29 days and counting...

It's 5am on Tuesday morning, I have about 10 assignments due in over the next 2 and a half weeks, so what else would I be doing but updating my blog that I haven't touched in two months? Cooking mini pizzas and re-heating cold sausages is what! (Denny's Gold Medal Sausages courtesy of parents, mini pizzas provided by Cocci Market).
It is very very strange to think that almost a year has gone by since I started this (awful, poorly thought out, and neglected) blog. Also very strange was booking a one-way flight for my return home (1st July!!!). With less than a month left, most of which will be spent with me panicking at 7am when I have a presentation due in an hour and haven't slept yet, I'm very anxious to charge up my camera battery and wander around Paris for a day or two, soaking it all up before I go home, because whilst the vast majority of my encounters with Frenchies have been bad ones (although over the past few months things are evening up), I will definitely miss the city itself. In the rain it's not so pretty but when the sun shines it's bloody gorgeous :)
So over the next week I'm going to sit down and make a list of things I need to do and see before I leave, because as much as I may want to, with a busy year ahead I doubt I'll get many opportunities to come back and visit (although if I want to do so at least I know people I can crash with!). Also I need to buy shoes. Can't leave Paris without buying nice shoes.
Overall I have very few regrets about the year, starting out was very tough, and in retrospect I would have done a lot better had I just thrown myself into it, but that's easy to say now I suppose. I also probably should have wandered about a bit more, did lots of wandering last summer and really enjoyed it (apart from that one time where I misread the map and we ended up in Chinatown), and I wish I could have made the most of the sunny days we've had so far but I blame Sciences-Po on that one for keeping me indoors working on exposés and fiches and the like.
I'm sure there's more to say so I'll write a more comprehensive summary blog when I leave, for now it's back to asking whether or not we can consider politics as a profession...oh the joys..

@+
Nikki

On an aside..

I forgot to mention, I hate being grown up, dealing with electricity and phone bills with the added complication of them being in the previous tenant's name (and therefore bank account) and having to go through the whole process in French is NOT easy OR fun!

Kilmeaden Red Cheddar cheese, please

Thought it was about time for another post, given that, well, I've been neglecting this blog for a while..god knows what I'd be like as a mother, anyway..

Since I last wrote, I've had exams, and I have no idea how I did because they STILL haven't given us our results! Which I would really appreciate because if I failed anything it means I've failed the year as a whole, so I might as well stop going to college and just go out and do fun stuff :) This semester is a little easier, not work-wise but just in so far as I'm much more used to the workload and what's expected of us etc. That said, I think my new laid-back attitude is only going to mean I do worse but I guess time will tell.

Since myself and Chris have come to the sudden realisation that we don't actually have that much time left here, we've decided to take advantage of having an apartment relatively near to town and all to ourselves and have more parties, much to the disgruntlement of our neighbour downstairs. Emma and MP (people who had the apartment before us) had warned us about the wench that lives in the apartment below ours, who apparently complained at them just walking around the apartment, saying she had a very small baby and they were making too much noise etc. So when we first moved in we expected a good few knocks on the door, but heard absolutely nothing. It turned out that she wasn't in fact there, and that it was only her (elderly and not easily bothered) mother who was in the apartment...

...until a few weeks ago, when wench-face with annoying baby moved back in. Since then we've had a few complaints, nothing major but enough to make us realise she's a wench. We wouldn't mind only her baby NEVER stops crying so it's a bit cheeky for her to be complaining so much, but I shmoozed her when she came around last time all worried about the fact that we were gonna have a party, so I think she's less pissed at us now...I hope.. (we're having a party in 3 weeks)

I'm sure there's a lot more stuff to put down here but I'll do it when I don't have a presentation on Nazi foreign policy to give in a week :)

Nikki


p.s. send me Denny's sausages please :)

p.p.s. big thank you goes out to Irwin who brought me lots of food when he came over for Easter.

p.p.p.s. Evil eyes for Irwin who ate half of what he brought me :)