Automne

It was a picture perfect autumn day today and so warm, 17 degrees! To celebrate I decided to walk into Paris along La Coulée Verte (the green corridor), after some convincing Rachael decided to come too. It's about 9km into Paris (literally just inside Paris it stops!). I've only ever gone as far as Fountenay-aux-Rose, which is still about 7km from Paris. It is such a nice idea to have a car free, vegetated walkway all the way into Paris, although admittedly the closer you got to Paris the less 'green'it became. In the last stretch it was basically just walking next to a hedge! With the leaves changing colour it was so pretty.
There were so many different colours - Orange!
Yellow!
Purple!
A mix of colours
I walk past these trees everyday on the way to school, they seem to have changed colour overnight - amazing!
A stand of fairy apples.
We packed a picnic and stopped halfway to sit in the sun and eat. Yes, no jumper and its the last day of October! We were very very lucky!

We were planning on trying to get all the way to Tour Montparnasse but we got sidetracked by a market...so much fun! Got a pair of shoes for 5Euro. So guess where all your christmas presents are coming from!

Salon du Chocolat

Everyone knows (and can see) that I love chocolate. At the moment there is a huge chocolate exhibition in Paris called Salon du Chocolat.It has everything chocolate. We tried chocolate from heaps of different countries, hot chocolate, chocolate wine, chocolate truffles, chocolate fondue, watched chocolate bars being made, saw the heads of models in a chocolate fashion parade and now I don't think I can even look at chocolate again without being sick! Nothing was very cheap but yay for free samples!A sculpture of chocolate hearts...make a good valentines day present!

Some of the chocolate fashion being modeled.
Artisan chocolate bars, they had every kind of addition imaginable added.
MMM chocolate fountain!
Giant marshmellow chocolate bear anyone?

How to become Parisian in 1 hour

On Friday night, we went off to the comedy show 'How to become Parisian in one hour'. It was very funny, you need to have lived here to understand some of the humour. Here is a you tube ad for it.
Some of it was overacted a bit, but still funny and a nice way to start the long weekend. I've been thinking about some of the stuff he said, like getting a seat in the metro and the blank faces everyone has. And getting a waiter's attention, I think I have perfected the Parisian pfft!

UK visit!

After what felt like the longest day at school ever, I finally left class to catch my plane to Bristol. There was maintenance being done on the RER B so had to change at Gare du Nord which was a nightmare. My ticket said the gate closed at 18.25, I got there at 18.20 and the little bitchy french easyjet person told me that the gate was closed, I showed her my ticket and she said 'No, it closed at 18.15'. Luckily I wasn't taking hand luggage so I could just walk through but it gave me a heart attack. Budget airlines suck! The flight to Bristol takes less than hour (shorter time than it takes for me to get the train to the airport). Got picked up in Bristol by Aunty Fe and was resting with my feet up in Kim & Matt's place within 2hrs of leaving Paris - it is so close!
After rising quite early, we were off to Bristol shopping for winter clothes & boots. Primark is my new favourite shop, everything is so cheap! The best thing I liked about the shopping centre was the toilets, they were so nice & clean and the didn't smell horrible. I could have quite easily moved in! I hate going to the toilets in Paris, they are few and far between and are normally disgusting, unhygienic cesspits - gross!
After a marathon shopping session and a really nice lunch in a tapas bar, it was back to Glastonbury to start the birthday celebrations for Kim! We went to the Wookie-Hole Inn, the food was really nice and the wine was flowing, such a nice dinner! Here's a photo of Jess's ice cream - yum!
After drinking copious amounts of wine, we decided to head into Wells for a few more drinks. We went to the King's Head first (photo below!) and left shorlty after, a random girl just came over to Kim and was like - what are you looking at, obviously wnating a fight -crazy crazy people!After King's head we went to Kudos - the local nightclub (it hasn't changed a bit since I was last there - still has the orange walls!). We stayed until it closed just to prove that we are still young enough to do that, crawled into bed at an ungodly hour and was awoken by the urgent call of the boys for breakfast. Went to a lovely farmhouse and had a proper english breakfast-pork sausage sandwhich - yum! After finishing breakfast at about 11am, we were off for roast lunch with the family.. soo much good food! Do we look hungover?

