Three weekends
Bonjour.
I’ve had a busy few weeks recently, though things are now dead as virtually everyone I know in Paris has left - most of them were placement students like me and I’m the only one staying the whole year.
At the beginning of the month, Adam came over to Paris for his birthday. I’d just got a bonus from EDF for the work I did with the Evian summit and so I decided to treat him. I bought him a 20GB MP3 player which he seemed to like. I should have bought him something rubbish and kept it for myself because my ipod has completely died. I sent it to be repaired while it was still in warranty but it came back exactly the same and the warranty has since expired. They now won’t do anything until I’ve been into an Apple centre. Cunts (I do like that word).
Me and Adam decided to hire a car and go to Luxembourg. It was a Citroen C1 which was small and slow (that’s being polite).
It was weird driving on the right, and I only ended up on the wrong side of the road three times, but once I had got out of Paris it was great fun. We had an old map from 1997 which was not of very detailed scale at all. Understandably we got lost and arrived at the village we were going to at 10.30 at night. It was a lovely village with a nice castle but we had to leave at 9.00 the next morning to get back to Paris in time to return the car. I was struck by the lack of border control - we passed an abandoned border station on the way between France and Belgium but otherwise there was just a sign to say you’d arrived. I was equally struck by how rubbish Belgium was (crap roads and no signs - perhaps they don’t want anyone to leave?). Hurrah for the EU anyway.
The week after was Bastille day and I made like a good Parisian and left. I’d been invited to Aurillac where I know a family I met through a sixth form exchange. The journey was a bit surreal - I’d been forced to go first class because there were no standard tickets left. Settling down among the middle class women, I saw a shirtless, long-haired, unshaven hippy type come into my compartment and sit down. Faces dropped. He didn’t stay long, preferring to go to the end of the carriage to drink and smoke dope with his friends. Towards the end of the journey he came back to his seat and started talking to me. I got taken for a shy Frenchy - progress I suppose.
Anyway, as always when I go visit this family, I had fun. They tend to devote lots of time to me and drive me miles to do and see stuff. I went quad biking among the sight-seeing. I’d do it again, but it really hurts your wrist. I also got invited to my friend’s boyfriend’s family barbeque where I played pétanque (and was in the winning team which didn’t go down well), and got taken for an alcoholic (apparently the local poison went down far too easily, but then I did live in Russia not so long ago). I also took this photo (some wild rabbits had been born in their garden).
The following weekend (the one just gone), my parents came over to visit. The only other time they’d been to Paris was when they brought me in January when it was cold and they were occupied with helping me move. I took them to see nearly everything. It was 30C or more every day, my dad has had one knee replaced, he needs the other one doing, and he has back problems but he stuck out my grueling walking tours like a trooper. They came on Thursday and by Sunday they had seen pretty much everything so we had a day of not doing very much. We stood on the Champs Elysées from 10.00am until 7.30pm waiting for the Tour de France. Apart from the irritating child that letched on to my parents, it was worth the wait and it was quite a party atmosphere so the time went quite quickly. If cycling weren’t so rubbish, I might watch more of it - who ever knew cyclists would be so fit? And their outfits are almost as good as swimmers’. A cyclists orgy would be quite something. It was definitely worth waiting for the lap of honour where you could take the time to admire more than just a lycra blur. I couldn’t get a good angle on them because of lampposts and trees and stuff, but this one is ok.
You’ll have to take my word for it that they were fitties.
I’m almost done in Paris now. Thanks to the French being lazy cheese-eating surrender monkeys flexible French labour laws, I’m leaving two weeks before my contract is up so I’ll be home by the 21 August.
I’ve had a busy few weeks recently, though things are now dead as virtually everyone I know in Paris has left - most of them were placement students like me and I’m the only one staying the whole year.
At the beginning of the month, Adam came over to Paris for his birthday. I’d just got a bonus from EDF for the work I did with the Evian summit and so I decided to treat him. I bought him a 20GB MP3 player which he seemed to like. I should have bought him something rubbish and kept it for myself because my ipod has completely died. I sent it to be repaired while it was still in warranty but it came back exactly the same and the warranty has since expired. They now won’t do anything until I’ve been into an Apple centre. Cunts (I do like that word).
Me and Adam decided to hire a car and go to Luxembourg. It was a Citroen C1 which was small and slow (that’s being polite).
It was weird driving on the right, and I only ended up on the wrong side of the road three times, but once I had got out of Paris it was great fun. We had an old map from 1997 which was not of very detailed scale at all. Understandably we got lost and arrived at the village we were going to at 10.30 at night. It was a lovely village with a nice castle but we had to leave at 9.00 the next morning to get back to Paris in time to return the car. I was struck by the lack of border control - we passed an abandoned border station on the way between France and Belgium but otherwise there was just a sign to say you’d arrived. I was equally struck by how rubbish Belgium was (crap roads and no signs - perhaps they don’t want anyone to leave?). Hurrah for the EU anyway.
The week after was Bastille day and I made like a good Parisian and left. I’d been invited to Aurillac where I know a family I met through a sixth form exchange. The journey was a bit surreal - I’d been forced to go first class because there were no standard tickets left. Settling down among the middle class women, I saw a shirtless, long-haired, unshaven hippy type come into my compartment and sit down. Faces dropped. He didn’t stay long, preferring to go to the end of the carriage to drink and smoke dope with his friends. Towards the end of the journey he came back to his seat and started talking to me. I got taken for a shy Frenchy - progress I suppose.
Anyway, as always when I go visit this family, I had fun. They tend to devote lots of time to me and drive me miles to do and see stuff. I went quad biking among the sight-seeing. I’d do it again, but it really hurts your wrist. I also got invited to my friend’s boyfriend’s family barbeque where I played pétanque (and was in the winning team which didn’t go down well), and got taken for an alcoholic (apparently the local poison went down far too easily, but then I did live in Russia not so long ago). I also took this photo (some wild rabbits had been born in their garden).
The following weekend (the one just gone), my parents came over to visit. The only other time they’d been to Paris was when they brought me in January when it was cold and they were occupied with helping me move. I took them to see nearly everything. It was 30C or more every day, my dad has had one knee replaced, he needs the other one doing, and he has back problems but he stuck out my grueling walking tours like a trooper. They came on Thursday and by Sunday they had seen pretty much everything so we had a day of not doing very much. We stood on the Champs Elysées from 10.00am until 7.30pm waiting for the Tour de France. Apart from the irritating child that letched on to my parents, it was worth the wait and it was quite a party atmosphere so the time went quite quickly. If cycling weren’t so rubbish, I might watch more of it - who ever knew cyclists would be so fit? And their outfits are almost as good as swimmers’. A cyclists orgy would be quite something. It was definitely worth waiting for the lap of honour where you could take the time to admire more than just a lycra blur. I couldn’t get a good angle on them because of lampposts and trees and stuff, but this one is ok.
You’ll have to take my word for it that they were fitties.
I’m almost done in Paris now. Thanks to the French being lazy cheese-eating surrender monkeys flexible French labour laws, I’m leaving two weeks before my contract is up so I’ll be home by the 21 August.