Picture diary

My weekend.

Friday evening after youth group we had a soiree pate (I've given up trying to put accents into my blog because every time I do and then click preview it does something rather funky- so apologies for lack of accents on names, random French words and the like). It was really good, Colby cooked up some huge vats of spaghetti carbonara.

It was a really nice evening. And made specially nice by the fact that Elaine came too. Dinner was of course accompanied by the usual chat, but had the added feature of some geography and Korean lessons for some of the guys. There are now about 6 Koreans who are regularly coming to church and or Youth group. I love the multi-national stuff :)




Saturday I'm afraid to say I was immensely lazy during the day. I barely made it out of bed all day. Instead I finished my book- memories of a geisha. It was really good :) So thank you Sheila for that one. However by the evening I was up out and doing. Jane has been wanting to go dancing for absolutely ages so we decided to go find a club. Unfortunately Caen doesn't have a huge club scene. There are like two or three places. First we went to the lizard but it didn't seem to be open so we wander to O'donnalds for a couple of hours and played darts. Darts is a funny game (especially if you ware watching me!). I am one of those player who regularly manages to miss the board but when I do hit it I am more than capable of getting a good score to make it up. I was the first one to hit triple 20, triple 19 and the red ring of the bull's eye. I was also the only one to end up with my dart sticking straight up out of the floor!!! Then we went back to the lizard- not much going on there, so we tried the other club- hardly anyone there (so dancefloor empty) and rather rubbish music. So we ended up just chatting in a corner, but it was really good even so. We are going to have to try another night though because Jane was really disappointed to not actually get to dance. It was a bit of a late night though and I drank enough coke that I needed to wind down when I got back, so what with the loosing an hour I ended up going to sleep at about 4!!!

Sunday- up at 8 (man I was bleary eyed- haven't done that in ages), to get to church. It's not normally that early but the choir were singing so I had to be there at 9:45. All through the service I was so nervous, because I was doing a solo later on. Now I have done solos in front of hundreds of people and been hardly nervous at all, and here I was with my hard shaking and butterflies in my stomach in church in front of little over 100. However here is the catch- I was accompanying myself on the piano! I have got used to playing with the choir and singing at the same time so I knew I could do it, but there was no one else to sing over any mistakes I made and no one else to keep singing if I had to stop to concentrate on a certain bit. However it went OK. I was shaking so much after though that I was worried I would spill the little cup of communion wine I was holding! People said it was good though so I can't have done too badly.

Sunday afternoon there were only 4 of us at choir- me, Armelle, Nina and Philippe. So Philippe went through the music books and taught us a load of new songs. It was basically just a big jamming session. It was absolutely fantastic. Some of the songs he picked were in horrible keys though with E flats and b flats and the like. When I first looked at on of the songs I just laughed! So we transposed it by a semitone to put it in a very nice key. It's bizarre transposing by sight though, in the end I just worked out what the tricky chords were and we went back to playing in the written key. We were there for hours! It was one of the best afternoons I've had in ages.

The Sunday evening we went round to Jamel's house (the pastor).
It was ace. We got fed yummy food- just look at Jerome's face!

And played with Sammy's toys! Sammy is like 1 and everyone was having great fun with this magnetic drawing board (stick a magnet on it and it makes a mark).
Olivier and I drew pretty pictures


While some of the others played Hangman on it

Hee Hee.
It was also a bit of a good bye party because Colby is off back to the states on Wednesday

And Laurent and Karen are off to Argentina

They will be missed.

CPE- the saga continues

Today for the first time the students and their processes have actually affected me personally. Normally the delays they have caused to the trams etc has been during my work hours so although many of my friends have been stuck without transport it has always sorted itself out by the time I got out of work. Today however the driver made a little announcement saying that all tram As (the one I take) would be going to Herouville rather than Campus 2. This meant I had to get off a whole stop early and walk!!! lol not too hard a task but I know they are planning protests next Tuesday as well and I'm wondering if next time they will block trams at Campus 1 meaning I have to walk all the way. hmmm might have to leave a bit earlier on Tuesday just in case.

Good note though, I am no longer morning the loss of my USB stick. I have discovered that I can use my ipod as a mass storage device. I need the special software to add and remove songs from it but for documents I can treat it as a normal USB stick :) yay (just have to remember to take the cable with me- otherwise I'll be a bit stuck.)

