So my second week came and went so quickly I didn’t have enough time to write everything down; I hope I can remember everything!
NB: In amongst all the adventures, food and escapades assume that during the day I was a good student and soaked up the French language like a sponge cake in alcohol… (sorry too much food!)
Monday at lunch the girls and I went and had lunch at a little tea café where we all had cheese crepes! They were incredibly cheesy (as was to be expected) and we all felt guiltily content afterwards. After class we took the “Cavilam Vichy Tour” which informed us of the history of the region, well those who could speak French anyway… Despite my limited capacity I gleaned from the tour the importance of the town’s mineral spa resource which supposedly has “healing powers.” There are many distribution points around the town in which to collect this water for free and, as the tour was in progress, the “source” was visited by no less than 3 senior citizens of Vichy, all with their reusable bottles. Disregard my cynicism but I feel that the beneficial properties of this water need to be tested… but perhaps the fact that all three of these believers either jumped on their bikes and pedalled away or lugged 5-6 Litres of the stuff away on foot is testament enough. The rest of the trip talked about the Opera of Vichy, the royalty who used to make it their holiday destination and the war memorial monument. Interestingly, not too much was said about the German occupation of France in which Vichy played an integral role… but as it was near freezing I stopped paying attention and focused on keeping feeling in my toes so I probably missed a lot.
Tuesday night Nivek and I went to dinner and a movie. And although I say dinner I feel I must clarify; we had ice-cream and sorbet which was possibly the most amazing sorbet I have ever had! The fruit sorbet had pieces of real fruit throughout while the chocolate ice cream was littered with dark chocolate chunks. After our well rounded, nutritional meal we walked across to the cinema to watch “Raiponce,” the French version of Rapunzel. It was a great movie and, although I didn’t understand all of the dialogue it was quite easy to glean from the situation what was going on.
Wednesday afternoon is activity day at Cavilam and so we had the option of attending the weekly event, which was ice skating… Yes that’s right, bring on the disaster! When I bought the tickets I had visions of a beautiful outdoor rink surrounded by trees, Christmas lights and cheerful children however the venue was in an in closed dome and, if not for the French children and the 90’s U.S. disco music it could have been at Warner’s Bay! However, keen to make the best of it I strapped up and began my career as a figure skater. It was a career short lived as during my 7 triumphant laps (which took near 40 minutes) I hit the deck three times. With a bruised pride, wrist and knees I was relieved to hear that Nivek was keen for coffee so we took our skates back and asked for our shoes. Unfortunately we could not receive our shoes until every member of our group handed back their skates which rendered us without anything on our feet. Wishing I could argue my point in perfectly constructed sentences all I could come up with was “le system, c’est shit!” So unable to leave the rink and enter the coffee shop outside we were stranded for 1 hour in socks. Despite said events I still had a really fun afternoon with the girls and now know that I never need to try ice skating again!
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