Go Stag Hill!!!!!!

Well This morning I had a very nice (anticipated) surprise waiting in my inbox for me- my university accommodation confirmation for next year!!! Once again I am in Stag Hill Court, though this time in a single room rather than the duplex I had in first year.

UPDATE: And they have put me in the room next to Helen!!! How much fun is next year going to be (correct answer= lots)

Oh how very exciting. It means I really am going to be a student again next year. I can't wait! Well only 31 days of work left (how sad is it that I know that, but I have been counting down for months).

Last night I went to go and see V for Vendetta with France and Suzanne. I really am becoming a cinema-a-holic, it's terrible, and there are loads of films coming out which we want to go and see.
So anyway the film, to be honest I can't make up my mind on it. I found it really quite hard to watch mainly because the theme of the story is terrorists in London. After living in France I have become immensely patriotic and fond of England and London. It has been my home all my life. So I didn't like it being in London. Also after July 4th and seeing the riots here in France the images they showed of riots and terrorist attacks didn't seem particularly 'entertaining'. I think if I had been in London the whole time I wouldn't have noticed so much and I think I would have come out raving about a great film. As it is I'm not sure I'll even see it again in English to find out what was going on half the time (I got so lost at times). However I might find that in a few days I'll think of it as a fab film, who knows.

Mixed feelings

Well this weekend has been a bit of an up and down emotional ride.
The thing is this weekend is goodbye time for loads of people. So as a goodbye send of on Friday we all got take away and had a nice communal mismatched meal together. Then headed out for a final drink together 'sniff' It was so much fun.
Saturday morning Elaine and I went wandering round town for a bit before going home to see Jane off 'even bigger sniff'.
Then it was back up onto a high for the wedding of Dolphin and Muriel at church.

It was so lovely and I have to say I did shed a tear when they read their own vows. I found out that unlike England in France weddings always take place at the town hall for the legal bit and then at church for the god bit (if that's what the couple want). During the church service the choir did a couple of songs, well in fact there were two choirs- us and another choir from Bordeaux. Now this other choir were really good, with some good gospel voices and several harmonies going on. However I have to say that we held our own against them (not that anyone was comparing of course, but even so). I was so proud of the choir. We had a lovely harmony in our second song which the girls did to perfection and... it was just great.
Mini sniff here because saturday was Remi's last for a bit, but he is coming back for a placement in a few weeks so that's alright.
Sunday each choir reprised a song for the church marking the last performance of Philippe with the choir *yet another sniff*. Finally with the last sniff of the day it was time to see Elaine off with her monstrous amount of luggage. Poor old cab driver struggled to lift the largest suitcase in- must have been just a bit heavy!
And there they were gone!
Ines is leaving us on Tuesday and Gemma is leaving next Wednesday. Thankfully that is it for a month or so.
been left feeling a bit flat though :(

Happy Easter

I hope you all had a fantasic easter weekend. I did!
Wednesday evening I got the ferry over to England arriving early thursday morning. It was so bizarre getting on the coach and hearing the english radio- I nearly started crying. It didn't take long for me to plaster a cheshire cat grin on my face though. One thing I have actively missed this spring is daffodils. I have only seen cut ones on sale in the market here. In England however within 2 minutes we were driving past carpets of them. I love daffs they are such happy flowers.
The coach made good time and there was a train ready waiting for me when I got to victoria so I was home by about 10:30 which was fantastic.
Thursday evening my parents took us out for a belated birthday meal, amusigly to a lovely little french restaurant. The food was fantastic and it was so nice to spend time with the family.
Friday was the good friday service at church in the morning, then gardening in the sunshine in the afternoon. I also managed to do both my global action forms (for the trip to Ukraine that I'm planning to do in the summer) and my loan forms. The loan forms are so annoying and mildly confussing. There are like four seperate loans/grants that you can apply for and there is very little explaination as to what they are all for- so I just applied for everything! Well the worst they can say is no.
Saturday I went dog walking with my very good friend Terri and her dog Dyson.

We went to mitcham common and had a good old ramble, natter and general catch up session. Thankfully the day's rain held off until the afternoon when I was safely back home.
My mother is an absolute legand and prior to my arriving home she had invited some of my mates round for a meal. So Andy, Hannah, Sarah, Laura, Suzi and Hazel all came and muched through pasta bake and pavlova nad chees cake!! OH YUM. I've missed mum's cooking. For all the french are supposed to be like the culenary kings of... everywhere, they just can't compeat with my mum's cooking.
Sunday was easter day (chocolate!!!!). Church was great, we had three baptisms, a fab worship set, mime from Poppy and dash (clowns to entertain the kids) and the chance to chat and catch up with a few more people.
After eating our way though roast dinner we collapsed in a heap. Then Jonathan and I played a game of monopoly with david ritter who had popped in with his parents. And we had syminal cake- marzipan, yummy.

