Beauval Zoo and other morsels of my life

So, it's Saturday evening, I should be planning next week's lessons, but instead I thought I would enlighten you as to my adventures over the last few days.

Highlights:
* French teachers who are willing to look over your Year Abroad essays and correct your French: an absolute blessing. I need to 'take advantage' of being surrounded by native speakers (who have surrounded me for the last six months, but somehow I hadn't noticed their potential) before I leave in the not too distant future...
* 'Of Mice and Men' on stage at the Pyramide with my MAJO friends. However, in some ways it's not a highlight because I thought the actors and directors had misinterpreted the characters of John Steinbeck's novel. Then again, I am basing my opinion on the plot summary available on Wikipedia...
* Group 2 on Tuesday afternoons have miraculously reappeared! I didn't dare ask them where they've been for the last six weeks when I've been sitting in the classroom on my own in case they don't come next week. But then again, I've never seen Group 1, who they're meant to alternate with each week; I've ended up telling them to come ever week from now on, not that there's much time left but it's better than nothing.
* Yet another scrummy dinner (pizza) and nice conversation with a couple from church, followed by a Bible Study in their apartment.
* Badminton: a bit of sport to qualify my Malteaser intake and a lot of laughs from ridiculous rallies.

And now, we come to the piece de la resistance (which doesn't count as the British stealing French phrases, because I am qualified to use this phrase as an inhabitant of France... ahem):
Friday midday, Carine and I returned to her home, and generally spent a lot of time talking between ourselves and with her sister (Emilie), her sister's boyfriend (Cesar) and a friend of the aforementioned,  because Cesar thought it would be funny to try and set Carine up with his friend. It didn't quite work out like that.

Eaten on this occasion with
nutella or home-made jam. Yum. 

The evening consisted of watching the film 'Rio' which I very much enjoyed, while stuffing our faces with crepes, which I enjoyed even more so. We didn't have anything else to eat apart from a small amount of baguette, pate and gherkins beforehand so that it wasn't sugar-central. I felt contentedly sick at the end.
A solid night's sleep, and then I was waking up to hot chocolate in a bowl with madelines and pain au lait smothered in nutella. At 9.30am Carine and I set off to Beauval Zoo.

The zoo was genuinely fascinating, with an incredible range of exotic species (white tigers, white lions, white rhinos, two frisky pandas, red pandas etc), many of which had babies; four baby white tigers, baby elephant, baby koalas... there was a baby gorilla which was just 48 hours old! My love affair with gorillas has been re-kindled after staring at them for a significant amount of time during lunch.

Left: mother with baby on back
Right: Group Silverback Alpha Male

None the less, regarding some enclosures I felt uneasy. It must be about nine years since I last went to a zoo, if not longer. Unsurprisingly, in that time my sense of wrong and right has been heightened and I no longer have the blunt-headed excitement of a child upon seeing all the animals. I had the prickly tightening in my stomach at seeing the tigers, the lions, and the jaguar in enclosures which were not big enough to properly run in, which mostly consisted of mud and trampled ground, and with nowhere to hide from the never-ending stares of humans. I asked Carine what she thought of the situation: 'well, they want for nothing here, do they?'. And I now call to mind Aldous Huxley's novel 'A Brave New World', whereupon (spoiler alert) at the end the savage announces that he doesn't want the safe, conditioned world that has been created (i.e. the zoo):

“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." 
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”

Also:
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” 

This is what I felt upon seeing the jaguar: Yes, he need not fear death by starvation. He need not run to catch prey and thus survive. But one need not have a reason to run. Yes, he need not fear being caught and killed by poachers. But is it not worse to spend every day of your life staring at life moving around you, and being helplessly trapped in security? I know full well that the money zoos raise through admitting anyone who has enough money to stare at animals which are far too beautiful to truly comprehend, and that they use that money to further causes aiming to protect animals of the same species in the wild. But, if we believe that every human is equal, then why not every animal, and if every animal is equal, then why are some trapped in cages and others are allowed to roam free? I guess that is one of the messages of 'A Brave New World': life's not fair, but then again, it might be less interesting if it was...

