Aurea Hotel Saintes

Hé hé !

L'Amérique latine, nous voici nous voilà très très bientôt !!!
Plus que quelques heures avant le décollage...
L'excitation et l'appréhension sont 2 émotions qui se battent en duel en ce moment.

Le départ est prévu à 20h ce lundi 7 décembre de Paris CDG et l'atterrisage le mardi 8 décembre à Buenos Aires.
Nous en avons rêvé et ce projet va enfin devenir réalité.

Nous partons tout équipés : les 2 v ...

... in Paris. I really had so much luck with the weather and the city itself was beautiful. The last few days I visited Montmartre, the picturesque artsy part of town on a hill, where I visited the gorgeous Church of Sacree Coeur, as well as the cafe where one of my favorite movies, Amelie, was filmed. I took lots of pictures and arrived there as I listened to it's amazing soundtrack.

I also ...

... part where there was 3 in a row! They all sold some amazingly presented food and after making some purchases we went for a quick walk around another church (I'm not religious, but I love looking through all the old, well built and presented buildings!).

On the way back to Calais, we went via Ypres, a city which was completely demolished during World War 1. The two main buildings in the centre of the city both ...

Or at least, the Lille metro.

Lille's metro system was the first one in the world without a driver, which is pretty clever really. It does make the journeys interesting, however!
As there is no driver, sitting right at the front of the train you can look at the tracks straight ahead of you, which is quite good fun really and reminds me of being on a rollercoaster! Of course I don't sit there screaming and shouting. At least not all the time.
Getting on the metro early ...

... The museum was a in depth look at life during WWI for the soldiers on both sides and for the people who lived in the town. One of the things they discussed the most was the Christmas agreement between the Germans and the allies that stopped the fighting for over a week and allowed both sides to talk and exchange gifts. It was amazing to see that these people could go from killing one another to sharing a smoke and a drink and then back to ...

... therefore imagine how disturbing it was to see this torture machine in real-life!
Parts of the exhibition were very interesting, and the artist takes inspiration from contemporary society and when explained, some of his works make a lot of sense, but some of them are incredibly strange!

Yesterday I took a trip to Dunkirk with two other English girls, my guide-book says that Dunkirk is the most interesting of Nord-Pas-de-Calais ...

... to get to know them, and vice versa. However it didn't really give me much of a sense of their level of French, but more about that later.

Last week we were sent on a training day for all of the English speaking assistants in the "academie de Lille" (basically the LEA), which Annabelle had pre-warned me would most likely be useless, however we actually found it of some benefit! We were taught about discipline and teaching methods and ...

... had a sketching guest teacher for the weekend who was an amazing sketcher/artist/architect. The first place we went was an old fortified palace up on a hilltop. It was mostly remains, but very beautiful in its own way. The next place we went was the village of Laon, a little bit more hoppin' then the last because there ere more than 2000 citizens. There was a very elaborate Notre Dame Cathedral here which we toured and sketched.
After we visited these two places ...

... lane to pass, the driver leaves his/her left turn signal on until moving back into the right lane (and out of the way of faster moving traffic). It's the way highway driving is supposed to work in the U.S., but doesn’t, and it made my long drive from Urretxu to Saintes smooth and easy.

Another interesting note from driving in this area of Western Europe was how most vehicles (almost all of them small sedans/compact cars) had either a bike rack or ...

Dylan: Today we went to the Saintes Fine Arts Collection. The best thing we saw was a sphere made of straight metal rods. Kit: Then to another cathedral. After that we went to look for another car place three kilometres away, but they didn't have a car. Raymond's Travel Page