Tomber Dans les Pommes

It's been sooo long since I've updated this but I've been rushed off my feet the past two weeks so sorry for what is bound to be a long post!

One of the things I've been up to is making a full English breakfast for people one morning. As I said in my last blog post I've only ever cooked for two before so the pressure was on to cater for 20. But we got there alright. It included sausage, bacon, beans (courtesy of the English section of Auchan, which also sells cheesecake mixture, scone mixture, golden syrup and jars of curry, all for ridiculous prices!) hash browns and tomatoes. I think that is was great success, because there were lots of empty plates but the French keep saying that "on mange mal là-bas" (the English eat badly) so I just have to remind them that they gobbled it all up so it can't be that bad!

Another evening the Residence did a Dino Apératoire, which is just like little bits of food to eat. I made little portions of fish and chips (fish pre-made) which everyone liked as well! Never actually made my own chips before, only seen it done, so I was a bit worried about causing a chip-pan fire or something but we got there safe and sound. I also decided to make crisps out of the skins, which didn't go down as well, but l'économie protège du besoin - waste not,want not. It did get a bit confusing though because they kept calling fish and chips les fish and chips and then crisps are chips in French too, so I had no idea if they meant are the chips ready or are the crisps ready. 

Dino Apératoire

So I've shown the French a little bit of our cuisine and it seemed to go down well, especially among a group that we have in at the moment. It's a group called the League de l'Enseignement which, for this group anyway, provides holidays for mentally disabled people. They spend a lot of time in the bar area, watching the telly and playing pétanque. So I've been taught how to play pétanque by them, which makes me feel a little bit more French. We had a game of residents vs the group, and I'm not sure who won because I still don't understand how the points system works. The one thing is that they don't understand that as an English person I don't always understand what they say, especially when they start speaking really quickly or they give numbers for where they're from. France is split in to departments which are numbered, so when I ask them where they're from and they say 25 and I say I have no idea where 25 is, they just keep telling me it's the 25 and don't give a place name. I only know that one of the group, Marcel, is from Nimes, but the others are from 25, 31, 82 and 16. You know as much as I do. 

We've started playing football on a Thursday evening now, which is great because it means I don't have to work because I go there as one of the "animateurs." Really enjoying it, we bumped in to a team which was training and they offered us a match so we played. I took up my old Tean Rangers position of left back, although I played a bit yesterday on right back and think I was better there, even though I'm left footed. I was shocked how much energy it took out of me though; I've started up running for about the past year but it's so much harder to play in a match than run constantly for an hour. I think I might change my exercise routine to incorporate stopping and sprinting to make me more used to it. I kept being called "anglais" on the pitch, which annoyed me a bit at first; I was like I do have a name, but nicknames stick I suppose.

Film-wise I've watched the new Batman film, in French, which I really liked even though it lasted so long. I've also seen a film called Bowling which is set in Brittany, more precisely in a town near to Brest, which is where my friend Vern is doing an ERASMUS exchange in September. It looks a really nice, rural part of France; sure he will be very happy there. Heat-wise I'm still not coping at night at all, it's just too hot and I need a duvet or blanket over me to be able to sleep, so I spend most of the night awake uncomfortable, which would explain my new-found coffee addiction (when in Rome). Someone suggested buying a fan, which is a very good idea but I think it's a bit silly when I'm going home in just over a week, but it's top of the list of things to buy when I'm in Spain. But hopefully by the sea and in the north of Spain it'll be a bit cooler at night time.

