Une année presque terminée

Where oh where does time go? It's been 2 and a half weeks since my last post, we're now over a quarter of the way through 2013, and I'VE ONLY GOT 4 WEEKS LEFT. What's even sadder is I'm about to enter into my last week of teaching. I know I moan about some of the kids, I have to wake up early, and lesson planning is a bit of a drag, but I really will miss being an assistante anglaise. I'll miss feeling like a celebrity surrounded by shouts of "'ello Emma, 'ow hare you'" every time I walk from one side of the school to the other. I'll miss little Maël in 6eme, my favourite pupil whose legs dangle off the chair since he is so tiny, and who makes such an effort to speak English in class despite making a mistake evey other word. I'll miss my car journeys with Laurent as he quizzes me each week on English current affairs to which of course I am totally oblivious. I'll miss school lunches where I get the opportunity to try random but delicious French dishes such as rabbit, stingray, and duck drumsticks. Most of all I'll probably miss Domie and Anne-Lise, who have never ceased to try and make me feel welcome. 

But hey, it's not over yet, and I've still got to tell you what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks. I shall attempt to summarize the highlights.

Rob's been here again. He didn't want me to be alone for Easter, so turned up at Stansted airport as I was about to go back to France after having been back for a day to go to a friend's 21st, informing me that he'd booked himself onto my flight and would be staying for the next 9 days. We didn't do much, since I had work, and he is currently training for 2 MARATHONS (once again I'm going to be cheeky and post the link to his sponsor page just in case anyone is feeling generous: virginmoneygiving.com/run-rob-run), but we ate yummy food, did more walking, and went to the Easter masses. 

The Easter Vigil was one of the nicest masses I've ever been to. Normally in England I'm playing keyboard or clarinet for this mass so I don't really get to appreciate it properly, but with the fire and candlelight procession into the beautiful Eglise Sainte-Hilaire, joyous singing resonating around the building, and church bells being rung on the Gloria to celebrate the ressurection, I felt so lucky. I wish I could have subtly taken a picture of everyone with their candles.

On Easter Sunday, after mass we went for a walk to Saint-Romans-les-Melle, which I'd already been to but Rob hadn't, and I think it's one of my favourite places in the area. It's just so peaceful and pictureque, and there were so many flowers. I literally couldn't stop taking pictures, Rob was getting a bit frustrated.

Here's some more photos from our afternoon in St-Romans:

Lavoir de Saint-Romans on La Béronne river

These little lambs have yet to be told by their parents that it's rude to stare

Christ est ressuscité, il est vraiment ressuscité!

On Monday evening we watched the sunset, but got there too early so left before it had fully set:

Night night Sun.

On Wednesday Rob left.

On Friday night I went to Poitiers with Mike, Sonia, Bethan, Amy and Lizzie for an 'end of year abroad' night out. It was a really good night, but was sad to think that might be the last time I see most of them :(

Other than that, time has been spent trying to do my YARP. Cry :(

And so here begins my final few weeks. A la prochaine xxx 

Giving Sophie a taste of La Vie Melloise

So, Sophie's here. Well she would still be if I updated my blog on time. Let's pretend it's 10 days ago and Sophie is indeed in France's Poitou-Charente.

As she was only going to be here for 3 full days we decided not to venture too far and instead show her what there is relatively locally. So on Wednesday we stayed in Melle. I won't go into much detail seeing as I've already bored you all on numerous prior occasions about Melle. But we just walked for hours around town, visiting the churches, walking around the old fortifications, strolling along the Chemin de la Decouverte, and getting the most delicious chausson aux pommes from the boulangerie. With the sun breaking through here and there it once again reminded me how much I love it here and am proud to call it my town.

Probably definitely taken a pretty much identical shot somewhere along the line, but anyway...La Beronne river

Thursday we went to Niort. We did a spot of shopping before the sun came out, then had a picnic on the river, then went into a couple of churches, and then, something I hadn't yet done, we went into the Donjon which is Niort's castle. Free for 25-and-unders, the visit included the history of the building and Niort itself, details of its construction and modifications over the years, and lots of narrow windy staircases in the turrets. But my favourite bit was getting to go up onto the roof to get 360º views across Niort.

