All Settled In

I think I’m all settled in here in France now. I’ve even made some French friends (who would have known!) it’s quite useful actually because they teach me some French and I correct their English so it works quite well.

Cute picture of Fanny, Ann-Sophie, myself, Bekah, Sophie, Liza and Jen (left to right) at the Mayor’s welcome.

 

Sophie and I with Luke (a Brit who’s lived in France for 9 years: an excellent translator!)

I was told on one of the first few ways that being in the kitchen was a good place to meet people; I was sceptical but it’s true. I met various people predrinking/playing poker/maybe actually eating in the kitchen! It seems to be the social hub of the floor. It’s always heaving with people and they tend to speak a bit slower when they realise I have no fricking clue what they’re saying – which is handy! There’s a drastic change on the weekend though as all the French student go home. I wouldn’t be surprised to encounter tumbleweed in the kitchen it’s that quiet. The weekend is therefore an excellent time to do washing (if you can work the machines… if we’d found the language setting earlier we may have saved about 10 minutes umming and arring!)

The kitchens are locked after 11:30pm, which I thought was strange but I think they’re trying to crack down on kitchen parties. There was one on Wednesday due to be on my floor which, due to the sign, was shut down before it started! We assume the cleaner saw the note and locked the kitchen early. Because of this it was moved to various places before everyone just went to chill outside. It was interesting, nothing like a house/flat party in the UK: there was just as much wine but nothing was broken and no one was sick!

We then went out on Thursday night (I’m definitely learning too, not just drinking… ) which is student night here, so it’s always rammed. We are still yet to make it to any of the bigger clubs as we don’t ever seem to make it past Rue de la Soif/Place des lices! We then somehow ended up at a rock gig, which was really good! I had to ask in French the name of the band to look them up afterwards: they were called Monty Picon.

They came out with some trombones and stuff which somehow worked! Also, the huge skull prop had a cable attached to it so in the chorus it could “sing along”. Weird. But cool.  Later there was a DJ set which was equally as epic:

I got some nice edgy photos of the occasion. I don’t know how, but the guy did the whole set in a morph suit! It was hot enough in there with everyone smoking cigarettes and weed inside, let alone a full-body tight attire! We eventually retired and got the night bus home.

Now I’m going to attempt to upload some long awaited photo’s onto Facebook!

A bientôt!