Here's a few more photos taken on my wanderings around town, hope you like!

Slightly worrying…my English is getting worse. I’m too busy trying to get my French right that I seem to have given up on speaking correct English and just say words and hope for the best. Grammar has gone to pot. God knows what I'll be like when I get back home!

I’m starting to wonder if things are ever going to settle down and if I’ll ever reach a point where I’ve managed to get all the stressful administrative/bureaucratic things DONE. Every time I think, right, everything is sorted out, something else rears its ugly head and rudely invades my ‘to do’ list. And nothing here is easy to do. The French seem to have an undying love for all things document-like.

I swear, if I have to fill in one more form….

Don’t get me wrong, I love France, I really do. Here, it’s acceptable to carry around a large baguette and start eating it on your way home. There’s wine EVERYWHERE. And it's good, it's really good. And don’t even get me started on the cheese…it requires a lot of willpower and self-control to not buy every type available, they’re all so delicious-looking. There are currently three different cheeses sitting in my fridge, so I'm happy, and I feel it's an appropriate adaption to French culture. Best discovery yet: the Aldi round the corner sells a huge round of brie for 2 euros...think I'm pretty much set for the year now. 

The one thing that I’m NOT getting on with is the way the French like to handle their bureaucracy and all other important administrative things – put it this way, “dès que possible” just isn’t their mantra. For someone like me who has relatively little patience…it’s frustrating, to say the least. I’m not saying that the English are super-efficient (far from it) but I’m pretty sure in England you’d never have to wait one month to receive a bank card…a personal sore point, as you can tell. Maybe it's just that the laissez-faire attitude is typical of the south?

The university also seems to be going along the same confusing and stressful lines. At Leeds, I’d say about 90% of the time I knew what class I had, at what time and in what room. Not here. I can write down a class to go to; it either doesn't exist, they haven’t said what room it's in or they’ve failed to mention that the lesson is cancelled that week. I went into uni this morning, pointless exercise really, as I had no idea where the class was actually taking place and instead just spent the time wandering round aimlessly and hoping for the best. No luck. I know that students are meant to become ‘independent thinkers’ and ‘take responsibility for their studies’ and all that jazz…but this seems to be taking it to the extreme. Good job I like a challenge!

Saying all this, if I had to choose between Montpellier and Leeds, I know exactly who would win. North of England or South of France – not really much competition! Every now and then, it hits me that I actually LIVE here (I mean, I even have loyalty cards for the supermarkets) and I can’t quite believe it. Don’t make me leave! 

The calm before the storm

So another week has gone by and I’m still loving life here in Montpellier. It really is one hell of a learning curve and at times the differences between the English and French culture are bizarre, unusual or just downright frustrating. Here’s a couple of things I’ve picked up so far.

- If you get stuck in the tram doors, don’t expect anyone to help – people will just push you and/or yell at you to move. Not a good experience.

- Don’t expect any administrative procedure to be easy – the French love their paperwork and they like to take their time processing things. Two and a half weeks on and I’m STILL waiting for my bank card...

- Ignore the tram timetables, they will run when they want to.

- If you want to buy fresh milk regularly, it’s probably easier to get a cow.

This last week has essentially been a holiday – with 30 degree weather, the only thing you can really do is go to the beach, right? When the Mediterranean sea is close to hand, there's no way you can resist. I also managed to sit through an entire French film and actually follow what was going on, which is pretty good going I reckon – definitely getting into la vie française!

One of the things I banged on about was going on a   lot of day trips to random places – well now I can tick one off my list, Nimes. Apart from the unexpected surprise of seeing a mini-Colosseum and momentarily thinking we’d got off the train in Rome, Nimes turned out to be quite a nice day out. Whilst wandering around the town centre, we spotted a plate of biscuits at a stand offering Tango lessons and spent 5 minutes pretending to be interested when all we really wanted was a free biscuit…which didn’t even turn out to be that nice anyway. The main attraction, Les Arenes (the mini-Colosseum), was worth the visit:

View from Les Arenes

So tomorrow the holiday officially ends and I actually have to start going to lessons and (maybe) start doing some actual work. For Erasmus students, it’s a case of turning up to the seminars and asking the tutor if you can be on their module – not quite sure how well that’s going to go, I have a feeling this coming week is going to be stressful to say the least. No doubt there’ll be some sort of mental breakdown at some point in the week…we’ll see. 

I’m trying to work my timetable so that I have Fridays off – I still need to have time for all those day trips!

Street party? I'm there.

L'Esplanade

Imagine a cross between a wine festival and a street party and you’ll probably end up being intrigued as to what that would be like. So when I heard that there was an event going on in the centre of town where you could get cheap wine, listen to bands play, see some random street dancers and generally love life, then there was no way I was going to miss it. Wine + partying = good times.

‘Les Estivales’ lived up to the hype. Pretty much every inhabitant of Montpellier descended onto the streets of the city centre and the atmosphere was buzzing. People were casually wandering round with glasses in their hand, mooching around, chatting to friends, making new ones (an inevitability when you drink…) and having a damn good time. Music was being played everywhere, streetdancers performed all over and, my personal favourite, some random Jamaican guy playing an instrument that I’d never even knew existed.

As for the wine side of things…for 4 euros, you were given a glass (perfect souvenir!) and 3 ‘dégustations’. Then you wandered up to the stalls, asked to try one of the wines, and if you liked it they’d fill up your glass. Do this 3 times, and you’ll be pretty merry. I’d love to be able to give you an in depth explanation of each of the wines I tried and talk about the clever balance of flavours, the delicate undertones of strawberry or the crisp clean finish…but in all honesty, when it comes to wine, I only work in colours. I know that I tried 2 rosés and a white, so that’s good enough for me. They did the job, and it was impossible not to feel very content with life at that moment in time!

Now if this sort of thing happened in England, you know it’d all just descend into chaos, windows would probably get smashed and people (chavs) would decide that now would be the perfect time to get that plasma TV they’ve always wanted or the latest that Adidas has to offer. You also know that in Blighty planning any event outside is always going to be hit and miss, and most likely it’ll just rain and the whole thing will be a disaster. But not in France. The centre of town remained relatively intact and everyone managed to have fun without causing a riot. Even better, it was a warm evening…so that ticked that box. All in all, the 

whole thing just made me love Montpellier even more!

Les Estivales is on next week as well – on y va!!