I left my last blog just before the weekend so thats where I'll start it! Saturday I headed off on an adventure to Val D'Europe to do some shopping and it's been ages since I visited there! Took me an hour to walk to Disney (it's still exciting I can do that, cutting across the fields and looking ahead to see space mountain in the distance) then hopped on a bus from chessy and 5 minutes later voila! I swear the place is bigger than I remember it and it has EVERYTHING. I fell into Auchan and came out 20€ lighter...but had nearly a weeks food shopping and some stationery...what is it with new stationery why is it so exciting to buy, why is a stationery aisle always so appealing?! Anyway I mentally spent several hundred pound in there but left as I had to haul it all back home still.
Few piccies for those who have never seen it, this place is mere minutes by RER/bus from Disneyland.
One of the entrances:
Inside:
More inside....
A little music whilst you shop...
There is way more to the place than that, there's a whole other floor, an aquarium a massive food court, an entire outdoor street known as 'the village' which is a massive seconds designer outlet and not many people know it's there... It's awesome I get to live in a lovely very French village in the middle of nowhere but for entertainment I have Disneyland and for shopping etc I have this place right on my doorstep and central Paris is 30 mins away should I fancy it! Ideal location, I'm a very lucky girl and I know it right now.
One of the things I haven't mentioned here before is the Graf in the area. The french love their street 'art' and even in my sleepy little area these treasures are present (sorry picture extravaganza today people!)
Here kitty kitty... (there's also a tiger randomly on the wall a couple of streets away)
Photographing me photographing vous...
One of several cats (I found a new incredible one today will get pics up soon!!!)
Interesting...
It's everywhere!!!
Anyway that was Saturday. Sunday got off to a very stupid proper blonde start. Alarm went off at 04:15am ready to switch on the computer, turn on expat shield and log onto ITV (thank you expat shield for allowing me to watch UK tv!!!) and watch the Wales match... Just one rather stoopid problem. It may be 04:15am and kick off is at 04:30am, but that is UK time and I'm in France!!!!! So it's only 03:15am in the UK. Anoyed but awake I switched on the coffee machine and read my book whilst dipping in and out of watching this years Olympia for an hour and then the match started. When I had watched Wales win I got up went for a small run myself with a few basic squats, lunges and press ups thrown in before heading back to shower and watch England win! Awesome start to the day.
Once the matches were over i headed over to Esbly to the Brocante and to pop to Zoe's for an aperitif and a catchup after. Now Brocantes are fascinating. It is basically a car boot/garage sale but the whole town empties all the rubbish from their houses and sells it on the street or outside their house, as opposed to flogging it from their car boot in a muddy field somewhere whilst charging you for the privilege of sloshing through the mud to look at their aforementioned mentioned rubbish. I strolled over the canals to Esbly wondering if I'd find it going on anywhere obvious (the one the week before in my village was a teeny affair and got rained off) but sure enough when I got to Esbly what gave it away was that normally Esbly high street is like a ghost town, maybe the usual guy with his glass of wine sat outside the local bar (yup he's there, even at 7am!) the guy smoking outside his tabac store and some tumbleweed drifting past, but today...
Esbly high street in the grip of a Brocante!!
They really do sell anything...
It was fabulous wondering round perusing the stalls there was some fab stuff! You have to haggle too I was told, often you can get it for half what it's marked at. You have got to remember at these events though, you are in france and the french are not spatially aware (actually they just dont care) and if they walk into you it's officially your fault so you get jostled through and you have to deal with it. This is them, they aren't british, I'm not in the uk, they're not super rude they are how they are the same way that Hugh Grant epitomises us English people (bumbling and apologetic and wondering why the rest of the world aren't as polite as us) Someone once said that if abroad you could always find the British people in a darkened auditorium by just working your way along the rows treading on peoples toes until someone apologises to you...
