Week 30 - The Penultimate

It's been a rather eventful penultimate week back in Avignon, comprising of everything from 20th birthday celebrations, lunch with Roman gladiators and an emergency trip to the dentist.

I landed back in Marseille last week to a beautiful sunny day - classic that as I reach the end of my contact the weather starts to get really good. It was a fairly quiet weekend in Avignon as everyone was gradually beginning to filter back from their holidays. Pauline and I had a few chilled evenings at Red Sky and caught up with the girls while assessing Diane's waitressing skills at Ginette & Marcel.

Kate, Annie and I were also invited to tea by one of the ladies at our gym who put on a serious display of cakes and chatted away to us about life in Avignon with the Amélie soundtrack playing in the background.

Monday saw Pauline reach the tender age of 20, which obviously meant a night out at Red Sky with the crew (including one of their university tutors). Despite my 6am start the next morning, everyone was invited chez nous for afters - we did have birthday bunting, a slightly questionable (French flour is just not the same) birthday cake and vodka jelly prepared, after all. Unfortunately the neighbours weren't quite as keen to celebrate Pauline's birthday in the early hours of Tuesday morning and it wasn't long before we had the police knocking on our door so we were forced to relocate the party elsewhere.

After a slight toothache on Tuesday, I woke up the following morning to a stabbing pain in my wisdom tooth and a gum the size of a golf ball. This didn't seem promising. Putting on my best French accent despite the lack of ability to move my mouth, I called all 9 dentists I could find in Avignon and desperately pleaded for an emergency appointment. Just as I was about to give up hope and overdose on painkillers, I got a call back from the first dentist I called (typical) who had a sudden gap they could squeeze me in. Within 5 minutes I was in the dentist's chair and she very sweetly prescribed me some anti-inflammatorys.

That afternoon I met up with Annie for milkshakes (couldn't physically consume anything else just yet) and we had a little panic session over all the French admin we needed to sort out before we go. Phone contract has now been cancelled and packing is about to commence. Later, Ghislaine and I went for a walk to the Palais Gardens to enjoy the sunshine before heading to tandem.

Two of my classes were cancelled on Thursday because the Romans of Vaison-la-Romaine were visiting school! This just meant I got to spend more time with my favourite CM2 class where we basically spent the lesson playing the celebrity guessing game. The three 'Roman soldiers' ate lunch with us in the staffroom which was quite entertaining - they were fully dressed in gladiator sandals and body armour.

Fair to say it's been quite emotional going into work this week and preparing to say goodbye. I've armed myself with several giant bags of sweets ready for next weeks classes. Going to miss my kiddies.

Friday night was DJ Vessel's final Pub Z with all the assistants so was a great chance to see everyone again and start saying our goodbyes *sob*. Ghislaine and I headed to Brian's for his famous soup (butter is the secret ingredient) after tandem, followed by pres before we headed to Pub Z and obviously ended up in Red Zone at the end of the night.

Another 3 hours sleep - this seems to be becoming a habit out here - then an early start this morning to go for a hike/take an English lesson in Les Alpilles with the sweetest local woman. After the hike we popped into the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy for a look around at where Van Gogh was a self-admitted patient back in the late 1800s.

Now time to finally get down to doing some uni work that's due next week - we do have some assessments to do on a Year Abroad, promise!

Bisous, Katie x

No Fuss Yoghurt Cake

This is probably one of the simplest baking recipes I have. It's super-quick to make and you don't need weighing scales, dreamy for those times you find yourself in a poorly-equipped kitchen and have to whip up a cake for a friend's birthday. I had to make this cake almost every day when I was working my ski season as a Chalet Host. That's probably about 200 times - you can see why Chalet Girl Bum is such an issue! The fact it's made with yoghurt means it should even rise at high altitude in the mountains, fail safe.

Ingredients:

• 1 125g pot of natural yoghurt
• 1 pot of vegetable oil
• 2 pots of sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4 pots of flour
• 1 sachet baking powder
• Icing sugar
• Sweets e.g. Smarties, Haribo (for decoration)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C
2. In a large mixing bowl add the yoghurt, then rinse out the pot to measure the other ingredients
3. Add the oil, sugar and eggs and mix
4. Add the flour and baking powder and beat until smooth
5. Pour the mixture into a lined baking tin and cook in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes
6. Mix icing sugar in a bowl with a little water to form water icing
7. Allow cake to cool before pouring icing on top
8. Decorate with sweets and let the icing set before serving

Frenglish / Franglais comedy

While I was at home in London this week my friend Freddie won tickets to a private stand up comedy gig with Eddie Izzard and Gad Elmaleh and sweetly invited me along. The night was Frenglish themed - English comedian Eddie was performing in French, while French/Moroccan Gad did his set in English (perfect for a bit of French practice while I was in the UK)!

Celebs for the night

The evening turned out to be a very exciting event at Abbey Road Studios where we were greeted with champagne and a star-studded room. Hosted by the French multi-media company, Vivendi, the evening started with a brief introduction in French by their English representative and English by their French one.

After a wonderful melange of the two languages and leaving the audience in fits of laughter, Eddie and Gad had a brief Q&A discussing everything from Brexit to Jeremy Paxman's ridiculous comments about the French language.

Check out Gad and Eddie on YouTube, trust me they'll make you laugh.

Abbey Road

CAF

I received some VERY exciting news this week. My CAF has finally arrived!