Spring

Now when I say spring what do you think of?
chicks, lambs, daffodils, sunshine, flowers..... etc
but not normally snow I imagaine.

Yesterday was the first day of spring and yet today I walked to work in a flurry of snow! How bizarre is that!

On a slightly less bizarre note, did you know that a man of 800kg has a brain which weighs 1.6kg? Well according to the french 'who wants to be a millionaire' that we were watching yesterday he does! It's strange watching it and knowing that the first few questions are stupidly easy and yet not knowing the answer. They were things like 'complete the phrase' and of course we don't know most french phrases! However we got a few, and we got Morgan to explaine the questions we didn't understand, and then tell us the answer.
I think it will be a while before we can try out for the show though!

Non, non CPE

This has become a familiar chant to hear in the street of France.

For any who are not aware (I don't know how much coverage this has been getting in England) the CPE is a new law that means that under 26s can be hired by a company on a two year contract during which time the company can fire them are any time without explanation.
This law is designed to combat the huge unemployment which exists for the under 26 age group- it's as high as 40% in some areas. However a good proportion of people think that it will remove their job security.
So what are the French doing? going on strike! Some universities haven't been open for about two or three weeks now and many high schools and colleges have also been closed. Most of this is because students are blockading the buildings, going on marches (so aren't in class) and things like that.
Saturday saw the biggest organised march in Caen so far- and what a sight. I knew they were marching because I could hear them from my room. So I wandered down to take some photos, unfortunately with the loss of my USB stick I can't yet post them up. So instead I will describe it to you.
There were hundreds (possibly thousands) of people marching down the main road, many with placards baring slogans such as 'No to CPE' 'Solidarity' 'Social democracy or policed democracy' OK the translation of that last one isn't quite as impressive, however this was written on a huge black tarpaulin which was mounted on the top of a fork lift truck. The driver kept stopping every so often, lowering the banner and then raising it high again to huge cheers from the crowds around it. People had drums, speaker systems to blast out an any CPE song (this one was a bad idea as the guys with the mics couldn't really sing at all), and one guy had a bugle.

Thankfully most of the protests in Caen have been peaceful- unlike the riots they have been having in Paris. However some people have been doing things such as throwing eggs at the trams and one of my friends said that some people started kicking the tram she was on. So please pray that any future protest here are peaceful.

Other than watching the protests my weekend was good. Sunday was an evangelicalism service at church and the place was packed!! The choir were performing and apart from one slip up of words it went pretty good. In fact the word slip up didn't even matter because everyone else followed the mistake and just repeated a section twice- I was rather chuffed because it is one thing that I have repeatedly tried to tell them "If you make a mistake try to run with in rather than stopped looked shocked and giggle at each other" So if you sing the wrong words and no one else joins you make it into an ooohhh etc.

But the best thing about the weekend (well it was monday evening so not technically the weekend but will be included in my 'weekend post' so is) was that my birthday present from my parents finally arrived. They sent it the 27th Feb and it arrived yesterday!! but it was worth the wait- switchfoot album from David and an ipod nano from my parents!!! so I had a good play last night (and this morning). It's sooo tiny. Amazing.

Questions

In responce to Rach's post here is a copy of the same list for her and the rest of you to answer.

Put the answers to the following questions in my comments box:
1. Who are you?
2. Have we ever met?
3. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
4. Describe me in one word.
5. What reminds you of me?
6. If you could give me anything, what would it be?
7. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
8. Are you going to put this on your weblog and see what I say about you?
9. What do you love like a fat kid loves cake?
10. What makes you come back here?

not sure how to add a post?
If you look at the bottom of each blog entry there will be a little line saying "# comments" if you click on that and you should find yourself on a page with a text box for you to write your message in. Type your message, and click publish.

Happy St Patrick's Day

Top of the morning to yah

Wow how appropriate is it that St Patrick's day should fall on a 'green day' on my blog- totally by chance too.

