a few things worth mentioning

hello

of late there hasn't been very much to say, studying and revising have actually taken up a fair amount of my waking hours. there have been a few of those days where i go crazy from being in my room for hours upon end, other days where i reach 4pm and realise that i haven't used my voice yet, some days i revise with Emma or Sabine and we keep each other from going insane, those are good days.

but nevertheless there are one or to other things maybe worth telling from the last couple of weeks:

• i spent a lovely evening at the home of some Romanian friends from church, their mum made all this traditional romanian food for us to taste. yum :)
• took part in Vélorution Montpellier. like critical-mass, a hilariously irritating environmental protest by cyclists which happens in many cities. the best part was when everyone stopped in the middle of one of the busiest roads to dance and clap along to a band that were playing outside a cafe. oh, did the car drivers get upset!
• last weekend we had a mini-christmas at Hrönn's place with raclette and glüwein (with raisins and spices and blackcurrent liqueur) and tangerines which still had their leaves on.
• we've been singing carols at church, we're going friendly-neighbourhood-carol-singing on wednesday :)
• i got an lovely letter from Jo with a dvd FULL of music, WOOP! YEY! thanks Jo!
• i finally joined the bike-workshop and mended my bike, yipee! (then i had a nasty collision with the back of a van the following day, i hurt my shoulder and my knee and disgruntled my handlebars but thankfully there was not too much damage done, i was wearing my helmet and not going to fast. sadly i don't have any bruises to show how much it HURTS!)
• i made no-need-to-bake oaty chocolate peanut-butter cookies and chocolate truffles, if you don't have an oven you just have to make do.
• i was sucked into a very heated game of couchsurfing assassins, it was boys vs girls so it got pretty heated. flat keys were stolen, bikes were sabotaged, hostages were taken, workplaces were besieged. it was dramatic stuff. i had declined to play this round but my friend Triin, who lives in the building opposite me, was often in need of a bodyguard (you're protected if there is another couchsurfing witness present), which made for some funny emergency messages along the lines of, "come quickly, the boys are after me again!"...
• yesterday i got a lift to the foothills of the provincial alps, because clearly the most clever thing to do the week before all my exams is escapade across the country to the goodbye party of someone i'd only met once! It was fun. highlights include, banter in the orange van with Luic (FR, who lives in the van) and Alice and Jesus (UK/SP, two fellow couchsurfers), singing along to 'the no smoking orchestra', having fun with toilet roll confetti in the high winds at the motorway toilets, stopping for a very wet snowball fight, teaching french people to ceilidh at the party (with a very merry Luic playing the fiddle), playing clapping games so enthusiastically that we all ended up with blood blisters on our thighs. We hitch-hiked home again today in the cold, people are very lovely to hitchhikers here, or maybe they just love my bright orange jacket, who knows.
• here olives come on trees as well as in jars :)
• sometimes there are oranges on trees too!

some vocab to keep you on your toes (it's keeping me on mine!):

stitch (knitting) - maille

wool - laine

to score (a point/a basket) - marquer

guidons - handlebars

prise (de courant) - electric socket

fog - brouillard

demeurer - to stay/to remain/to live

that's all for now folks.

lots of love.

over.

an ode to couscous

dear gentle readers,

ok, so I hate to be a one to be forever sprouting excuses but what a week it's been!

4 days sans electricity and (just when the electricity came back) 4 days sans internet, now the fuse in the cuisine has blown, again.

^%&*@^*!!!!

huff.

rant over.

I'm off to borrow someone's kitchen.

more soon.

ps/ couscous is AWESOME. over.

This week

for those of you who are concerned for my academic welfare rest assured, this week has been essay based, with a lovely interlude of Latin exam happiness.

today was the first of those days, you know? where you sit and drink perpetual cups of tea. it must be getting towards winter.

this evening I spent a pleasant time watching a film ('black cat,white cat', its bulgarian i think, watch it if you haven't, it's wonderful) with Triin and Kristina (both from Estonia) and Hrönn and Frosti (both from Iceland) all of whom found it rather a novelty not to be in the ethnic minority. don't they all have lovely names?

over.

Photo links

I've loaded a whole bunch of photos to facebook and there'll be more to follow

The link to the album is below, not sure how it'll work but its maybe worth the try,

The first wee while:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=117878&id=502041309&l=6f37b2959d

Venice:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=126804&id=502041309&l=3a9e5a685d

xx

over.

