And then came the busyness...

It’s insane how fast December has come along! When I came back from Paris I had a pretty chilled weekend of mostly catching up on sleep and recovering from early starts and travelling. I went round to Christine’s on the Saturday night and watched a film with her and the girls, and then Church on Sunday and that was pretty much it! I did go to the evening church service too, in the town where the pastor and his wife live. They are American so it was a special Thanksgiving celebration :) there was a talk about the meaning of Thanksgiving, some songs in English and French and then we had Thanksgiving dinner together. There were 50 of us! It was epic times! I talked a lot of French that night; I even impressed myself. Ended up talking about the troubles in Northern Ireland, church and God in French! Mental! 

It’s nearly time to go home for Christmas :) very very excited to see everyone again and get back to my own bed! I’ve had a wonderful last few weeks here though, especially last weekend, when I went to Paris to spend the weekend with 2 of my best friends from home! I travelled on the Thursday afternoon to meet them, Aimee flew from Belfast and Sarah got the train from Arras. We all met when we arrived at Gare du Nord – I have no idea whose idea that was; it was a silly one as Gare du Nord is a complete nightmare.  Aimee and Sarah found each other and then I just looked everywhere for Sarah’s blonde hair, and we managed to cross paths! We then trekked to the hotel to check in and dump our bags. It was surprisingly easy to find (even for me and my non-existent sense of direction) and was just a few mins round the corner from the Eiffel Tower :). Of course, we chatted and caught up sitting on the beds for a while, until our stomachs decided it was time for food. We just headed towards the Eiffel Tower and decided on a restaurant there – we were so hungry, we didn’t really care! After dinner, we got crepes from a stand and took some photos in front of the Eiffel Tower! Then it was pretty much bedtime, so we headed back to the hotel and got a good night’s sleep.

On the Friday, we did the Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe (where there was a protest, so we couldn’t go under it L - flipping France and their protests!), the Louvre, Sacre Coeur (which is so stunning!), Eiffel Tower again, and back to the Champs Elysees for dinner :). It was an epic day, but amazing! Then on the Saturday we had decided to go to Versailles. After some minor train confusion, which involved us crawling under barriers.. lol, we made it! It was so beautiful :) and we got to go in for free with our student cards! Afterwards we were reunited with Starbucks, before heading back to the centre of Paris, where I had arranged to meet my friend, Libby (who was in Paris the same weekend) for dinner :) We met be the fountain at St.Michel, and went to this amazing little restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where we got 3 courses for 10 euro! It was so good to see her.. we pretty much just laughed solidly for a couple of hours! We had some Metro issues on the way home with delays etc.. and just the fact that the Metro isn’t a great place to be on a Saturday night – we came across some interesting people :P but we made it back safely and were pretty knackered! We managed to sleep in on Sunday, almost missing breakfast – lol but, much to the waitress’s disgust, we managed to convince her that there were still a few more minutes before 11 O’clock! Haha she wasn’t too impressed. We spent our last hour or so meeting up with a friend of Sarah’s for coffee, before heading our separate ways once more. What a brilliant weekend!

In my last week of school, I’m just doing lots of fun, Christmassy things :) I’m loving it! I don’t know how many times I’ve read the poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ and they’ve asked me what ‘Twas’ means – joy!

So I'm still really enjoying it here, just can't quite believe how fast the time is going and trying to make the most of every minute. 

Anyway, I better go!

A Bientôt mes amis J