Waka Waka....

Booooooooooonjour!

Hehe... im a little overtired. Came back by midnight from Lyon and I had a early lesson this morning (8am... *yawn*)

So how was the concert? Bloody fantastic I must say, I knew that already as I have seen her live 2 times before in Stockholm. She sang all the new songs like Loca, Waka waka, She wolf and so on.. But also some spanish classics like Ojos asi and Inevitable.. But I missed Estoy aqui :( Well you cant have everything in life. What I liked was that she changed the songs a bit making most of them rocky and she did a really cool version of Metallicas Nothing Else Matters. She sang 2 verses from the song and then changed to one of her own song which has similar tune.

Oh I must tell you about the drive there.. It took more than an hour to get to Lyon by car and when we got to the city it was FULL of cars, a big traffic jam around the arena as it seems like everyone arrived at the same time 15 mins before the concert started.. We had a hard time finding a place to park, ppl had started parking EVERYONE there was some space you could put your car on.. LOL.. It looked so funny, Im not surprised if many ppl got a ticket when they came back. I should have taken a pic but I wanted to save my batteries for the concert. The arena was not really big but not really small either (if you compare it to the Globe) and we ended up in the middle of the standing crowd, with alot of tall guys infront *sigh*. So thank god for screens.
I did manage to take some pics of her but I mostly filmed, and Im trying to upload them on youtube now but its going very sloow.

So I leave you with some pics from the concert.

You can see how thin she has become!

She´s having a great time. This was actually her first european concert on this tour.

One of the cool guitarist

With some flowers she threw out to the audience

Singing: "Im a Gipsy"

The cool stage that changed depending on which song she sang

Singing "La tortura" I think.. the crowd went crazy during that song

Start of "SheWolf".. Never liked that song

With a cute blue dress she only wore for one song

Singing WAKA WAKA!

Well that was it.. the rest of the pics are in Facebook for you who have it (as is for the rest of all the pics I take here in France).
Im tonight off to play some Basketball with Sarah and then to the wednesday pub meeting. So I will be back with pics and stories about my chocolate visit and Paris weekend next monday!


À Bientôt

PS. Although its not french I thought it would be fitting that this post get a Shakira song! So here you have, the song I missed hearing yesterday: ESTOY AQUI.

De nombreux plans!

Coucou!

Are you all still there?

This week has been quite calm, I´ve been a bit tired so I havent gone out so much. School has been as always quite calm and everything has strangely gone as planned. This friday some of the kids were told that Im leaving in a month and they were all dissapointed. They thought I was going to stay a year.
I only had one french lesson this week as thursday was a bank holiday here which was quite nice.

Wednesday I spent with Sara.. We met for lunch and then we went for shopping (well sara shopped and I went with her) it was fun but tiring, dont know why but I get very tired after just some shops.. LOL.
In the evening was like always, I met the lovely people from Happy People. It feels like every week comes someone new, this time was a guy who actually lived in Sweden for 6 years so we spoke a little Swedish! Romain (the president of HP) told me now that we finally have a Swedish "group" hehe..

Me, the new guy and Celine (who is learning swedish)

After the pub a group of us decided to go to a "nightclub/pub" in the old town and we staid there until 2am.

Thursday was a day off, so I spent the day with my English friends, Sarah, Jo, Jacob and Sophine. We started the day by talking a walk by the Rhône river which was really nice as the weather was wonderful, we walked for an hour almost and then we had a pizza/movie/game evening. We had some great pizza, ate loads of junk food and watched Sin City and then played some Bananarama (a wordgame).

Friday  I stayed at home after my afternoon lesson as I had a headache, didnt feel like going out and partying. So I had a quiet night in the apartment watching a funny french movie that was on TV.

Saturday I spent with my chilean and peruvian friends Daniela and Diana. Danielas boyfriend Ricardo was going to the town Chambéry (thats 30 mins north from Grenoble) to visit some friends and we decided to tag along. We started the day by eating breakfast together (we had some yummy french pastrys) and then we headed off for the 3 hour trip. Insead of taking the highway he drove by small villages which was really nice.

Here are some pics from the car-ride:

When we arrived ín Chambéry we first went to Ricardos friends house and then we headed off to a mountain next to the town called Mont St. Michel. We did a 20 min hiking up the mountain top and it was really worth walking in the mud as the view up there was amazing. Here are some pics from the mountain top:

the three of us up at the top

the beautiful view

a little church that´s up in the top

View of Chambéry and the small villages next to it.