We managed to fit 12 people around the table, was a very brief catch up with the family as I had a plane to catch at 4pm but will be back for Xmas which will be nice!
I was quite sad to leave UK, I felt so comfortable and safe there. When I arrived in Paris, I was in a panic, kept checking that my phone & wallet were still in my bag, freaking out about catching the right train, such a weird feeling considering I was 'home'. It took forever to get home, just couldn't ever get connecting trains or buses - I landed at 6.30pm and got home at 9.30pm. Will have to do UK mmore often since you can get such cheap tickets and it is not very far away at all (once u get to the airport anyway!).

I apologise for the lack of photos but after nuit du styx, my camera was flat & while I packed my charger I didn't have an adaptor for UK...so no photos :(

Nuit de Styx

Although I am not a big fan of techno music, I was persuaded to go to Nuit de Styx which is a massive dance party held at Ecole Polytechnique (a huge college in Massy). It only cost us 15Euro and we got 5 drink tickets and a free bus there and back so I couldn't stay at home! We starting drinking in my room, lots of red bull and vodka. Unfortunately I read the bus timetable wrong and we 'missed' the bus. Turns out it was late anyway but we ended up taking the train and walking what felt like miles to get there (up a bloody great big hill!) - I'm surprised we weren't sober by the time we got there. When got in, they gave us each a plastic glass to reuse during the night (makes a nice souvenir!). It was a great atmosphere, have a look at the promo video to get what I mean!
After finalling getting there at about 12.30pm, we danced and drank some weird concostion of red & white wine, whiskey & some sort of cordial -yuck but potent! There were 2 free buses home, one at 2am and the next one at 4.20am. Ofcourse we missed the 2am one since we had only been there a few hours! But by 3pm, I was so over techno music and we still had to wait for like and hour and a half for the bus. Went to stand out in the freezing cold waiting for our bus. Do I look drunk in this photo?
There were 1000's of people waiting to get onto a bus, absolutely crazy, everyone mobbing the buses as they arrived. We finally got on the right bus and was in bed at 5.30am (not bad for an old girl on a week night!). Was up again at 9am to go to an exam a 10pm! An afternoon of boring group work and then off to the UK - was such a long day!Yay, pretty lights...

Paris Again!

Rachel had a friend visit for the weekend so it was off to visit the same sights of Paris AGAIN! And while I am very over seeing the major sights there is always something slightly different to see each time.These photos are in no particular order.

As much as I love Seine river cruises, this is probably the last one I'll do until it gets warmer - was freezing!Although we are experts at it now, bring our own wine, glasses and snacks, best view you'll get having dinner and so uch cheaper than the expensive 'dinner' cruises!
This was outside the Disney store on the Champs Elysees for halloween , the whole thing is made of lollies, nougat for the face and licorice for all the black - amazing!
It was a stromy day in Paris, as the sunset behind the Eiffel Tower we got this amazing dusty pink sunset.
Walking past the Louvre, we saw this guy feeding birds right out of his hand.
There was an art exhibition in the Jardin de Tuilleries (weird abstract art), the dead tree in the pond isn't normally there.
You can just see the Sacre Couer through the haze, this was taken from the top of the Arc de Triumph.
The stromy sky was amazing that day, wish I was a professional photographer or had a decent camera!

