Can’t quite believe I’ve been in France a month today! It’s
going so quickly, I’m now a fifth of the way through my time here and it feels
like I only just got here! The past week or so has also flown by and I didn’t
even realise that it’s been over a week since my last blog post until my mum
told me off because she’s been checking it every day for an update! At least I know
someone can't wait to read my next post even if it is my mum :P But I’m gonna warn you now, it’s a bit of a long
one seeing as I haven’t posted for a while!
Last Sunday I went to the Natural History Museum here in La
Rochelle, I failed to realise that it was the weekend of the ‘Journées du
Patrimoine’ which meant that it was free for everyone to get in and it was
consequently rammed! But at least now I’ve discovered what French people
actually do on Sundays, that or sleep! The museum was quite interesting, and as
you can imagine it was fairly similar to the Natural History Museum in London,
but on a much smaller scale!
At the Natural History Museum
On Monday morning I went to the CAF Office with my housemate
to get the forms I need for my application, it reminded me of going to Argos
because when you go in you have to take a numbered ticket and wait in the
waiting area until your number comes up on the screen. Unfortunately it wasn’t
quite as good as going to Argos as instead of getting something exciting, I was
landed with about 7 pages of forms to decipher and fill in! But hopefully it’ll
be worth it if I can get some free money!
Lots of lovely forms!
On Monday afternoon my mentor and I started English lessons
with the equivalent of the Year 5 class and I was pleasantly surprised at their
level of English! Most of the lesson was spent by them asking me questions in
English that they had already learnt for a bit of revision. One of the children
asked me what languages I speak and when I told him English, French, Spanish
and Portuguese his response was ‘Oh you’re not like most other English people
that only speak English then’! Good to know what our reputation is like!
On Tuesday afternoon my mentor and I started English lessons
with the equivalent of the Year 6 class, I had a cold and was feeling pretty
rubbish but I was somewhat cheered up by some of the funny things the children
came out with. For example, when I asked how he was one of the students proudly
came out with ‘I’m red’ when in fact he meant to say I’m tired! Then we got
onto the topic of the Olympic Games and it turns out that they all actually
believed that the Queen had parachuted into the opening ceremony, unfortunately
I had to break the news to them that it was in fact a joke as the Queen is 86
and probably wouldn’t be up to parachuting!
This week in La Rochelle there has been a big international
boat show and if you live in the area you could get a free ticket from the Town
Hall to go to it on Wednesday afternoon. One of the teachers at school got me a
ticket so although I’m not particularly interested in boats/watersports and I
definitely can’t afford to buy a boat I thought I’d go along and see what it
was all about, that and I was also secretly hoping to meet a nice, French guy
that would take me out on his boat, but alas that plan failed. The show was in
Minimes which is over the other side of the harbour from where I live so I was planning on getting the ‘bus de mer’ which takes you across
there. I had to go to the bank first and I wasn’t sure how long it would take,
especially as my knowledge of banking terms in French is definitely not great,
so I left with plenty of time to spare before getting the Sea Bus. However, I
was somewhat relieved when the advisor I spoke to in the bank spoke fluent
English, although I was also a little disappointed as I went in ready to speak
to him in French and he immediately spoke to me in English! Anyway, the bank
took less time than I was expecting and I had a bit of time before the next Sea
Bus was due to leave so I decided to do a bit of shopping. Since my last fruitless
trip to the out of town shopping centre I had discovered that there are
actually a few decent shops in the town centre but had not yet had time to
explore them. I ended up only going in one shop, I think I was so happy to find
clothes that I liked that I got a little carried away and blew nearly my weekly
budget in one shop, oops! I also got a little carried away time-wise as by the
time I was finished in the shop I realised the next Sea Bus was supposed to
have left 5 minutes beforehand and I was still a 5/10 minute walk from where it
leaves from! However I decided to walk there anyway and when I got there I
found that everyone else had obviously decided to get the Sea Bus there too and there was
a rather long queue so even if I had been on time for the previous boat I
wouldn’t have made it on anyway! I reluctantly joined the back of the queue
wondering whether the boat show was really worth it but I decided that it’s
quite an important event in La Rochelle and it only happens once a year so I
should still go. I ended up queuing to get the boat for nearly an hour! But it
was a nice little 20 minute trip over there and once again it is included on my
bus pass so I can’t complain too much!
