Had a great weekend with other assistants, exploring some new towns and meeting up with people I haven't seen since the stage (the 'stage' was the few days of training we had at the beginning of our assistantship). Friday night I visited Chauny (where Gulliver lives) with Katie, Willie and Matt - Gulliver cooked us a proper dinner (mmm, curry) and then the others proceeded to drink lots and lots of red wine (I, of course, remained sober!). Tobias (th...

28 Oct: After arriving from Glasgow, had lunch and then slept for a few hours. At night I went out with Vicky from Canada on a mission to find some Scots (no luck - met some English guys in a pub and hung out with them all night!) Was surprised to find that Halloween is a big deal over here - felt a bit left out 'cause I wasn't dressed as a pirate! 29 Oct: Woke up earlyish and went with some Chinese tourists from the Hostel to Edinburgh Castle. Outside t...

Arrived 1am 26 October in the pouring rain and managed to check in to the hostel and find a free bed in the dark without too much trouble. Woke up around 10am to find only one other girl still in the room; turned out she was an Aussie (from Melbourne) and we hit it off right away. Weather was good. Spent the whole day with Moira - we ended up doing some shopping and promised ourselves to do some sightseeing the next day as we felt bad for not doing anything touri...

A Day in the Life of... Creil (a.k.a. Boules part 2) People have been asking about my typical day - I have not really sufficiently established a routine to have a "typical day", but I will tell you some of the day-to-day events that occur here in Creil. For a start, although Creil is not exactly a hole, the best thing anyone seems to say about it is that it's close to Paris, so that gives you some idea of the town I am living in. This means that th...

My first trip to Paris Tonight was "La nuit blanche" in Paris, which means that all the museums and churches are open basically all night and you can walk around and see whatever you want for free.There were heaps of us, including a whole stack of hispanophones, which meant that decision making was practically impossible, and we spent much of the night wandering around Paris (which was not terribly unpleasant, to be honest!).I caught the train to Gare d...