Metro-Boulot-DoDo

Metro-Boulot-DoDo is a french saying that is used when replying to what's new? It's basically the same as saying nothing new is happening. Metro is obvioulsy referring to public transport, boulot is a colloquial term for a job and dodo come from the verb to sleep 'dormir', little french kids say I want to go 'dodo'.
Why I am I saying this because lifs here is becoming so ordinary, I'm in a routine even though I am on the other side of the world.. however everything is not as it seems!
For starters I walk to school and back everyday so don't take the metro and it is a really nice walk everyday. Here are a few snaps...Afternoon Sun
Autumn Leaves
Fresh baked baguettes anyone?
A round of boules underway
Thankgod I walk because there has been a transport strike on, it started on Tuesday and I believe it ended yesterday (a total of 4 days). The strikes are actually really well organised, they know how many trains aren't going to run and put on extra buses etc. But it is still a pain in the neck, for example on Friday there were no trains into the city from 12-4pm...absolutely none, they closed the station. Do you want to know why they are striking? Because the government raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. Now I'm pretty sure Australia has put in a plan to change the retirement age to 65 by 2014. I only know this because I looked it up, pretty sure it wasn't a big thing. The upside to this is that we didn't have a few of our classes as our lecturers couldn't get here but we couldn't actually go anywhere exciting because there were no trains... catch 22 situation!

Now I don't actually work, but attending class all day every day pretty much counts, on Thursdays I'm at school until 8.30pm with language courses, on Wednesdays I have a petit boulot teaching english to a family (2 kids and their mum) which is nice to get some pocket money but also a pain because its another whole day gone with no personal time... My course is still pretty disappointing but the complaints are piling up, both from exchnage students and the french students so hoepfully something will be done. For example, we have a class called Quality Control, basically it gose over ISO14000 and ISO9000, incredibly boring and I'm not sure we need 9 hours of our life dedicated to it since it is a well documented process and doens't really need you to be particularly savy. But, that is beside the point, the lecture slides that were presented to us were just downloaded from the internet (no citation etc.), they were just presented as if they were his slides. So unprofessional and he just read them from the screen anyway..so unimpressed especially with the amount of money I am paying for this supposedly 'world class' education!

On the 'dodo' side there is not a lot of that going on either. We usually end up in one anothers rooms, drinking cheap bottles of wine and listening to music at all hours of the night.
We eventually get told to shut up - at which point we move to another room and piss off another corridor! We are sharing cultural differences so I maintain that it is a learning experience, for example, on Thursday night I learnt the different noises that animals make in the world...pigs turn out to be the funniest - how did english end up with oink oink?
Think we had drunk a little too much at this stage
In conclusion, while life is routine it is still amazing to be here and I'm having the time of my life apart from the occasional issue at school :)

Parc Asterix

Last weekend, we ahd the most gorgeous weather for autumn, clear and sunny and it got all the way upto 20degrees on Saturday! On Saturday we went shopping at a big mall which is about 25 minutes away on the bus, was quite nice to have everything there in one place and there was a huge supermarket there that had lots of gluten free goodies for me - yay! I had to leave early as I had a meeting with my project supervisor(yes on a Saturday...). On Sunday, we were off to Parc Asterix (similiar to Disneyland but with Asterix). everyone else had a pretty good idea about Asterix, Obelix and the like from their childhood. I vaguely remember reading some of the comics, I definately had a Disney childhood!
There was one problem with our plan, the park is located close to the airport (which is on the other side of Paris) and the RER B is currently under repair so in order to get there we had to take a train, and then 2 buses - fun! We left at 9am and got to the park just after 12pm, which included a 40 min wait at the airport for the bus to the park! Photo above on the train (not a good photo of me!) and below on the bus :)

But we finally arrived, it was great, the park was really quiet and we hardly had to wait to get onto any rides. They were all so much fun. I'm contemplating getting a year long ticket! There were a few water rides which would be good fun in summer, we went on one that we thought wasn't going to get us too wet and I got soaked as did a few others!
Probably the only line we waited in - about 1hr. Was totally not worth it, I still don't understand why everyone was waiting there...
Yay fairy floss, we did all the things are parents wouldn't have allowed us to do, had chips for lunch, overdosed on sugar from fairy-floss, got wet...
All ready to go have fun after sitting on the bus for 3 hrs! The park was laid out in a similiar way to Disneyland with various 'worlds', like Greek world, Roman world etc, apparently they each related to one of Asterix's adventures.
With one the characters, not actually sure who but everyone was really excited...
Overall, it was such a great day spent with friends from all over the world while the sun was shining.

