All change

Weeeell here I am in Chamonix then, after a pretty uneventful journey (once Jay and I managed to find the way to the train station - this is a seriously easy place to find and between us we must have been to Lille a dozen times, but hey we got there).

Have had a super busy last couple of days, the job is very daunting from what I can tell so far, still not really clear what I spend the majority of my time doing and how I know what to do when - enquiries have met with vague "just keep your ear to the ground"s which ain't all that helpful to be honest.

Today was nice though, we drove about 2 hours each way to Albertville and Courcheval to deposit liquor license requests at the mayor's offices - this was through gorgeous winding mountain roads, on a lovely cold but sunny day, with all the autumn colours all about. Hopefully tomorrow will be nice as well, I have the weekend off to explore the place.

Last night went out for a couple of drinks with the girl and guy downstairs at my current accommodation (which I'll be moving out of in favour of my own apartment shortly), pretty low-key but nice to start making some friends. They are in the jobs I originally applied for, so were filled with wonder in my superior abilities being able to snaffle this job ha ha.

One thing I was surprised and a little bummed out by is that all the bar staff etc everwhere we went were English. I was expecting English-speaking in a tourist town like this, but come on, where are the Frenchies? Going up and ordering a drink in French from an English person is taking things a bit too far... However, I've witnessed the woman in my job answering a number of phone calls in French, so I don't think I have to worry about not using the language, in fact I'm worried about not being good enough. However, although she spoke pretty quickly, she made dozens of grammatical errors that even I could pick up on, so let's be optimistic.

Am missing my chateau friends quite a bit, hoping that I will settle in and feel better soon, make friends la de da. The office I am in is full of 30-somethings, but once more people who applied for the job I originally applied for get here I'm hoping things will liven up a bit. And then of course there's "the season" to look forward to - which I'm not entirely sure I AM looking forward to. I suppose it will be fun to have lots of bars open and people around and so on, but on the other hand, tourists - everybody hates them! At least I'll have the privilege of being a bitter, supercillious "local" if I so desire.

Stand by for updates xx