For those of you who don't know, CAF (Caisse d'Allocations Familiales), is money allocated by the French government to people living in France who earn under a minimum threshold to contribute towards rent. The amount differs depending on income and price of accommodation and it very generously covers foreign students living abroad, meaning if you're on your Year Abroad in France you should be entitled to it!

However, as I've discovered with lots of admin in France, CAF is an absolute nightmare to organise. To start with, you have to fill out a long form listing all your finances and information about your accommodation, as well as submit a copy of your passport, birth certificate, bank details and tenancy agreement. Once this is all sent off, you should receive log in details in the post so you can access your account online and track your status.

Having spoken to other friends who also applied, it seems the process is slightly different for everyone - some friends never received their online details, others were sent their CAF money immediately and others were asked for more documents (and photocopies) of their forms of ID, payslips, utility bills, the secret recipe for CocaCola, the script to the new Harry Potter book... ok I'm joking about the last bits but you get the idea.

I was in the unfortunate position of having to provide a payslip for a month I never actually received due to issues with my pay at the start of my placement. Woohoo, slight issue. Having gone into the office a couple of times and made many attempts to drop off my bank statement for the following month with little success I'd pretty much given up hope on ever receiving CAF altogether.

Fortunately, my friend Kate said she was going along again and motivated me to give it one more try. So at the start of this month, a whole 6 months after I first made my application, I went into the CAF office and explained my situation to an extremely helpful woman who added some notes to my form and arranged a phone call for Monday morning. Despite being on a ski trip in the Alps, I kept my phone on loud and fortunately managed to take the call while coming off a chairlift, trying my best to understand the French being spoken to me over the gale-force mountain winds!

This week the magic finally happened and I have a very happy little French bank account. My monthly allowance for the past few months has been deposited in a tidy lump sum, the perfect cherry on the cake to have in the final weeks of my time abroad in France.

My top tips for applying for CAF:

• If you can, go in person to the office. It is 100 times quicker and easier to speak to someone and they are always really helpful and sympathetic of your situation so can help you through the process.
• Be persistent. I had almost given up but I'm so glad I went in that one last time - it's worth it in the end!
• Try and do your application early. Although it can be daunting when you move to another country for the first time, especially with the language barrier, these things take a long time and a lot of patience so the sooner the better really!

Weeks 28 & 29 - Easter Holidays

For the Easter holidays I went off skiing for a week with my family in Les Deux Alpes, followed by a lovely week back home playing tourist in London:

Cece came to visit so I showed her around on Boris' Bubbles

Katie x

Week 27 - Easter in Marseille

Easter in France: Champagne, soirées and classroom Easter Egg hunts!

For Easter weekend Pauline (my lovely flatmate) invited me to Marseille to spend it with her family. We both stayed in Avignon on Saturday, since she had work at Just Coffee Shop and I had tutoring, and took the TER that evening. My tutee was a lovely lady who lives in a local village so I took the bus to meet her and she drove us to Les Alpilles for a combined hike and English lesson. It was probably one of the sunniest days we've had out here so the weather was perfect for it.

In the evening Pauline and I headed straight from the station to her friend's birthday celebrations in Marseille. Although perhaps a little daunting at first walking into a room of French strangers, we quickly got chatting and had a fun evening. They introduced me to a super-shot - take a slice of lemon and coat one side in sugar, the other in coffee granules, then bite into it after a vodka shot. Lethal, but also definitely needed for a caffeine/sugar high at the end of a long day!

We had a chilled Easter Sunday morning before a wonderful lunch with her parents. In true French style, there was of course apéro, wine, bread and cheese. Plus, since it was a special occasion we also popped open a bottle of champagne. Bliss.

Pauline had uni work to do so I went along to the Vieux Port to see some of my assistant friends who were also visiting Marseille that weekend. Unfortunately the sunshine hadn't quite held out for Easter Sunday but the Vieux Port was still looking pretty. Later that evening Pauline and I met up with some more of her friends who were all really friendly and we had fun hanging out and playing Picolo.

On Easter Monday I got to try out Marseille's metro (city life is exciting) as we went down to South Marseille to her sister's for lunch. Yes, more wine, cheese and chocolate - it was a very happy Easter. In the afternoon we made the most of the fact we were by the seaside and had a trip to the beach, followed by drinks at a beachside bar with her friend before heading back to Avignon.

The sun was shining again on Wednesday so I met up with Ghislaine from tandem for Monacos in Place Pie where we soaked up some rays and Brian joined us later with his old housemate (they were late after having a few admin problems at uni, classic).

Once again, the ever-reliable French transport system decided to go on strike on Thursday which meant an even earlier start for me. School was fun though, especially with it being the last week of term so everyone was in a good mood with the holidays in sight. This time of year the primary schools have a thing called Carnival where all the children dress up in fancy dress and parade the streets throwing confetti. Unfortunately I missed out on seeing it as it happened on the days I wasn't working but the teachers were quite jealous of me - turns out the teachers had to dress up too and they weren't quite so excited about it as the children were!

Over lunch, my head teacher brought in some Kinder eggs and Shoko-bons for us all. Once she'd realised Alex (another teacher) and I hadn't been on an Easter Egg hunt that weekend she declared we'd have to do one, so we were sent out the classroom as her and another teacher hid the eggs for us to find. Have to say is was one of my more amusing lunch breaks!

I'm currently in Lyon where I'm impatiently waiting for my family to arrive as we're off to Les Deux Alpes tomorrow for a ski trip. I do love school holidays.

A bientôt,

Katie x