D Day

Matt left for Timor today and I know I've said goodbye already but I felt like I was doing it all over again today for some reason, even though I only managed to speak with him for a few minutes in the last week! Silly I know, but I have been in bad spirits all day today and even though my course was significantly more pointless today I'm really down for no other reason. I'm so glad that I am in Paris and already a bit used to being apart! Although, when I look at his ugly face I don't know why I miss him so much...

Octoberfest!

I'm so so glad that I made it to Octoberfest last weekend, it was one of the best weekends ever, I was miserable coming back to Paris! Being the 200th anniversary was even more special. Rachel & I caught the bus from Paris (meant to be at 7pm but it only arrived at 8pm!) to Munich which is only about 8ookm but we managed to only get there at 10.30am! Admittedly we had a bunch of wankers at the back of the bus that had already started partying so insisted on stopping for a cigarette break for what felt like every 45 minutes! However after a sleeping tablet and sharing a bottle of wine I soon got to sleep. We didn't have any accomodation booked for the Saturday night that we were there so we were distinctly aware that this may be the last decent sleep we would get somewhere warm until Sunday night! We were super super excited on the bus, I was worried that we had our hopes so high that the weekend would only be a disappointment..boy was I wrong!The first thing we noticed about Munich is that everyone is so friendly and helpful, we were stopped on a corner to try and find where we were and where we should be going and this really nice guy with a baby just stopped without asking to help us. Such a big difference from when you are in Paris, where taking out a map as a tourist is a sin against all Parisiennes!

Arriving in Munich at 10.30am we knew we were not going to get into a tent so wondered around Munich and stopped for our first litre of beer and Pretzel for lunch!
Arriving at Octoberfest was like arriving at a fantasy world, there was so much going on, people everywhere, the smell was amazing (roasted sweet nuts and sausages and pretzels....scrummy when compared to the sewage smell that you get walking around Paris!). We walked past a few of the beer tents but since there was so much else to explore we decided to just wonder around absorbign and try and get a drink elsewhere. Found a little area serving Weisbeir which didn't look too appetising (it was cloudy) but actually tasted alright for a beer! We met some Germans wearing real lederhozen -everyone wears traditional dress there (so cute!).



They took us to the traditional area that was there for the 200th anniversary with all the traditional events and food etc. We were lucky and managed to find a corner of a table to perch and were lucky enough to get the best waiter who brought us beer and food whenever we caught his eye. He was lovley, our table was good fun and we ended up staying there until closing time which was quite early!



afterwards we decided to go on a few of the rides, the most scary ones we could find, a big roller coaster and one of those flicky things that spin you around and around, all very fun!



Then it was time to try and find a place to sleep! We decided to try at least to ask the hotels if they had a spare room. The first hotel we walked into had a free room for 120 Euro walking distance to Octoberfest...but it gets even better, we managed to find a single room to share for 70Euro (no shower, but a sink and a shared toilet). It was all under the table and we had to leave before 7am so the receptionist wouldnt get into trouble but you couldn't find a hostel for that much and we were considering paying 65Euro a night for a tent! The world definately wanted us at Octoberfest!
After a decent (albeit quite short) nights sleep we headed to Macca's for breakfast, then the train sttaion to drop off our bags in a locker which were now dead heavy from the beer mugs we stole! We arrived at Octoberfest at about 8.30pm and chose our beer tent. By 9am we were sitting in side ready to party!
The beer and pickle for 2nd breakfast pretty much defines the rest of these photos!



The atmosphere in the beer tents is amazing, its the biggest party ever, everyone is there to have a good time, there is no queing at a bar for a drink, the music is great, there are games and songs and yes it is awesome and everyone needs to go at some point!
The bus trip back was absolute torture, instead of getting back at 9am, we only got into Paris at about 12pm. Sitting on a bus with a hangover for 16hrs is not fun but was still totally worth it!