The show itself was fairly interesting, basically there were
just a lot, a lot of boats, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many boats in one
place before! But aside from that, there was also a big marquee all about
Brazil, as that was the guest country this year, which was interesting and some
other marquees with shopping stalls. All in all I think I spent more time
queuing for the Sea Bus there and back than I did at the show, but I did have a pretty yummy
ice cream while I was there so I reckon that makes it slightly more worthwhile,
and also the weather was lovely so it was nice to spend the afternoon in the
sun!
Entrance to the Grand Pavois
Brazil marquee
Sooo many boats!
On Thursday I had my first school dinner, it’s taken me a
while to get round to it because I’m only at school at the start of lunch (when
they serve dinner) on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I don’t eat red meat and the
French are big meat lovers so until Thursday there hadn’t been a day that there
was a meal that I would eat! But on Thursday the menu was cucumber salad,
turkey breast in a creamy sauce with mixed vegetables and bread, laughing cow
cheese and a kiwi fruit so I decided to give it a try. I have to say I was
fairly impressed with the standard, definitely wouldn’t get that in a school in
England (at least not when I was younger, but I guess things may have changed
since the whole Jamie Oliver thing)! On Thursday afternoon I was told they were
doing the class photos that day, so I was expecting a professional photographer
to turn up but it turned out that it would be me taking the photos with my
mentor’s daughter’s camera! I felt rather responsible and I hope I took some
okay photos, but there’s always bound to be one child with their eyes shut! After
the class photos we did art and I helped half the class do ink paintings- they dropped
different coloured inks onto the page and then blew it across the page with a
straw, it looked really cool but it was very messy! Unfortunately I ended up
missing half of the art lesson as I had to go back outside to re-take one of
the class photos as the teacher had realised he’d missed someone out of the
photo!!
The childrens' artwork
On Friday morning before I went to school I decided to go
and buy some macaroons as I hadn’t tried them before and a lot of
other Year Abroaders have been raving about them so I thought I’d see what all the hype
was about! There was quite a big range of flavours and I’m not the most
decisive person so after a lot of umming and erring I finally decided on a
nutella one and a white chocolate one. I thought they would be put in a little
box or something but I was just given them in a little plastic bag so I
carefully placed them in the top of my bag to eat when I got to school.
However, unfortunately by the time I got to school they had managed to work
their way to the bottom of my bag underneath all my other stuff and
consequently get squished. But they still tasted pretty damn good so it’s okay,
and I think it’s safe to say I’ll be back to buy more macaroons (despite the
fact that they probably cost more per gram than gold!! Slight exaggeration!)
My squished macaroons!
On Saturday morning I decided that after three weeks in this
house without a toaster I couldn’t take it much longer and ventured out to the
HyperU again to buy a toaster! This may seem a bit random/irrelevant but I love peanut butter on toast, so it's a big deal for me :P
My 9,90€ toaster!
On Saturday night there was something called the ‘Voiles de
Nuit’ which was part of the Grand Pavois, I went along with one of my
housemates and a couple of her friends. It was a big fireworks/light/boat/music
show in front of the old port, it took ages to get going but when it did, it
was amazing! I got a bit snap happy and took a silly amount of photos but the
fireworks were so good that I couldn’t help myself! The end of the show was
pretty chaotic as around 50,000 people were all trying to get across a tiny
pedestrian bridge back across to the other side of the harbour to the main town.
We decided to just wait it out instead of getting crushed trying to get across
the bridge and after a while the road bridge which had been raised for the show
was lowered again and we made our way across there, which is actually a
shortcut so it paid off to wait! After that we met up with some of my
housemate’s other friends for a night out. Once again there was a lot of
cheesy, old music and French music that I didn’t know but it was a good night!
Fireworks at the Voiles de Nuit
On Sunday morning (actually I lie, by the time I woke up it
was already the afternoon) I finally got my toaster out of the box and had
peanut butter on toast for breakfast, yay!
And today, just in case I was feeling homesick after being here a
month, the weather has decided to be like English weather to make me feel more
at home, it’s been the first properly rainy day since I got here. By that I
mean that this morning (luckily before I had to leave the house!) it absolutely
poured down, it’s been raining on and off all day, it’s very windy and
apparently in the early hours of this morning it was stormy! Although it’s
still a bit better than English weather as despite all that, it’s still not
that cold. I hope it doesn’t stay like this for too long because the weather
has been lovely here so far!
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