Home tomorrow ...

Sooo ... I'm going home tomorrow! I'm so excited, but it's really weird to think I've lived in France for going on 4 months already. A lot of this term felt like it was going insanely slowly at the time, but when I look back on it it's gone really really quickly.

I know I'm going to get so many questions when I get back, everyone asking how it's been, and I'm not sure I know how to answer!! So much has gone on that it's so difficult to put it into a few sentences! It's defo been really difficult. This is by far the most difficult thing I've ever done and is almost certainly going to be the hardest year of my university life.

There's no real point doing a recap because if you're that interested, you can just read my previous blogs. We've had an absolute nightmare with accommodation, a fire in our building and lots of wine at 5 euros for 5 litres. Loads of it has been really really good and some of it's been not so good, much like in Nottingham I suppose, though it is made more difficult by the language barrier and the fact that I'm in a different country from most of the people closest to me. The work has been ridiculously hard, though in the last couple of weeks something's clicked and it's become slightly easier. I've only had two pieces of work marked properly, one of them being my mock exam, and I got 8/20 in both of them, which is 2 marks off passing. And to be honest, considering most of the French people get between 6 and 8, I'm not too upset with that. It's annoying that I work so hard and I'm still failing, but hopefully with 4 weeks of revision time I can pull it up two marks. And there's only one exam that's going to be really hard, which is the module we have tutorials in. Everything else is literally just factual questions so it's just a case of learning everything and regurgitating it, which should be ok. I know that I'll be so glad at the end of the year that I've done it (provided I pass everything), I've just got to work through all the really hard stuff and try and still enjoy it at the same time, which I think I have managed to do mostly this term!

Today's been really really nice! I met up with three other girls from Nottingham who are doing Management and French and are studying at the business school - Nicola, Laura and Anna. Coincidentally, Laura lived with two of my really good friends last year (Alex and Lish), and they're all really lovely. We went for lunch - absolute mission to find a jacket potato but we found a pub and had lunch there then went for a bit of a wander. They said they'd found an Irish shop where you could buy mince pies which got me well excited but sadly we got there and they'd run out of mince pies!! Very sad times. Then I went to the Eglise de Notre Dame, which Helen and I came across by accident the other day and which is BEAUTIFUL, to try and talk to someone about organising a St Mary's tour. Unfortunately though, there were absolutely no "staff" there, but I had a look round the noticeboards and found an email address so I'm going to send an email that way to see if someone can help. Then I went to the Cathedral for the same thing, had a very lovely conversation with le Pere, who was very interested and said I have to email him with all the details and he'll post me the forms I need, so hopefully there'll be a little tour in the making there. After that I came back here, finished off my packing and then Sam came over so we could do Secret Santa and have dinner - him and Pat made us some LOVELY fajitas and then we did presents. Everyone was pretty happy, Helen had me and got me an egg that hatches into a dinosaur when you put it in water, a cow mug (yay!) and a PAINT YOUR OWN FISH!! It's amazing, you get two little clay fish and some paint so you can decorate them, I am VERY excited about doing that when I get back to Bdx. Helen, Mel and Pat are going out tonight but I'm going to stay in - I don't want to have to get any more money out and I don't want to be knackered tomorrow when I get back, especially as I have to get up at 7 on Monday morning for a hospital appointment!!

So yeah, it has been a good term in hindsight. I already feel like I can do anything after negotiating the French administration system etc for 4 months and managing to survive! I'm now just really really looking forward to coming home. My first couple of days are going to be incredible, I'm spending the whole day in Leicester on Monday, meeting a load of people for lunch and hopefully a few other people for coffee and stuff, then getting a haircut (finally - first one since the 2nd September!) and going out for dinner with Dad and Katie. Then Tuesday I'm off to Notts for the whole day, looking round a few houses if I can, meeting some more people and then SINGING in the Lord Mayor's carol service with St M's. I've missed singing SO much, and St Mary's even more. It's still so weird not having that kind of routine anymore, and the people at St M's are some of the people I've missed most, I can't wait to see everyone again. And then I've got so much more to look forward to, though I do have to do a lot of revision. But hopefully the fact that I'm having lots of fun will motivate me to work when I've not got stuff on, and then I can come back and hopefully pass all my exams ... and by the time I've finished my January exams, I'll be over halfway through my year abroad, which is a CRAZY thought.

