The End. For now...

If I say I'm writing this post in England, then that will tell you that my time in Melle has come to an end. Yes, after nearly 7 and a half months in the west of France, I am back in the real world that is north London. But fear not, I am only home for a week before I set off on another French adventure.

Early evening sunlight in Melle

But more on that later. For now, I feel it's about time that I tell you about my last couple of weeks in the pays mellois.

My absence from the blogosphere can be almost entirely attributed to my research project that was due in last Thursday. I won't drone on about my last minute struggles to get it all done, but let's just say I can't remember ever being quite so stressed. 

So on Thursday evening with the dissertation due at 17:00, I submitted it at 16:58, attempted to tidy and clean my essay-abused flat in half an hour for the landlord's inspection at 17:30, all whilst awaiting the imminent arrival of my parents.

Having my parents FINALLY get to see Melle was so so lovely! As we only had two full days before we headed back across the Channel, we decided to stay local, and so Friday was spent at the market and walking in and around Melle, and Saturday I showed them Celles-sur-Belle and Niort under bright blue skies. And we had 7 different cheeses between us. And lots of pains-aux-raisins. Just making the most of my last few days in France. ;)

Really wish I could teleport this patisserie back to England :(

Aww, bluebells

Dad and Mum loving life in Melle...

Old Melle hospital through the flowers

Celles-sur-Belle

Celles-sur-Belle

Niort - the Sèvre Niortaise river in the foreground, and Eglise Saint-André at the back

Eating bread, cheese and pâté by the river

Le Donjon

Rather excitingly, it was Games Night at the Café on Friday night, so deciding that this was the best way to witness Melle life, we went along for the plat du jour (which was Moroccan chicken and couscous) and had a game of Scrabble, as people in Melle do on a Friday night. The games commenced with a standard poem by Afro Man and his side-kick, and then bizarrely followed with a random game of musical chairs for which the music was provided by aforementioned side-kick on a kazoo (Google it if you don't know what one is - coolest instrument ever in my opinion). It may have been the most tedious game of Scrabble I have ever played and we didn't finish it until 1am. And I lost.

Side-kick and Afro Man 

Side-kick and Non-Afro Man taking the game very seriously

The result of 3 hours of wordplay

On the Sunday, after struggling but eventually managing to pack 3 cases and 5 boxes of my crap into the car, we set off on our 10 hour drive back to Blighty.

The greatest work of car loading you'll ever see.

Oh, and I also became obsessed with Wisteria at the weekend:

How could I forget?! I had my last last day at school last week, which was sad! I got given homemade macaroons, several hand drawn union jacks, and lots of cards from my pupils which was so cute, I will miss them loads!

Some of the leaving presents I got from my pupils

Me with Dominique and Anne-Lise, the English teachers

I will write another post over the next week reflecting on my past year as an English assistant and my life in general in France, but until then, I'll tell you where I'm off to next Tuesday.

For the next 6 weeks (hopefully) I am going to be a WWOOFer. For those that don't know, that stands for World Wide Organisation for Organic Farming, and is a worldwide scheme in which farmers advertise their farms and hope to receive volunteers, known as WWOOFers, to help on the farm in return for accommodation and food. So I'll be working on a fromagerie high in the Pyrenees for the first three weeks, milking cows and sheep and learning how to make cheese. If you haven't already gathered, cheese is literally in my top favourite things about life in general, so I am mega mega excited. I should have the afternoons free which will give me lots of time to go for walks in the mountains. It better be sunny!

For the other 3 weeks, I'm hoping to go to a vineyard preferably in Provence, but I haven't had much luck so far in finding a place that still has space, as I left it a bit late to contact them. I'm hoping I'll be able to secure somewhere last minute.

Beautiful sky on the way home from France :)

A week of lasts

They say you never know what you have until it's gone, and that sentiment can definitely be applied to this past week for me. Not that it's all gone quite yet. But this week has definitely been the beginning of the end. I shall take you through it.

Sunday night was Mexican night. Alfredo hosted a fantastic soirée in which he was able to share his culture with us, which involved cooking us a typical chicken dish with CACTUS and chillis which tasted 20 times better than it sounds, playing Mexican picture bingo, drinking tequila, and playing musical chairs to Mexican music. It was such a great night and was the moment I realised how much I am going to miss my friends out here.

Clockwise from top left: Alfredo's present to each of us; group photo; Mexican bingo; the chicken and cactus dish

Thursday marked my last day of teaching at the lycée and it was actually sadder than I thought it would be. I had a class with my favourite 2 pupils (which may have something to do with the fact that they are basically my age and are really quite nice to look at) where we just played games, I got my interviews done for my YARP, I got a brilliant reference from my supervisor teachers, and they gave me a lovely little present and card to say thank you and goodbye. In hindsight it would have been nicer to work there more than only once a week, since I don't feel I really got a chance to have an impact on the pupils as they are in rotating class groups rather than set classes, so the most I saw the same pupils over the course of the year was probably only 4 times. Also, I've really enjoyed teaching there; the pupils are much more well-behaved than I was expecting, they're friendly, and it was fairly easy to get them to talk in class. So, good memories.

Leaving card and jewellery set from Sandrine and Manue

Anna and Maggie hosted the last party in Niort on Thursday night, which was a brilliant night with lots of food, lots of alcohol, lots of nationailities, lots of tears for some people, and lots of goodbyes. I have been waiting for the group photos to surface on facebook to put one on the blog, but they have yet to do so.

Alfredo and I went back to the lycée on Friday morning to watch a concert, in which 2 groups of pupils performed to the rest of the school after having spent the week working with professional musicians writing songs and in some cases learning more instruments. I was really impressed with what they'd managed to achieve in just 5 days, and it seemed like a great way for the pupils to end the term in high spirits.

