Snow.

It finally snowed! YES! I went out to go shopping on Saturday mid-morning and as I closed my front door and turned around, I had to stifle a squeal haha. It was so pretty! It started off really light, and by the time I had arrived at rue Saint-Catherine, it was so heavy! And it wasn't raining, other than it snowing, the weather was perfect - not even that cold (1 degree I think). That afternoon, the sun even came out. It wasn't cold enough though for the snow to gather, so it just hit the ground and melted away.
I spend the day just walking around town, I did buy some long sleeve shirts as the weather gets warmer. It's getting a bit too warm to wear a shirt, jumper and jacket now in the sun. But not warm enough to wear just a shirt and jacket/jumper. So I bought some warm long sleeve shirts that act as both a shirt and jumper. Everybody's a winner!

Snow on Saint-Catherine

Snow

Snow

That night, I had fondue with Nat, Sarah and Jason. It was the coolest! The restaurant was so cosy. When the food came out, it was plates of raw meat with six different sauces. In the middle was a pot of oil over a fire. You put the raw meat on the fondue stick and into the oil, it started sizzling straight away and cooked in about 30-45 seconds. It was served with some of the world's best potatoes. We only had the meat fondue, there was cheese available as well, which the people at the table next to us had and it looked so good!

Fondue pot and meat

The restaurant chandelier

Nat and I

Sunday it rained, so I opted to stay in and get some uni work done. That's really all I did.

Today it snowed again! I could see it on my skylight and thought it was just rain. But then wondered why it wasn't making any noise as it landed. Then realised! I did some work in the morning, then went out and did some art shopping. I'm not sure how I got onto stalking photos of needlelace on google, but I did, and then I wanted to make some. Ever since arriving, I've missed not being able to just make art whenever I want. I only brought a set of coloured pencils over with me. I bought some markers, a paint brush and some watercolour blocks at the art store, then ventured to a fabric store and bought some thread, then onto a wool store and bought a ball of crochet thread. When I got home, I didn't have much time before I had to leave for church, so I just knitted some more jumper, then left. I feel I'm picking more up each week. I certainly understood more than last week. As it was so cold, I didn't go out for dinner after, but went home for left overs.

Snow on the skylight

Things I bought

It's also my housemate, Leah's, 21st birthday today. Léa and I bought her a present a few days ago, and Léa made cheesecakes yesterday. They were seriously the best cheesecakes I've ever tasted. I'll have to get the recipe off her. I somehow also promised to make lamingtons soon haha so I'll have to keep my promise. Maybe Wednesday (one of my tuts had a bad car accident and is out for the rest of the semester, so class has been cancelled for this week until they find a new one).
Felt like this weekend went for so long. I think because it's the first one in a while that I haven't had anything planned.

Knitting... slowly getting there

The hardest test.

In preparation for the last week, I cooked a massive lot of spaghetti and froze it, knowing that I'm getting sick of cooking for myself, and this week was going to be a busy one. 

Wednesday afternoon was good. I met Léa at Victoire and we did some shopping. I discovered an Irish store that sells CADBURY chocolate! Very expensive, but still. And I bought some of the best caramel hot chocolate I've ever tasted.

I had my first in-class test on Thursday for dynamiques et recompositions francaises (geography). And it was a hard one. Say we had studied 20 units in the 5 weeks that we've been at uni, I learnt 10-15 of them pretty well, and there were about 5 that I had absolutely no comprehension of. We were tested on those 5 things. And the questions I did no the answers to we just so broad, it was difficult to answer in english, let along in french...

So, I went home, and at my spaghetti lol and worked on other subjects. Usually, I leave my uni work until Monday, but this week, I've tried to get most of it done on Thursday evening/Friday so I can spent Monday doing other things. I also have my first UTS assignment due this Wednesday.

Today (Friday) was spent mainly working/skyping my family/and grocery shopping (really just buying salt and vinegar chips).

The weather has been nice lately. Blue skies for a whole week! Not a rain cloud in site. The weather was so warm at the beginning of the week, I wore just a long sleeve shirt on the walk to church. This morning, the temperature has dropped back down. It went to -2 degrees over night, with a max. of 5 degrees throughout the day. It's forecasted to stay cold, but sunny. As long as it's not cold and rainy!

Churching and Dining.

Monday, again, was lovely weather. But I had work to do. So I went running in the morning and then did some grocery shopping and then settled in. I had an in-class test for dynamiques et recompositions on Thursday (tomorrow!). Angela, the ICS France coordinator, has told us that our french uni marks in no way at all count. But, I'd still like to pass just for my own mind!