That is the note I want to end on for this blog post, but shall add Sunday's event as an afterthought to this summary paragraph. I thoroughly encourage anyone who has read this post and been intrigued by the citations to go away and read Aldoux Huxley's book. It is a masterpiece.

Light-hearted addition: on Sunday I visited a teacher and her family in Blois. My thighs received a horrific workout playing on a seesaw designed for 3yr olds with her daughter, but we had a delicious lunch (including a cheese course, bien sur) culminating in home-made tarte tatin, which is a speciality of this region of France. Legend has it that Ms Tatin accidently dropped her apple tart upside down in the oven, hence tarte tatin being cooked by covering a layer of caramel-drenched apples with pastry and baking in the oven. Unfortunately I missed the carnival in Blois because there was only one bus to take me back to Romo, but on the upside I was able to go to church, skype home and quickly prepare my lessons for Monday morning.

Everyday Excitingness

So it’s Tuesday the 19^th March as I write this. So I’m more or less half-way through my final half-term as a Language Assistant, since I only work four days a week, and one of them is only for an hour!The last week and two days have passed very satisfactorily. I have lost any passion I once had for teaching, but my extra-curricular goings-on are keeping my spirits high.

 The mediatheque. I fully regret not finding this gem earlier. I knew of its existence, and had ventured in a couple of times and picked up a book. However, I now know of its FREE INTERNET and computer section, and since internet at the house has gone again, and you have to pay for the internet at the MAJO (albeit at a very reasonable price), I have been spending most of my free time being a little internet-hermit at the mediatheque. I have also made friends with a charming lady who is married to a Frenchman, and who I might have exploited into helping me write my intercultural competence essay... (I mean that I have exploited her ideas, she’s not writing it for me – I’m not that lazy.)

An illustration of one of
La Fontaine's Fables

Six months into my Year Abroad, and I am starting to read French classics: I have read Moliere’s l’Avare (the Miser) and Le Petit Prince which is simple beautiful and I refuse to ever read in English. I am also working my way through La Fontaine’s Les Fables which are brilliant. They are typical fables, some taken from Aesop, but written in verse (but I am told not in verse which was conventional for the era) and they present some morals in a really thought-provoking fashion. As Michael told me, as he was smoking and drinking Pastis with Kyann, La Fontaine ‘a bouleversé ma vie!’ (‘turned my life upside down!’ Reading shall soon be commencing for my French modules for next year, which I already know since the French Department are lovely enough not to cap limits for modules: 1. A feminist literature module revolving around mythology and 2. A study of France in the run up to the Revolution, an era also known as the Ancien Regime.

I have also discovered some quality French singers. These are rare, but with Carine’s help and the CD section of the Mediatheque, I have become a huge fan of Johnny Hallyday and Claude Francois. Check them out.

Dinner invitations from teachers. Despite having the last six months to invite me, many teachers are now realising how little time there is before I leave, and wanting to invite me around for dinner. Last weekend, I dined with Virginie and her family. I met her at the lycee where there was an Open Day, whereupon the English Department greeted me with actual CAKES which they had baked. Oh cake, how I have sorely missed thee. Mousse and macaroons sometimes just don’t do the trick. While stuffing my face, I had a conversation with a girl from the college about how to make my lessons interesting. She suggested making posters. I pointed out that making posters doesn’t involve speaking English. I was told to think of something original, in that case… After clearing up the classroom, we went to the canteen where there were nibbles and champagne, and after staying briefly we said goodbye to the head and deputy head and began the hour long journey to Bourges, home of Virginie.

Raclette machine: grill cheese below,
warming plate on top. Pour onto meats
and potatoes.

