Hello from a much colder and wetter Sète! In fact over the last week or so we have had huge thunderstorms echoing those rain storms we had when I first arrived in Montpellier. People still keep telling me that this is really quite rare, but I have to say I am now starting to doubt them! Fortunately Sète is built on a hill, so we are fine in our apartment, although the canals do look dangerously close to overflowing!
Since I last wrote a blog post I have somehow managed to find myself at two wine festivals, the first being a planned trip to a big exhibition centre in Montpellier with some of the other primary English language assistants, and the second being when we stumbled across one in the centre of Montpellier when celebrating my flatmate Amy's birthday with another American assistant and assistants from El Salvador, Spain and Italy.
I also managed to end up going from having never celebrated the American tradition of Thanksgiving to celebrating it twice in one week! Obviously being American, Amy wanted to celebrate it, so she cooked us a lovely thanksgiving meal - trying to keep with tradition as much as French supermarkets would allow! We had a roast chicken instead of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, apple cider and a delicious Apple Crisp. It was so yummy, and we even topped it all off by watching the thanksgiving episode of Friends!
Then, on the Saturday night that we went to pick up Amy's roommate from college, Gina, from the airport in Montpellier, we were given a lift by our landlady Maryline who lives in Montpellier. She invited us to her house afterwards to join in a thanksgiving party she was having with an American student who is currently living with her, and her American friends, and their French host families. There was lots more traditional food there, and they even had a turkey and pumpkin pie! There was a funny moment when the Americans and French who were doing the cooking were baffled by the Bisto gravy they had bought and I had to explain to them how to use it!
As I said we celebrated Amy's birthday by going into Montpellier on the weekend before (sadly she had to work on the actual day) and watching the new Hunger Games film in the fancy cinema on the Place de la Comédie. It was after that when we found the wine festival, which we then followed nicely with a meal in the famous l'Entrecote restaurant which serves only one dish - Steak Frites - but it is the nicest Steak Frites you will ever have! They have a well-guarded secret recipe for the sauce they use on the meat, and people queue up outside every night before it opens at 19:15. Once the doors open they sit you down as fast as possible and you order how you would like your meat to be cooked and then they bring it out to you, and then refill your plate when you want.
The next day, one of Amy's teachers offered her a ticket to the opera in the posh theatre in Sète, so I bought the last available ticket online and joined her - I have to say, being English and watching a Spanish opera with French subtitles was an interesting experience!
I also finally managed to go the a French church in Montpellier with one of the other primary English assistants, Matt, last week. It was actually really fun, and the people we met were really welcoming. A lot of the worship songs were ones that I know from English churches but translated into French which was funny! The first song we sang was Bénit soit ton nom which is the French translation of the song Blessed be your name!
But by far the most spontaneous thing I have done on this year abroad yet, is to plan a trip to Barcelona two days before going! Amy and her friend Gina decided it would be fun for Gina to be able to go to two countries whilst she was staying in Europe, so we decided to book a trip to Barcelona which is only three hours away from Sète by train. We got up really early on Wednesday morning and took the train from Sète, changing at Perpignan to get to Barcelona by midday. We managed to book a really cheap hotel right in the centre which was great, and straight away plunged into our first taste of Spanish food - a Spanish omelette! Then we headed over to the tourist information and book tickets for a flamenco show that night which we went to after visiting the Picasso museum which turned out to be free for students which was a nice surprise! Then we did as the Spanish apparently do, and ate dinner at 10pm - I had a yummy chicken paella accompanied with sparkling wine which I was reliably informed was the drink I should have.
The next day we basically spent the day admiring the architect Gaudí's work - we had a tour of a house that he built/decorated/designed called Casa Batlló which was really cool and colourful. We then went to the Sagrada Familia church that he decorated, and the the Parc Gueïl which had beautiful patterns everywhere you looked.
On our final day we walked around the gothic centre and did some shopping in the many shops and in the Christmas market, before catching our train back to Sète. For such a short amount of time we maganed to fit in quite a lot, and had a great time experiencing such a different culture to the one in France, despite it only being three hours away!
On the last day of Gina's stay we went into Montpellier for the Christmas market. The whole of the centre is currently completely covered with pretty Christmas lights and there is even a giant lit up globe in the middle of the Place de la Comédie.
We also went on the reindeer ride with all the children and their parents and drank vin chaud which reminded me of Christmas at home!
On the reindeer ride
Le Marché de NoelMeanwhile, before you all start telling me that I'm basically on big holiday (although it is almost kind of true!), I have actually been doing my work, and have been doing the English words for different jobs with some of my older classes, who have been very much enjoying the actions game I have invented for them! It is funny to see what they think of when they think of different jobs though, as when I asked them to come up with an action for a policeman, they all started to have pretend guns, which surprised me. It seems the police are a lot more hardline in France and are seen as a lot more violent than in England.
This time next week I will be getting ready to celebrate my 21st birthday in style with a weekend trip to Paris with Amy, Emily and Hollie who is coming over from England to visit - I'm so excited! Amy and I have got a very busy month planned what with Gina having just visited, and Hollie coming to stay until we all go to London for a few days, before Amy and I go down to Plymouth for Christmas and New Year! So the next time I blog will probably be quite a while, but I'm sure with plenty of things to write about!
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