Yoghurt here is my staple. I love this 

yoghurt so much, I eat it with my cereal

as milk. And then usually have it for lunch

I think I've found my usual church time: Monday, 6pm at Cathedral Saint-André (the massive one I shared photos of a few weeks ago). Churches here don't have Sunday afternoon mass times, so it's either 10:00am or you miss it. But Saint-André has daily services, so Monday night it is. I went for the first time this past Monday. It was pretty cool. It was such a warm day, so it was a nice walk there. The service wasn't held in the main seating area, it was next to the chorus, in a room to the side. Well, when I say room, I mean there were 17th century delicate wrought iron walls separating us from the main building. There were heaps of candles! Which gave it a cool feel. I was the youngest there by far! There were maybe 25-30 people, all aged between 40-80. Actually, there was a young couple there who looked to be about 30. I've never been to a Catholic church before, but it was interesting. All throughout the service, the church would say things together, which I had no idea of. The sermon was also pretty good, from what I could understand.
Afterwards, I called Jason up and we went exploring for food! We found a french restaurant in the small square and I had the most amazing duck. Then we bought cakes/dessert from a small bakery thing on our walk home.

Leaving church

Out for dinner

Place de la Bourse

Saint-Michel

Saint-Croix doors

Tuesday was back into uni and studying!

The Bordelaise are quite a spirited bunch.

Friday nights dinner was lovely. We just dined at the same thai restaurant as for Andrew's birthday. Zoe and Ella had come across from Poitiers and Mitch had come from Lyon. I had the thai beef salad again because it's absolutely amazing!

Out for dinner

Mitch, Lucy, Zoe, Candice, Ella and myself

Saturday was another beautiful day; no clouds and just blue sky. It was the day of our crémaillère/house warming party. In the morning Léa, Leah and I all went to the supermarket to buy food and alcohol. We bought so much our hands hurt carrying it home! I had planned on doing work today, but as it was such lovely weather, found I couldn't stay indoors. It was actually warm! I didn't wear a jacket all day, just a long sleeve shirt and jumper. I walked down to Nansouty today to buy some cake. I hadn't walked the opposite way from town yet and knew there was a small shopping village (well, there are small shopping villages everywhere). It was about a 10-15 minute walk, but so worth it. The cake I had was so good, but I don't actually know what it was... haha
When I got back to the house, we just cleaned and set up/moved furniture about and made sure breakables were away. People started arriving at 9pm. My friends all left at about 1:30am, so I went to bed haha I was feeling so tired! The last people, who weren't staying the night, left at about 4am. The party was massive. About 50 people came altogether in our living room lol. One of Leah's friends is a dj, so he bought his stuff and played for the night.

"Tonight will be the end of this house"

All drinks

In the morning, I walked into the lounge room and all I could smell was smoke. We have two large french windows at the front of the living room and people had been smoking out of those all night. The smell had just lingered all night. We promptly opened the windows and I had breakfast while a few of Leah's friends woke up. I then skyped mum and dad and then rushed to the soccer. I didn't know it was going to be so busy! My bus was packed with guys going. Outside the actual stadium, there were people everywhere. Inside, it sounded like a scene out of gladiator. People yelling and chanting, it was really exciting. I was meeting Zoe, Lucy and Sarah at one of the gates. They all went to one and I went to another. I walked around the entire stadium before I found them. Unfortunately, we missed the start of the match. But once we got inside, it was mad. We found our seats, and stood on them. We were seated in the Bordeaux fan section, and everyone was standing on their seats yelling, so we did for the entire game. These people just chanted and yelled for the entire game. There was one guy at the front who had a microphone and some speakers and he was leading them all, but everyone just knew what to chant. Constantly putting their hand up and clapping and yelling stuff I couldn't understand, except "Bordelaise allez allez, Bordelaise allez" repeatedly. Bordeaux lost 4-0 :( There were riot squads everywhere, it was so chaotic. When the game finished, we didn't even bother trying to get onto public transport, we just walked home (about 30-40 minutes).

Stade Chaban-Delmas

Bordeaux v. Lyon

Bordeaux v. Lyon

Bordeaux v. Lyon

Bordeaux v. Lyon

Bordeaux v. Lyon

Zoe, me and Lucy

Zoe, me and Sarah

Blue sky!

I had woken with a bit of a headache this morning and it was aggravated by people smoking at the stadium, so I bought a quiche on my way home and ate dinner at about 5:15pm and then went to sleep. I woke back up at 7:30pm and thought it was morning lol. Now I'm just sitting up uni working!

One fine day.

