People and places

Wow, it’s been a while! I’ve found myself really busy since returning from the UK and haven’t had a lot of time to do this. We had a jour férié on Friday 11th so it was an extra long weekend, which was great! My friend from home, Sarah, who is an assistant in Arras, came to stay for the weekend. So more sight-seeing was involved, and we went to the aquarium here, which was really impressive! At church we had a 'culte internationale' so people sang and read in all different languages according to the country they were from. The English contingent sang Amazing Grace together and then I sang another song along with an English lady. It amazing the things you find yourself doing when living in another country - it would've taken a lot to get me to that in the UK! They really appreciated it though and all the old ladies came up to me afterwards to thank me – seeing their reaction made it totally worth it! Then we all had lunch together - it was lovely. After leaving Sarah to the station to go back to Arras, I spent the rest of the evening with my French family (Christine, Gabrielle and Celine).

Mum came to visit me the following Wednesday (16^th) and stayed until Sunday. It was really nice to have her here and she brought me some yummy UK food! We spent most of the time she was here just in Boulogne, chilling, eating, shopping, drinking coffee, walking and running. She was a really good influence on my sleeping habits too.. we went to bed well early! I haven’t slept that much in ages! On the Friday night we were invited round to one of the English teacher’s houses for dinner, which was so lovely! She cooked us an amazing meal.. yum yum. We spent Saturday in Lille as neither of us had ever been before. It’s a really lovely city; we spent most of the day shopping, walking and sight-seeing. The weather was on its best behaviour for mum being here – it was so beautiful! On Sunday, I left her to the train station to get the train back to Calais, and I went to church. In the afternoon I met a German assistant at one of the lycees in Boulogne for a walk in a town about 10mins drive away called Wimereux. We walked along the beach in the sun, and then watched the sunset – it was beautiful!

Last week I only had 2 days in school because on Wednesday and Thursday I had Comenius meetings. The one on Wednesday was in Arras with all the other Comenius assistants in my region working in private Catholic schools. They invited any schools who were interested in Comenius/applying for a Comenius assistant. We were put at the front of this lecture hall (about 7 of us) with our headmistresses/headmasters and had to introduce ourselves and answer questions about what we did in the schools. Yes, in French.. it was well scary! After that I had arranged to travel to Paris for the other meeting with 2 assistants, so we went into Arras centre to waste time and have lunch before catching our train. Once we got to Paris I had the challenge of finding my friend Sinead for uni who I booked a hostel with. Gare du Nord is the biggest, busiest, scariest train station ever. We arranged to meet at the information point.. but when we finally found it, we still hadn’t found each other, we realised there are about 4 on each floor and there are at least 3 floors :P We spent about 20mins on the phone saying “I’m near this, I’m near that”, before I told her to stand still by one of the 7 exits and I’d walk round them all and find her! I found her eventually and we made our way to the hostel. We stayed the Wednesday night and the Thursday night with the meeting on the thurs. The hostel was rather amusing, because when they say there is a shower in the room, they mean there is a shower literally in the room, in the corner :P it had a curtain though haha. We saw the Notre Dame and the Seine by night on the first night. We went to the meeting on the thurs which was pretty intense, with a lot of French being spoken at us, but meeting lots of Irish people and free 4 course sit-down lunch made it totally worth it. On the Thursday  night one of the girls we met at the meeting (who is from Belfast) who lives in Paris arranged for a few of us to go for drinks. She took us to the student area and we went to a proper pub, which was amazing, and had such a good atmosphere! I miss proper pubs! It was really nice to discover Paris a bit, albeit in the dark and spend time with Sinead :) plus being reunited with a Starbucks caramel latte made my life! Apologies for the length of this.. it’s been a while. Will write again soon :)