Monday 24th March

There was no snow on the ground. Was very disappointed as Mum sent a text saying England had loads. My tooth is still hurting so asked Anne for some more paracetamol, and then I showed her how I do my cut-out pictures. Her craft knife was really heavy so I have a bruise where I was holding it, but I was pleased with my picture. Then we had a really nice lunch of different salads and salmon steaks. It was torture though, as the eating made my tooth ache worse. I just hope its not my dead tooth wanting treatment, not sure I coul face going to a french dentist. Had a couple of hours to kill after lunch so I checked emails, Anne showed me how to cross Paris on the metro and then showed me some photos of Lavendu, museums etc. At 4.30 I said goodbye and caught my train to Paris. Actually it wasn’t my train because they were running late so it was the one which was meant to leave at 4. This meant there were two lots of people wanting to get on and the train was packed. I was standing squashed in a corner. At the next stop, loads more people tried to get on and the train was halted for about half an hour because there was too many people on board. Then another train pulled into the station and several people go off our train and headed to the other one. I didn’t understand properly what was going on so I bravely turned to a nice looking woman and her son and said ‘Vous parle anglais?’ Luckily she did and explained that the other train was also heading to Paris (I think it was the one I was originally meant to get), so I swapped trains. Finally I was on my way to Paris, but running about 45 minutes late. In Paris, I pushed my way through a gigantic mass of people and headed to the RER, which is like a double decker underground train and finally I was on my way to Gare St Lazare. There were two American women next to me and one had definitely had loads of plastic surgery. She looked a bit like Jackie Stallone. At this point it was nearly 6.30pm and my train was leaving at 6.50 so I was very doubtful of catching it. I was right, I missed my train by 5 minutes and ended up catching the next one at 7.30. It was a really nice train with squashy seats, clear luggage racks, curtains all in a pale greeny blue colour and that was 2nd class. In all the trains I’d been on I have learnt that red = 1st class, green/blue = 2nd. I was worried about my ticket though, because it had the previous trains' time on it but it doesn’t seem to matter in France. The conductor looked at my ticket and said merci and that was that. I had planned on visiting Monoprix on my way home because I had nothing in the fridge, but I arrived back in Rouen too late so I settled on McDonalds for supper. Could only manage about half though because of my tooth.