Today was a beautiful day! I even slept in. I set my alarm for 7:30am, then got annoyed at myself when it went off at that time haha so dismissed it and was woken up by mum and dad skyping at 10am. I went out for a run (and it was actually really warm!) at about 11:30, grabbed a baguette from a cafe on the way home and arrived home about 2pm. I decided to run over to the Jardin Publique/Jardin Botanique, which was really lovely. There's a pond/river that runs through it and bridges that criss-cross over it. I also found some sort of old carousel in there.
We're having our massive house warming party tomorrow night, so I decided to clean my room. It's generally pretty clean, but I could see dust forming in the corners. It's now SO clean!
I then had afternoon tea of cheese and crackers and fruit. I bought some strawberries yesterday, but Leah was telling me because they're not in season in France, they've been imported from Spain, so they'll go off pretty quickly. What an excuse to eat them all in one go!
Tonight, I'm having dinner with a few of the Bordeaux people, plus Zoe whose down from Poitiers and Mitch whose down from Lyon.

Oh and yesterday, nothing significant happened. Just uni.

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Jardin Publique

Gates to the Jardin Publique

Walking home

Walking home

Grabbed lunch from this square

Walking home

Side street

Walking home

Walking home... another café

Walking home

Saint Michel bell tower. Tallest in the

South of France

Saint Michel

Saint Michel

Back into it.

I've got really nothing interesting to write about. I'm beginning to dislike grocery shopping lol. I think just because I'm shopping for myself and cooking for myself, so it's hard to be motivated to like it. I did a big grocery shop when I got home yesterday. Before I left for London, I went through my section of the fridge and threw out anything that would go off between my leaving and returning. I restocked on food and then got straight back into uni work! I have quite a fair bit of it too!
Today I just went to uni and ran in the afternoon.

But, in other news, Jason and I, and I think some of the girls, are planning a trip to Andorra for the end of March. It's a small country squeezed between the French-Spanish border. It's incredibly cheap to get to and stay there and we're planning on doing heaps of hiking!

A weekend in London.

I'm going to attempt to cover the entire last weekend in one blog post. It was pretty full on, so I hope I cover everything!

FRIDAY
I packed and left so (too) early for the airport. I'm terrible with airports and wasn't sure how long it would take me to find my gate. I did get a bit lost when I went into terminal B, even though my ticket and my brain were telling me to go into terminal A. I had 3 hours to spare, so it was alright though. I then made the mistake of going through customs too early... Instead of shopping I sat and ate a ham baguette on the other side of the terminal watching everyone else shop. I also exchanged some Australian dollars I had with me still into GBPounds. We boarded at 6:25 and took off at 6:40. The flight was alright, it was only an hour and a half and I didn't have anyone in the seat next to me. WIN! Landing at London was cool and confusing. I landed at Gatwick airport and to get from my terminal to the train station you have to catch a shuttle train. You walk into this tube and on the sides of the walls are sliding doors and when the shuttle comes, they open. I had no idea what was going on, but just followed everyone else. I got onto my train to East Croyden (wasn't actually sure it was stopping at EC,) and finally made it to MILES! YAY! We then caught the train to Honor Oak Park, picked up some hot chips wrapping in paper cup like things and then walked home. Juliette and Paul (the people we were staying with) were so lovely! They told us to go out so we did haha. We just went into London and walked around, the wind was so cold! We were right out the front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben at 11pm as it started ringing which was cool. It was a little creepy at night. It's so old and gothic and the lights shine from the bottom. To get out of the cold, we found a pub and just sat in there. Bed at 12:15am.

St. Paul's at night from Westminster Bridge

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

SATURDAY
Woke up at 8:30am and left the house at about 9:45am. Caught underground to Trafalgar square and headed to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. There were so many people there, but with Miles height and my hustle, we made it into a fairly good position to see it. It was awesome. The music they were marching too was crazy good. Then the front gates opened and they marched out and off down the road, we both wondered where to lol. We then walked back up the Mall and onto Piccadilly circus and went to an Italian cafe for lunch. We just walked around Piccadilly for ages being tourists and buying London stuff and then we headed home at about 5pm for a family dinner. London isn't as tall as I thought, nor as old. Everything looked like it was from maybe the 1600's. I was expecting more 12-1300's. But it was interesting nonetheless. We went to an Indian restaurant with some of Miles' family and afterwards, they went home and we stayed in Peckham to just wander around and walk home. Miles then made me watch an episode of Doctor Who haha and I ate heaps of chocolate!

Honor Oak Park, walking to the station

Station

Waterloo underground!

Selfie in central London

Red phone boxes

Trafalgar Square

Office building

Black taxi

The Mall, on the way to Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham

Changing of the guard

Changing of the guard

Marching out of the gate

Marching out of the gate

Miles and I

Buckingham

Policeman and I!

Buckingham Palace

Gates to park near Buckingham

Older red bus

Let's play monopoly!

