Introduction – Who, What, Where, and Why?

Welcome to my blog! My name is Claire and I’m a recent college graduate spending 7 months in Reunion Island teaching English through a French program called TAPIF.

Let’s get some basic questions out of the way:

Where is Reunion Island? In the Indian Ocean, 400 miles east of Madagascar.

What is Reunion Island? A tiny island that is an overseas department of France (so the main language here is French and the currency here is the Euro). This island was formed by a volcano and had no original inhabitants. It wasn’t discovered until about 1507 by the Portuguese and then wasn’t populated until the French claimed it and dumped some deported mutineers here in 1642. I encourage you to read more about its history because it is pretty interesting but I don’t have time to get into it. Long story short, since then people from all over have settled here, making it a blend of European, African, Indian, and Chinese cultures. Everyone speaks either French or Réunion Créole (or both in many cases). You can really see and feel the mix of all of these cultures in the people, food, religions, and traditions present here.

Why? So I’ve taken French on and off since high school (more off than on I’m afraid). But I wanted to give myself one more chance to really learn French so applied for TAPIF where I could teach English 12 hours a week and live in France or one of it’s overseas departments. Naturally, I wanted to be on an island, and far away from anyone who speaks English, in order to do this properly. Going in, my French skills were really bad (like, really bad) but I can already feel improvement everyday which is an incredible feeling. Hopefully after seven months I’ll be much more proficient.

For my job, I teach 9 hours of English in a high school, and 3 hours in a middle school. I get a decent monthly stipend and therefore I get plenty of time to explore the island, travel, meet people, or squander on French bureaucracy.

For everyone at home asking when I’ll be back: My job is from October until the end of April so I’ll probably be back some time in early or mid-May. Be patient haha.