A Very Belated Update

Very sorry once again for the weeks of silence on my part, but I'm on permanent holiday/unemployment now that I've finished work and I haven't been in the same place for more than a week or so at a time! No excuse, I know.... Also, believe it or not, I've wanted to update my blog for a couple of weeks now but the website fell out with Google Chrome for some reason (and Firefox, which I decided to try as well), so it wouldn't actually let me upload anything.

So where to start? Before my Easter holidays I had a wee cheeky trip down to Dijon with 2/3 of the other assistants in my region. I say 2/3 because Kate couldn't make it down with us in the end, but we made sure that she was there in spirit:

I then had a bit of a whirlwind of a holiday during Easter because I was here there and everywhere! I started off at home for four days, then headed back to Metz with my mam and dad for a week. It was really lovely to be able to show them around all my haunts. Highlight of the visit was a night in Strasbourg which led to walking over the Rhine bridge to Germany, where my dad not only found a WOOLWORTHS, but purchased two massive flyswats (of all things).

Next off was a trip to Champagne with Aline, one of the English teachers. Going to Champagne was high up on my ticklist of things to do this year, so I was thrilled to be finally able to drink Champagne in Champagne!

Next up was one final week at school and a quick trip to Schengen and Luxembourg City before an emotional goodbye, a bulging suitcase and a TGV hotfooting it back to Paris. This was in aid of my 21st birthday celebrations with Michèle and a flight to LA RÉUNION, a wee island in the Indian Ocean which is next to Madagascar. I'll leave that for next time though because it deserves a whole blog post to itself. 

The fun thing about having my birthday in France was that my birthday, being the 1st May, was a bank holiday. And not just any old bank holiday, but Workers' Day - the mother of all bank holidays. Nobody works on the 1st May. Especially not museum staff. So Michèle and I found ourselves at the Sewer Museum, it being basically the only museum open. It was a very informative tour which genuinely led us down into the Parisian sewers and taught us not only about the history of the sewers, but how the whole process works. Fascinating...! The afternoon was a little less smelly because we found ourselves at one of Nicolas Sarkozy's final rallies before the election. A lot of fun and a lot of people, but sadly not enough to help him win...

So that brings us up to date until the beginning of May - next stop, La Réunion. I'll be a bit quicker with the next one, I promise!


Bises,


Sophia xx