So yeah, there's my first semester summed up as much as possible, and my last blog of 2009. Unless any of you want to find out what I'm up to in Leicester, but it probably won't be half as exciting as Bdx so I'm guessing not :P

Joyeux Noel :D

And one more thing

Something else now ticked off the list of "Things to do whilst in France":

I ate frogs' legs last night.
I am now coming to terms with the French mantra, "If in doubt, cover it in garlic."
They were very nice though. Like chewier, deep-fried chicken. Covered in garlic.

C'est tout.

Only in France

Today, I had my last lecture for one of my modules - international public law. About an hour and a half in, the lecturer was chatting away about international treaties, when suddenly we all heard a man's voice shouting from the back of the lecture theatre. I thought at first it was one of the students like, contesting what she was saying or something like that, but then this man who I'm not sure was homeless OR drunk, but definitely looked both, comes waltzing down the steps holding a guitar and a box. He went up to the big table behind which the lecturer sits and put his stuff down on it, took his coat off etc and then went and spoke to her and shook her hand. She was looking slightly confused at this point but let him carry on with what he wanted to do. And as it turned out, what he wanted to do was to serenade the lecture theatre. He sat down in the lecturer's chair, adjusted the microphone and then started playing his guitar and singing! I have no idea what he was singing but all the French people seemed to like it! Then when he finished, everyone applauded and he took his box, left his guitar on the table and walked all round the lecture theatre asking people for money! A French girl my friend Sophie was talking to said that he does that quite a lot - he'll just wander into lectures and the lecturers don't really know what to do so they just let him get on with it. He took bloody ages to leave as well, once he'd got his money he went back down to the lecturer and started talking to her again and was talking to students on his way back up the stairs - he must have been hanging around at the back because the lecturer suddenly went "Vous sortez, s'il vous plait!" ... and then he was gone.

Just thought I'd share that little snippet. Can't imagine that one ever happening in B62.

Your sex is on fire. Oh no, wait ... that's your flat.

So, if any of you have been stalking me on Facebook in the last couple of days you'll know that something quite scary happened yesterday - definitely blog-worthy!

There we all were, me, Mel and Helen in our room and Pat in his, dutifully doing our TD work. Patrick heard fire engines outside and looked out of the window (his room looks out onto the quays). A woman on the other side of the room started waving at him and shouting "Descendez! Descendez!" (for non-Frenchies, the literal translation of that is get the fuck out). Then he looked down and there were two fire engines outside our house and quite a lot of smoke! The three of us obvs had no idea by this point, until Patrick shouted "Girls, there's a fire in our building, get out!" I'll be honest, for a second I thought he was joking but from the tone of his voice it was pretty obvious he wasn't. So we all grabbed bags, put shoes on etc - I even thought to save my TD work on my laptop! Sadly, Helen struggled to put her shoes on whilst simultaneously performing the all-important task of checking her text messages in the face of death ........... and that was the last we saw of her :(

JOKES! She did however take a VERY long time faffing with her shoes and locking the door despite me shouting "Helen, don't lock the door just get the fuck out!" Anyway, we obviously had to evacuate so we ran downstairs, knocking on doors on the way and stuff. Then followed a VERY LONG TIME waiting outside in the cold behind red and white tape cordoning off the area, watching firemen put the fire out, with no one telling us what was going on. It became clear though that there had been an electrical fire in the basement of the building, underneath the shop that the proprietor owns on the first floor of the building.

Eventually we got fed up of waiting and not knowing anything and went to get some food. When we came back there were still firemen there - in fact, three fire engines, two police vans and two ERDF energy vans! The proprietor was there as well - that was the first time we'd actually met her and she was really lovely, even gave us an English handshake rather than the typical French cheek kisses. She basically told us what had gone on and said we couldn't sleep there tonight. Obviously though we didn't have anything with us so we asked a fireman if we could go up to the flat quickly to get more things for the night. He took us up with him - obviously there was no electricity so it was pitch black but it was SO smokey and the smell was disgusting - that really acrid burning plastic smell but worse! So we ran around grabbing overnight stuff and once we were out we phoned the Sheffield girls and asked if we could go round there.

Patrick went back to his room in halls for the night, and the three of us stayed with the Sheffield girls - it's actually really lovely to know that in case of emergency we have got friends who will always let us stay with them! So yeah ... and now, we're not really sure what's going on. We're waiting to hear from the proprietor about when we can go back properly but not sure if we'll be able to stay there tonight, and even if we can, when we'll have electricity, gas and hot water back.

So yeah! There you go. I thought it was definitely something worth blogging about! In other news ... there isn't really any other news. Less than two weeks till I'm back home now and I really can't wait. It's our last week of lectures, then we have one week pretty much free to go to the Christmas market (which is beautiful), shop, ice skate, admire the Christmas lights... and start some revision!