Monday before heading back to france I went round to the Peirces' for a bit. As well as being a lovely chance to spend time with my second family I got to meet the newest addition to the clan. Their cat had a kitten a week ago- it is sooo cute

Then it was back victoria to get my coach, then the ferry, then rush home to dump stuff and have a shower before heading off to work! wow what a weekend.

Mount Saint Michel

This weekend was one of the most fun weekends I've had here. Jane, Elaine, Anna and I all hired a car for the weekend and went off site seeing. With Jane driving and me navigating (not quite sure how that one happened) we made our way to Mount Saint Michel.
It was so beautiful, and visible from miles around.

So we got there, parked and made our way through the portcullis gate:

On entering we were all taken aback by how many shops there were. These tiny little street were packed full of grockle shops (shops for tourists full of random tourist souvenirs) and food places.

Climbing up we started to leave the shops behind. In stead we were greeted by hundreds of stairs to take us to the top.

With a couple of rest along the way we finally made it to the top and had a wander round the monastery. The views from the top were breath taking.
You could see down into the streets of the village.

And the huge stretch of sand and grass which stretched back to the mainland.

Mount Saint Michel was originally a tidal island. That means that at high tide it was a regular island but at low tide there is a huge stretch of sand stretching all the way from the mount to the coast. Due to the build up of silt, the causeway (road) in is never flooded and the rest of the mount is only surrounded at really high tides. We learnt in the museums that they intend to do some serious re-landscaping to make the mount into an island once more. Should be good because watching the tide come in looked increadible- we got to see some old footage of it in the museaums
There are four museums on the mount and we figured that since we might never come back (especially Jane-from Canada and Anna- from Spain) that we would do everything. If you ever go though I can safely say that you are not missing much if you don't go to the museums, the redevelopement plans were probably the most interesting bit. The monastry however was good- especially the cathedral. You have to go through it to get to the next part and when we were in there they had a service on. Now one thing I will say about traditional stone churches is that the acoustics are incredible! I had goose bumps listening to the music.

After Mont Saint Michel we drove on to St. Marlo giving Elaine her first visit into Brittany. We had been told that St Marlo was a very pretty place but knowing nothing about the town ourselves it was quite hard to know where to go. We found some prettiness in the old section of the town, munched our way through some yummy snacks (kouign-amann for me, oh yum yum)then headed onto the beach for a last wander before heading back to the car.

As it turned out we ended our day just at the right time. No more than a minute after we had set off home the heavens opened and it chucked it down.
Getting home we had a minor detour due to confusing road signs but other than that it was rather quiet, in all senses of the word, as we were all nackered- it's all that see air dontcha know!

Ice Age

ICE AGE ROCKS!!! Elaine France and I went to go see it yesterday evening and all enjoyed it immensely. It is a fantastic film to have seen in French because there were so many visual jokes that even if I didn't follow the whole script there were plenty of laughs anyway. Scrat is just the best- with his ever elusive acorn.

I thoroughly recommend it to everyone.

On another note had a bit of mild excitement on the way to work this morning- I got to see firemen putting out a real fire! I thought it was slightly concerning that the bin at the tram station was smoking slightly and then this fire engine pulled up, three or four firemen got out, dragged their hose over to the bin and started squirting furiously into the bin. I was in fits though because they couldn't have picked a worse time with a tram coming in each direction and their hose stretching across both lines. But obviously the bin fire was much more important so the trams had to wait! lol it made me smile.

Turtle Attitude

This post will be dedicated to my new found love, to the reason that Wednesday evenings exist, to the tortoise and to the cause of my bleary eyed state this morning. Confused? I am of course talking about Nouvelle Star!!!

Over the past few weeks us English girls (that's Suzanne, Elaine and I) have managed to get completely hooked on Nouvelle star. It's the French pop idol and it's fantastic. Wednesday evenings at 8:50, every week on M6. It's really nice actually because the other two can't get M6 in their flat but for some reason I can, so they come up to mine and we all watch it together.

The past two weeks have been public voting but due to a fault in the computer system last week all 14 of the candidates were back this week to sing in the special French song only episode.

So for lack of anything better to do at the moment I shall give you 'Sarah's break down of singers and performances from yesterday's nouvelle star'

Cindy

First up is Cindy. This is a little white girl with a big black voice. She has loads of energy and is good. I could easily see her getting down to at least the final few.

Vladimir

Vladimir went out this week. So not much point in saying much

Bruno

Bruno has one of the most feminine voices I've ever heard in a guy. But listening to him that not a bad thing (in his case). Last week for example he did beautiful by Christina agularia (or how ever you spell her name) and sounded amazing. This week as well he was really good.