Sat 21 Nov. Interlude.

today they switched on the christmas lights in town.

white and blue, some quite tasteful, others the most tacky things you ever saw.

they must use up so much electricity.

its still too warm for christmas.

when i came home just now at 1am it was 17º

more importantly, i climbed a mountain today, its called Pic Sainte Loup, about 1/2 an hour north of Montpellier. no view because of the clouds but an amazing 300m vertical drop from the summit into a void of fog. photos to follow.

now it is time to sleep.

over.

the mother-of-all-blog-updates. take two

Patient readers, the time has arrived.

Once again, my sincerest apologies for my blogging negligence. In fact, I wrote about half of 'take one' of this update last Tuesday and then I deleted it accidentally like the spoon-face that I am (hence "take two").

It has taken me almost a week to summon up the courage to start again.

So here goes.

Maybe get yourselves some provisions before you start, there's over a month to catch up on!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

Thurs 8th Oct

As I sat, innocently blogging in my room, a storm raged outside. You will realise if you observe my blog entry for 8th Oct I was clearly not intelligent enough to disconnect my computer from the mains and ethernet during the storm. As a result my poor wee new macbook (Pierre-Louis) spent a couple of weeks in intensive care, and I spent a few weeks without internet.

Weekend 10/11th Oct

-My first official couchsurfing meet at a brilliant wee bar in town called Kaboum, I met a girl who is studying wine-making (!!!) and had ginger beer (beer+ginger syrup) yum!!

Week beginning 12th Oct

-Medical check. It seems that we aren't considered safe to live with other people until we have been medically scrutinised. On Mon 12th I had my medical check: clothes off, star-jumps, the works. Luckily I didn't seem to be too hazardous to the population of Montpellier, I'm also permitted to participate in competition sports :)

-First assessment. Tue 13th I had my first assessment, an oral presentation for my Francophone Lit class, needless to say I was terrified. It was on 'the representation of traditional education in L'Enfant Noir by Camera Laye', a nice wee book, incidentally. We prepared well but our presentation was pretty dire, I think we still passed though.

14th - 17th Oct: Circus tour to Edinburgh

-Aller. So on the 14th I woke up at the crack of dawn, dashed down to uni where I tried to print my boarding card, skipped back to my room for my passport (yeah, apparently you need you passport for online check-in too), I finally succeeded to check in and print my boarding passes (it was complex but I'll spare you the rest of details), then I emailed my tutors to let them know I would be skiving, skipped a queue to register for my exams, dashed back to my room, packed my bags, did my washing up and jumped on a tram and then a train to Nîmes (on the way we passed a little town where all the shutters were painted blue and there were cacti growing along next to the rail track) from where I got a shuttle to the airport and flew (in a plane) to London Luton. Whew. Ironically in Luton I had a leisurely 4 hour wait for my flight to Edinburgh.

-Contenu. I spent 2.5 action-packed days in Edinburgh. Highlights included: Dad fetching me from the airport, being home, breakfast with the family, inviting myself to Cat's, shouting across the road in english and not feeling like a ejit, autumn leaves on middle meadow-walk, bumping into confused people on the street (Monty and Becka on Marchmont Road, and Rosie on her way home from KB), drinking wine with Mum and Dad, a cuppa and a catch up on the meadows with Richard, autumn, the 4:48 psychosis fundraiser at the wee red bar, biblios lunch with Nicola and Helen, cycling the genesis, visiting Granny and Grandpa, Gina-g came for tea, eating apples and pears from the trees in the garden, seeing the St Tams gang and dancing the night away at Luisa's 21st Birthday Ceilidh (the purpose of my visit), seeing Luisa and Yazz, autumn, a chippy and irn bru in Glasgow on the way to the airport.

-Retour. the return journey was even more adventurous than the way there. I pushed aside the cosy prospect of a night in Stansted airport and took a wee trip into the big city to visit Laura Howells. I was quite chuffed with myself, navigating London at night. Laura, despite feeling poorly, was kind enough to welcome me in between the hours of 11pm and 3am and we had a good blether before I ran off again into the dark to catch 3 night buses and the airport shuttle back to Stansted for my 6am flight to Marseille. [I think I should also mention the whisky tasting which took place at 0530 in Stansted duty free, and the mainlining of sugar at the McCafe in Marseille Gare St Charles].