We have a slightly bleary eyed Sarah today because despite nearly falling asleep at my desk yesterday I neglected the early night I had been planning and went out instead. Jen told me at dinner that there was this soiree at Florian's and we were going to leave at 9. So after dinner I had a bit of a nap, then got up to join Jen and Jane. So we arrived at Flo's house and joined the lads in the basement. They were all really lovely- if a little loud. The lads were all 19 to 21 ish and well... if you have met any lads of that age yo can imagine how they were acting. We had loud, slightly out of tune and very crude, drinking songs, talk about cars (which suited me) sport (and yes they did mention England's shameful rugby performance!!) and whiskey out of plastic bottles. The only thing I would say was bad about the evening was the location, the basement was freezing and I could hardly feel my feet by the end. So on the way home us girls were huddled together in the back- partly from cold, partly from Julian's very fast driving.
When I got back I discovered I had consumed far too much coke during the evening and consequently spent another hour trying to get to sleep- good thing I took that nap!

Lost property

I can't find my USB stick!!!!
It's one of those really annoying times when I can remember putting it somewhere (in this case my jeans pocket) and when I went to find it again it wasn't there. Now I don't know if it dropped out (and is therefore lost) or if I took it out at some point and now just can't remember where I put it. I'm going to have to turn my room upside down when I get home to see if I can re-locate it.

So other than feeling the loss of my USB stick I am mostly just really tired! I went swimming again yesterday with Suzanne. I'm quite please with myself really- I have managed to go three weeks running. It's amazing how much easier it is each week. The first week my legs were like jelly when we got out and it was an effort walking. The second week was much easier though walking was still an effort when I got out because I got a massive cramp in my leg which was rather ouchy. However the swimming itself was easier. This week the swimming was even easier again. I did 6 lengths of the pool with out stopping, which in a 50m pool for me- that's good going. And it didn't take so long for me to catch my breath.
Yay, I think I am going to have to keep this up- it seems to be doing me some good :)

Ducks

I got the most fantastic ducks through the post yesterday. They are colour changing rubber duckies!!!
Here's a pretty picture of them halfway through their 'transformation' after having sat on my radiator for a little bit (coz it's the heat that changes then dontcha know).

Thanks Laura- that was such a fun pressie. I can't wait to get back home where I can try them out in a nice hot bath now :)

Wonderful morning

Who will buy this wonderful morning?
Such a sky you never did see!
Who will tie it up with a ribbon
And put it in a box for me?

There'll never be a day so sunny,
It could not happen twice.
Where is the man with all the money?
It's cheap at half the price!

Who will buy this wonderful feeling?
I'm so high I swear I could fly.
Me, oh my! I don't want to lose it
So what am I to do
To keep the sky so blue?
There must be someone who will buy
No points for guessing which film I was watching yesterday (Oliver in case anyone wasn't sure). And today really is a lovely morning, for a change we have blue skies and blazing sun, it's still nippy but it sure beats the rain!

So my birthday.
I must apologies for the lack of interesting birthday photos that I promised you. Unfortunately my camera was out of batteries- so I couldn't take any!!! I got Elaine to take a couple so I should be able to post a couple from Thursday evening up at some point. But for now I thought I would just share a couple of things. The first as the rather funky pen that I got.

Yes it's nemo, and he lights up when you write!!!! rather fun (big thanks to Terri for that one).

I got lots of Cards. Through out my time here I have been building up a card collection of postcards, random hello cards and now birthday cards. And my card lines are full! I have had to start another one on the other side of the room!


Thursday evening was fun, we had nibbles and drinks then all decanted out into the town. We managed to go into three pubs/bars before we found enough seats for all of us. Finally we plonked our selves down in the Dublin Cafe. It was so weird the whole place is like the tardis. From the outside it looks pretty small but once inside- it all opens up. The loos are the same, you think you card going into a single cubicle loo, but infact it goes father back than the bar itself an it actually quite big. We also got some entertaining music. I'm afraid entertaining might be the only plus I can give it. With his songs about messier X, with a wonderful repeating drum beat played off his laptop! lol.

My weekend was fairly standard.
Friday evening we managed to put the French in the minority! Many of the youth group are already from places like the Cameroon, Congo etc, so although they are French speaking (francophone) they are not French. And then Friday we had me, two Americans, two Germans and two ... I think they might have been Korean.

