30 March onwards
Yeah I’ve got bit behind on my blog as I’ve been busy and then forget things. Here’s what I wrote last week. Sorry mum I haven’t written properly about your time here yet but it was lovely having you and dad come and visit and you know my friends adored your dancing! Just to jump ahead abit, yeas for the past week I’ve been on holiday from art school and tomorrow Monpellia! I’ll write soon properly.
Sunday
Well I didn’t do much. I went for a walk along the riverside and contemplated going up the big hill but changed my mind when I got there.

Monday painting painting painting! Grace had told me the clocks were going had gone forward the day before and told me to tell the others but I forgot and subsequently when I told Liz and Hannah the next day, they felt like they’d lost an hour of their life. Liz thought she was turning up early to paint and she wasn’t. It’s all my fault! For no reason in particular we all decided to go to the supermarket and buy red wine, grapes, bread, and 4 differernt types of cheeses. This is the life. Feeling very French, we went back to Graces to begin our session of endless amounts eating and afternoon drinking. We watched the film ‘the wedding crashers’.

We left at around 7.30 feeling a little tipsy and surprised at how light it was outside. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because the clocks went forward… Later on that evening we decided to go to O’kalloghans just because it was so light out still, it didn’t feel right staying in. We didn’t drink though. I ordered a coke but they’d run out!!!!! So I had an Orangina. There was a singer in there playing typical bar songs, like Amy Winehouse, Oasis and such like. It was really funny because he was sitting at the bar, facing the bar so we didn’t see his face all night. I guess he had stage fright. There was only about 10 people in the bar anyway so we felt a bit rude leaving when we did. We were tired a feeling the effects of stuffing our faces with wine and cheese though.

I went in to the art school pretty early and finished my painting…I think. I might go back to it. I got a call from Grace asking if I want to go out to café Cheri so I packed up and went to meet her. I got the usual- hot chocolate. After an hour or so in there I was feeling pretty stuffy so I decided to go for a little walk which ended up being a 2 hour walk. I decided to cross the bridge! Crossing the bridge seems like coming to the edge of the world or something. My side of the bridge is like this protected little world, like in the trueman show. I’d been across a few times before, once for the punk concert and once for the comedy show at the Scottish pub but I’d never been in the day and I’d never been alone! It turns out there’s loads more shops over there, a market and another cathedral. After all that walking I was exhausted so I stopped off at Hannah’s on the way back and borrowed a film.

Tuesday
Liz and I painted in the studio. Not too sure what Hannah and Grace were up to. We were supposed to meet Patricia at around 5-6 to go to an exhibition where students from beaux art were collaborating with another art school. Patricia didn’t turn up until about 6.30 to pick us up. So while we were waiting outside, Grace went into a little shop to guy a card and made the mistake of saying ‘saluuuuut!’ to the old woman behind the counter who quickly corrected her rude French by replying ‘Bonjour mademoiselle…’. She’s just too friendly! The other day we were in virgin and she said ‘tu’ instead of ‘vous’ to the man behind the counter. He kept looking at us strangely as if we’d just come on to him or something and then he said ‘you know….you only say ‘tu’ to close friends and family? Whoops! She’ll remember one day….

The exhibition was pretty cramp. The first thing we saw when we walked in was performance art where a woman originally dressed in white, was stood on a table and people were encouraged to through paint on her while she recited some French I didn’t understand. I’m not sure the reason behind this. We walked on and there was an installation of a 1940’s room. We think the theme was disturbance as the phone was left of the hook and the person who ‘lived’ there seemed to be in the middle of a cross word. Other things in the exhibition included a few paintings, a video montage of films clips placed on a loop to change the meaning.