Look at th middle of the pic and you can see a little plane, there were loads of little planes flying that day.

It has started snowing up with the mountains that is close to Grenoble

the three of us by the church

a really yummy cake (dont remember the name though)

We had a nice picnic and the weather was wonderful

In the evening we headed to Chambéry Centre. Here is Old Town

A nice elephant statue they had in the middle of the town (just had to take it for my mum)

Nice river that runs through the town

The cathedral

We had a long days trip, we left Chambéry by 8 and arrived back in Valence around 11pm.

Today is sunday and as usual I have a quite day in.. Done some washing up, hoovering and now im sitting and watching the last episodes of the 3rd season of True Blood, its sooooo good. 

As you might have seen on my title I have many plans for next week and I do hope I get to do them all. The 2 things im most looking foward to is the Shakira concert on tuesday and then the weekend in Paris when Im going to meet Mai. Im also maybe going to a chocolate factory/shop on friday, where you can taste all the chocolate before buying (so there will be ALOT of testing :P ).

Well I hope you all have a nice start of the week and I´ll be back maybe on wednesday to report on the concert!

Bizz



PS.. I will continue with the french musical.. so this weeks song is BELLE from the musical Notre Dame De Paris, sung by Garou, Partick Fiori and Daniel Levoire

I´m baaaaaaack................

BONJOUR À TOUS!

How have you all been doing?...

I havent been writing as I had a 12 days long holiday from school and as many of you know I went back to Sweden. Those 12 days at home was great but I missed Valence a bit aswell I must admit, i´m kind of used to this life now.

As you know my trip back home took about 14 hours due to the strike and plane being late and another cancelled (it was not my day) but the trip back home went much smoother. Everything went as planned and when I arrived at the Valence Gare it felt like I never left. One other thing I noticed was how much warmer it is here comparing to Sweden. I left my spring/fall coat at home and brought back my winter one, big misstake as its to warm for that.. lol.. Hopefully it will get a little colder so I can wear it, luckily I have my windcoat that I can wear now.

So what have I been up to since I arrived. Well on the day I arrived not much happened as I arrived in the evening. But on wednesday it was back to school (fun to see the kids again and the teachers of course). Nacira, Auré and Aurélie had a gift for my birthday 24 macaroons from Gillet (the fancy place) :O I wasnt expecting getting something from them, it was so sweet. As it was wednesday it was of course it was back to the HP meeting. It was fun to see everyone again.
Here its me with Sara and Pierre

Thursday it was school again and back to my french course. I was a litte worried as I had not studied at all for 2 weeks. I had just started reading a french book "le petit prince" but that was all. But the lesson went well and I had only 2 misstakes in the dictation test we had :). In the evening I went to meet the english gang that I had not seen for a while. Sarah cooked a nice pasta and we had a nice evening telling what we had been doing during the holidays.

Friday I was really tired after my 2 lessons, dont know why. I think the talking activites I did with the kids was a bit tiring for me as I had to tell them to be more quiet as they talked very loud (they are not so used to do walking around activities here in France and my activity was that). In the evening I went to Jake´s place to celebrate Sarah´s birthday and the fact that it was Bonfire night. We had such a great time, met a lot of new people, we were over 15 in Jake´s little apartment and after a few hours it got a bit loud so poor Jake got complaints 2 times. After the second time we decided to end the party in his place and we headed out instead. While the other continued partying in a pub I went home as I had an early morning the following day. 

Here are some pics from the party:

Jake, Sarah and Jo making a playlist for the evening

 The macaroons I got from the teachers, I needed help to eat them.

Sarah smoking her sparkle..lol

Me and the birthday girl

The guys playing with sparkles aswell

On saturday morning I met Maiju to go to make a day trip to Marseille. We took the fast train from the other station outside Valence so Maiju´s hostmom gave us a lift. The trip went fast only 1 hour instead of 2 with the slow train. The weather was not so well, it was very foggy and cloudy when we arrived (but not cold) but after a while the sun came out and the it went away, it was like that the whole day lol.

So first we went to the centre, to find the tourist information to get a map and the first thing we visited was the harbour. 

Then we just took a quick look at the main shopping street where the turist information was.

