Straight after Eurotour, still during the holidays, I spent the weekend in Poitiers with a Rotarian and his wife from Loudun. I'd only been to Poitiers 2 or 3 times, so it was cool to actually have a good look at the city which is actually the capital of my department (Vienne)!
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| Statue of Liberty |
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| Palais de Justice |
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| Hotel de ville (town hall) |
The last time I was in the town centre of Poitiers it was completely under snow - when I came back, I barely recognised it!
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Notre Dame la Grande - on certain nights, there are light shows
and projections (will have to go back at Christmas time to see it) |
On the Saturday I went to Futuroscope (where I'd been to before, but it was snowy so most things were closed AND I didn't get to do all the rides), the big futuristic theme park - the "rides" are mostly 4-D and 3-D projections, not rollercoasters, but it's an awesome place! Luckily the Rotarians' (Jean-Yves and Mauricette) grandson was there for the weekend so I didn't have to go on my own.
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| Futuroscope |
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| Futuroscope |
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| Futuroscope |
Pierre-Adrien (the Rotarians' grandson) did photography and had a really cool camera so we were playing around with night settings - the 2 photos below are what's called "light-writing".
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| I'm writing "Jo" (obviously) |
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| Missed a little bit of the E but oh well! |
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| Eels. There were LIVE EELS for sale at the marker in Poitiers (I've seen them in Loudun too). YUCK (haven't tried them, but I don't like the way they wriggle...UGH). |
After that weekend, it was back to school... although that weekend was my birthday! I turned 19, how OLD. But I invited 4 of the newies (new exchange students, who arrived in August) to come stay with me for the weekend to celebrate! I'm on exchange for my birthday, so naturally I wanted to be with exchange students.
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My friend Paul from school had the keys to the church organ so
we mucked around on this MONSTER organ for a while! |
The Rotary club of Loudun also had a fundraiser going that weekend - they'd imported "hareng" (herring) from the North of France to sell, apparently it's an annual event in Loudun. They had their little French "barbeques" out and were grilling fish for the whole town. So we stopped by and tried some French herring! It was good... but full of bones. I can also say I've eaten caviar now, cos the fish were full of eggs (breeding season - I think it's pretty irresponsible, ecologically, to catch so many pregnant fish because they can't reproduce if everyone eats them, then there are fish shortages and everyone complains and wonders WHY - ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, PEOPLE!)
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| Lydia (U.S), Camila (Mexico) and Victoria (Canada) |
Then on Sunday, the actual day of my birthday, I had an little exchange student/family celebration - complete with cake and presents! My 2nd and 3rd host families combined and bought me a really nice silver necklace, and my 1st host family bought me French Monopoly, the game! And the cake was delicious.
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| Cutting the cake! 19, scary...that's practically halfway to being 40! |
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