Sophie on the roof of the Donjon de Niort with the impressive Eglise Saint-André in the background

View NW of Niort with the Eglise Saint-Étienne close by

Neither taken on this particular day, but here's the front and back of the Donjon (although I'm not sure which way's which...)

If I was a decent blogger I'd now go on to educate you on a brief history of Niort and its castle, but I'm feeling somewhat lazy today, so if you're feeling curious, I recommend a certain website of the name 'Wikipedia'... :P

On Friday we had planned on going with Mike to Saintes, a city in the Charente-Maritime that I've wanted to go to for months. With it being fairly difficult and time-consuming to get to from Melle without a car, it was necessary that we take the 06:50 bus out of Melle, in order to get to Niort in time to get the 07:38 train to Saintes, which was the only direct train there for the day or there abouts. Who comes up with these ideas?! Whoever it is, I'm not his greatest fan. A 05:45 alarm was very unwelcome indeed, but we wanted to go to Saintes. So we caught the bus, updated Mike (who had stopped over in Niort the night before) on our progress, asked him to get our tickets as it'd be touch and go whether we'd have time, pulled into Niort at 07:35, legged it, found Mike by the ticket machines, made our way to the platform...

.......

...and watched our train leaving without us. Putain de merde! Having envisaged this might be the case, and with the weather forecast promising a gorgeously sunny day, our Plan B had been to get the bus to Coulon. But Monsieur Météo had been telling lies, and it was in fact gloomy and totally overcast. So we knocked that idea on the head and took the next bus back to Melle. That's a waste of 5 hours if ever I saw one.

Instead, Sophie and I decided to go for a walk in the afternoon, when the sun had finally come out a bit (although still nothing like as predicted), to a nearby village called Saint-Romans-les-Melle. A fortnight earlier Rob and I had tried to do this walk, but being mapless we had unknowingly taken the wrong road right near the beginning of the walk thus ensuring we obliviously walked 1 hour in the wrong direction. It's meant to have a nice church and a washhouse though, so I still wanted to walk there at some point. So after carefully studying the route on Google Maps, Sophie and I set off. It was a nice picturesque walk there, along an old Roman country road with the sun slowly getting stronger. But when we got to Saint-Romans we couldn't find the church. I mean, normally they're pretty easy to spot with a steeple or a bell tower, but we could not find it. On a small scale map we saw there was apparently 2 churches, and a temple in this place, but they were obviously hiding from us. We took what seemed like every road possible (which in a village of a population of 700 this isn't too difficult), and thought we'd have to call it a day after 45 minutes of searching, or else the sun would be down before we got home. But we finally found it, the Eglise St-Romans, at the bottom of the village in the little valley. We later read, on an information board inside the church, that its unusual location is due to 'ground constraints' when it was built in the 12th century. So we didn't feel quite so silly. Anyway, it was a really pretty church, with a mini grotto/shrine thing opposite, and a really old crumbling graveyard on the side of the hill. We also found the washhouse. In the late afternoon sun, it was lovely.

L’église Saint-Romans, 12th century 

Old graveyard with some graves dating to the 1800s. The church is at the bottom of the hill.

The lavoir de la fontaine de Font Maye

The grotto/shrine thing to Our Lady that reminded me a bit of the Grotto in Lourdes

The silhouetted graveyard

On our way back we went past a spooky abandoned chapel which had crumbling murals, broken windows, and plants growing inside. I love coming across stuff like this, it makes me feel like I'm in a movie!

Creaky rusty gates, overgrown graveyard, crumbling walls....glad I didn't stumble upon this at night.

And then it was Saturday, and Sophie had to go home :( But we still had a good few hours in La Rochelle before she had to get to the airport, so we did a bit of shopping, had lunch on the harbour front, and once again took advantage of being under 25 and went up 2 of La Rochelle's towers for free. Although a bit boring inside, it gave us nice views over La Rochelle and the sea. I'm sure the views would have been a lot nicer on a warmer and sunnier day, but it was cool nonetheless.

View across the Vieux Port from Tour de la Chaine

View over the Rochelais rooftops from Tour de la Lanterne

Then Sophie left, and there was one.