come to think of it, I've also heard "Peking Duck", or is that a different dish altogether?  Chinese dishes aside, when it came to a team name, Luis had the pen, and having been the chief advocate for "Crispy Fried Duck", thus took the executive decision that we would hereby be known as "Quizpy Fried Duck".  Genius.


The second and third rounds went past without too much of great note.  Sean was the only one who managed to name the two teams who played in a Major League Baseball match, and by the only one, I mean the only one to get the question right in the entire pub.  Pretty impressive.  Alex was then able to name the tallest sculpture in the world and its exact height.  Also pretty impressive.  Liza gave the names for the 50th, 60th, 70th and 80th wedding anniversaries, whilst I jumped in with the answer to the bonus question; the 1st anniversary is known as the 'paper' anniversary (that was two things I'd answered... I was on fire!).


The final round was probably the one that posed the most problems, but then again, the music round always does.  We didn't do too badly though and even I managed to recognise two of the artists/bands.  One was a little bit of an embarrassing one to admit to, but the other was Blink 182.  Hearing a Blink 182 song being played as part of a quiz in a pub in the South of France did slightly make my night to be honest.  Alex and Luis had to step in with the song name, but it really was on the tip of my tongue... Honest.


So, an hour and three quarters, four quiz rounds, and several pints later, and it was time for the results!  As is customary, the results were read out in reverse order.  By fourth place we still hadn't been announced and we were all a little bit astounded to be honest.  With the team in last place having a mere six points, and the numbers now being up in the twenties, we figured we had to be third.  The quiz master then took it upon himself to build the tension and announce, in no particular order, which teams were in the top three.  We knew we were in the top three - we just wanted to know where!  Several nail biting seconds later, he announced third place.  It wasn't us.  This instantly made us very happy, since even if you come second, you still win free alcohol.  Next, second place... And that wasn't us either.   Which could only mean one thing: we'd won! We'd finally won!  And not even just marginally either.  We were six points ahead of the team who came second, achieving a final total of thirty points.  Epic.  Especially given that the team who came second were stood behind us and had been looking over our shoulders for half the quiz.  They should clearly look a little more often next time! Victory was finally ours!


The prize for first place is a bottle of whisky, complete with a bottle of Pepsi and enough plastic cups and ice to go around all your team members.  To be honest, I wasn't that bothered with the prize.  I don't even like whisky.  It wasn't about the prize though, it was about the fact that we'd finally won something.  Montpellier had finally given in and let us have our little victory.  We'd hunted for days for places to live, we'd queued for  hours for tram cards, we'd devoted days on end to organising bank accounts, and finally, we'd made it!  Anyone reading this will  probably think that we're/I'm completely nuts, but I defy you not to spend two months in a foreign country and then get a little bit over-excited when you finally win the pub quiz.


So, same time next week guys?! If anyone needs me, I'll be scouring French and English newspapers and gossip mags alike for obscure little facts that might pop up next Tuesday...

The winning team, minus Helen (she was taking the photo)