We bought a metro/bus card and we took the bus to the Chateau du Pharo, it was up in a hill so it was a nice view of the centre from there.

Here is the centre and the harbour

Me and Maiju and the now blue sky and you can also see the coast

In the garden of the chateau was this cute cat who we first thought was dead but he was just resting in the sun.. lol

Then we went to the statue d´orient. remembering some soldiers who died in north africa.

we walked by the water/coast of Marseille and we saw this funny sign.. lol

One of the bridges we crossed as we walked, the water looked sooo nice and I would so love to have one of the houses up in the hills.

Then we went to a huge park by one of the big beaches. The park was full of people and it seemed like Marseilles version of Hyde Park. It had this nice lake,,

and nice rose garden but as its fall there werent so many roses lol. But it had many palm trees.

By the park we found this creperie and we had a nice nutella crep.. mmm it was delish

When we went back to town there was a BIG demostration going on (no news here) and of course its about the same thing they have been demostrating about since I came to france. One thing that caught my eye that I found hilarious was this sign for people who were demostrating against demostrating... LOL.. (its the orange sign)

We were supposed to catch a bus that was going to take us up to a hill where the big NOTRE DAME church was but thanks to the demostraters the traffic was chaos so we decided to stay in the centre and do some window shopping. We didnt buy much just a book each, I bought a "how to learn swedish" pocket book.. lol its so funny to read how they are supposed to pronunce swedish words.. lol But it will be in handy for me as it has loads of info and a dictionary and its all in french.. :) Maiju bought the same but a Finnish one. We had such a fun time reading the books on our train ride home! We arrived at 21 again in Valence and I got a ride home from the host mom. We had such a nice day and I think I really like Marseille (well the part thats next to the water, not so much the centre).

Well now its sunday.. I have cleaned my room, done my landury and im soon off to the cinema with Auré to see a movie Mai wrote about in her blog. A new funny French movie. I hope its good! Hope you all have a good sunday!

A Bientôt!

BIZZ

ps. song of the day is from Mozart the rock musical that I have discovered thanks to snuttan, so here is the song: l'assasymphonie

brrrr.....

Hello Everyone!

Fall has come to the south of France now, its getting chilly. I have to wear my jacket now, which is ok but im not very fond of the wind, which is what makes it cold. As when its now windy its not cold. Well well, I knew the sunny weather was going to go away sometime.

So my friday and Saturday has been full with activities for me as the other days of the week.
So lets start with Friday:

I had 2 lessons with Auré, on the first one I had to mark students on their oral presentations which was a bit difficult but fun. I have never graded someone before as I will work with younger kids. The pupils had to talk about their favourite celeb for at least 1 minute. It was fun listening to them, many of them took Lady Gaga and other current singers BUT one boy chose to talk about Homer Simpson LOL and a girl about Jimmy Hendrix (didnt know 13 year olds knew who he was). 
With the younger kids I had to work with a song about the weeks of the day. I had them sing it for me after having listen to it once and afterwards one kids asked me if I was going to sing for them. I was like NO!.. lol

 After the lessons I went back to the flat to make my Chocolate Balls for the International Dinner I was going to that evening. Sarah, Jacob and Jo aka the flapjack team came over to make their flapjacks as they dont have an oven in the student room. When we were finished we chilled out, watching a little bit of Harry Potter in French and just relaxed in the comfty sofa before going out to buy some wine and going off to the dinner.
There were loads of different foods from everywhere one american guy even brought clams..

You can see the swedish flag on my chocolate balls. Oh by the way, I made the misstake telling Jacob, Sarah and Jo that they used to be called Nigger balls before and during the evening Jacob was like: "Im going to eat some nigger balls now".. LOL.

Here are some of the ppl that was at the party. L-R: Roxana (chilean girl), Caroline (french), ?, Manolo (Brasilian), ?, Julia (arentina, the spanish assistant that works in my school) and of course Sara and Me.

The chilean gang, Me, Roxana and David.

Me and Manolo dancing some salsa (or at least we tried lol) after the dancing we started to sing Karaoke.. Lol lovley night, But I had to leave by midnight as I was taking the 7.30 train to Lyon the following morning.

