This term I have decide to write a blog of all the goings on that happen in the land that is Montpellier. I have promised myself that I will try and write everyday if not at least every other day about what has been going on in "ma petite vie" whilst mooching around France. That's what it feels like...mooching.
I will back date my first week so far of my second term in MontiP.
OK so...I arrived back from an "eventful" time in Leeds on Friday - after having viewed at least 15 properties, came back not having signed for any!! However, I did have a really good night out with the girls despite the fact that some chump poured a full pint down my back. I was certainly not impressed and "politely" shared my feelings with him about this. lol!!
On the saturday I went to Granny Pat's 80th Shindig at 51 in Southport, where I had a lovely meal, met family that I didn't even know existed ( yet they knew me!!) but unfortunately had to make a quick exit in order to return home as there was not one item in neither my suitcase nor my mulberry bag, despite the fact that I was due to leave the house at 6am in order to catch my flight from Liverpool to Carcassonne at 9am.
Similarly to last term, I packed, unpacked, packed and repacked my suitcase. However, it was impossible to fit all what I believed was necessary into my suitcase to return back to MontiP. The issue was that on my return to the UK for christmas, I flew with Air France to Manchester and their luggage allowance is 20Kg in comparison to "stingy, we rob you of every penny that you have" Ryanair, whose maxium baggage allowance is 15kg. Therefore immediately I was 5kg over the limit. I checked the excess baggage prices and at the time on their website and it said that they would be charging £12 per kilo.....robbing @*!%^&!$!!!
My case with all its contents vacum-packed I must add, was about 19Kg, so mum insisted that I removed some of my clothes. Reluctantly I said yes only if she would come visit me sharpish and bring them out with her. I was absolutely gutted too that I was that over weight that I couldn't pack the wii :( However, mum has said that is she will try bring it out with her when she comes for her birthday weekend. Although, dad has promised that he will ship it all out to me...so perhaps I should be pestering him about that.
After finally having sorted the baggage situation (we decided that it would be inevitable that the bags would be overweight and I would have to pay whether I liked it or not), Mum and I went and chilled out downstairs in front of the TV, when William rang asking what I would like from the chippy for my "last supper" before leaving little Crostonia behind. I placed my order of chips and curry sauce (curry sauce must always be served separate in a pot, otherwise despite the chippy being a stones throw away, the chips go awfully soggy). I was still full up from the 80th bday meal earlier that afternoon, defo should have ordered a fish though...it smelt amaaaaaazing! I wolfed the chips down (clearly wasn't as full as I thought I was), I don't even think that they touched the sides! I then settled down with madre to watch Air Force One with what's his name that plays Indianna Jones....Harison Ford. I think I only made it 30mins through the film before the chips hit my stomach and I went all sleepy and left for my last night in my own bed with BB. :)
I was up at 5am still packing my handluggage...nightmare!! It was probably at least 5 kg overweight and I was praying that no one would stop me at the airport because my bag was so massively overweight. I had left a note beside my bed to remember BB as he is usually buried somewhere underneath my duvet, usually by my feet, inhalers, phone charger etc and threw those into my mulberry bag.
We left the house at 6am, enroute I was going over my list of items and managed to forget loads of things such as hat, scarf and gloves, pashminas, abercrombie hoodie etc. Also I was meant to go shopping for some cardigans, tshirts and a gillet but had done none of the above!! O well...so it took us 40mins to get to the airport. Mum always likes to be early even though I was going to have to wait about 15 mins for Livo to arrive. I said a quick goodbye to mum...no tears (wayhey!) and attempted to drag my suitcase and mulberry to check-in desk.
I decided to wait for the girls to arrive. Emily was the first. We both checked in and I was slammed with a £42 excess baggage charge as the charge had actually gone up to £14 PER KILO. Thats almost half of what I paid for the flight....so before leaving Blighty and arriving in France I was officially skint!!
The flight was very quick to Carcassonne. I missed most of it because I was asleep the whole journey until the point of the wheels hitting the runway, with my mouth wide open...how attractive!! We took the Navette to the station, only to find that due to the "tretcherous" winds in the south of france earlier that week that all trains were cancelled. Luckily 3 replacement busses were being put on to Montpellier as this was the closest running station in the region and this was were people would be able to make connections to their destination. In the meantime of discovering this we were doing shuttle runs to the toilets, getting food in Maccies, sorting tickets and minding the baggage.
We waited for the busses for a two hours!! We finally got our luggage loaded onto a small coach and got onto the coach to find that there wasn't enough seats for all of us. There were about 15 of us without a seat. We complained to the driver but he told us that although the station told us 3 busses would be arriving this would be the only 1 for the day. So 15 people, including me were sat with our legs wrapped round our ears for 4 hours. You certainly wouldn't get that in England!! Typical french!! What was meant to be a 6 hour journey soon turned into 12. When I did eventually get a seat, which was soon after we had dropped some passengers off at Narbonne, I was unfortunately sat next to a really really REALLY smelly frenchman, who smelt like he hadn't had a wash for days. I swear they either sweat perfusely or have never heard of deodorant...in fact I would say both actually. I put harry potter on my ipod and fell asleep once again with my mouth wide open which I hope was just as pleasant for the smelly man as he was!! Lol.