We had a late lunch (circa 2.30pm) which I’m told is Italian time for lunch – I shall find out for myself in mid-May! How exciting! – and we had raclette. I am an ENORMOUS raclette fan. For the unenlightened, it’s a type of cheese which you melt and put on top of boiled potatoes and eat with cold meats and salad. It's also the name of the dish i.e. "we're eating raclette tonight". The last time I had it was with the family next to Disney Land. We then took a leisurely walk around the town of Bourges, which I had visited when my parents came to see me at the end of October, but I thoroughly enjoyed because of our conversation. Problems at the lycee, French culture, Italian culture… It was varied and fascinating, and almost entirely in French. Such fun.

Back at the apartment, we began watching a French comedy called ‘Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis’ (Welcome to the home of the Ch’tis), about a man from southern France who goes to work in the very far north of France where they speak a different dialect. It was very funny, and interesting to see the intra-country stereotypes between the far north and south of France. Before we could finish it, it was time to go and have dinner. Warning: before reading the next sentence I suggest you sit down. I was more than happy to have skipped dinner as I was still full from lunch (shock horror) but we went to a creperie, so I forced down a Galette Incontournable (Unbeatable Savoury Crepe: ham, mushrooms, egg, tomato sauce, cheese. Yum.) along with some cider drunk out of a bowl, and finished it off with a Pear and Chocolate Sauce Crepe for pud. It would have been rude to refuse.

I am only half joking with that last sentence. Here, one of the things that I love, is that you invite people around for entire three course meals to get to know them better. The French really value mealtimes: people come back from work and school to eat as a family (and the two-hour lunch break enables this), so I slot in like a hand in a glove.

The evening was finished off with the rest of the film, before I went to bed, exhausted. I awoke to pains au chocolat before Virginie and her partner walked me to the train station and I began the journey back to Romorantin in the rain. Sadly the boiling hot weather has retreated and been replaced by rain.

That evening, I went to church. I love my little church family, and singing the hymns in French. Bonus: Lydia invited me to come round and eat with her and her husband before Bible Study on Wednesday. I’m just clearly a delight to host and generally be around.

Yesterday was back to work, with an awful first three hours at college, but a good two hours at the lycee in the late afternoon which cheered me up (after I had drowned my sorrows in mini-cookies, which gave me a socking headache from sugar over-dose). We then all ate together at the canteen, and the food was a lot better than usual, and then just chatted for a couple of hours about nothing in particular.

Today, I have four hours at the lycee. I predict a good group at 1pm, no-one at 2pm, and two people at 3pm, and normal set-up at 4pm (one person presenting a news subject to me and then discussing it for half an hour, then swapping and repeating). Then this evening a group of us are off to La Pyramide to see ‘Of Mice and Men’ / ‘Des Souris et des Hommes’. I have sneakily read the Wikipedia plot summary to make sure I understand vaguely what’s going on. Although, sadly, Wikipedia actually tell you the ending, which made me gasp out loud and genuinely shocked me. So I’ll have to pretend to be equally horrified tonight.

Next weekend is looking INCREDIBLY exciting, but I’m not telling you until I have experienced it. So you’ll have to wait a while for that blog post! Signing off.

Americans, Babies and Crêpes

So this weekend, my American biffle came to see Romorantin in all its tiny glory. I warned her that there was not much to see, but she insisted but accepted that she would arrive Saturday evening, and leave at 3pm Sunday. 20 hours is more than enough time to see my town.

Just because I thought it was quite a funny picture...

I finish lessons Thursday afternoon, and had the prospect of an empty Friday and Saturday ahead of me. In fact, I was fairly successful in filling the days with Italian grammar, playing billiards with the boys, saying goodbye to a (now former) occupant of the MAJO, and having a Bible session with some ladies from church. After discussing Genesis 12 and the figure of Sarah, we had some good old fashioned tea and cake. And I made a point of asking for ENGLISH tea with MILK. And I was duly so served to my delight. One woman had to leave briefly to feed her baby, and so the talk turned to babies, pregnancy, the ease of weight gain and the difficulties of weight loss. And I looked around at the seven women surrounding me, all of whom were married and had at least one child. And I thought: is this what I am going to turn into in ten years? And will I be subject to conversation themes dominated by "the weight of my children when first-born", diet changes during and after pregnancy, and the inability to have romantic dinners in restaurants because of incapable babysitters? I shuddered, but comforted myself by thinking that I’ve got ten years until all that (according to my precisely mapped out life plan).