I even went to church on Sunday evening. Yeah, I was impressed too!

...feel free to take a break by the way... I know I need one!

Sorry for waffling, it all seemed interesting at the time...

Week beggining 19th Oct

-Rain rain rain rain rain. I walked back from uni KNEE DEEP in water, I kid you not! The city isn't really built for rain so when it rains it floods everywhere (and when it rains, it pours!). There was a car rather unfortunately parked on one of the streets which was worst flooded, it had water up to the level of its windows. I had to change 4 times in one day, after a while I ran out of dry socks so I just started walking everywhere in flip-flops beacuse it was easier.

-Basketball. I decided to put my medical certificate to use and went on an explore to find the uni basketball team. I found the coach mopping up flooding in the opposite corner of the sports hall, he said I could try out that training session, (although he looked sceptical when he saw that I only had my converse to play in) and pointed me in the direction of the changing rooms. The other girls were really friendly,I didn't feel like I was any worse than the other girls, we trained together with the boys, but the coach didn't give me any indication of whether I could come back or not. The next day I went to the sports office to register anyway and, as it happens, he was there when I went in, turns out I am on the team after all :)

[NB// never, never play basketball in converses if you can avoid it, many days of pain and blistered feet are sure to follow]

-Dancing dancing dancing! I went to a contemporary dance workshop with Sabina, the teacher is totally eccentric, but really cool. It's all about the centrifugal and centripetal apparently. On the way home we heard music coming from outside the lecture theatres and, apon investigation we found a whole bunch of people outside, playing music and dancing. It was one of the most lovely things I've seen. Sabina was cold so she continued but I stood there open mouthed for long enough to be swept off into the next dance. I'm still trying to figure out if it was quite real.

-No more money. On the Thursday I ran out of money, well, not exactly, there was money in the bank, about £9 in the british one and €6 in the french one so I just couldn't withdraw any, and I had a €10 and and empty fridge. I wasn't sure when my erasmus grant would arrive so as far as I knew I had to go until the end of the month on my last €10 note. I went to LIDL and bought as much as those €10 would buy. It felt like real student living. Sadly for my idealism (and happily for real life) my grant arrived on the Monday.

-Bowling with CFU. With €4 from my french account I went bowling with a group of the other students from church. Banter was had :)

Weekend 24/25th Oct

-Joan Baez visited Montpellier on the 24th for a public concert to finish the 14th international festival of guitars. Hippies, former hippies, future hippies, Woodstock hark-backs, wine and cheer abounded. I was there with Sabina and Isabell and afterwards we joined some other friends and the couchsurfing contingent at Kaboum for some cinnamon beer (and chocolate beer, and coconut beer). I also made the acquaintance of some lovely Islanders.

Week beginning 26th Oct

-Friends? this was the point where I realised that maybe I have some after all.

-Latin Exam. What it says on the tin. I passed. Got the next one tomorrow, hence the procrastination! Lupus domini a cane superatur.

-Cake Club. On the Tuesday night it was the goodbye party for one of the couchsurfing guys, Erbin, as he was moving to Belgium :(

Everybody had to bring cake and he let me use his oven to bake a plum tart which (you can imagine) made me very happy indeed :)

-Surprise unbirthday. On wednesday morning Sabina, Emma, Julia and Georgina invited me for breakfast and had a surprise "unbirthday" for me, because they had missed my real birthday. They had gone to the AMAZING boulangerie next to Georgina's and bought all sorts of treats, and invited a whole gaggle of friends and we wore paper hats and drank coffee and didn't stop eating until 1 o'clock in the afternoon, it was so lovely.

-I splurged some of my newly acquired erasmus grant and bought some much needed basketball trainers,

-I helped Erbin moving out of his flat, in exchange he gave me a lovely set of prints which make up a panorama of St Petersburg which now proudly adorns my wall.

-Basketball training no.2, much better with proper shoes, followed by a friendly drink with some the team.

-More dancing, the magic people were back! They meet each Thursday to play folk music and dance, a bit like a french ceilidh.

Weekend 30/31st Oct 1st Nov

-Camping larks and hippy loveliness

-Of Rochefort and wild-boar paté

Week beginning 2nd Oct

-Still no computer, still no computer, still no computer, COMPUTER!