We arrived in Montpellier four and a half hours later, dragged our cases to the flat. Blitzed it, changed the bedding , then went out for a slap up meal at a steak restaurant called "Assiette du boeuf". On word...delicious! I ate fillet steak, au point, with harricot vert and sauted potates. After...bobos :)
Monday, Allie and I had a well deserved lie in and around midday we ventured to the supermarche for our "big shop". Unfortunately we had picked a poor time of the day to go as the shelves were pretty bare so we decided to head to the local supermarche in town for the rest of the items on our shopping lists. We had to be up at university to collect our new timetables at 5pm. We headed up on the tram after having recharged our passes and were greeted by the usual tramps and drunkards on the tram. Welcome back to Montpellier!!
I collected my timetable having passed ALL my exams and collected my exam results, which I am really proud of :) and I will be collecting my diploma this week. As a result I am now in B2 group 4, having moved up from B1 group 5. The timetable isn't too bad. I am never in university any later than 12.30pm apart from on a wednesday where I am in until 6pm. However, I do have two 8.30am starts and two 9am starts. I need to get used to these early mornings. I spent the rest of the evening chilling with Livo, Liv, Amy, Tanya and Jonjo at "shiterdine" as we have now renamed "citadine" where the other girls live. This is because they winge about where they live all the time. Although they get very offended if we call it that despite the fact that they created the name "shiterdine".
My first class was on tuesday at 8.30am. Two hours of oral...what a great start to the term!! It was fairly easy going though, as the teacher talked at us for at least and hour and a quarter then we finally got down to the nitty gritty of introducing ourselves and stating what we would personally like to achieve from the classes. My second class was an option: Sciences. Not really my bag but i thought that I would try something different to literature based courses. Especially as this doesn't count towards my degree so it doesn't matter if I only just scrape a pass.
Later that evening we all had pre drinks round at ours before heading off to the aussie bar (murder she wrote). Jonjo arrived at mine with a little present for me. It was a video that he had made of my 21st birthday party in leeds. Its really really good...extremely funny. I will try and upload it later.
Wednesday was a little difficult. I had to be in uni at 9am and I only got to bed at 2.30am. Not cool, cant be missing classes during the first week of term. Allie had warned me about a certain teacher that I have on a wednesday afternoon 3-6pm and now I know why. She really is a crank!! I swear to god she sounds like she smokes at least 100 a day. No exageration there! She also cant help but say errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm, during all her pauses and repeate "eh" at the end of every question!! Vile!! She literaly blabbed at us for three hours. Extremely boring and I honestly can say that I learnt absolutely nothing that lesson and wouldnt be surprised if it continued that way!! I am going to have to try really hard in her classes to keep up to scratch with my grammar if I want to pass this level at the end of term. :(
After uni on wednesday I nipped home, threw my bags in and legged it to the cinema in town to watch "King Guillaume" a french disney comedy. It was quite entertaining and easy enough to understand, maybe not all the way through, but most of it. We are hoping to go the the cinema one night a week from now on. There are loads of good films out at the moment...yet all dubbed in french. This often means that the actor as stopped talking about five minute ago yet the dubbed voice still continues over the scene.
Thursday, pas de university as a result of a nation wide strike. No trams were running which meant no university, which I suppose it is something to thank the french for. Bloody annoying at the same time because you can't go anywhere else other than town. As a result I met with Livo, Liv and Amy to go for a few bevvies on comedie and watch what we thought would be a small march through the centre of town. God we were wrong!! There were 45,000 people marching through the centre of town on strike as a result of the worsening economic situation in France. Try being in England!! It all got a bit hectic when people started setting of fireworks and firecrackers. The sound they made were so loud- we decided to leave as it was all going a little crazy and getting rather rowdy.
Friday I chilled at home watching prison break and gossip girl and went and met Tanya for a coffee and a crepe on comedie. We nipped to the supermarche for some goodies to take up to "shiterdine" where we were going to watch a film and generally chat and chill. In the end we didnt watch a film as we were all too busy chatting away and trying to organise our trip to Marseille to see Oasis (or Oh-wa-siiiiz as the French say). We manage to book our hostel for the evening which works out at 23 euros each which is really good. I'm very excited about it all now.
Saturday Liv, Amy and I arranged to go to Ikea for a mooch. Unfortnately it was pissing it down with rain! We still decided that we would go for something to do. We ate lunch there as they do great hotdogs!! I bought a throw for my bed and a new hanging shelf thing for my clothes rail..cheap as chips 5 euros...bargin! In the evening we decided that we would go bowling. It was hilarious because we didn't have the barriers/bumpers up so we were doing really rubbish...well I was, I was loosing massively. Nothing new there!! Jonjo and I went and asked could we have the barriers up and the woman laughed at us and told us that they are only for 11year olds and under!! The shame!! The bowling place is great. There are 20 lanes downstairs and 20 upstairs and also a massive go-karting track which I am really eager to go and whoop jonjo's arse round there! I can't wait!!
And now finally we reach today: Sunday. Jonjo came round at 11am to watch the Hollyoaks omnibus. We had a few issues with the signal of the telly due to the rain. We kept flicking up a channel then back down one and this seemed to temporarelly solve the problem. We then nipped out to grab a hot chicken and a baguette for lunch and made the most amazing hot chicken sandwiches. I spoke to my ma also on skype to arrange when she and william would be coming to visit me :) I am now currently sat on my bed and will attempt to do some uni work before I meet the girls to go and watch the Liverpool v. Chelsea match at Fitzpatricks irish pub. I have been looking forward to going there since being at home for a pint of cider and black and watching the reds. Fingers crossed we will win!