Sadly I forgot my camera, so thank you to Google
Images for providing something resembling my own galette

Shortly after being dropped home, it was time to go and pick up my biffle AKA Erin from the train and bus station. We had a lovely, French dinner in a restaurant in Romo I had been wanting to try for a while called ‘la poele percée’ (the pierced (frying) pan) and they had frying pans with holes in them as lighting brackets! It was a crêpe restaurant AKA crêperie, and Erin and I both chose the Normandie galette (galette = savoury, crêpe = sweet) which included: steak haché, egg, mushrooms, crême fraîche and gruyere. It was soooo good. You could tell it was proper French cooking because they didn’t completely cook the meat or the egg so it was plenty moist and juicy. Larverly. I also began to feel particularly French when Erin explained to me the reason we had little bowls on our placemats, and no glasses. Their function (which I had originally mistaken to be to wash our hands in after the meal – not entirely sure why I thought that, perhaps it’s with Chinese food) is to serve as vessels for our lovely, delicious CIDER. We got the cider doux, and it was heavenly. Galettes demolished, we contemplated the menu once again, but focussed on the desserts section. Could we manage one? Of course. ‘Un crêpe à la maison, s’il vous plaît’, and not too much longer we were savouring the delights of a crêpe filled with peaches and dark chocolate sauce, topped with vanilla ice-cream and chantilly cream. Stuck in our crêpe was a small green clown who we were permitted to adopt, and have named Clarence. Upon paying for our meal (33€ well spent) I asked if Clarence was home-made. I was told not, and Erin was then handed two more clowns, one red/pink (Agatha) and one blue (Basil).

We then returned to the MAJO, played a couple of games of pool. Six months of living at the MAJO and playing pool almost every evening has definitely paid off. Whether it has been a good use of my time is a different question which I deign not to answer. We then retired to my room and proved that it is possible to fit two people (one in a sleeping bag) on a single bed.

Not bad at all. 

Sunday was spent doing some light shopping, sauntering around Romorantin in the glorious sunshine, making double cheese burgers for lunch, watching Gavin and Stacey, having lemon meringue pies from the patisserie for pudding and generally loving life.

A few points to make on the supermarket:

1. There are no shopping baskets, only trollies. Is this another way of encouraging people to buy more? Either you limit yourself to what you have in your arm capacity, or you take a large trolley which has plenty of space for products on offer, things you might possibly need within the next year, new things to try…? Just a suggestion.

2. No free plastic bags. I arrived at the check-out and discovered I had left my coveted plastic bag at home. I asked if they had extra plastic bags and the girl on the till got out a bag for life. Curse the eco-friendly French. The girl then told me I could use one of the cardboard boxes piled up outside the supermarket for free if I wanted. Thanks again to Erin, who explained that it’s a way of people being able to carry their groceries, and for the supermarket to get rid of unwanted packaging which they’d be obliged to recycle themselves. Gotta love the eco-friendly French.

3. Eggs. There were battery-hen eggs, and there were organic and free range eggs. There were no free range non-organic eggs. These organic ones had better be worth the extra euro. My omelettes shall be subject to strict judging procedures.

      

      Talking about organic produce, I had a thoroughly interesting conversation with a man at the MAJO the other day. It started off with him wandering into the computer room and me being more interested in facebook, but before long we were chatting away in general, and before much long after that we were talking about his motivations for becoming vegan (he’s the son of two butchers!). A very enjoyable and stimulating conversation, and the thing which sticks most stubbornly in my head is Yvan quoting Ghandi: be the change you want to see. Yes, I don’t think veganism is going to catch on completely ever, because meat will always be at the least the luxury of the rich, but I completely admire the way he has significantly changed his life style because of a cause that he passionately believes in. How many of us can say the same thing?

Lovely park/woody bit and river running through Romo.
I need to get my running shoes on...