-Les Jeudis en Musique with David Linx and Diederik Wissels

-Truffles -I am eating one just now, soooo yummy, but got chocolate all over my computer :/

-Isa's 18th

-The day of blurr (and peanut butter)

-Potluck and almost assassins

7th - 12th Nov: Venice

Sat

-Ticket stress

-Montpellier-Milan

Sun

-See "In which Elsbeth Helfer is entirely surrounded by water"

-The local (+MONSTER mosquitos)

-PIZZA

Mon

-The bridge of tourists, Jimmy Bond in Venice and St Mark's in the rain

-Traviso and magic sunshine

-The book-binder's shop

-Chocolate and hot chocolate

Tue

-Gondola

-Market

-Spice shop

-Singapore

-Strolling

-The gutting of the fish and the curry fest

Wed

-Lithuania

-Mexico

-The basilica

-Coffee solo

-Venice-Milan-Lyon

Thurs

-Lyon-Montpellier-shower-Sociolinguistics-basketball match

Weekend CFU 13/14/15th Nov

-church weekend away

Last Week

-Another Victory for UPV1 (we won our basketball match)

-Marrons

-'The shakespeare'

-The Pirate bar

-Andrei and Pauline's flatwarming

to be completed. over.

In which Elsbeth is entirely surrounded by water

A quick shout from Venice (!!!)

highlights of the trip thus far include:
-the 3 hours that the small child in front of me on the bus to Milan was asleep!
-the old man in the station in Milan who gave me chocolate as I waited for my train :)
-the lovely indonesian/german/spanish/dutch actress/painter/sculpture who was in next to me on the bus
-the ENORMOUS pizza boxes lying around Jo's piazzo
-thunder over Venice - ooh!
-the Icelandic biennale exhibition "the end"
-an afternoon nap
-hot nutella

and I haven't forgotten about the mass update, I promise!

(for now) over.

Snapshots

Montpellier, from the top of the cathedral

Place Albert 1è

La Place De La Comédie

Tram Ligne 2 (Jacou-St Jean de Vedas)

Mireia, Georgina Emma & Sabina

Cat à Montpellier

L'Arc du Triomphe

Le Vieux Byclou

Pont D'Arc

Gorges d'Ardèche

Pauline, Andrei, Viola, Dali, & Triin

Mosson at the crack of dawn to buy my beautiful bike

From my window...

...and again at sunset

address correction

Please note the amendment to the post code of my postal address, not that it seems to matter too much, I seem to be getting post anyway.

Get ready for a long update once I get my computer back!

over.

autumn arrives

... and so gentle reader, autumn arrives in Montpellier.

After three days of glowering skies and I awoke this morning (a fair bit later than I had intended) to the sound of the rain :)

It is stil raining now, I'm sitting at my desk in my wee room looking north over the rooftops and, as I've finished classes for the day, I feel that it's time for a bit of an update.

I suppose it must logically always be such that when you have a lot to do then you automatically have less time to talk about it, in any case this is the excuse with which I beg you pardon for not being a better correspondent.

So, are you ready for a long one?

A few adventures:

- Assassins: Shortly after my arrival in Montpellier I was conscripted as an"assassin" with a group of Montpellier couchsurfers. The rules of this amazing game are numerous and complicated, but to give you an idea: each of the 21 players was given 2 targets along with name, address, place of work/study and, at midnight on 25th September, we were let loose across the city to neutralise our targets with water. Once killed you're out of the game, but you're not allowed to tell anyone this, paranoia is the key. Once you kill your target you get contracted to a new operation. I killed my first target at 0300 on Sept 26th, needless to say I felt pretty pleased with myself, until the afternoon of the 30th that is, when a cunning assassin with a water pistol came knocking at my door... and then the 1st Oct when I was caught defenceless outside the university restaurant with a syringe... and then the 3rd Oct when I was calmly admiring the landscape in Ardèche... did I mention that you're only supposed to be "killed" once?

- Cycle to the beach: Last wednesday I made the most of my day off and hired a vélomag* from the city and cycled down to the beach with my friend Ed, he has a lovely super light road bike with dropped handlebars so I was considerable outmatched, but it took us only 25 mins to cycle there where we met some others and had a well deserved swim. Man the Med is salty!

