Tuesday 29 September 2009

Premier Jour.

My first day in a new city!

I woke up at 07h00 (6am, in England) and got the tram into the centre of Nantes; where everything was closed except for a tiny little café near to a petrol station. I had a coffee and a pain au chocolat, then set to wandering around Nantes for the day.

As i'm still on a pathetic AZERTY keyboard, i'll leave the exciting bits for later, but here's a few (stolen) photos of the sights that I saw in Nantes today...








Monday 28 September 2009

First Day.

So, I arrived.

I'm currently siting in a French living room, surrounded by French furniture, on a French computer, after having French wine withe a French meal. The first DVD I see on the shelf? 'This Is England'. Oh, the irony...

The English teacher i'm living with this week is very friendly and welcoming, and her house is nice. My room here is bigger than my room in Horsham and Reading put together!

I'm meeting other Assistants in Nantes tomorrow, which will be nice. Hopefully i'll be able to upload some photos when I am on my laptop. French keyboards are seriously messed up!

Sunday 27 September 2009

Not long now...

So far, packing has been fairly unsuccessful. Fortunately, I already have all the essentials.

Dictionary
Map
Money
Fluffy kiwi
Muse
Badge
Harmonica
Bottle opener

I reckon I could live for a year with that lot. Also, it turns out the suitcase i'm using was given to my Dad for his 21st. How fitting. It's made by a company called 'Spartanite'. Probably from a limited edition of 300...


Au revoir, England.

Two fairly major turning points in life today:

I can now legally drive an HGV.
As of about 20h00, i'm a French person.

Saturday 26 September 2009

Packing for Nantes.

What do I need to pack? There's the obvious things, such as toothpaste. There's the less obvious, but necessary things, such as passport photos and plug-adapters. But the best category of all is the unobvious, and unnecessary things. On this list are:

Holographic eye glasses:




Regina Spektor 7" Single:




Lakerol tin of plectrums:

Friday 25 September 2009

Impending France

I got a new camera yesterday. It was a birthday present from Frida. Well, about three-quarters of it was, anyway. 'Twas about time I got a new camera - my former one worked perfectly well until the zoom lens decided to fall out one day, giving me a close-up of the floor that I didn't particularly want.

It is now two days before I leave for Nantes - two days in which I need to pack, buy shoes, get some leaflets about Horsham, work out budgets, and have a 21st birthday. Eek!

Nice as this photo of Nantes is, I hope the weather's not always like this...




Photo from Manuel MC's Flickr

Sunday 20 September 2009

One week to go...

It seems there is only one week until I leave for Nantes. Eek! I still don't have a place to live. And, to top it all off, I leave on my 21st birthday. Hopefully, if they have any internets in France, i'll keep everyone updated with what's going on in Nantes on here. There's even a propr website - www.gavingreene.co.uk! Should probably change it to .fr though...

Anyway, this is what Nantes looks like. I'll put an arrow in when I can see my house.