Sophie

Well Sophie never stuck me as a strong contended, and even after a HUGELY improved performance this week she was also out this week

Jean-Charles

Poor old sausage had a sore throat which probably helped him on his way out. Bit sad I quite liked him. He reminds me a bit of on of Tom's mate Alex

Celia

Went out

Florian

Despite being shaky vocally Florian's performance was entertaining (in a good way, not a funny way). He managed to stay in.

Beverly

Her song didn't really strike me either way- haven't got much to say on it. Beverly was saved by the judges.

Christope

We love you Christope we do, we love you Christope we do (etc). Christope is easily our favourite. As Elaine said yesterday is just 'fluffy'. He is this tall gangly slightly geeky guy who looks like he wouldn't say boo to a goose. In fact he earned himself a nickname on his very first audition.
(paraphrased translation)
"I just have to explain why I'm laughing "This is one of the judges after he
finished his audition piece, "When you walked in I thought Oh no not another one, look what we have here. We are going to get another 'wannabe who can't sing'. You walked in like this little tortoise and them- wow what a voice. It's amazing"

So he is now M. tortoie. His fans have t-shirts and banners with a tortoise and 'turtle attitude' written across them. And boy can that guy sing!! I honesty believe he has a really good shot at winning. The judges love him the public love him, we love him :) lol

Joana

Good performance, stayed in.

Stephanie

Another huge improvement from last week. Stayed in.

Gael

Much better than last week (when he attempted U2- very brave). Stayed in

Valerie

Last week I was convinced that Valerie was the worst of the entire bunch. However this week she was brilliant. She did a song called caravane and I have to say that I liked her version way better than the version by Raphael who is a famous French singer whose album has been in the top 10 for months. a well deserved place in the 10 chosen

Dominique

Went through

Ahh was a good evening.

Spring

Well I reckon spring is well and truly here. I have not put a coat on all weekend (and yes I have been outside for much of that time). It's great :)

Once again I find that it comes to Monday and my last blog entry was the Monday before. So here's the round up of the highlights of my week:

Monday:- we got new flat screens at work!!! This is fantastic news for my sanity. Alain's screen used to screatch when it had warmed up and it drove me balmy!! but now we have pretty, quiet screens which can tilt in every direction possible- they even twist 90 degrees so that 'normal' horizontal bottom edge of the screen becomes the vertical side. It is weird!

Thursday:- got another little distraction from work in the form of protesters (the CPE again) walking down the street next to Phillips. They completely blocked off one of the roads leading onto the ring road- so thankfully just disrupted cars and not my tram home.

Saturday:- had a really productive day (for once). I did two loads of laundry- I had completely run out of socks! I did a bit of shopping- got a tambourine and egg shakers for the choir. Then I went swimming with Jane and Suzanne. This was in the outdoor pool so although it was a bit chilly it was sooo nice to be out swimming in the sunshine. All three of us were knackered for the rest of the day though. After a (very) late lunch I headed back into town just to wander in the sunshine. I found Jane and Morgan sitting like a couple of cats in the sun listening to a band who had set up in the theater square. So the three of us sat drinking up the rays until the sun disappeared behind the theater.
Saturday evening we decided to go out for dinner, though none of us wanted to spend the 20 euros some places charge, so after walking about 2 miles we ended up at a little place near the foyer. When we first arrive the waiter was really quite moody and we were rather unimpressed, however as he started trying to explain that they were closing earlier than advertised we realised that he was probably a bit annoyed about having these 'English tourists' here. He started in English and so Anna put him right very quickly telling him to speak French- the look of relief on his face was a picture. I have never understood why so many people in France assume that because we are English that we don't speak French. I guess we probably do it in England too but it is annoying. By the end of the evening the waiter was laughing and joking around with us, we all had lovely food and left feeling very contented. We rounded off the day with a trip to O'donnals.

Sunday:- church, lunch at the church- always great fun and choir. I must confess that last Sunday I was a little... off with our newest member. His name is Charles and he is a pianist. I had got used to be 'the pianist' for the choir and so when in his first practice he offered to play, as I mucked things up, I was a bit put out (and a bit grumpy- oops). I think he realised and the next song jumped up for me to take the piano again. I felt just a bit bad. This week I was well behaved though. I played for the songs he didn't know and he played the ones he did. He's really good- with a completely different style to me, we had great fun. We sang 'I will dance I will sing' by mat redman, with him doing this jazzy fun little accompniment and the choir dancing shaking the eggs (they were a big hit) and having a good old worsh. Charles also really helped us in writing a harmony for one of the songs. So despite my initial humph a really welcome and useful addition to the choir.
When I got back Suzanne Elaine and I decided to take advantage of the remaining sun and went for a wander round the castle. We stopped by the Chinese take away and Elaine and I bough what turned out to be a mountain of food. I'm sure those tubs weren't that big when we were in the shop! Good food though- and man was I full, we had enough over that both Morgan and Suzanne had a good plateful as well. yummy