Tourist photo

SUNDAY
Today was the big day. We had so much planned and so little time. We planned to leave the house by 9am, but the printer wasn't working so we couldn't print our pre-booked tickets to the tower of London. We ended up leaving at 9:15am and got lucky with the buses and one was coming as we walked out the front door. We panicked because we didn't think we'd make it to the St. Paul's cathedral service on time, but we got there with plenty of time (we were becoming such underground pros). When we walked in, all of the ushers were dressed in these amazing red and black tailored suits. One of them invited us to sit in the second row, which is where the regular cathedral goers are supposed to sit, but it wasn't full. The service was AMAZING! It was a sung service, so the choir boys and men sung everything. They sounded so good. The cathedral was amazing, but we weren't allowed to take photos inside. It would take too long to describe everything that happened during the service, but if you want to know, ask me when I get back haha.
We then left the cathedral, bought some scratchies (and lost) and then headed onto the tower of London. We got there and I ate my first pie in a month (I haven't been able to find a pie anywhere in Bordeaux yet). Lucky we pre-booked our tickets because the lines were so long to get them there and it was raining. Actually, it rained all day, but it was only a light rain so it was fine. The tower was pretty cool. We just missed a tour with one of the Yeoman warders, and the next one was in 25 minutes, so we went in and went through the torture chamber and then went back to the front gate. But the tour was cancelled and then next one was in half an hour. We just decided to do it ourselves with our map. We went round the top of the inside wall, passing through different rooms and reading stories of prisoners, etc. When we got to the end of that section, we went into see the crown jewels. The line was so long and it was then that we realised we probably weren't going to make the service at Westminster at 3pm. Instead of hurrying off to that, we decided to miss the service, do the rest of the tower in depth and then go to Westminster later. The jewels were so cool, I want a crown like that just to wear everyday! Tonight, I'm going to watch the coronation haha. We then did a war room, which had uniforms and medals and other items from all sorts of wars and then onto the chopping block. The place where they beheaded people was so small! And there's nothing really there now, just a monumental glass plate thing. But it was still cool.
We then left and headed onto Westminster Abbey. We probably should have just saw it the first Friday night, but we didn't know it was there then. It is absolutely massive. And so old! I wished the Queen was in town so she could have been there. Next time I'm in England, I'm going to go to the church at Windsor if the Queen's there! We actually weren't allowed into the abbey though :( It's open every day but Sunday, because there are services running all day and they don't let you in after a service has started. So that was sad, but we spent a good while in the gift shop!
We then caught the underground back over to London Bridge and went to St. Helen's Bishops Gate, which is Miles' regular church. This was much closer to a GPAC service, albeit much bigger, and the music was cool. We were there early, so grabbed hot chocolate and sat in a cafe. As we were leaving church to find somewhere to eat dinner, it started SNOWING!!!!! I was so excited! It was soooo cold and I was getting snow in my eyes haha. In an effort to stop this from occurring, I pulled my beanie down over my eyebrows and zipped up my jacket just so I could see. Unfortunately, I also caught my lip in my zipper and made it bleed haha. But not for long because we found this really cool Indian place (Indian is everywhere so we just had it 2 nights in a row) and had the most amazing samosas ever! They were about 4 times the size of ones in Australia and a third of the price, so we just ate those as a main lol.
We then headed home for some warmth.

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's side door

St. Paul's front steps

After the service

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral

The tower of London

Tower of London with Tower bridge behind

Tower of London

A Yeoman warder

Inside the tower

Traitors gate

Tower bridge

Me!

Inside a guard box

In one of one of the kings rooms who stayed at the

tower of London

Inside the tower and the ravens

Tower bridge from inside the tower

A king's crown with the jewels removed

(actually wasn't allowed to take the photo)

Beheading place

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Westminster side entrance (where Kate walked in)

LONDON!

MONDAY
So cold getting out of bed. There was snow on the skylights. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to make my flight! Gatwick airport on a Monday morning is absolutely crazy and we were already catching the earliest bus from Honor Oak Park to try and make it. We got up at 4am and the bus was due at 4:48am. It didn't come until 4:56am. Still ok, but cutting it fine. We made it easily though and I left Miles at East Croyden train station and continued solo :( I had an hour to make it from the time to I got to Gatwick station to my gate. I ran so fast lol. And the got to a crowded customs, but just as I got there, a guy opened a new customs gate, so I was now 2nd in line. Winning! When I made it through customs, my flight gate wasn't even open yet, so I just sat down waiting. But then spotted a money exchange office. On Friday night, I started with 270 pounds. I still had 120 pounds left, so just got it exchanged back into euros. I then spotted a Harrods and realised I didn't actually go there (or see one) in the centre of London. So, I went in and bought a really cute tote bag! As soon as I left, my flight gate came up and I headed on through. I was the first one on the plane haha so much for panicking about being late! The flight was fine and so was getting home. It's so much warmer in Bordeaux haha

4:30am... SNOW!

I hope everything made sense!