summer days

Due to popular request (yeah, Conway this is your mention right here) I'm blogging again briefly, not that I ever stopped intentionally, I just got lazy I guess. Once again, it's been so long since I wrote that I'm afraid you'll have to make do with snippets of news from the last few months.
About a month ago I had the joy of popping back to Edinburgh for a week to see my friends and family (even my kiwi cousins, huzzah!), celebrate some birthdays and attend the Aiken-Croley wedding. I was so happy to see everyone and can't wait to ba back again to hang out with the Edinburgh lot again at the end of the summer. (you rock dudes)

At the beginning of July I found a job serving ice-creams in the Glacier Catalan in Palavas, one of the seaside towns on the coast, about 10km from Montpellier and about half an hour away for me on the bus (or on the bike when I'm feeling energetic and it's not too swealteringly hot). My job isn't complicated, I scoop ice-creams from around 7 in the evenings til 1.30am (yep, folks are still buying ice-cream at 1.30am) which gave me some pretty impressive ice-cream scooping blisters at first. I'm very proud to say I now know automatically where to find all 48 flavours of ice-cream, how to make crêpes on the special wee crêpe device and how to calculate change in french, oh yeah.

ohh, I hate the machines for the italian ice-creams, grr
but I do like to serve huge towers of carefully balanced swirly ice-cream for wide-eyed children :)

Palavas is a bit of a hilarious wee place, a former fishing village the last 200 years have gradually brought an increase in bikini clad-tourists and ugly buildings. Opposite our stand a shabbily clad and amply bearded monsieur makes his pennies drawing caracatures, he drew mine one evening when he had no paying customers, we call him Pirate. On a friday evening a man sings badly from a boat on the quay and elderly ladies dance to elderly classics. One of my supervisors and our wonderful KP are true Palavasiennes born and bred and proof of the fact that, despite the tourist trash, Palavas still definitely has soul.

The Quay Paul Cunq (Our glacier is right at the end near the beach, opposite the casino, somewhere in all those lights)

In other news, I try to make the most of my days, that is, when I'm not busy sleeping in :/
The last couple of months I got the chance to play a fair amount of basketball, with some couchsurfing friends and any other people who turned up to play at the same time. I find it such a shame that we don't have a similar culture of street sport back in Edinburgh, or at least not that I know of, maybe it's more the case for football.
Sadly I don't get much time to play since I started work, it's too hot to play during the day and I only have one evening off in the week.

When I get the chance I galavant off for adventures with friends

↕ these photos are from a couple of weeks ago when I went to Les Gorges de Colomiers with Andrei and Laura. We hitchhiked there and then spent the afternoon scrambling up the gorge and jumping into plung pools when it got too hot to continue (which was fairly often, its been a minimum of 28˚ for the last two weeks). Most activities have to involve some sort of proximity to water.

Otherwise I tend to spend a lot of time buying, preparing and consuming edible substances and then doing the inevitable washing up which follows. Cooking and eating are just so much FUN!
Yesterday was the day of THE roast beef (y'know how we call the french 'frogs' yeah? well to them we are 'roast beef'). It was my first solo roast dinner and I'm extremely chuffed to say that even the frenchies among us found it palatable (one may even have been remarked to have licked his plate!!!).

↑ Here's a wee photo of my angel of a new flatmate Aina (left) with Anne, one of our Couchsurfers, just about to dig into a full british breakfast (one needs a change from pain au chocolat every once and while).

That's all for now, I need to make some fruit tarte before work, pastry awaits.
Over.

today is monday

the day before yesterday was saturday

i hitched to lac du Salagou with Triin, Hrönn, Magdaleny, Alice, Jesus and Elizabeth for Triins birthday, about an hour from Montpellier. Jesus was my hitching partner, we got as far as the lake but had to walk the last bit to the village where we met the others.

it was SO sunny and beautiful, spring colours, green grass, blue water and red red rocks.

we found a spot on a sort of "presque île" where we picnic-ed, the northerners swam and the southerners laughed.

later on Tiana joined us with some other couchsurfers and we did a tour of the promontory with a stop for rugged-terrain volley/football as the sun started to set.

Triin, Jesus and Hrönn stayed to camp by the water but the rest of us were obliged to migrate back to town. Olivier gave me a lift, with a pause for an omelette and (half) a glass of wine en route.

hier c'était dimanche.

un ami de l'église, Cleve, s'a fait baptisé le matin, c'était chouette.

je suis rentrée à pied parce qu'il faisait tellement beau, je suis passée par le jardin des plantes mais les arbres avaient l'air triste et il y avait trop des couples donc j'ai continué.

à rue de la loge il y avait trois enfants qui dansaient devant un musicien qui jouait un instrument bizarre et qui chantait pour sa femme en Amérique du sud.

plus tard Triin est rentrée très bronzée et même plus fatiguée.

j'ai bu un café avec Julia en ville, puis j'ai fait une tarte aux poires et on est allée manger les quiches et les tartes avec les assassins de montpellier.

aujourd'hui c'est lundi.

it is a day of lists :(

now i'm going to Lidl.

over.

just some wee messages

A is for Awesome Adventures and Assassins and Aileen and Alice and Audrey

B is for Barcelona and Blossom and Burglars and Basketball and Bicycles

C is for Cheese Cake and Couchsurfing et Crêpes et Camembert et Cevennes et Commentaires Composés et CFU and Chocolate et Cambriolage

D is for Dancing in the antigone

E is for Essais and Easter Eggs and Ed and Emma

F is for Fun and Food et Figuerolles and Frosti

G is for Grèves and Georgina

H is for Hitchhiking and Hrönn

I is for Ice-cream and Icelanders

J is for Jokes and Joy and Jesus and Julia

K is for Kinésithérapie

L is for Laverie et Latin et Langues et Langage et Littérature

M is for Mimosa and Markets and Music and Mint tea and Muscat and Macbook and Montpellier(?)

