Week 5 - Moving House

All moved in to my new apartment in Avignon!

After a quiet weekend in Vaison packing up my apartment and Skyping friends from around the globe - think I've managed to call everywhere from Australia, to America, to Russia now - it was finally time for the move to the 'big' city. Although I've loved living in Vaison, the distinct lack of young people and boredom that comes from living on your own had led me to find a flat-share in Avignon. I'll be living with a lovely family in Vaison for 2 nights a week though so the 2 hour commute won't be as horrendous as it sounds! Organised another BlaBlaCar with Gael, the guy who gave me a lift on Friday (practically my chauffer now), and we had long chats about the best nights out in London - turns out he'd done a year abroad there back in the day and was pretty impressed by London's nightlife.

Beaut last night in my Vaison apartment

Spent the afternoon unpacking and settling in and in the evening Pauline, my new flatmate who's studying at the University of Avignon, cooked dinner for me and her friend Perrine. We had a chilled evening drinking beer and watching Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu.

My new room

Decided to stay on mainland France for week 2 of half term! The family I used to au pair for in the summer live really close by so invited me to stay with them for a couple of days. They came to pick me up on Tuesday afternoon and I've had a lovely time catching up with my second family and have been sleeping like a log in my old room. Louisa, the girl I look after, has grown up so much since the last time I saw her which is making me feel very old - she's 11 now and has just started Year 7 (or sixième) and is at the stage of sending chain messages and choosing ring tones for her shiny first mobile phone. Those were the days!

Selfies: the best way to keep an 11 year old entertained

I've been helping her with her homework - mainly learning how to say what the weather is like in English - and we've also been making a scrapbook of her holiday to a safari park last week. We also went on a trip to Marseille as her grandparents had some errands to run so Louisa and I spent the afternoon browsing the shops, enjoying the views and riding the lifts (she got a little over-excited and would have stayed in them all day if she could) at the shopping centre.

The weather's not been great as there was a huge storm on Wednesday which caused a power cut when Louisa and I were home alone (fortunately it was daytime). Since there's little to do when it's pouring with rain we thought we'd have a trip to the cinema and went to an adorable old cinema to watch the film everyone's been talking about: Les Nouvelles aventures d'Aladin of course (James Bond isn't out until 11th November in France). The film was surprisingly entertaining, basically a modern day twist on the story of Aladin with lots of jokes thrown in that were easy to understand.

No swimming this holiday

Heading back to Avignon this afternoon and am looking forward to celebrating Halloween in Avignon with some of the other assistants before finally heading back to work on Monday!

Katie x