Saturday I actually managed to not leave the foyer at all. I slept badly so slobbed the morning away as I was feeling all washed out. Then Armelle came round for a bit. Last week I started helping her to correct her report which she is writing in English, and she came round with her little USB stick so I could have a copy and correct at my leisure. Then after making it as far and Elaine and Suzanne's to pick up the glasses I had taken round for Thursday, I ended up staying there for the rest of the day, until Elaine and I went to watch the old Charlie and the chocolate factory. It was fun deciding which bits we thought were done better in which film- and no I will not pick a favorite of the two... oh OK, I think I slightly prefer the new one.

Sunday was a choir performance. It was... OK. Unfortunately Herve forgot the rhythm at one point and so we all got out of time. Thankfully Philippe managed to chop and change the chords so they matched again by the chorus and we carried on fine. Apart from that hiccough it was fine. The choir sounded really good, we had people in thecongregationn smiling and clapping along with us, and all in all I was really quite happy with it- though I might have been the only one in the choir to think so.
The songs we are singing for the evangelism service next week are much easier and so hopefully wont present so many problems. Therehearsalss so far have been good, and they are some pretty songs.

oooohhhh andSundayy as well was the first grand prix of the season!! and we didn't have a ferrari 1,2 which was a nice start to the season. I won't say any more about it though 1- in case anyone hasrecordedd it and hasn't yet watched it (as Jon had when I spoke to him yesterday) and 2- so I don't bore those of you who have no interest.

hope you all enjoy your day :)

Happy Birthday to me :)

So yes today is indeed my birthday. I finally got to open my parcel pile and all the cards I have been saving up- very exciting. And I got to chat to my mamma and my pappa, coz they called me up to sing :)
hmmm only got about 7 hours more at work (wow that sounds like lots now!!) and then it is off home to party. It is Ines' birthday tomorrow so we are having a drink and nibbles party round her's after dinner this evening. Oh that reminds me I need to text a couple of people to tell them- or we might have no-one there!! lol.
I shall of course post up some pictures tomorrow as no doubt I'll take a few.
bbbbyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeee

Parcels

Now any student will know that getting mail (and especially parcels) is one of the most exciting things that can happen. So imagine the frustration of not being allowed to open said packages!!! I have been building up a little collection of letters and parcels over the past few days- with strict instructions not to open them until Thursday :(
But saying that it does mean that my birthday is just round the corner- how very exciting.

Yesterday evening was great-
Firstly I actually got round to doing a job!- had to go to the post office. Secondly yesterday was the first time in two weeks all the assistants (+me and Morgan) were back at the oasis. Oh and thirdly Elaine got me a copy of Emipre from England- with the featured film being X3!!! Yeah. So neway we all had dinner and then pootled back up to Elaine's, sat and did the cross words in Heat and came to the conclusion that they were not written to be very taxing! I think we're going to have to go back to doing the Daily mail's

swimming in the snow

For once yesterday the weather forcast was 100% accurate- the meteo showed a little picture cycling through a big sun and then snowing clouds passing over over and over. And yesterday we had a repeated cycle of brilliant sun with clear blue skys and then dark wintery skys with mini snow blizzards. It was really quite bizarre!
So what with all this weather change my choice of evening activity seemed quite strange as well- joining Suzanne for a swim in the local open air pool!!!
However despite the freezing walk from the changing rooms to the pool and back it was actually reall good.
Since coming here I haven't really done any proper exercise- and it showed. I couldn't beleive quite how much hard work it was! Today I am all achy. But very happy that I went. I think I'll probably go again next week.

Happy St David's day

Well happy st David's day to any welsh reader I might have today (well happy st David's day to the rest of you as well).

Ahhh arn't the daffs pretty. Haven't actually seen any yet this year :( Bet they are popping up all over the place in england.

Well so anyway yesterday- pancake day.
Despite suzanne and I being the only two people still around (what with everyone else off enjoying their holidays in far off lands) we still did the works. I perchased the ingreedients, she bought the non-stick pan and then together we cooked up and plowed our way through a pile of pancakes sugar and lemon- yum. I must confess though that I completely woosed out of tossing the pancakes and just flipped them with a spatular. We also got to meet the new flat mate in suzzanne's flat. I can't remember her name but she seems really nice and friendly. It's also nice that she understands english. Generally with french people we try to speak french with them (obviously) but I for one can't manage everything in french, so tend to switch as necessary. So it's very nice when I know that the french people around will still follow what I say, and help me if I get stuck.
I wonder how long she will stay, since being here that flat has gone through 4 people in that room!