So, this is a belated update about my trip back in February. Better late than never:

I’m back from my two week, mammoth trip round the south of France, of which I loved nearly every minute; it was the first time I saw the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean and also the first time I couchsurfed. Here follows a correspondingly long account of ( Read more... )

On Thursday night, I went to my first local board game society night with Diana, an American friend. It was really fun - I love board games, and I don’t think I realised how much I missed playing. They have literally hundreds of games at the club; one group of people were playing Settlers of Catan, but I decided I wanted to start with something ( Read more... )

Life ( Read more... )

Chateau de Chenonceau

Wednesday was a national holiday in France to mark the Armistice. As everyone had a day off, we went to Chenonceau, a nearby chateau. I regret not having a camera because it was very impressive. I thought it would be quite dull, but it was surprisingly interesting - built on a bridge and, therefore, in the middle of a river, ( Read more... )

Poitiers

On Monday I went to Poitiers, the administrative capital of the neighbouring Poitou-Charentes region about an hour away by train, to meet up with Ella, a French student from Hertford who is a language assistant there.

As a town, Poitiers is immensely dull. In size it is smaller than Tours, which is about the size of Oxford or Luton, with ( Read more... )

On Tours

Now that I have settled in completely and got to know the place a lot better, my initial impressions remain true. Tours is an exceedingly beautiful town and I feel lucky to be here. The river and islands in it are beautiful, the squares are lovely, the boulageries incredible, and any town that owns wallabies and a stuffed elephant gets a ( Read more... )

We have ten days of holidays for All Saints’. Since we broke up on Friday, the dread of solitude has compelled all of us assistants to seek one another’s company in order to compulsively DO THINGS, leaving very little time for updating LJ despite my theoretically increased free time. So, I’m going to make up for this it now.

We started on Friday ( Read more... )

Well, it's been a week seen I last posted. We're in ninth week now, which is technically after the end of term, but lots of people have exams or papers to write so most people stayed on. I haven't really done much except watch lots of Peep Show and say goodbye to lots of people. I actually did some work on Tuesday, which was a slightly amazing ( Read more... )

I'm planning a trip to Paris for 5 days. Has anybody got any tips of places to see, things to do or either to eat ( Read more... )

I went through two town centres hunting for a job today. Considering Luton had a population of 230 000 people, that is a very large town centre ( Read more... )