fleur & me in guingamp.
a couple weeks ago, fleur & i had a grand idea to check out the lovely little nearby town of guingamp... pretty much the same as lannion, but more fun to explore than sit in the apartment & do nothing, just the same. i sent a little message to an assistant there, amy, and we met up with her and another, sabine, for coffee & pastries & to discuss our experiences & faire de la connaissance with each other. the following week, they visited us with two more assistants, lynette & hannah, and we made a deal of it & went bowling... again. welcome to lannion. i would be willing to say that everyone had a pretty good time. a few of us went out afterward to my favorite little bar in town, and the next day i played tour guide & took the three assistants who stayed with us up to ploumanac'h to see the sights. it wasn't a gorgeous day, but the weather held off enough for us to do some exploring & share a picnic.
almost the whole group at bowling eclipse.
little bird at ploumanac'h.
getting out of this picture almost proved problematic. ploumanac'h.
amy, sabine, lynette, & me at our picnic at ploumanac'h.
that evening, i invited some people over for a fete de halloween (keep in mind that we're already two weeks late on this one), but mom had sent an amazing care package, and i promised her it would be put to good use. my roommates dressed as twins, catherine went as catwoman & fleur, a cat, mari-elena as frida kahlo, and i, a magic 8 ball. we had some new people over to the apartment, and had quite the spread of snacks & beverages. i didn't do too bad a job decorating, either. those pointless chest x-rays made perfect posters for the festivities.
fleur & me at the fete de halloween.
the "twins", aka jacqueline & saskia, with twin boyfriends, hans & franz.
meow! catherine & fleur at the fete de halloween.
what else? oh, i walked to beg leguer last wednesday. yes, i said "walked." and for your information, that's 7.8 km each way (about 4.8 miles for those of us, like myself, to which the unit of a kilometer means next to nothing, other than you run five of them in a cross-country race). so, i walked about 12 miles (this is a rough estimate), half of which was in the dark (and probably not in my best interest, i forget that the light goes away earlier here), and was offered a ride a few times, as hitchhiking isn't all that uncommon in rural europe. i didn't take the ride, but wish i had... especially the next day, as my entire body ached. the beach itself was beautiful, though the cliffs reminded me of the dunes at home on the peninsula, and the sunset was amazing, almost rivaling one over lake michigan. i guess it was worth the hike after all.
here's some pictures of the beach at beg leguer:
there was la greve on thursday, which for your information, means "strike" in french. the only thing the french love almost as much as their vacances & their vin is la greve. i had been told this was a "pretty big one" by profs & that the chances of me having class were definitely on the lower end of the spectrum. needless to say, i had class, at 8am & 9am & 2:30pm... the rest in-between were canceled due to the strikes or other unknown reasons, which gave me plenty of time to do a whole lot of nothing. awesome. in other school news, they've finally canned the replacement teacher (or found something else for her to do), who i just recently met, because she never shows up for class. so now, late-november, there's a replacement for the replacement, & i'm the assistant for the newest replacement. thank god the students' english who're in this class is higher than that of my other students... i also can't believe that a system in a developed country such as france could allow their students to be literally two months behind in their studies. oh well... qu'est-ce qu'on fait?
this weekend, a couchsurfer, marianne has come to visit us... so i've had the chance to hone my tour guide skills. we checked out the town a bit, went to fete de la science (which really was just a science fair for adults, i kid you not), and went out to a bar i've been meaning to check out, le pixie, with my french friend kamy & some of his friends. we saw a "trip-hop" band (don't even ask me to classify that...) called taleisin, who were actually pretty good. decent local breton beer, too. i'll be going back. i had big plans for today, mainly because it's the weekend, but the weather's been less-than-agreeable, so i've been sitting around, laying low, and catching up with things like this.
marion, of taleisin, at le pixie.
well, i think that suffices for now... more later!
No comments:
Post a Comment