Being treated to a guitar solo

And now summer has arrived it seems! After a week in which April Showers seemed to feature heavily in Melle, yesterday was the hottest day of the year here so far where it reached mid-20s. My day was made even better when I got a phone call from Rob as I was sitting in the sunshine to tell me that he'd just finished the Brighton marathon, making me a super-proud girlfriend. The good weather is meant to continue through the week, which is perfect for the arrival of my auntie Sara and Maurice in Melle tomorrow, so bring it on.

Summer lovin'

A la prochaine, je vous embrasse.

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.

Settling back into French life

Wow it's been a busy couple of weeks since I've come back to France (which will hopefully explain my absence from blog). So as not to bore you all with too much detail, I'll instead just give you a brief overview of what I've been up to in this time.

Thursday 10 Jan

Had Galette des Rois at school today, and my slice had the fève (lucky figurine thing) in, so I got to wear a crown. Yay!

We should totally have 'Kings' Cake' in England

This evening Mike and I were blessed with Aurélie's offer to drive us to Niort for a meal, and as a way to allow us to easily get out of Melle. The 3 of us met Lewis in town where we went for a meal in a 'pub', and I had a yummy pizza. We then met a couple more assistants, and headed on to a bar where there was a Couchsurfing soirée happening. Met more cool French people and spoke lots of French. Great evening.

Friday 11 Jan

This evening there was a gig going on at the Café, so Mike, Alfredo and I went along for that. Performing was a folk/ballady duo, comprising a singer and guitar player. Pretty easy-listening tunes, although they got a bit samey after a while. Nevertheless, was very French, and the Café was buzzing.

Singer Claire Dousset performing at the Café

Saturday 12 Jan

The sales in France don't start until the 2nd week of January, and so this marked the first weekend of the sales. Mike and I headed up to Niort to see what bargains we could find. Bought a nice cosy red jumper.

Sunday 13 Jan

Aurélie once again was kind enough to offer to take us to Niort today to go and watch a film. We saw 'Foxfire' which is about a group of girls who rebel against society by setting up their own secret gang. The film was long and had a dark theme to it, but it kept me entertained to the end. And we later found out that the director of the film (whose most successful film is the famous Entre les Murs) was born in Melle! A proud moment for the 3 of us.

Tuesday 15 Jan

Mike and I organised to go to La Côte de Boeuf (the local steak restaurant) the following day with Aurélie and Alfredo to celebrate my 21st birthday. However, as I was sitting in my kitchen that evening, I got a call on my English phone from my boyfriend. Yes, you guessed it right. Rob had decided to surprise me (once again) by turning up unannounced and spending my 21st with me!

Wednesday 16 Jan

My 21st birthday. And it snowed in the night! Well, a little bit. But it still felt magical!

My wish for snow on my 21st birthday came true!

After a lazy morning opening cards and presents, Rob and I took a walk on the outskirts of Melle, after which I made the most of his biceps by suggesting we go to Aldi and stock up on heavy things so he can carry them home. Ssh, it was my birthday. 

Opening a bar of Dairy Milk was very welcome indeed

Crispy snow on the soggy leaves

I'd cancelled dinner with Mike, Alfredo and Aurélie since Rob's parents had decided to treat us to a meal, just the 2 of us. So we set of to La Côte de Boeuf on a bitterly cold Wednesday night, only to find.....the restaurant was shut. Gutting when you have been excited about the prospect of a succulent juicy steak all day. We ended up instead going to the pizzeria, which was still lovely in any case. I haven't been that full since Christmas Day though. Coming home and watching Notting Hill, it was the perfect birthday surprise to have Rob with me, and I don't know how I'm going to match it when his birthday comes around...

Rob and I pre-dinner

The French really know how to do a good salad

Pizzaaaaaaa :D

Thursday 17 Jan

Said goodbye to Rob as I went off to work, since he was leaving later on. Only worked 2 hours, so was done by lunchtime. Enjoyed a massive school dinner as usual, introducing me to yet more French food. Today was Hachis Parmentier, basically a French version of Shepherd's Pie, followed by French-style trifle. Delicious. After returning to Melle for the afternoon, Mike and I decided to not waste such a sunny day, and so went a nice long walk. And after 4 months here we still discovered hidden parts of Melle we'd not yet come across!

Mike and I discovered on our walk that at the back of the derelict
hospital in Melle there is a chapel. Who knew?! 

Memorial statue to Jacques Bujault, who also has a place named after
him in Melle. I can't remember exactly who he was though

Old water pump

This evening was exciting too. The association that runs where I live had organised a big meal in a nearby village, to which staff, volunteers, and all residents of the association's 10 appartment blocks were invited. Travel was all arranged, and the 3-course meal was all paid for, so I only had to wait for my doorbell to ring. In total there were 25-30 of us at the meal, and apart from the food (salmon terrine followed by pork, pasta and carrot soufflé, followed by pear tarte tatin), there was a quiz and a charade-type game. My table didn't win, but I learnt many interesting things in the quiz, such as the étiquette when a man takes a woman to a restaurant is for the man to enter first, check said restaurant is safe, appropriate and worthy of the woman, then allow the woman to enter! I also met another really nice girl from my block called Angélique, so all in all today was a pretty good day.

Woke up this morning to a little bit more snow, but from seeing friends in England's photos, it's nothing to get excited over! No work for me until next Thursday now, which probably means I should start cracking down reading for my research project :( Bye.

View out my kitchen window this morning. I want more snow!