The Final Countdown…

… Well I suppose that’s not quite accurate but it feels as though it is! On Saturday, I head home to spend the Christams holidays with my closest friends and family. Somehow this feels like the end of my time in France – in reality I shall be back for two or three weeks in January, but I imagine that that’s going to feel a lot more like a holiday after I’ve had the chance to spend some time at home! Still, at least it’ll give me some time to visit the Irish pub a few more times! My priorities are quite evidently not in the right order, but this close to Christmas I’m not really that bothered… The Christmas spirit has well and truly kicked in – which in the language of students, means that we can most definitely no longer find the energy to go to class. Instead we tend to spend our time getting drunk to Christmas songs, and just generally being jolly!  Oh what it is to be a student…

This last month began with a visit from an old friend; one who is rather famous for being there whenever I’ve gotten myself into trouble in the past. Her time with me here with me  in Nantes didn’t disappoint!! On her first night here we spent almost 5 hours in the pub, before being invited to carry on the night with the barmen. The night ended in a house party with far, far too much wine, and lots of debate over which accent is the most difficult to understand (welsh or irish – feel free to vote!). It’s safe to say that we barely ventured out of bed on the sunday, but when we did it was to head back to the pub for a very British hot chocolate and crisps, and eventually made it across the road to the pizzeria, where they served us the biggest pizzas I have ever seen! I can honestly say that I’m not sure what we did with our monday and tuesday, except that we went back to the pub on both days… What was supposed to be a cultural visit most definitely turned into a drunken girls’ week in! Can’t say I’m the least bit surprised though – we seem to have that effect on each other! What I do remember, is that we spent at least an hour trying to teach various people how to speak a bit of welsh. It ended with one rather drunken off-duty barman telling everyone that he was going to put his “dirty black pig in the microwave” (mochyn du brwnt yn y popty ping (for anyone that cares))- but hey, at least he learnt something right?!?

The rest of the week was spent desperately trying to catch up on university work before happily welcoming the weekend once again. Needless to say that passed by far too quickly for my liking, but at least things are pretty much back to normal now! Or almost back to normal anyway… I mean, I do still have a few more days to go until I leave. That’s plenty of time for something interesting to happen!

In short, this month has so far been drunken and over too quickly! At least I found plenty of positive things to blog about though. Seems a friendly face from home really does help to brighten up your outlook.