Rouen- day 1 and 2

Bonjour mon amis!

I'll start by telling you about the journey where every possible thing that could go wrong......went wrong! To begin with my luggage was much too heavy and i was being asked to pay an extra 70 pounds so i opened it up in the middle of Luton airport and handed half the contents over to ny dad. Thank you dad!After paying an extra 18 pounds, checking in and getting through customs, we wer'nt out of the water yet! Grace was given a boarding pass with my name written on it. With half 20 left before we had to board the plane, we rushed back and told someone behind the help desk.



Day one

Grace, Liz and I were greeted by a man holding up a sign, which has always been my dream. It said Erasmus on it not ‘Mary’ but it was still exciting. He recognised that I was wearing red, which I had arranged to do and came over to say hello. We carted our bags to Cecile’s boy friends car, where we crammed them in and got dropped of to our homes for the next three months. Liz is living with me for a week as her exchange partner Orida is working in Rouen for a week before coming to Norwich. My apartment is tres nice. It has lots of character. I feel quite sorry for Cecile as I cleared all trace of character from my room so she could have space. Oh well! So Grace went to her house which is a 3 minute walk from my house and Liz and I sat in my apartment feeling quite daunted, out of our depths and wishing we’d learnt more French before arriving. Luckily I bought a large supply of tea bags with me and tea is always the most comforting thing in times of distress so we went on a search for milk and other groceries.

Our troubles were not over yet though. More problems arose in the queue for the food. I had a bag of cherry tomatos that…..i had not weighed. The women tried to explain but I just stared at her blankly and then she asked if anyone in the queue spoke English. No one did. I left all my shopping and I walked back to the isle I had found them before deciding the tomatos really weren’t worth all this trouble so I left them. When paying for my shopping I was asked if I wanted a bag. Liz and I keep on getting really dumb founded when ever anyone says anything to us in French even we know what they mean, we just freeze and stare at them blankly. I’m hoping to stop doing this.


We brought brie among other things, settled in properly and went over to grace’s house. Grace had texted Kevin, a friend of simon (the man who owns her house) a few time so we decided to invite him round. We had a lovely evening playing cards, drinking wine and singing ‘American Pie’ which is one of the only songs I know on the guitar.
















Day 2
We awoke and had pain au chocolate for breakfast. It was quite a slow morning as we didn’t leave the house until about 12.00 to meet Grace. We just decided to explore and be tourists for the day. First stop the Saint Ouen Cathedral. This was the first of our run ins with the police. It seems there is some sort of a conspiracy against us. They follow us around where ever we go. We were just taking photos there and Grace and I thought it might be fun to jump off a little wall and then 8 police men appeared out of no where. We quickly moved on. The next thing we did was buy our 3 mobile phones so we could all be in contact with each other. Our other phones only allow texting and were very expensive. This will always be place I made an idiot out of my self. I don’t know why but, from no where I came out with ‘merci pourquoi’- thank you why. I meant merci beaucoup. The sales assistant gave someone else in the que a confused ‘what a weirdo’ expression and smiled politely.


























So we took our matching red phone which were a bargain of 30 euros and went to buy credit from another shop. We then proceeded to explore. I think the pictures speak for them selves. It’s absolutely beautiful here. It almost seem to too easy to take good photos as every where you turn is stunning.

We then went to the local supermarket and did a proper shop. Liz decided to cook dinner for us. She made a lovely lentil curry. Grace added to that with a chick pea dish. I poured the wine and promised to cook the next night. So we scuffed that down as fast as possible as we had planned to go and see ‘Sweeney Todd’ at the cinema at 6.30. It was in English but there were French subtitles which I’m sorry to admit, I ignored. After the film, which was very good indeed we went back to grace’s house and had some camomile tea. Very cosy.














Day three

We left the house about 10.30 in search of an internet café and to hunt out the art school. The first café we went into turned out to be just for people looking for work or somewhere to live. We eventually found somewhere and we had difficulty with the mixed up key boards and decided to write our blogs on our lap tops back at the house. There was also no assessable @ sign so Grace had the bright idea of typing in ‘at sign’ to google and with abit of copy and paste we were away. After Face book, myspace and such like had been checked our time there was done.

When we’d left the café, we whipped out our maps, like the tourists that we are… for the time being and headed in the direction of the art school. It is absolutely stunning. We were calmly taking photos for about five minute until who should show up…about 10 policemen again. I hate the way they walk around in such large groups. It’s very intimidating. They are permanently watching us though! So we departed from there and decided to stop off in a café for some hot chocolate. This was very delicious but in very small cups. Liz and I then split off from grace. We listened to a learn French cd, recited it for about an hour and then realised we probably wouldn’t remember anything if we listen to it for too long so decided to learn it in small chunks and also by way of error ‘thank you why’. Tonight we are planning to go out to a bar and see where the night takes us.

Au revoir pour maintenant!

I will add the photos soon. I'm goung to bring my lap top in tomorrow.