La Belle Etoile Saint-Nicolas-lez-Arras

... démontés et empaquetés dans des cartons, une remorque, un réchaud et une popotte, des vêtements pour tous les temps, des éléments de rechange pour le vélo, une trousse à pharmacie et une brosse à dent :)

Attention top chrono : J-23h

On vous embrasse tous très très fort.
Vous allez nous manquer quoique....!
N'hésitez pas à nous écrire et à commenter nos images.

Hasta luego amigos.

Joséphine

... 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 ...

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 ...

... that I have been dying to do in Lille is to climb to the top of the Belfry in the Hotel de Ville and see the view of the city. I have made two attempts to do this now, both at times when it was closed!

I took my parents to a market on the first day they were here, which was a lovely little French Sunday market in the old part of town, it was much nicer than the big "famous" market in Wazemmes, which is slightly out of the centre. I went ...

... Toussaint holiday began at 5.30 on Friday, and Erin went home for the break. I hadn't planned to go home until Christmas and so I'm determined to stick to it, so I will have to apartment to myself for a week or so. I'm looking forward to visits from mum and dad and from Bridget and in between visitors I am planning to fill my schedule with cultural visits or as one of the teachers put it at school today: "On peut voir et apprecier notre belle région."

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 ...

... but French, Spanish, German, and on Friday I even observed a "Couture" lesson, which is a strand of the vocational studies which my school provides and trains students on how to design and make clothes.
The week has been challenging but very worthwhile, if not only for my confidence in French but meeting other foreigners in Lille and branching out of my comfort zone.
Today to start off as we meant to go on, travelling-wise, we took the train to Brussells, went for lunch in ...

... continued throughout the day as we struggled to fit it all onto the Eurostar, then struggled to get it all off when the train arrived in Lille before it set off again to Brussels!
We then met the teacher from the school at which I will be teaching who is called Annabelle, and is having us to stay until we move into our apartment on Friday. She had to make two separate trips because of the amount of luggage we had!
Annabelle is lovely and insisted that we stay with ...

... our last day of freedom by checking out Paris's most famous market this Sunday, but we're definitely going to have to make return trips because I did not buy anything (shocking how regular this is becoming, it's really rather unsettling), and because there are so many stores to see - this place is HUGE. So that's going on my ever-growing list of things to do, but, as always, please keep me posted with any suggestions that you may have!

... many young men lost their lives in the pursuit of our freedom. Matt had also found some songs on his jukebox that had been written about the war by modern bands such as Motorhead and Iron Maiden. To drive through this part of the world listening to songs written about the horrors of war was a very moving experience and a real silence fell over us for most of the day. We now headed south-west back across into France to the Somme Valley. This was the site of the later ...