Thursday, July 12th

My alarm wakes me up but not my room mate Charlotte. It's early, so the view from our terrace is pretty quiet.

The wall of the bathroom is covered in these postcard sizes pictures/quotes. It's kinda cute, really. And a time check before I take a shower.

We are staying with a host family, to get the "true French experience" This, apparently, involves tea in a bowl and stale bread. I'm British, tea just isn't meant to be like that. After, I read. The day before we were 20 minutes late to school so we have time to kill now.

On the way to school, we seet a pair of shoes dangling from a liine over the street. We also stop for a croissant from one of the 3225353 boulanger's.

We were 20 minutes to early that day, so we chill outside school. In class, I sit beside a scary looking Thomas. We basically just sit there and colour in the rectangles in our copies.

But boredom does not last long because we're sent out on an assignment - ask random French people kinda random questions. Thankfully, I'm with Erina.

We get the assignment done quickly, so we shop for a bit then we find Thomas, who is colouring squares on his copy. On the way back to school, a police man is directing traffic. This amuses me, mostly because I don't remember the last time I saw it.

Several hours of French grammar later, it's lunch. We eat in the park, which has this really long walkway. Someone suggests they have a race. So Thomas, Danielle and Robert race. Danielle won which many protests of "I let her win" and "I was wearing flip flops!!!"

After lunch, we have to do this scavenger hunt with pictures. They gave us a list of 20 things to take a picture of. This involved a lot of walking around and sitting in cafes (and getting lost)

My group, minus Sarah, in the park. Charlotte and I were afraid to go into the park, because every time we walked by it there was an ambulance there. Anyway, one of the tasks was to take a picture of a canon. There was no canons in the city that we knew of, so we had a drawin contest to see who could draw the best picture so we could take a picture of it. Some of the attempts were brilliant.

I don't know what you call these in English or French. But it's like flavoured ice? It was about 15.00 by then and about 30 degrees so it was pretty hot. Ice cooled you off a bit.

We were meant to go to the beach but it was too windy so we decide to go a lake. The lake was in the middle of nowhere. We turn a corner and we see this complete barren land. When were eventually see the lake it's like 'IS IT A MIRAGE?!!" It was so, so hot and most of us had run out of water.

I read "the Kite Runner" a bit more until Ellen asked to borrow it. So I gave it to her and coloured some of my copy. I wasn't really concentrating though, which is why it's not right. But I have since finished it, front and back. That's what I've achieved in my time here.

I read the free newspaper (the "world" page) and listen to Danielle, who is in her element talking about rugby with a guy from Hong Kong.

The Italians play some soccer, though, frankly, it cannot be called soccer but just showing off. It's latish and we're hungry so I pull out some over priced cookies I bought earlier. We don't end up eating them though.

The pizza comes, thank god. We devour it. Robert becomes our resident bartender.

Leaving the lake, I take some photos that don't do the sunset justice.

A stage was being set up - in the middle of noewhere, I swear. There's always concerts going on, though. We take the tram home and meet an American!!! This is groundbreaking because I basicaly hadn't spoken proker English in the two weeks I'd been there. So it was nice to hear him speak normally.

The trams are funky.

Charlotte crashes on my bed and tries to hide form the camera. I glance at my side of the room and consider tidying it. I basically just close my suit case over, because I have another bag and far too much stuff to tidy up.

It's so early, but as I keep telling my family, school tires me. A lot. So I brush my teeth.

I'm not a big teddy lover but I got him last year at Santa Monica pier and I brought him with me because ... he was familiar, y'know? I try to sleep but these three chefs stand outside our window and talk very loudly for an hour. Oh, French people.