Anyway the atmosphere was fab on a sleepy Sunday morning meanwhile let it never be said that the French dont stereotype themselves over the whole French bread thing:
Yep they do it all the time, you know you are near a boulangerie, the number of people passing you with baguettes under their arm increases. Speaking of French bread did you know the word baguette basically means three things. 1. That I can't remember (useful I know) 2. French stick (obviously) 3. If you go to a Chinese restaurant and ask for a baguette you'll get chopsticks...
No wonder I'm finding it to so hard to learn French (asides the fact my friends out here are English, American, Irish and south African...) it's even more of a wonder when my bilingual housemate tells me she once counted 54 variations of the SAME verb.
So post Brocante I popped into see Zoe who along with her husband filled me up with the loveliest food as they always do, allowed me to chase the chickens, amused the boys on the trampoline and played with the dogs
Silly soppy boys...
before heading home along the canals to walk off the food and especially the amazing strawberry Flan we had for afters.
Zoe had told me of this little workout area just off the canal which was on my route home so decided to check it out as having walked that way several times I couldn't recall what she was on about. Sure enough I came across first this sign which is a grafted map of the route:
Then there are signs telling you where to rest and jog:
And then mini obstacles on the path!
Fabulous!!! So been using them initially in the morning but lately the light has turned almost overnight and the mornings are suddenly extremely dark now...rubbish.
The next night I was out walking Sasha and exploring a new part of the canal when I acme across more signs!
Suggesting stretches:
Some chin bars just off the path:
The canals here are beautiful and so these are an amazing addition to a jog! I love the scenery out here you get the most amazing fauna and flora, came across these very beautiful flowers growing wild
And it turns out in France they didn't get the memo that these were rare...
Turns out the grey Squiggles are the rare ones here... Beeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaauuuutiful!
Any who it's not been all play. Actually yes it has but that's besides the point. I do also have to work. Sometimes. Apart from today during my 15 min break between class change over, it was super hot so i was sunbathing down at le stade, watching the little lizards scurrying about and thinking how much I was hating being me. Damn any minute now a bunch of children are going to turn up and we are going to play for an hour....I'm getting paid for this *smug mode*.
This week I've been teaching throwing which is pretty easy going however if you asked my friend Shawnee who I spent half an hour throwing an American football round with pre-fitness training with the aigles de meaux American football team...he'd laugh. But I am apparently starting to throw less like a girl and getting a good spin on the ball. When he's not ripping into me for being a sports teacher. Annoyingly I could have gone to Disney with him tonight to play golf but I had parents evening, although parents evening is fun, especially the couple of hours respite I had during which Michelle and I popped to the boulangerie in Montry, bought pastries and flopped on the grass in a mini park to consume and discuss our lives. Is the little moments like that I enjoy the most!
It's just as well from next week life gets way more hectic... I have to do 2 extra dance and drama workshops after school from then so a lot more planning is involved from next week and I got a taster of the work that is cut out for me in running these on Wednesday when I did a dance workshop with some of the children in the afternoon. Some of the girls who signed up for it really surmised me, until we started the class then I realised they had thought dance was the easy option and had just come to be able to jump around without structure... When they discovered I had a routine for them to learn and perform to the others an hour later which required them to listen and learn their easy afternoon get out clause bubble was well and truly burst and they'd missed out on plan B which was a nice easy afternoon of arts and crafts...that'll learn them. But it's not my job to let them mess about therefore it wasn't allowed. I can be quite tough on them but you have to be and so far I've had reports from parents saying everything from the lessons are good (from children who never say that about sport), to their favourite, to the best lesson they ever had...so it's working somewhere down the line!
Anyway that's pretty much it for the week, not my usual tone and lots of pics but it's been a recovery week so my brain isn't up to scratch yet. However it's almost the weekend for which so far the plan is I am heading into Paris to watch the rugby Saturday morning, then I am spending the day in Paris before going to see Excalibur at le stade du France with friends Saturday night, a few drinks in Paris then home. Genial!
Bon soirée
Karen xxx
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