Before we knew it, it was time for Erin to get her bus back to Blois. The bus timetable itself confirms how much ‘better’ Blois is than Romo (I beg to differ, but I’m a country bumpkin): buses go from Romo to Blois is the morning, and return from Blois in the evening. If you want to go from Blois to Romo for a day, you’ll have an hour and a half there before you can take the last bus back to Blois! This was the original reason for her staying the night in Romo, but I very much enjoyed our intellectual conversations. The most helpful of which tackled a question which I’ve been having real difficulties with of late (and which comments – which will be subsequently subject to vigorous debate – from one and all would be welcome):

What is culture?

However for my musings on that particular question, you will have to talk to me directly, because my opinions change on a daily basis. More to the point, I'm stopping because I need to finish off planning my lesson which is starting in 12 hours. Bonne nuit!

Visiting my future workplace

And so, dear reader, you might well be wondering where I went in this, the last of my school holidays before I finish my post as English Language Assistant and am rendered once again unemployed. (N.B. it's not my last paid holiday, since I am paid until the end of April, half of which is conveniently taken up by holiday! Gotta love the French.) I hope that this blog post serves to take away your puzzlement and sufficiently informs you.

My favourite Exeter people.

I briefly graced home and Exeter with my presence, having an awesome time in each of them. Highlights of home consisted of a Miranda-thon and baking scones (I know, I have excellent taste and will make a wonderful house-wife one day). Highlights of Exeter include finding an awesome new burger joint and catching up with all my friends (I am so glad I have put off finals and the idea of becoming unemployed for another year...).

American Biffle and lovely painted houses. 

On Monday, I took the Eurostar to Paris, and then a train to Strasbourg whereupon I met my American biffle Erin (yes, I am aware that the acronym is spelt 'BFFL' - best friends for life). Strasbourg is quite a small city, and the main, old part of it is encircled by rivers. This makes it incredibly easy to find your way around, or at least to not get hideously lost: if you've crossed a river, you've left the main old part.

Favourite aspects of Strazza:
1. Paint.
Well done to the French living in Alsace, for this lot seem to have discovered how to paint buildings. I am beyond sick of the typical beige-grey exterior of the vast majority of French buildings (the finish of which I am reliably informed is called crépi), giving then a battered, unloved and dirty appearance. 

RED (!!) Cathedral

2. Cathedral.
Regarding its exterior, this cathedral was very different from those that I have seen so far. It was constructed using red stone, its architecture is pointed, and it only has one tower because they seem to have run out of money before they could finish it. Its interior was not over-whelming, I have seen far better stained glass elsewhere (did you not know that I am a well-known cathedral connoisseur?) but it did have a very interesting clock in one corner of the building. 

3. Tram system.
The Strasbourg tram system is very effective and clean (like the rest of the city). However I dislike the fact that we bought a ticket and it was never checked. That 3€ could have been spent on patisseries. 

And, as you may have noticed from the title of this blog post, I was able to visit my future workplace AKA the European Parliament. Sadly Erin and I were not allowed to go in, as guided tours are only permitted if you are in a pre-decided group of at least 15. Oh well, I'll get to swan about in there once I'm an EU civil servant. 

Future working quarters. I can already taste the power.

Strasbourg also has a fascinating city history. Among many other interesting nuggets of information, the city was a military outpost at the time of the Romans (coinciding with a huge rise in illegitimate births, for some unknown reason...); it became an independent city-state in the late 1200s and remained thus until the French Revolution in 1789; the first ever newspaper was printed there in 1605 with the city's printing presses; and it was in Strasbourg that 'La Marseillaise' was composed. I highly encourage you, dear reader, to inform yourself on the history of Strasbourg, by Wikipedia or by other means.

We stayed in Strasbourg until Wednesday afternoon, whereupon we took a TGV (train de grande vitesse = a train of great speed: it's not exaggerating, we were going at over 300km per hour) to Paris. We were joined in our carriage by a large family who presented themselves like some sort of gypsy Mafia (I'm not exaggerating), and who were so stand-offish towards the train conductor checking tickets that he eventually retreated when it became apparent that they didn't have the appropriate rail card. We then took the metro, then the train to Blois. The rest of the evening consisted of Dominoes pizza, watching 'Tangled' in French, and Erin's landlord telling me I spoke French 'super bien'! Oh, and catching cockroaches in Erin's apartment...