Pique-nique

Cordes-sur-Ciel

One day Fabien, who works at the Residence took some of us on a day trip. He's from Brittany so he wanted to explore the region a little bit too. We went to three places, the first of which was called Gaillac, which is where a famous wine comes from. It was a nice little village with not a lot there, but we had a picnic in the square and then a coffee after a walk around. Apparently it's weird to eat quiche that isn't hot, according to everyone else that was there, but I don't think I've ever eaten it hot. Fabien just shook his head and said "vous anglais," "you English" so sorry if I'm just the weird one who eats it cold because now he and the others think it's an English thing and we're weird. Then we went to a small town called Cordes-sur-Ciel, which is built on a hill, and you have to walk all the way up the hill to get there. The weather was lovely and at the top you could see miles and miles (or should I say kilometres and kilometres) of unspoiled countryside.  The town itself reminded me a little bit of an island in Brittany/Normandy which is just one town, called Mont St Michel. After a nice walked around Cordes we drove to a town called Albi, which from one view reminded me so much of Durham. See for yourselves at the end of this post! It's a nice little town, has a really impressive cathedral (no castle though!) where there was an organ concert going on, which was actually pretty good but we went after a few tunes because Anthony decided it was too scary! Haha! We managed to come home just before a huge storm arrived and we all slept in the car on the way back so we weren’t that tired when we got back, so we stayed up talking about the differences between people, mainly the opposite sexes, with Anthony (French), Brenda (Togolese) and Evelina (Romanian), which was quite interesting if not massively stereotyped.

My parents came out to Toulouse last weekend, which was really nice. They both said they really enjoyed it, because we don’t normally go into the cities when we’ve gone on holiday to France before. I hadn’t realised quite how big Toulouse is but we were all so knackered after walking around all day that we had a cheeky takeaway pizza one night because we were too tired to go in to town. One evening we went to an Indian restaurant – my first Indian in seven weeks!! – which I thought was really nice…but Mum got a bit ill afterwards, so not so sure. We had wanted to go to Carcassonne on my Monday afterwards but didn’t want to go without her, so we got a 90% refund on our tickets, 10 minutes before the train was supposed to leave! Which is great, I don’t know but I don’t think you’d get anything like that in the UK, apparently in France you get 50% back even if you didn’t catch the train, which I’m sure doesn’t happen in the UK.

Tuesday night I was really poorly too, which makes me think it was actually a bug, and Anthony had exactly the same problems on Thursday night, so I think something’s just going around, but yeah, spent Tuesday night awake doing poorly person things, which really annoyed me because Wednesday was a bank holiday and we were supposed to go canoeing. But I woke up after a few hours sleep feeling alright-ish so still went. J

St Antonin Noble Val

So France is legally a secular country, a country without a religion. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a day off work to celebrate the assumption of the Blessed Virgin in to heaven, especially as it means a day off work. What I found really weird was that it was on a Wednesday, on the actual day of the Assumption whereas in the UK we nearly always have bank holidays on a Monday near to something. But it was quite good to break up the week, especially as I needed a day of recovery. So I decided to go to canoeing because I probably wouldn’t get the chance to go with the same people again. One of the residents, Nina, gave me some disgusting medicine to block me up a bit and I felt better after sleeping for a while. We went to a little town about 1 ½ from Toulouse, called St Antonin Noble Val, and did a 10km canoeing course along the Aveyron river. It proper felt like being in the middle of nowhere and gave some amazing views. Me and Anthony shared a canoe, but were a bit lazy as we were both knackered and just found the current instead of rowing for most of it. We stopped by some rocks for a swim at one point and you proper felt like you’re in the middle of nowhere, really liked it. I love getting out of cities and back into the countryside, as I’ve mentioned before. By the end of the day I was so tired from the illness, barely eating and all the rowing that I don’t think we made it out of St Antonin before I fell asleep all the way back to Toulouse and then pretty much the second I got home. But, apart from a fair bit of shoulder pain and a massive bruise on my back from the canoe smacking my back, I felt a lot better the next day.

Albi or Durham?

Abli or Durham?

So there’s a whistle stop tour of the past two weeks for you all. I have about 10 days left, and will update before I leave. It’s so weird to think that the “year” abroad that everyone has talked about since the end of GCSE’s is now the 10 months 10 days abroad!