N is for Noisy Neighbours

O is for Oranges and "Oh no! I've slept in again"

P is for Perpignan et Pain (bread!) and Pillow-fights

Q is for Quinoa and Queen

R is for Rooftops :)

S is for Sunshine and Sunsets and Spring and Sleepy and Soup et Syntaxe et Semences des Soucis

T is for Tea and Trams and Triin (and Triinsbeth)

U is for Université and Uncle Uli

V is for Visitors et Vingtième Siècle

W is for Wine and Water wars and Washing-up

X is for Xhosa et bisouxxX

Y is for "Y doesn't anything begin with 'y'?"

Z is for snooZzzzing :)

over.

Sledging, stookies, single-handed life and Boulevard Rabelais

So gentle readers, an overdue update from the new year until now:

Most of you will know that I broke my wrist just after the new year in a spectacular sledge jumping accident on Blackford hill.

After some colourful drugs and rather a lot of pain I returned to France on the 15th of January.

On the 22nd January (one week later) I moved out of my little room in Boutonnet student residence and stayed in transit with my friend Tiana until I moved into a lovely little flat with my friend Triin on the 26th.

During the 4 days at Tiana's I had a flying visit from Yasmeen Chaudhry :) It was lovely to show her the town, we also ate some amazing food, danced in the Antigone, and Yazz made some amazing fudge which very much impressed the company. It was also nice to have another Scots lassie around on Burn's night!

Now I'm safely settled in Boulevard Rabelais with a magic kitchen and just enough space on the roof for 3 or four friends and a dram or two. We had a bit of a flat-warming bash two sundays ago and crammed far too many of our friends into our tiny little flat, I counted 17 nationalities present. Sadly the flat hasn't stayed very warm, in fact it is decidedly freezing, which i'm sure we'll appreciate to its full advantage in the summer *er-hem* and anyways, at least we have plenty of excuses to drink lots of tea and eat lots of soup! :) both Triin and I are very fond of cooking and we've been eating about 5 times better than last semester for around half the cost, a combination of making shared meals, living 5 mins from Aldi and discovering the Figuerolles market which is all that a fruit and veg market should be and more.

Its been so lovely to have a friendly flatmate again and to have a home where other people like to come and hang out :)

In other news I've also started classes (3 weeks ago now), most of which are seem much more motivating than last semester which is good news. Another lovely bonus is that, although I am taking more credits then last semester, I still seem to have managed to keep my Fridays free :) this gives me more time for market shopping, clothes washing and assorted activities of a more adventurous nature.

Last weekend I joined a trip to Pont du Gard and Avignon with Emma, Sabine, Georgina, Lara, Tina and Suzanne. Much dancing on the bridge took place. There should be some photos on the snap-shot post that I made this afternoon.

Sadly Lara and Sabine were only here for one-semester and both headed back to Germany this week. Saying goodbyes was really sad, but it also has made me appreciate the friendships I've made and be grateful that I get to be here for another while yet.

well, that's all for now folks x

PS/ for your delectation and delight, and with the view that I should be getting my wrist freed from plaster cast on Tue morning, I present you with my soon-to-be best-seller:

Elsbeth Helfer's Guide to single-handed living

with the "how to survive single-handed" on subjects as diverse as:

1- Kitchen chaos: washing up, chopping veg, cake-making, cracking eggs (with tribute to Yasmeen Chaudhry and Audrey Hepburn), and a rough guide to tin openers and corkscrews.

2- Tying laces (needs a chapter all to itself), with special thanks to Becky Symes for her inspiration.

3- Moving out and moving in.

4- Adventure sports: midnight salsa with drunken icelanders, rooftop stargazing, silent-disco and city cycling.

5- Hints and tips for daily living: the low-down on the know-how for showers, bra clips, curby-grips, trams, groceries and the laundrette.

over.

NEW ADDRESS

hey gang

as a number of people have asked about this:

i'm no longer at Cité Universitaire Boutonnet.

my new address is:

1008, 43 Boulevard Rabelais

Montpellier 34 000

FRANCE

oh yeah, i do live on a boulevard! :)

over.

some catch-up snap-shots

From Dec

Christmas raclette and mulled wine chez Hrönn.

Triin, (me,) Hrönn, Frosti, Alice, Kristina and Viola

A gathering of northerners, its not often you have a Icelandic and Estonian majority!

Yazz's visit at the end of January :)

Pont de Gare with Asso Erasmus at the beginning of Feb

Pont de Gare with the girlies

(Sabine, Emma, Georgina and Lara)

Bridge of Avignon (only 1/4 of a bridge really)

See them dancing...

(Sabine and Georgina)

... see them dancing

The magic kitchen of wonders (it cooks all by itself)

My lovely estonian coloc Triin (with the post, and the junk mail!)

Fête de la Crémaillère (flat-warming party)

- over 40 guests of 17 nationalities!

A dram (Glen Garioch)on the roof

-with Alice, Frosti and Hrönn

At Babarousse, the pirate barrr

-with Georgina, Lara and Sabine

christmas '09. new year '10

snow

(snow snow snow SNOW snow snow)

food

sledging

hair

sleeping

food

snow

sledging (ouch)

A&E

over.

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.