Some BEAUTIFUL petits fours.
Slight downside is that they cost 26€...

Romorantin welcomed me with open arms and plenty of bisous on Thursday early afternoon. Internet at the house still doesn't work, so I am now living in the MAJO like a little internet-hermit for most of the day, sending emails to teachers to try and sort out an extra hour for my timetable, asking what topics I am doing with the pupils over the next six weeks etc etc. And I also had the lovely surprise, when going to pay my rent, that my housing benefit has arrived and so I am rent free until I leave Romorantin, and will receive a cheque with the remaining credit!!
I also had a mooch around the shops with Carine, and in the evening, I went with three friends to the cinema to see 'Sublimes Creatures' which was OK, but not outstanding. I went to bed shattered, with all my stuff still not unpacked (except my Sainsbury's basics chocolate digestive biscuits), but glad to be back in Romorantin for the final six weeks.

Some classy lady in Strasbourg.
Not entirely sure who she was though...

Calling Chartres

So, for the last weekend before the February holidays, I and Erin, Harriet and Amy (AKA the Blois girls) went on a small adventure to Chartres.

Chartres cathedral

My adventure started Friday evening, where I discovered a cultural difference between 'southern' Europe and 'northern' Europe. I have two very good friends at the MAJO. First of all, let me introduce John, who is 42 and wordlywise after having lived in almost every continent, and Portugese but essentially European as he says he has taken on a personality characteristic from most of the countries he's lived in. Secondly, there is Michael, who is French-Portugese and a French teacher here in Romo. After telling the boys that I was going to Blois that evening and taking the 6pm bus, John exclaimed that he and Michael were wanting to go to Blois in any case and that they would drive me. I accepted the offer, but said that if they changed their minds, they would need to let me know by 5.30pm at the latest so that I could walk to the bus stop.

Some rather lovely
stained glass windows

At 5.45pm, I got a call from John telling me to chillax, and that he was going to drive me. He added that he'd be ready in about 15 minutes after he'd had a shower and made himself 'beau'. Let's just summarise and say that 6pm English time turned out to mean 6.30pm southern French / Portugese time. All joking aside, being uptight and strict about timings does seem to be part of English / British culture. John said that's why stuff actually works in Britain and Germany, unlike southern France downwards...

Anyway, we got to Blois fine (it's SO much quicker by car than by that tank-like bus - especially with John's driving) and Erin welcomed us with open arms. Such hospitality that she came out to greet us and left her keys inside so Amy had to come and let us into the building. We then hit Blois reasonably gently, with burgers and cider in a restaurant, and some more ciders and beers when Erin's Columbian friend Dina joined us. Another benefit of learning a foreign language: Without each of us having French in common, we wouldn't have been able to communicate and have the interesting conversations about cultural differences which we did!

At one point, a cocky young French lad came up to us and said 'Are you English?' I replied 'Peut-être, peut-être pas' (Maybe, maybe not). He looked thoroughly confused. I told him to try and guess the nationality of everyone on the table. This boy was doomed: John is essentially European / Portugese with a perfect southern French accent, Michael is French-Portugese, I'm English, Erin is American, and Dina is Columbian. Nonetheless, it was a really good laugh watching him try and guess, especially when he came to John. The expression on John's face put me in hysterics.

Anyway, after spending the night in Erin's apartment and having far too little sleep due to extensive gossiping and discussing, the alarm buzzed to wake us to go to the train station to take first a train to Tours, then a bus to Chartres. Suffice to say the ticket was 8€ for a reason. The journey was horribly, horribly long for what is not a long distance, and I severely dislike long-distance coach journeys.

