Learning French: A Phrase a Day

L'hiver approche a grands pas

Winter will be here soon
(winter approaches in big strides)

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Chateau Lalinde : The perfect venue for your event

Relocation Orientation in France

Mexico's mysterious City of Gods comes to the City of Light

The exhibition brings together some 450 exceptional items of Teotihuacan culture, a large city of Ancient Mexico where recent excavations have led to a better understanding of the site.

The objects are presented in successive themes enabling visitors to discover this ancient city, and to understand the way it functioned and the role and influence it held in the Mesoamerican world.

This unique exhibition presents items most of which have never before been displayed in Europe. Some were unknown in Mexico until they were on show in Monterrey between September 2008 and January 2009. 95% of the objects come from Mexican collections and 5% from European collections (collections from German ethnographic museums and from the musée du quai Branly in Paris).


Claire Rosemberg/AFP/Expatica reports the exciting news about an exhibition that cannot possibly be missed!

Some 450 pre-Columbian pieces, some of them monumental, some rarely or never exhibited, are on show until next January 24 in the French capital's newest arthouse, the Quai Branly museum, under the title "Teotihuacan, City of the Gods.”

Feathered serpents and sacred jaguars from ancient Mexico's mysterious City of Gods, Teotihuacan, show in Europe for the first time at an unparalleled exhibition opening in Paris on Tuesday.

"It's the biggest exhibition ever on Teotihuacan,” Miguel Baez, of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), told AFP. "We in Mexico love shows from other places, this time we aim to display our great civilisation."

Some 450 pre-Columbian pieces, some of them monumental, some rarely or never exhibited, are on show until next January 24 in the French capital's newest arthouse, the Quai Branly museum, under the title "Teotihuacan, City of the Gods.”

A fearsome oversized 1,500-year-old jaguar recently discovered at the giant site opens the exhibit, also featuring new proof of rampant human sacrifice.

One such item, which reverses previous thinking that Teotihuacan was a peaceful society, is a large just-excavated marble statue of a slave showing signs of bondage and arrows in his limbs.

Wrapped in thick vegetation when rediscovered in the 19th century, little is yet known about the giant ancient city of Teotihuacan, which became a regional powerhouse in its 800-year history until its mysterious fall around 700 AD.

At its height, the city built in semi-arid highlands barely 50 kilometres from Mexico City was home to more than 200,000 people, bigger than any European city of the time.

"We don't know who built it, how it was governed, or what happened to cause it to collapse," said Baez.

"We have more questions than we have answers."

Though one of the world's larger archeological digs, less than 10 percent of the 22-square-kilometre site has yet been excavated, leaving experts puzzling over why it disappeared -- internal strife, invasion, disease, or hunger caused from over-intensive use of the land?

"Teotihuacan was not even its original name," Baez said. "We still don't know its name."

Discovered by Aztecs several centuries after being mysteriously abandoned and left crumbling, the Aztecs were so impressed by its greatness and beauty that they called it "the place where Gods are born" -- in Nahuatl, Teotihuacan.

The city was laid out according to a cosmic view, with a main road, the Avenue of the Dead, running straight towards the mythical Pyramid of the Moon. Close by lay the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and the Pyramid of the Sun.

"Earlier than Rome and over a very long time they rigorously built a massive city on a grid," said Brendan MacFarlane, the New Zealander scenographer who worked with France's Dominique Jakob to recreate a giant model of the city at the show.

People lived in some 2,000 residential complexes grouping anywhere between 20 to 100 people, with family apartments organised around a central patio. Items on show were found in 15 of the complexes.

And while archeologists have found trace of the artists and know there were priests and traders and slaves, nothing is known of the system of governance or the rulers.
"There was no sense of personal identity, none of the statues are made in anyone's likeness," said Fabienne de Pierrebourg, who is in charge of the French museum's Americas collections.

"It is the most mysterious civilisation of the continent," she added.


The exhibition is to travel to Zurich and Berlin. Details on Quai Branly, the hottest place to be right now in Paris!

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Chateau Lalinde : The perfect venue for your event

Relocation Orientation in France

Every Little Helps

Quite often I pick up a fare from Tesco and take them home. They pay the fare and I help them unload their goods but this week I pick up a fare and I take them home. The fare was £4.10p They paid me a five pound note and told me to keep the change.

With the £5 note was a Tesco receipt and I passed it back to him saying he had given me his receipt with the fiver. He then told me that it was a little extra for me as Tesco have a promotion on where if you spend more than £50 on goods then you get 2p per litre off your fuel and as my fare didnt drive, he passed it on to me.

Not bad then, a 90p tip and a voucher for 2p per litre off fuel.

Figuring it out

I picked up 6 girls and took them into Barrow. They asked me if I could turn the music up on the radio and so I did. My radio display is part of the cars computer and this is what is normally displayed.


To explain it a bit it shows the time, the temperature and the radio station. (The 218 miles was how much fuel I had left)


Anyway this computerised thing in the car tells you when you have a blown bulb or if your oil or coolant level is low and also tells you if your windscreen washer fluid is low.



I was really surprised to hear the girl sat in the front seat say this and I quote.
"Is there really a radio station called "Washer Fluid Level"?"

I was so surprised by what she said that I told her that there must be if that's what it said and she went on to ask me what frequency it was on. I didnt have the heart to try and attempt to explain to this dimwit that it was warning me that my washer fluid was low.





At the end of the journey I asked for an £18 fare to which she took out her mobile phone and used the calculator on it to divide the £18 into 6 people and then blurts out to everyone that it will be £3.00 each but then asked if one of her friends could check it on their phone just in case her calculator is faulty.

I`ve said it before... Some people are only alive cos its illegal to shoot them

Passenger forgets taxi

Picked a fare up today from a local pub. He was very drunk but happy with it. He wanted me to take him to a local shop so he could buy some more beer. I did this and he asked me to wait whilst he went in the shop.

5 minutes went by and no sign of him. I thought that he cant be far away as he is a regular fare so I gave it a few more minutes and I failed to see him come out of the shop and walk off down the street so I`m still sat there outside the shop waiting. I knew he would be back as he left some things in the car including his jacket and house keys.

Another couple of minutes and nothing so I decided to get the callers number and ring him back. He answered, apologised to me and sai d he was at home and forgot I was there and to call round and get the fare. I did this. He got his belongings out the cab and I got my fare which had clocked up nicely on the meter.

He was very apologetic, said he had been celebrating and was drunk and when I asked him what he was celebrating. he said.... Super Sunday......

Its now November and the last Super Sunday was at the end of August.