*vélomag are the bikes which belong to the city's transport authority, they are hilarious affairs with über high handle bars, heavy frames and totally internalised break, gear and chain systems, you can hire them from various locations around town for 1 euro (4 hours) or 2 euros (for the day) and if you have an annual tram pass you can pick them up all over the place by swiping your card. Its a pretty good system, it would be even better if they had more than 3 gears and the breaks worked!

- Crémiellère de Georgina et Mireilla: My two lovely catalan friends celebrated their flat warming last Friday. Tortilla, wine, music, dancing...

- Weekend at Ardèche: On Saturday morning I set off with 5 other couchsurfers in an expedition to the Ardèche. 4 of us went in the car with 2 others hitching, we passed by Nimes and (further north) an 11th century fortress before reaching the gorges of Ardèche. Driving along the edges of the gorge was pretty epic, especially the following day when we had all 6 of us + bags in Pauline's wee car. We found a place to park and a VERY steep path ...interjection: ooh lightening!... which took us down to the bottom of the ravine and the river, it was like that part in Lord of the Rings where they're canoeing down the gorge, just spectacular. We swam in the river ...ooh more lightening, it's proper storming out there!... and later we sat on the beach with some wine and some very fine dark chocolate as we watched the moonrise, I genuinely can't make it sound ideal enough, the stuff of dreams. We camped overnight in a wee campsite next to the river (we had to stay in the official campsite because the park rangers saw us and we'd have been fined if they found us wild camping) making meals with what each person had brought and generally sharing multicultural banter (we were: me (Sco), Pauline (Fr), Andrei (US), Trinn (Est), Viola (Chin), Dali (Tun)). On the Sunday we struck camp and ...thunder thunder... made our way (6 in the car!) upriver to this place called Pont d'Arc (I think) which is this incredible natural bridge formed out of the stone, I swam here too but the other's were too fear't of the cold, arg my good ol' north sea training had me in good stead, it was balmy.

- Hitch-hiking home: So on the way back from Ardèche it was my turn to hitchhike, Pauling dropped me and Triin at the nearest village and we thumbed a lift home. It was pretty exciting, only my second time hitchhiking so I was a bit nervous but Triin has done a lot of hitching so I was in good company. We made it back in 3 hitches, it took us 2.5 hours, only half an hour longer than the guys in the car! woop, that's the south of France for you.

- Cooking: This week has been a very good week for food, during the weekend away we feasted, somehow meals materialised out of the bits and bobs which everyone had brought along. Sunday night we cooked chez Viola, Monday I ate at Sabina's (a German friend who also lives at Boutonnet) along with Emma (UK), Julia (Pol), and Julliet (Fr) - so much brioche! On Tuesday Triin and Georgina (Sp) came to mine for dinner, more brioche, tea and banter. Then yesterday I went to a student bible study group where the lovely pastors wife fed us all (including birthday cake, for me! because we missed my birthday before, yum yum) she is so lovely.

- Haircuts: On Tuesday after tea Triin cut my hair for me, she'd never cut hair before so it was pretty fun, she did a pretty awesome job too, although once she'd stopped being nervous she got so into it that I feared she might just keep snipping until I had no hair left. Also on the topic of haircuts, Andrei asked me if I'd cut his hair for him, apparently I'll be paid in cheesecake, needless to say I said I would.

- Cité U: Welcome to all the fun and games of university halls. On Monday the internet was down; on Tuesday the fuses blew and the electricity was down for 16 hours (fun for all the French cheese in the fridge); today the water was off for 2 hours (at least they warned us in advance) and just now the fuses have blown again, yey! ...I've just been off to the lodge to tell them, apparently I've got to talk to my neighbours and find out who is bingeing on electrical appliances, or else they'll come and confiscate everything in our rooms that isn't authorised, so that's my fun task for this evening, woop! ...arg, so the japanese girl in the next room speaks neither French nor English... more fun!

Signs of acclimatisation...?

- I no longer carry my map with me everywhere I go, and sometimes I even leave my dictionary at home!

- I now tend to look the correct way when I cross the road. LEFT first, then right.

- The guy who works at the reception for halls thought I was Belgian (coming from a French person this was not a necessarily a compliment, but it does mean that I sounded not-British for the whole of about 5 mins!).

