Inter Hotel As Hotel Ronchin

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 ...

I just arrived in Lille just over an hour ago by TGV (in right around an hour from Paris, super fast). I got a bit lost arriving to my new host's house, but here I am, safe and warm. I'll stay here till Friday, when we carpool (two groups in two cars) to a big CS weekend meeting in Rotterdam. There I should be able to meet up with my host in Hague (about 20 or 30 minutes away).

The last few days were ...

After a bit of a hard night, we were all up at about 9am to check out of our hotel and go for a quick wander around Brugge, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Often described as the 'Venice of the North', there are quite a few canals in Brugge, but as we discovered, there's even more chocolate shops - they're everywhere!
We walked down a stretch of road, only about 1km long, and saw about 7-8 chocolate shops, including ...

... in the last two weeks:
A hell of a lot of rain,
Starting back at school and having loads of lessons cancelled / teachers not turning up (wooppee!!)
Erin's 22nd birthday and a night in the sleaziest French club I will probably ever come across (and will most likely not return to)
The purchase of a printer
11/11 - Remembrance day in Lille (photos attached)
Confiscating a girl's phone in a lesson and then hearing my own go off in my bag!
Preparations to go to Paris!!

We went to Ypres on the suggestion of my dad. Ypres is located in Flanders and was a central battle ground during WWI. The town of Ypres seemed to be right in the midst of the fight and was almost completely destroyed in bombings and fires. It is also in this area that the battles of Pashchendale took place. It was one of the most deadly and greusomome places to fight in WWI and many young Canadians lost their lives there.

We got a ...

... and lovely and many people seem to use it as a place to go running, so I will be sure to go back with my trainers on!

When my parents had left there were only 3 other British girls left in my residence, so the following day we went to the cinema to see "Mademoiselle Chambon", a typical French love story with very little dialect (which made it easier to understand), and an unhappy ending. I enjoyed it!

This week I have also been to ...

... with animals, we really enjoyed the acrobatics and the incredible diversity of the circus. Acts came from all over the world, including England and Kenya and was well worth the 7€!

My Sundays are now typically spent preparing for school on Monday, after a nice lie-in and a visit to the Sunday morning market, of course!

This week at school I began teaching. However, not many of the teachers remembered this. I arrived for my ...

Hello all,
sorry it has been such a long time, but the pace has really picked up around here. This trip was from a long time ago, about two weeks now. I will briefly cover it because it was such a great experience.

Our school takes us on one field trip each semester. This first field trip we went on went to Couzy, Laon, Lille, and Amiens. All are in Northern France. All 41 students went along with three of our professors, history, design and structures. We ...

... heeft er ook voor gezorgd dat ik me bewust wordt van het feit dat ik ze toch een eindje niet meer terugzie. Maar wat zijn zes maanden in een mensenleven? I just have to do this. Ok, ik ben nerveus, maar het voelt nog altijd even juist aan als toen ik net met het idee begon te spelen. Soit, ik ga de rest van mijn rugzak klaarmaken en van de laatste dagen hier genieten. We horen elkaar aan de andere kant! Cheers, Arne

... British soldiers lost in WWI whose remains were never identified. The panels inside the 120 foot-long arch, the stairways and upper loggias, bear the names of 40,000 British (who died before 16th August 1917), 7,000 Canadian, 6,000 Australian, nearly 600 South African, and 400 Indian soldiers who died in the Salient and have no known grave. The ceremony has occured daily since WWI (the Germans even allowed ...