The last few weeks

Mostly just thought I should update.

Have been having a rather busy social life so far this year, and possibly drunk more in the last three weeks than I have ever one at university (without getting drunk, of course :p). Have been out for meals, drinks, gatherings (including both meal and drinks) at other assistants houses, gotten to know the other assistants better. All in all, a good three weeks.

Yesterday was of particular note. Decided with Dana on the spur of the moment to head into town to do various errand-y type things. Ended up planning to go swimming 2-3 times a week at the local pool and discovering a local park in which they had various Asian birds and a small 'farm'-type thing:
View of the river Eure and the park. Nice day for January.
Cool coloured bird.
Cool goat. He was just chillin' with his little goat-y friends.
Baby goat! Everybody say 'D'awww' now :pPeacock.
Random yellow bird.Dana on the Eure river, plus mini waterfall.

Ok, so after our little jaunt around Chartres, we went to a political meeting. Why you ask? Well, there is an election going on in Chartres at the moment (well, the elections are happening next Sunday, so this is the pre-election 'VOTE FOR ME' time.) and obviously one of the candidates is from the Socialist party. Now, which famous someone recently ran for presidential election for that very same party? That's right, Segolene Royal. So she came to Chartres to support her fellow party member, Françoise Vallet. Being all cultural like we are (well, that and wanting to see the woman who could have been president of France!) we went to the meeting. Couldn't get a great photo, but here's one anyway:


Françoise is the one speaking (on the left) and Segolene is on the right.

We then had takeaway pizza and watched Pride and Prejudice (the proper one) at Deborah's :).

So life is good at the moment. The French can still be a complete pain in the arse at times, but that's the French for you.

A bientot!

Nielle xxx

Back again

Back indeed.

I had a lovely time over Christmas, and certainly did not want to come back to France! I had family, Paul, heating, laundry done for me, hot, powerful showers that I could spend more than ten minutes in, decent clothes shopping. And here I have French people, spiders, slugs and loneliness. Luckily it hasn't actually been too bad. I've seen a fair amount of the other assistants - went out for dinner with pretty much everyone on Tuesday, had dinner with Dana and Deborah on Wednesday, and of course, school is nice, and the kids still lovely and cute. Unfortunately Joanne has been ill with Bronchitis (!) and so I have had two days off already this week! Also unfortunately I have picked up a cough from somewhere, and it's annoying me :(.

On a plus note, after not having received anything from the Social Security people except a letter asking for a birth certificate (which I had already given them!), I went to their office with Dana and sorted it out. They found our birth certificates and gave us a letter with our numbers on, and hopefully we'll get the 'Carte Vitale' soon. By French standards :P

Also, another plus, the CAF people got back to me in record timing (under 2 weeks after application!) and are paying about 2/3 of my rent for me. SO the system does work. Also, the water people wrote too me and actually apologised (!) about their cock-up with my water bill. So France is actually working at the moment :P.

Think that's about it. Will probably hit the massive soldes (January Sales) soon and buy clothes...as long as they're nice.

Love to you all

Nielle xxx