- I sometimes I catch myself speaking to myself in French :/

- I took comprehensive notes in class today for the first time, whoopee!

You know you're in the south of France when:

- You're sitting outside Grand café de l'esplanade, Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, with an ice-cream and a coffee (strong, black, sucré). You could swear the serveur actually is Asterix. There is a fountain. On the boulevard three musicians play (a cello, a violin, and, yes, an accordion).

- It's week 3 of the semester and the syndicats étudiants are warming up their loudhailers, the first student demonstration was on Tuesday: "il faut augmenter la pression!" apparently.

- There are vines planted on the middle of the round-a-bouts.

Simple things please small minds:

- A mural of the sun in terracotta, on the whitewashed wall of a house, the colour had bled down the wall with the rain. Underneath it read ensoleillé "sunlit".

- Uli taught me how to say 'hard core' in French: dur à cuire - literally, "hard to cook". Those of you who know me well will know how important an addition to my vocabulary this is!

- Buying a book from the second hand book shop for 1 euro, 'Le Saint au carnival du Rio' and reading it on the tram on the way home.

- On the wall of the girls toilets in the music dept: tomber 7 fois, se reveiller 8 "fall down 7 times, get up 8".

Incidentally, the power is back :)

And finally, few new words for the keen learners:

atelier - workshop

cannelle - cinnamon

foi - faith

parsemé - sprinkled (adj.)

loup - wolf

impôt - tax

froncer les sourcils - to frown

comportement - behaviour

I'm sure that's more than enough for now :) hope you got this far!

lots of love x

over.

by popular demand:

French for the following:

"cork-screw" - tire bouchon

"brain injuries" - lésions cérébrales

"target" - cible

"contract" - (mob.phone,bus pass etc) forfeit; (legal) contrat

"hug" - calin

"nose bleed" - (my nose is bleeding) je saigne du nez

"pillow" - oreiller

"kettle" - bouilloire

"speech therapist" - orthophoniste

"house warming" - fete de la crémaillère

English for the following:

"Dieu pardonne pas le prolètariat" - God doesn't forgive the proletariat

"l'entree pour l'enfer" - the entrance/foyer for hell

if I have made any mistakes I'm sure Uli will correct me!

over.

the spice of life

I feel like a lot has happened that I haven't had time to keep you up to date with so I though I'll share some of the quirky and the mundane, the more and the less believable, the annoying and the fun things that have been going on here over the last week.

