Thursday, July 15, 2010

Au revoir, France

The good news is that the exams are over, & the great news is that I passed! The songs we'd been practising for graduation went well (I played the guitar so didn't have to memorise all the words) and there was a good feed afterwards too. Our class also had a farewell for our teacher, who is pregnant with her 3rd child.


Since then I've been cruising & it's been awesome :) Last week I went to a conference which was really good; as well as being beneficial to my French! It was in this really old town (by old I mean from the 1st century) and some of the streets were really narrow & cobble-stoned.
The weather has been fantastic, most days it's in the early 30s & not much wind. Which is another great thing about me going from France's summer to Burkina Faso's wet season...
This month a few extras are here for a summer course. They've all learned French before & just need a refresher. 2 American ladies, Ruth & Vanessa who are now missionaries in Paris, moved in. At about 3 in the morning I heard a heck of a racket going on & I figured maybe 1 of them was sleep walking or something. Well no. Vanessa had locked her door before she went to bed, but needed to get up to go to the toilet. The key WOULD NOT move. Ruth & I got up to help, perhaps due to rather selfish motives at least on my part. First up we tried whacking the key out from our side of the door. No go. We're on the 2nd floor, but there's no fire escape (dodgy eh) so then we thought about taking the door off. I got my screwdriver, but unfortunately it was the type of hinge you need to lever out the pin & we didn't have a hammer or anything else suitable. After some time Ruth asked me if there was a ladder. Good thought!! So I went down to the basement & came across an extendable ladder. It wasn't really heavy, just awkward to manouver. The lights, which are on timers in the basement, turned off when I was 1/2 way up the stairs... Anyway I made it safely out and Ruth & I managed to extend the ladder to the required length & propped it against the wall. I decided to climb up have a look. I managed to wriggle, pull & yank all at the right time & in the right way & the key came out! So the early morning adventure was over & it was back to bed. And after a while sleep returned.
Tomorrow my travels begin... I'm going to stay in Tours (an hour or so south-west of Paris) with a kiwi couple who studied here last year. Apart from watching the All Blacks beat South Africa and visiting an old castle I'm not sure what else is planned. On Monday I'm catching the high speed train to Paris (320km/h) and stay overnight. On Tuesday morning I'm flying out to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso!!! It's been 19 years since I knew I wanted to go so bring it on!