We’d driven outside of Rouen to get to this exhibition and it was right next to Patricia’s
parents house so she decided to go in while we were at the exhibition. She said she’d drive us home or if we found someone to get a lift off, to go on without her. The truth of the matter was we were ready to go home after about half an hour and didn’t really want to go up to someone and say bonsoir avez vous un voiture? Hint hint not so subtly. So, we decided to walk. We new the vague direction and we just thought we’d follow directions. It would have been a 1 hour walk maybe but we only got half way when we noticed a car beeping and eventually stopping. It was Patricia. She said she’d been asking everyone at the exhibition where we were and was so shocked to see that we’d walked. Everyone here’s lazy and drives everywhere even if it’s a 5 minute walk. Anyway we jumped in the car and wre greatful of thr lift as it had started to rain.

We met up with Quintin aka Mika, well we’ve changed his name to Mika and Charlie again. They brought a friend called … and we all went to the opening night of a new bar. The bar was really unusual looking with purple stripes on the walls and mirror circular tables. The drinks were pretty expensive, for France so we moved on quite soon. Because we went to the bar before dinner and I hadn’t really eaten any lunch, I felt a bit drunk on my 1 glass of wine. I more than made up for my lack of eating at this restaurant. We went to a Fondu restaurant but the vegetarian option of fondu had cider in it and if I have one drop of cider I’m sick for a week. Instead I had this cheese potato bake thing in a casserole dish which looked like a meal for three. As if this wasn’t enough, they gave me a side salad too. I was full. After stuffing ourselves to the max, we all jumped in Mika’s car and he drove us too Grace’s house to play some music. Mika brought his electric guitar again and also his Ukulele which I had a go on. So much fun!

Wednesday
Went into the studio for another day of painting.

Thursday

For some reason I got it into my head that my parents were arriving today. It might be because Hannahs parents were arriving, I’m not sure but anyway I turned up at the station to pick them up and they were no where to be seen. I just happened to run out of credit on my engish phone just as I needed it too! It always seems to be the way! So about an hour later I realised I’d got the wrong day and they were coming the next day…. Whoops! Well done Mary…

So I kind of wasted the whole afternoon hanging around, getting credit on the net. It was a gorgeous day so I walked to Liz’s had some tea, played guitar and headed back into town to meet everyone. That evening we went out for a meal with Mika, Christophe, Charlie, and two new people called Laura and Timothe. We went to a delicious pizza place with typically French pizza toppings like camembert and emmental. I can’t keep living like this! It’s too expensive! Mika says he goes out for meals about 3 nights a week. I suppose their tuition fee here is only 400 euro so they can afford it.

Frdiay
Right second time lucky! I turned up at the station at 2 o clock and there my parents were, the day they said they would be. I went over and hugged them and escorted them out the station towards my house. We were heading up Grace’s road to get to my apartment, when we ran into Hannah, her mum and sister. We stopped for a little chat, carried on walking until who should pop her head out the window, Grace! She shouted down to us for a few minutes then we said we’d see her soon and walked on. A few minutes later we were finally in my lovely apartment. My parents seemed impressed. They hadn’t eaten all day so I gave them some French bread, cheeses, grapes and red wine, which my mum managed to spill all over Celils yellow through. Like mother like daughter.

About an hour later I decided to take them into the art school as this would be the last day they could see it because of the holidays coming up. On the way just as we were passing the fountain we ran into Liz. 3 in one day! She was waiting to meet Grace and they were going to see a French band with love called BB Brune at Mika’s university ball. I only know one song which feature the only words ‘dis moi!’. We arrived at the art school where I showed them my space and such like and then we went for a drink at a local café. We stopped off at the supermarket to pick up some food and wine and returned home to get changed. My dad thought it was stuffy and suggested I opened the window so I did so and a few minutes later my mum fluffed down on the day where the open window was. The next thing we knew she was gasping in excruciating pain and blood was poring from her head! My dad was shouting get some tissue he said later that his heart was beating so fast. Thank god her head stopped bleeding pretty soon and it wasn’t fatal! Mum always hurts herself on holiday whether it’s a jelly fish sting or a twisted ankle, there’s always drama.

When we’d run into Hannah and family earlier we’d arranged to out for meal with them. We met at the church near the art school and I decided to take them to the same restaurant we’d gone to a few nights before.

Had a brilliant night out in a pub called saxo. Live music and everyone got up and started dancing. My parents leading the way!