• I walked the two Jack Russels who belong to my 3rd couchsurfing hostess (Floriane) and ended up all tangled up like a person in a film, it was pretty spectacular, though I did get pretty bad rope burn on the backs of my knees from the lead
• I registered for uni, such a complicated process, one of those times where I came back on 3 consecutive days before they decided that they wanted to open the office, but to be honest I think I'm beginning to get used to it.
• I opened a French bank account :/
• I signed up for classes in beginners' latin, francophone literature, phonology and sociolinguistics and bought some of my books, seriously Sept '09 has probably been the most expensive month of my life.
• Attended the first week of classes for my initial (and still rather sketchy) timetable, its a kind of DIY gig, particularly for Erasmus students. Classes at 0815, I jest not. Still have to take on some more credits for my learning agreement so we'll see how it all pans out. The uni is a total admin nightmare, graffiti on the flagstones in front of the admin building reads "Dieu pardonne pas le proletariat" and "l'entree pour l'enfer", French students are so political, you've got to love it. Apparently we can expect up to 2 months of strikes in the new year, oh joys, it means time out of classes but unfortunately they still expect you to sit the exams even if the course hasn't happened. I have to have a medical check to do sports and live n halls, bizarre, and they're totally paranoid about swine flu.
• I've bought at least 12 baguettes, 10 pains au chocolat and more cheese than can possibly be good for a person.
• Watched 3 Englishmen smoke their pipes while they waited for the tram.
• I rode through town on the back of Floriane's scooter, with her dog on the front :)
• I've endlessly wandered the tiny streets of the old town, I'll post some photos when i get my camera cable.
• Moved into my room in halls, its pretty basic but clean and safe, the shower is a little interesting and i'll find it hard not to be able to bake (our "kitchen" between the 25 people on my floor consists of 4 electric hotplates and 2 sinks) but I have a nice view from my window and can tumble into classes in 15mins-ish. I've not met many people in my building yet, lots of folk seem to keep themselves to themselves, but I met some girls in the kitchen the other day who were very friendly, and a friendly chap helped me up the stairs with my bags.
• I bought a dustpan and brush, some cooking pots and some wool for knitting (even though its still average of 23 degrees here, but y'know, I brought my knitting needles...)
• I've learned some useful vocabulary, such as the words for "cork-screw" "brain injuries" "target" "contract" "hug" "nose bleed" "pillow" "kettle" "speech therapist" and "house warming"
• Got myself a tram pass :)
• Drank mint tea on a terrace in the sun and climbed the cathedral steeple for the most amazing view of the city on "heritage weekend".
• Got mosquito bitten on the pad of my middle finger...? this was while I was still couchsurfing and sleeping on the veranda, 25 was the total bite count (5 on my face!)
• Wandered through the 41st annual international beekeepers congress with the couchsurfing "free hug-ers" and tasted SO much honey. My favourite stall was the greenpeace gang, they were all about the free hugs.
• Watched "J'irai dormir a Hollywood", the guy is crazy, watch it if you get the chance.
• Swam in the Med with my cousin Florence who came down from Toulouse to visit me for the day, got quite sunburned. I think I'm browning up a bit, though its maybe just dust, the other day a random hobo noted that I'm 'not very tanned' as I passed by, he he!
• Debated the effects of the 2nd world war with a German, an Austrian, an Englishman, a Scot and 2 Catalans, and the ins and outs of Islam with an Algerian (with some helpful interjections from the couple sitting opposite us on the tram, mostly to correct my French). Good stuff.
• Signed up to play "Assassins" and successfully neutralised my first target (3 hours after the game started, 3am, oh yeah!)
• Found my way to LIDL.
• Found a birthday twin.
• Crashed 2 housewarmings and a leaving party, the second housewarming was amazing, everyone dancing like maniacs, incidentally the guys who's flat it was had worked in bar kohl in Edinburgh for a bit, genius.
• Listened to the foxes cry outside my window. Not as romantic as it sounds, like a child screaming, but not as sleep preventive as the car horns of a wedding procession, they blare all the way from the church to wherever they're going, who even gets married at 11.30am?
• Made spanish omelette in a saucepan.
• I've been at least 20mins late for everything, but apparently thats ok here - its the mediterranean don't you know?
• Met Cat off the train from Marseilles :) and went for a birthday dinner, the first time i've eaten out here, it was properly yum.
• Went clubbing -European style- hilarious and lots of fun.

I'm sure there's lots more that I've forgotten, and ask me if there's something that you want to know more about I'd better leave it there for now, got to go and wake up Cat and think about heading to the market :)

love love love.

over.

hey gang
I now have an address :)

Cité Universitaire BOUTONNET - F108
119 Rue Faubourg Boutonnet
34 090
Montpellier Cedex 1
FRANCE

a room with a view

they saved the nicest building for the secretariat

student living?

over.

une semaine sans-abri

So, I'm trying to think where I left off...

Tomorrow it will be one week since I arrived in Montpellier, and what a week it's been!

I'll begin at the beginning:

I arrived at roughly 1500 hours (European time) at the small Aéroport de Montpellier Méditerranée.As we had landed I had an amazing view of mountains and then all the rich peoples swimming pools and then the city and then the sea. It was sunny and WARM and beautiful and I jumped on a shuttle bus into the city (actually, I more like waddled onto the bus trying to balance my luggage). I was to meet my couchsurfing hostess at the bus stop in town, she was coming from the beach and was running a bit late so I sat at the bus stop and had a very nice conversation with a Vietnamese trainee pilot. Then, after a few confusing phone calls (ooh, how I hate phones), me and my couchsurfeuse finally located eachother and made our way to her flat. My hostess for my first 2 nights was called Gwen, she was super welcoming and over the next two days gave me the best intro to a town that anyone could expect to receive. I went with her to a flat warming and to the town associations fair (like freshers' fair but for the whole city) and for a tour of the city; she introduced me to friends, encouraged my faltering French, showed me how to use the trams (more about these

later) and she had collected a whole pile of maps and leaflets to get me started on my flat search and beyond.

