France Part II

Hellooo, sorry it's been a while since I've posted anything. I've got lots to tell though!

So in my last post I had said that we were going on a road trip to the South of France and that I was super excited for it. Well, the day before we were supposed to leave the car wouldn't start, and it turned out that it needed a new alternator or something (I'm not a car person) and so it was taken to the shop. By the time we got it back, the people who were supposed to host us in Marseilles couldn't do it anymore, so we decided to just cancel the trip. I was pretty disappointed, but it all turned out okay :)

We couldn't do a whole lot since we didn't have a car, but last Tuesday we went to a little town on the coast called Pornic. It was raining so we couldn't do a whole lot there, but walking around was nice. And we got some delicious ice cream!

That following Friday, we went to this place called Le Puy du Fou. It is kind of hard to explain, but it is sort of like an amusement park place, but just with a bunch of shows. If you've ever been to a Rennaissance Festival, it is kind of like that but throughout all of history. There were little "towns" from different centuries and shows going along with it. Overall a cool day.

Then this past Monday we went back into Nantes. There I bought my carte 12-27, which is a discount train card. It costs 50 euros but it's definitely worth it. I also put a little bit of money on my old cell phone, it won't last until I come back but this way I won't lose my phone number and it will still be active when I come back in September.

Tuesday we went to a place called Planète Sauvage, which is sort of like a zoo, but you drive through it and can get super up close and even feed the animals! It was really cool.

So one of my boyfriend's best friend's mom works for the Académie in the language department, so he went out on a limb and asked her if she could find out where I was placed, and she did! She told him that I would be at two collèges (middle schools) in a town called Saumur. So Wednesday we went there!

It is a super cute city, not that big but not too small either. It is only like a 10 minute train ride from Angers which is the second largest city in the region. The night before we left we were looking on leboncoin.fr at apartments there, and actually set up a meeting to look at one! Just so that I would have an idea of what I could get for my money. We looked at a studio which was really small, but only 200 euros, which was awesome. the guy who was showing it to us showed us an actual apartment that was right next store and was much bigger, with a bedroom, a living room, and a full kitchen for just 320 euros, which is in my budget! The apartment was right next to the train station, and not quite in centre-ville, but it was super close to one of my schools. So that was good too look at. After looking at the apartment we just walked around the city for a bit until it started pouring rain, then we decided to go back to the car and eat a lunch we packed before driving to Angers. We didn't really walk around that much because we were both tired, so we just drove around a bit, also a cool city. The drive over there was awesome too because we were following the Loire and driving through adorable little towns.

Besides those trips, other things that I did was eat enormous amounts, learned how to play French billiards, went to a pool spa thing, went bowling (tied for first place), went to the movies, and went to some other soirées. Also made my visa appointment for August 5th. Hopefully I'll get my work contract by then!

So now I have 3 days left. Tomorrow we leave to go up to Normandie, and from there we are going to Parc Astérix on Monday, and then on Tuesday we will relax a bit before leaving around 1am to go to the airport since I have to be there around 4am for my 6am flight.

I'm sad to be leaving, but at the same time I am excited to go and spend some time at home. Plus I know I'll be back in a couple months!