Tuesday 15th April

Had a nice early start this morning. We had arranged to meet at the station at about 7.00 ready for our 7.12 train, so I struggled down the 63 stairs at 6.40. I got to the station about 5 minutes early and I must say was a little panicked when the station clock got to 7.09 and there was still no sign of them. However, they appeared within a few seconds and we caught the train with about 30 seconds to spare. We had to change stations in Paris so we spent a good 30 minutes carrying our cases up and down stairs and on and off the metro, going from St Lazare to Gare Lyon in the rush hour. Never again! Once on the train to Montpellier we could relax and watch the countryside change as we headed south. One thing I have noticed is that although the majority of french toilets are bad with no paper, seats or sinks, the train toilets are much better than british ones. They have seats, working sinks and loo paper, and don’t smell too bad. Weird. Anyway, we got to Montpellier at about 1.30 and arrived to a blue sky and sunshine - bliss. While we were waiting for Laura (Mary’s friend) we watched the trams go by (they were painted in a 60’s style flower power pattern) and chatted to an english boy and an american girl who were teaching assistances from the North of france and didn’t know where to go in Montpellier. When Laura arrived she told them where to go and we went to Laura’s house to drop off the bags. Its a house on two floors with a big kitchen and a big sitting room, and had 5 people living there. We met Laura’s housemate and friend Mary, who was American, and the dog which another housemate was looking after for the week, and then had a wander around the town. Its a very pretty city, loads of cobbled streets and outdoor cafe’s. We stopped at two different cafes on our way around and had a gorgeous apple crumble at one of them. Liz and Grace have decided to go on a detox diet this week and were only going to eat grapes for the whole week. However, Mary and I managed to persuade them to have rice aswell, so now its grapes and rice for a week. Personally I think they’re rather mad. That evening we went to a party at one of Laura’s friends flats. They are all teaching assistance and there was and aussie, a kiwi, two americans, a canadian, a french and a brit. Then, a friend of Laura’s from uni, Lauren, arrived with some more teaching assistances. They were down for a couple of days from Lille. Amongst them were two americans, an english guy Nick who used to live in Holt, two english girls, Claire who lives in Cambridge and one I can’t remember the name of and two scottish girls. It was so weird being surrounded by so many different nationalities. In Rouen we have got used to mixing with the french.