On the Monday I started my flat search, little did I know. Students make up around 30% of Montpellier's population and the demand for (ridiculously overpriced) accomodation is HUGE, I soon realised that finding a place to live was going to be much more complicated than I had thought. I won't go into all the ins and outs of the search for a place to live, I haven't enjoyed it, I feel like I've spent the whole week moaning

to anyone who will listen and freaking out about it in my head so suffice to say that I begin to understand why so many homeless people stay homeless - without an address you can't open a bank account, without a bank account you can't sign a lease and without a lease you don't have an address... and it all spins around in a lovely dance to the tune of burocracy and administration.

But, aside from all the crappiness, I have also been one of the most blessed poeple in my first week here. My second couchsurfeuse was Barbara, a good friend of Gwen's who once again welcomed me into her wee home in the last few days of her holiday and housed me for 3 nights. She also came with me to help me sort out a french phone, introduced me to the university restaurants (under 3€ for three courses!), fed me, took me to a party and is still

keeping my bags for me in her room so that I don't have to pay to keep them at the youth hostel. Barbara, Gwen and their friend Pauline also helped me to look for a flat, asked around all their friends, and invited me to join in with everything that they were doing during the week.

And then yesterday afternoon, at the peak of my dispair (!) I suddenly came across a second-hand book shop (beautifully situated opposite a tea house) where I was able to distract myself until I was able to return to my temporary lodgings.

Yesterday evening I moved again, this time way out of Montpellier to a wee village on the last stop of the tram. Here my hostess, Floriane, has an amazing wee house built by a carpenter with everything in wood with nooks and crannies a wee windey staircase and thin doors built to just fit. And she has an amazing model hot-air balloon which floats above her bed. Yesterday, when I arrived, she made me dinner (chicken roasted on a spit!) and made me up a wee bed in the veranda and we talked for ages about couchsurfing and assassins and pillow fights and the weather and books and the sound of the rain.

The silver lining of my cloud has definitely been shiny.

And then this evening, as of about 2 hours ago, I have been granted a room in the Uni halls of residence. At first I felt like staying in halls was kind of copping out, and it's true, I'd have much rather be in a shared flat, but at the moment I am just really greatful to have been given somewhere to live. What's more, it is affordable, it doesn't require me to have a french bank account, is in a perfect location (in between the Uni and the town centre) and, provided I get payment sorted and everything goes well, I can move in on Monday :) Halleluja!

...

Tonight I have the house to myself, Floriane is lovely enough to trust me while she is elsewhere. And so now I am si

tting in the midst of this lovely wooden house with my tummy full of the baguette and brie which I bought on my way home, ruining the "french" effect by having a nice cuppa (made with boiling water (!) and a teabag that I found in my cagoule pocket :) - incidentally the first cup of real tea that I've had in a week!) and just about ready switch my brain off for a while and go to sleep :)

I haven't told you anything about Uni, but that can wait for another day.

for now, love to all.

over.

premiers moments à Montpellier...

So, since all the cool kids are doing it, it seems i'm blogging too! If nothing else it should be a good way to try and keep in touch with you all. I'm currently using up internet time which i should be using to look for accomodation, and i'm painfully slow at typig on this azerty keyboard, so i'll probably keep this one short.
I've been in Montpellier for just over 24 hours now and, despite having a full on head cold and nowhere to live, I seem to be having a good time :)
This city is beautiful, and not only because of the sunshine. It boasts as many old crumbling building as Edinburgh but instead of being dark and grey all the stone is almost white, and although any occasional patches of grass are dry and brown there are the most beautiful trees everywhere. It is pretty warm, to give you an idea it was 23 degrees yesterday evening when we were heading out at 8.30pm-ish (I was taken to a flat-warming party) and we walked home in the wee hours with no jumpers or jackets, it's going to be weird getting used to not needing to take 2 extra layers, and a waterproof, and a scarf everywhere I go, just in case. There's a lovely breeze that comes in off the sea though and, despite the heat, the atmosphere feels light and airy.
Obviously the fact that everyone here speaks French is just a little bit daunting, and it is very frustrating to constantly be struggling for words and not being able to casually join a conversation (some people just speak SO fast!!) but I keep reminding myself that it's only day 2!
Anyhow, I should probably try to find myself a place to live -wish me luck!
bon soir à tous!

over.