Paying and Playing my way out of trouble

Eurgh. It's hard finding a job in France. In fact, at the moment at seems basically impossible. There are 4 english pubs in town, none of who want anyone, and my french is apparently laughably poor to any employer working in a francophone industry.

It's been a soul-wearing week or so of writing carefully crafted emails and texts in french and even a CV in french only to receive nothing or hastily written apologies in reply.

So here I am, almost 10 days in Toulouse and no job, no appartment, no nothing.

What about my lovely hosts, I hear you ask (seen left, drunk!). Well, the thing that's truely making me feel miserable at this moment is the fact that I ended up grossly outstaying my welcome with this lovely couple. Shit. It came upon me suddenly, when one day Julien told me that we needed to talk about what my plans were for getting somewhere else to stay. He told me that it was important to Helena that I move out soon as she needed some space (the appartment, if you recall, is only one room). I'd sensed some coldness in the days preceding but thought it was just circumstantial. Maybe she was hung over or pissed off about something. But, no: She was sick of the sight of me on their couch every morning.

I hurried into town and spent the day sending out emails to people on CouchSurfing.com desperately looking for somewhere to stay when Julien told me that they had someone else coming to stay that night and that it was ok for me to stay one more night but with 4 of us in the one room it was going to start getting really difficult. It was then I realised that I could never go back to Julien and Helena's place, unless it was to pick up my stuff and move out.

I couldn't believe that I'd allowed things to go sour between us, nor could I believe it was finding somewhere to stay. The one avenue I have, the other flatmates don't make up their mind until this Thursday (four days from now) and even then if I do get the place it doesn't start till the first of october, which is another 20 days away. I was in the shit.

So, I did what I always did in these situations: I payed and played my way out of trouble. I told Julien that, great news, I'd found somewhere to stay, and I booked myself into a hotel (42 euro a night, argh!). When I went round to get my stuff I was worried that things would be awkward but happily they had a load of friends over and helena seemed drunk, relaxed and happy to see me. I re-established my good relations with everyone by playing a selection of their favourite hits on the guitar and singing like a wild man, and everyone was back on my side.

Fine, but I'm not sure how many times I can buy and sing my way out of difficult situations like this. Certainly not forever. So what to do?

Well, just now I went and took a test at the Alliance Francais in the Toulouse central square (I think I may have written about the last test I did in Bordeaux) and came out with a flying 'Level 5 (Intermediate Stage 3)' of a mere possible 7. I'm 5/7ths of the way to being a french expert!

So the course starts tomorrow, and hopefully they can get me in with a host family too, which would be wonderful. So, hopefully, you're favourite Levy gets to fight another day. And it feels quite good that this time I didn't rely on the old Levy luck for things to just fall into place. I actually went and did something. It's starting to seem like the Levy Luck Broadcaster doesn't reach all the way to the south of France.

It seems that I may be on my own....

Rob