I’m really spoiling you all this week with two posts in 6
days! Thought I’d do a post about my weekend in Poitiers and a bit about what
I’ve been up to this week before my sister gets here for the weekend and I
won’t have time to blog!
So Saturday morning my alarm went off at 6.15am and it was
very rainy and still very dark, normally it would have been very difficult to
drag myself out of bed but I was excited for my weekend in Poitiers with
Harriet so I got up and made my way to the bus station, albeit half-asleep! I
arrived at the train station about half an hour before my train and I was
surprised to see how busy it was at that time in the morning!
La Rochelle train station
In France you
have to ‘composte’ your ticket before you get on the train, that means you have
to put your ticket in one of the various yellow machines which are dotted
around the station and it date stamps your ticket, you then have to use your
ticket within 24 hours of the date stamped on your ticket. Having done that I
still had quite a bit of time left until my train and the platform hadn’t been
put up on the board yet so I went to the shop to get the French version of
‘Closer’ magazine to read on the train and a little box of Salted Butter Caramels
as a present for Harriet (although I ended up eating half of them with her
later that day! They’re sooo good!) After that, the platform was finally up on
the board so I made my way there and the train was already there waiting so I
got on and found a seat- because it was an off-peak train I hadn’t had to
reserve a seat so I didn’t have to worry about walking the length of the (very
long) train to find my seat! I was surprised how nice French trains are, at
first I thought I might’ve been sat in first class by accident as it was so
nice, but a small sign saying 2ème confirmed that I was in fact in second class
which left me wondering what first class is like! The journey was about an hour
and a half but it went pretty quickly, unfortunately when I got to Poitiers it
was still raining and it pretty much rained the whole weekend which was a shame
because we were going to go on a walking tour of the town on Saturday but it
was just too miserable! So instead we spent a lot of the afternoon sheltering
in a Crêperie where I had my first crêpe since I’ve been here- don’t know how
I’ve managed to go that long without having one!
Me looking pleased with my crêpe!
Harriet is also a teaching
assistant and we met some of the other assistants that are in Poitiers at the
Crêperie and after that we still managed to do a bit of a tour of the town
after the rain had died down a bit. They took me to see the Saint-Pierre
Cathedral which was very impressive then we went to the Saint-Croix museum and
after that we went into the Saint-Jean Baptistère.
Cathédral Saint-Pierre
Baptistère Saint-Jean
On the way back to Harriet’s
we went to Monoprix (swear I spend half my life in that shop!) to get some
supplies for dinner and we also bought a kit to make macaroons. Harriet also
took me to the 2€ shop which was great! After dinner we watched 101 Dalmatians
in French!
The next morning we attempted to make the macaroons, we were
in a bit of a rush as we were going out that afternoon, we finished making them
and had just enough time to cook them and get them out of the oven before we
had to leave. But only when I got them out of the oven a couple of minutes
before we had to leave did we realise that we hadn’t turned the oven on
properly so instead of them cooking, the neat little circles had slowly spread
out in the tray and made a big splodge of chocolatey mixture! Major fail! But
we weren’t too disappointed as that afternoon we went to a Chocolate festival
in Chatelleraut where there were a lot of macaroons and I imagine they were a
lot better than ours would have been!
Our failed attempt to make macaroons!
Chatelleraut is about 40 minutes from
Poitiers so we got a lift there with one of the other language assistants who
has a car and we followed another girl who was also driving there, however we
weren’t entirely sure that we were following the right car so just before we
arrived we were relieved when we got closer to the car and saw that we were in
fact following the right people! It was 2,50€ for students to get into the
chocolate festival and there were soo many free tasters that it was definitely
worth it! It was basically just a big hall full of stalls selling chocolate,
macaroons, meringues, nougat, jam, and a variety of other yummy things like
that, so we were in heaven! There was also a stand that was making chocolate
sculptures which were amazing! Me and Harriet both bought chocolate covered
marshmallows which were very yummy, if a bit sickly!
Me and Harriet with a lot of macaroons!
Harriet enjoying her chocolate covered marshmallow!
Chocolate sculptures!
I also bought a few things
for Christmas presents and a couple of other treats, including a little tub of
salted butter caramel sauce (my new favourite!) On the way back we got dropped
at the train station and waited for my train, it ended up being about 15
minutes late which marred my previously very positive view of French trains!
Because this train was in peak time I had a reserved seat and after almost
kicking someone out of a seat that wasn’t actually mine, I managed to find my
seat! On the way back a suitcase fell off the luggage rack and hit the woman
sitting next to me on the head! I panicked a bit and didn’t know what to do as
she started crying and no-one else seemed very bothered about helping! Luckily
she was okay and stopped crying soon after, I think it was just a bit of a
shock! When I got back to La
Rochelle
On Monday afternoon my mentor gave the children some time to
finish the umbrellas and flowers that I had done with them in art, they
(nearly) all turned out really well and I stuck some of them up on the display
board outside the classroom. On Tuesday my mentor went to Poland
Worskeet on the colours that I did with the class
Yesterday I met up with some of the other teaching assistants
for lunch, we went to a Crêperie and the food was so good!
My scrambled egg, asparagus and tomato crepe and 'bowl' of cider
My mum told me that she had sent me a parcel last week and I finally got it today! I love getting post! In the parcel was a bag of percy pigs (yaaay!) and lots of stickers to take to school because I brought a few with me to France and the children love them so they'll be so excited to know I've got more! There was also a card, a little cookbook and a pen :)
The contents of my parcel! :)
My sister gets here tomorrow so I’ll try and blog about our
weekend sometime next week. Although I'm not sure when I'll have time since I think I’m going to Paris on Tuesday
afternoon until Wednesday evening for a meeting, but I still don’t know if I
sent my reply off in time to say that I was going and I don’t have anywhere to
stay yet so we’ll see what happens!
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