So on Saturday morning the alarm went at 6 in the morning. I bearly woke up but I arrived on time to the station to meet Daniela (another Chilean girl I know) and the first thing we noticed was that our train was cancelled (thanks to the strike). We tried to find other ways to get to Lyon but there was nothing until 9.30. So we went home and I slep for another hour before it was time to go back to the station and we took the train AT LAST. In Lyon we had to check which was the last train to go home so we wouldnt get stuck there, and a nice guy helped us and told us it was at 7.30. We met Diana there who had come from Grenoble and we headed off to the city centre. The first thing I notices when we got off the Metro was a Pizza Pino (you Idsow girls recognise this place) and Starbucks! As we walked to one of the major squares of the City Centre we noticed some ppl demostrating about something.. LOL (this is france, there is always something).

They looked so funny that I just had to take a pic.



After a little while it started raining so we went in search for an umbrella as I had forgotten mine in Valence, found a cute PINK one in Clair´s. It was noon so we were starting to get hungry so I suggested Pizza Pino. The food was delish as always and the service was perfect as the one in Paris. Luckily it had stopped raining after lunch so we walked on the looooooong shopping street, and I think we visited all the shoe shops they have.. LOL. Diana was looking for boots but didnt find any.

A nice small church we passed.

The opera Museum.

They had a Starbucks next to the Opera Museum so I just HAD to have a Chocolate :)

Just outside the museum we saw that they had a market, and as we got closer we noticed that it was a Latin market which was quite funny as here we were 3 latins doing a little trip together. So here we are, Diana, Daniela and me by the Peru stand.

We walked to the Hotel de Ville, which was very pretty.

A nice, HUGE statue(fountain) infront of the Hotel de Ville

Then we headed off to Vieux Lyon AKA old Town. but we had to cross the Saône river to get there. A litlle fact, there are 2 rivers that runs through Lyon, Le Saône river and Le Rhône.

Us 3 by the river

In Old Town we visited this really creapy and chabby marionette museum.. LOL It was like a home made museum. We even had to put the audio on ourselvs (there was a tape player on a table) We laughed so much as we put Spanish Audio on and the girl who talked, talked soooo bad.. It sounded more like Italian.. lol. Then we took the little tram up to the hills of Lyon to see the view.

This is the Basilique de Notre dame de Fourvière. A really nice cathedral, as pretty as Notre Dame in Paris.

Here is a pic of the inside.

And the view of the city centre

Other part of Lyon (the city is HUGE, its the second biggest city in France)

At last we visited the museum Gallo- Romain de Fourvière. Its an old Roman theatre. Actually there are two of these roman theatre in Lyon. But we only visited this one as it was close to the Notre Dame.

We were really cold by this point so we decided to visit the HUGE mall they have opposite the railway station where we were taking the train. The mall was 4 floors high, and never ending corridors, I think we visited 10% of the shops.. LOL.. I did some shopping in Sephora :) Then it was time to take the train. As we walked over to the station we saw police men and men dressed up in soldier clothes closing down the entrence to the station! Diana lied to one of the officers and said that our train was leaving any second and he let us through.. LOL. When we got in it was nearly empty. We then realised why.. THERE WERE NO TRAINS!!! *Sigh* so We ran to the first person we saw that woud have info and he told us that there were no trains because of the strike BUT there were buses leaving now to diffrent parts of the country. So we ran out to the mass of people and tried to find the bus to Valence and Diana to Grenoble. Finally we found them and said goodbye. What usually takes 1h 30 mins took 2h 30 as the bus stopped at every little town on the way down to Valence. So it was a loooong ride but me and Daniela talked through it all hehe. I was really tired when I got home so there were no partying for me that evening eventhough I had promised.

Sunday I was really tired so I just relaxed in the morning and afternoon. At 5 (or afernoon as Sara and Pierre calls it lol) I met them to play some Tennis. It was really funny but difficult, Badminton is more my cup of tea I think. We played for over 1 hour and my arm is aching so much today.. LOL.

So here we are, monday and its only 4 more days til I go home (if the strike lets me). There is a BIG strike planned for tomorrow and probably ofther days of the week aswell.. I just hope it doesnt affect the trains. What it has done is affected the petrol, in some places the petrol is out! Can they just get over it.. they are only going to work 2 more years, its not like they have to work to 65 like in Sweden.

Well well Im off to plan my lessons for tomorrow! Have a nice week everyone!

BISOUS

Song of the day: Je t´aime by Lara Fabian (dedicated to my MOMO)