Well, one more week until half term! That’s insane. This week has gone absurdly fast, I feel like my feet are hardly touching the ground, the weeks pass in a blur of activity and work and the weekends in a haze of wine and food…

This weekend wasn’t as crazy as last weekend at least, Friday night was spent watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we were all exhausted so went to bed early which meant a reasonably early start on Saturday which was good because I had to do ironing and tidying and such although as I’m addicted to a new manga now(in French at least), it was hard to pull myself away from that.

We went to Lille for shopping, it’s my birthday on Tuesday so I figured I was allowed to spend some money on myself so I bought a new top, scarf and shoes and some manga’s which I’ve already finished but I promised myself more before I go to Edinburgh for half term. Last night we went to Bar Oz which is an Australian bar in Vieux Lille, it was a nice place and we met Rob and Sarah’s other English friends so with them and new people from this semesters French class we have enough people for a party… someone, (Mr. Donkin) mentioned that we should have a party Friday and somehow (me) it got turned into a fancy dress with Andrew and I going as Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers… in the fresh light of day this may not seem such a great idea. This week is already really busy what with Stevie and Amy- Rachel and Andrew’s friends coming over.

‘Je n’ai pas mal aux cheveux’ today unlike last week, and I’m thinking I have to do work as well as tidy and cook my vegetarian hot pot and we all know how well my main meals turn out…

Shusaku came over on Tuesday which was funny, he’s learning English so we were practicing by me saying a Japanese word and him translating it to English. It was like being at play school or something but very useful, Andrew tried to explain the phrase ‘if … jumped off a cliff, would you do it too’ which we managed to after a lot of examples, it’s good practice for French. I find it amazing that if we didn’t speak French we would not be able to communicate, from the perspective that we are both in France it doesn’t seem that amazing but if we’d met whilst I were in Japan we’d never have been able to communicate if we couldn’t speak French.

We went to enrol in French classes again on Friday, saw Shusaku there again but it was a little odd because Sarah and Rob were talking in English, it felt awkward. But still we’re hopefully going to be in a higher class for the courses and I found out that I passed my exam with 78% which I’m not too sad about, I think that was quite good considering I hardly revised. Well I suppose I am speaking French everyday and since Shusaku came round I’ve been much more confident with my French and speaking more often, it helps that Gabin is back in labs because he’s very talkative and will correct me, like Lydie, which is always good.

Labs in general are alright, although there are lots of people now which is strange, I’m so used to being alone, especially the last few weeks with Gabin in Gabon, Caroline away and Christophe teaching but everyone is back now and I’m overly territorial with my space. I’m only working on the antidepressants but I like that, it’s what I’m most interested and I know how lucky I am that I have the opportunity to work on that here, my literature review is coming on well but I am looking forward to having Edinburgh library’s resources when I go back for half term.

Oh, I’m on the NMR list now, I can do it all on my own which is a great skill to have, although I hope eventually I will learn to do it in manual mode as at the moment I do it in automatic which is self explanatory but I’m scared stiff of breaking one of the tubes. They’re very fragile!

Well, I guess that’s about it for this week, I have to go back and finish writing last weeks blog now and I will be up to date and I know that then I should do some Japanese because I never do and I should do some Chemistry because I want it done for half term and I want a list of things to ask Shusaku and yet this week I’m so busy with Japanese on Monday and out for dinner Tuesday and Wednesday and I have to pack and book train tickets and hope it won’t be snowing- it has been really snowy and cold here- and I need to learn not to stress out about things!

Too late for that I guess, I sometimes think I like being stressed, I think it must release some sort of endorphin that I crave or something.

Until next time…