I have to admit I haven’t been all that great with writing my blog, but I seem to be so busy all of the time. I suppose with just three weeks left to go it’s hardly surprising, when my parents left I suddenly realised how much needs to be done before we leave so I promptly started organising. Last week was a bit calm but it’s going to get crazy!

Coming back to the cite scientifique after being in Milan was a bit of a let down, and the prospect of a five day week was no more welcoming but as always time marches on. The week started in a particularly sad way, I finally made the decision about going to Japan. It’s been on my mind for months, since before Christmas and even over Easter I still really wanted to go but in that first week back I started to have serious doubts. I know people say to take every opportunity but my mantra is usually to follow my instincts and they were telling me to say no. I can’t put into words how horrible it was to sit in the class watching everyone else get so excited about going and me knowing I’d thrown it away but even then I still knew I’d made the right decision.
The stage was in a hotel, and the wage wasn’t great although accommodation and food were included I had visions of me cleaning dishes due to lack of Japanese ability and not many day trips… Also I know next year is going to be tough enough without coming back from Japan and wanting a break straight away, I have so much to think about with my chosen career path anyway. Finding a PhD isn’t going to be easy.

I was sort of wishing the week away since my parents were visiting at the weekend (which I now say in a French accent) but Rachel’s Dad was here on the Tuesday and Wednesday so we all went to the 3 Brasseurs, also known as ‘the flammekeuche’ place. Not wanting to break the tradition we also went with my parents on the Friday but we managed to get the table inside the brewing thing- I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s a huge brewing thing which is normally full of beer but they cut holes in the sides and put a table in the middle- it’s the best table in the place and we’ve always wanted to sit in there so that was a real achievement…

Before weekend fun could start we had a French test, it was actually horrific, none of us were really in the mood and so I forgot to listen in the listening part, my essay was okay, maybe a little off topic but since Rachel started to write about communism (‘look at Russia’) I don’t feel too bad. I think we were all a little fed up.

My parents, my brother and I went to Bruges on Saturday, I’d already been but it was on a snowy, rainy, awful day (even though we had fun) it was nice to see Bruges in the sun. Roughly translated that means walking from bar to bar drinking the local beer ‘Brugge Zot’ which means the ‘Bruges Joker.’ We did manage to get a ride on a horse and trap which took us around the town for about half an hour, it was fun, if not a little worrying that the driver couldn’t really control the horse! We ended up back in Lille for dinner, moules frites of course although they weren’t very nice, I don’t think it’s the right season… Sunday we ended up in Lille again just drinking beer, what a surprise, but before that we visited the zoo.

The zoo is a-m-a-zing! It’s free for a start but for a ‘tiny’ zoo it has some great animals like zebra and alpacas, a rhinoceros, lots of gibbons and one of them with a little 6 month old baby which was so cute and in a bizarre, surreal twist one of the girls from the lab was working there! It’s odd to know people in Lille, I think my parents found in bizarre and I found it odd talking in English; we donated some money to name the gibbon Hylo but I don’t know which name was chosen yet.

Anyway I’m organising a picnic to the zoo some time soon, everyone should see the meercats and the weird animals like the flying foxes and some of the pens are so flimsy, I could have touched the alpacas and the peacock managed to escape. Sorry, I was very over excited about the zoo.

Anyway, it’s Friday now so hopefully I won’t be so late next week, since I have some work to do I’m sure I’ll procrastinate by writing!

Until next time…