Traditional gothic style cathedral

We arrived in Chartres, happy to be off the blooming thing, and found our hotel fine (easily located opposite the train station). We then had a rather bizarre conversation with the man on reception, who recounted his entire life story (I'm not exaggerating) and then asked us if we spoke French, despite me asking him questions throughout, in french. We then retreated to our rooms which were actually quite nice, and reposed a little. We then decided that we were in Chartres to EXPLORE, so we set off in search of the cathedral which I'd heard to be splendid.

Bref. It was incredibly easy to find the cathedral because 1. it's pretty freaking tall, and 2. Chartres turns out to be a rather small town... The stained glass in the cathedral was lovely, but sadly I think I have simply seen too many cathedrals since my arrival here in France, and most of them are in the same gothic style with equally beautiful stained glass. The works going on inside the cathedral also detracted from its beauty. One brilliant thing though was climbing one of the towers. 300 steps later (yes, I did count) we were up on one of the towers, feeling vulnerable and insecure, as we dared to look vertically down and realise that we would end up looking like strawberry jam if we fell. It was a long, long, long way. It also feels a lot less sturdy 100m above the ground, than it appears to be at the bottom looking up.

Jean Moulin memorial

Other cultural activities in Chartres included following the chemin de memoires, which had monuments to all the people of Chartres who had died fighting in the first and second world wars, and in the wars in Tunisia and Algeria, and key French leaders. There was also a mention to the men who had liberated France, and they seemed to have got the nationality wrong: French, not British....

Another 'chemin de
memoire' memorial

Sadly, I actually preferred the activities that could have occurred back in Blois and saved us about 100€ each in hotel and train ticket costs. That is to say, 1. watching Wales whoop France's fesses in the rugby, while eating take-away pizza and 2. eating my first Subway sandwich, chicken teriyaki with sweet onion sauce. It is on my list of things to do in Exeter.

And that's when I realised, that travelling mainly consists of walking around, looking at stuff. Yes, the first few cathedrals I saw took my breath away, and the first time I bought a nutella-coated gauffre (waffle) my opinion of France increased greatly. But now, my travelling experiences in France consist of sitting on trains for horrible lengths of time, wandering around, looking at old buildings, in the cold and sometimes wet. The snow which commenced on Sunday morning (making Chartres look magical) quickly turned into rain and then slush.

We all took the train to Paris together, and then Erin and I walked around le Jardin de Plantes in the snow and appreciated a good chin-wag while looking at the imposing museums and menagerie while I waited for my connection.

Nutella Gauffre. It needs no justification.
Just look and  behold.

At Salbris, after waiting an hour, I nearly missed the train to Romo (we now have trains instead of buses!) as they have created an entirely new platform the other side of the car park, and haven't bothered to name it. Consequently, there was a blank space on the screens for the platform of the train to Romo (i.e. the same blank spot used when they haven't decided which platform the train is coming into). Many thanks to the man who asked me which platform it would be leaving from, and the chap next to me who piped up saying it wasn't here, it was over there. After pegging it across the car park, I then met Aykim on the train, had a little chat (so difficult talking in French after a weekend in English), met up with some people at the MAJO and went and got a kebab.

And then it was Monday again, and lessons. But this was special: it was the final week before the February holidays! Where have the last six weeks gone? (Apart from the time I spent whinging because time was dragging on and I wanted to go home... ahem.)

Typical battered French buildings

Anyway, my weekend foray into Chartres has shown that I need to stop being a control freak and planning all my weekends; two days after booking Chartres, Juliette invited me to go to Center Parks with her for the weekend, and I could have spoken lots of French and saved 100€. But too bad, because I'm a control freak and I had already organised Chartres.

So what sort of note to end on?
1. I'm looking forward to going home and going to Exeter in order to get my six-week dose of home and Britain. I'm then looking forward to going to Strasbourg; despite my above statements that travelling is basically walking around looking at stuff, I'm hoping that Strasbourg will be sufficiently German that it's more like visiting another country altogether, but without the need to speak German! I'm hoping to try more German food, and see some more germanic influences.
2. I need to take a leaf out of John's book, and chillax when it comes to organising my life, and just enjoy it as it comes.