A la fin d'automne

And so the rain arrives. Thought I’d hit you with a little December update, from the isolation and severe depression of my current situation. So, my sister and her boyfriend braved the grave distance and choppy English channel to come and visit me, and I attempted to provide entertainment for the weekend, which I’m hoping they enjoyed, despite my inevitable constant moaning about children and French people and the rising price of baguettes, etc. Within 4 minutes of meeting them at La Gare Routiere au Mans (after rather a heavy night on the town, I’m not going to lie to you) we bumped into one of the American assistants on the good old reliable tram (I’m a major fan of the trams, not like those crumbly bumbly buses of Leamington Spa). This single event was to colour the entirety of their visit, as over the next two days, it seemed that Charlotte, Tony and myself could not wander down a single French street without bumping into one of my friends. This, of course, made me feel like some sort of local celebrity, with people shouting my name at every corner. I’m hoping it had the desired effect on my sister, and that she reported back to Dadsie that I’m not withering away, spending every minute of my spare time alone, eating huge quantities of cheese and watching endless episodes of ER (as this only describes about 56% of my temps libre, with the other 44% comprising of an equal balance of crying and knitting).

When Charlotte and Tony had strengthened their wobbly little newly born French legs, they flew off to Paris, and my lovely little Robsie arrived (the aforementioned little friend). After walking away victorious from my first real French dispute (the people in my foyer attempting to tell me 47 minutes before his arrival, that we weren’t allowed to have guests in the week, and me simply repeating, “Well, he’s coming” numerous times until they conceded) I went to meet him at the train station. We embraced in an elegant and romantic, Hollywood-esque manner, with him running down the stairs, picking me up and swirling me around while I emitted a sort of high pitched “Eeeeeeeeee!” and then nearly falling over… I very much enjoyed it.

We mainly spent our week cuddling - our favourite past-time. But on Thursday, Rob foolishly agreed to travel into work with me and spend the day in Mamers, as on this blessed day of the week, I have a delicious five hour gap between lessons, and so I was able to plonk him in a café and then go to meet him a little later. He was bitter about this from the moment I poked him awake at 5.30am until we left crazily misty Mamers at 5.30pm. In fact, I think he’s still a little bitter a week later. . .

Last week, Rob was lucky enough to be present at what has been one of the highlights of my Year Abroad so far. Thursday 24^th November was the holiday of Thanksgiving, and as we have befriended so many Americans here, us British were allowed to join in the festivities and celebrate with them. A lovely lady named Liz, offered her apartment for the boum, and no less than TWENTY FIVE of us packed in, bringing food  and alcohol in abundance, to celebrate in a style as traditionally American as we could muster, being that we were undeniably in France…  I happily labelled myself the ROAST POTATOER (although many said this wasn’t really very traditional, I refused childishly to cook the pommes de terre anything other than the GREAT BRITISH WAY). As the chaos of arriving and attempting to correspond the cooking times of each dish died down, we all sat down to eat what turned out to be an UTTERLY IMMENSE repas. Just fab. We all stated mid meal a few things that we were thankful for, one of mine being the discovery of a 10 euro dress in H&M that I had donned for the party! I was also thankful for Rob being there, as well as having met a group of such great people, that make me feel like I really belong somewhere. Je sais, je sais, cheesy, but too late now.

Anyway, on Sunday Robert and myself thought it’d be fun to continue a Leamington tradition of going to feed some ducks (there’s a great lake on campus at Warwick uni where there are ducks, geese and swans in abundance) and so we went in search of ducks and ended up at the Jardin des Plantes, a great park near the centre of Le Mans. The ducks could not have been any less interested. But on Monday, something a little odd happened. I had been writing on the board all day and several times felt a bit of a twinge in my arm. A real muscle ache. It gradually got worse throughout the day, and I started trying to think what on earth I could have done, until at the end of the day, it dawned on me. My arm was aching from having thrown bread at the ducks. I’m genuinely ashamed to be alive and have resolved to overcome this extreme weakness by exercising again! Thus, this morning, I went for a run in the rain, despite my back pain and flu like symptoms. That will probably be the only exercise I do this month, but I felt like I’d made an effort.

I’ll let you know when exciting things happen – which they inevitably will. Pub quiz tomorrow night after work at the British Pub. Score.

Much love and whatnot, H x

Robbie feeding the fish

Rob doing the Paso Doble

Just throwing some leaves =)