Last Sunday, j’ai passé the afternoon snow-shoeing dans les montagnes. Noëlle’s family picked me up and après a quick stop at Skirama to rent some raquettes, we were on our way to the end of la vallée de Munster pour rencontrer les autres. Martin et Jean (note, prénom masculin) took the three youngest enfants to faire la luge, whilst the rest of us went off for une randonnée en raquette. It was assez difficile au début (surtout climbing over fallen arbres when you have a massive bit of plastic attached to your pieds) but it did get un peu plus facile when the path widened a bit.
Les Vosges enneigées
At one point, there was a hollow dans la neige: Pierre trod on it and cracked a sheet of ice which was environ 5 centimeters thick! It’s fairly safe to dire that I’m glad I wasn’t walking in front at that moment!
Group photo (minus Noëlle who was taking the photo)
almost au sommet!
Remembered to use the panoramic setting…
We walked to le sommet of ‘Le Tanet’; the views were incroyables! Il y avait aussi some small stone markers, indicating l’ancienne frontière allemande/française.
At the summit!
LHS: Deutschland RHS: La France
Ensuite, we descended via a currently hors-service ski slope before drinking un chocolat chaud in a chalet. Avant de partir, I tried sledging pour la première fois in my life; malheureusement, I can’t upload the video evidence ici, but it was so much fun! À la fin de la journée, some of us had raclette chez Laurence; for the uninitiated, this comprises of melting some fromage and pouring it over some pommes de terre and quelques autres choses…
Après avoir reçu (finalement) my numéro de sécurité sociale, I was able to complete all my feuilles de soins in the hope of (at some point in the very distant future) being reimbursed for my encounter with the French healthcare system. I am immensely reconnaissante to my school secretary, as without her phone calls to various people I would almost certainly still be sans numéro de sécurité sociale!
On Wednesday, we had une formation at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Après an alarm at hideous ‘o’ clock, a walk to la gare which I’m fairly sure was done in the dark, a train and a slight cauchemar with the tram network we arrived au Parlement Européen. Malheureusement, there was no free kougelhopf cette fois; instead, la journée began with confusing information regarding our numéros de sécurité sociale (désolée, but contrary to what was said, provisional social security numbers are not valid, and thus completely inutile) alongside finally being told we’ll probably never receive la carte vitale. Ensuite, we had a (très rapide) guided tour of parliament; je ne suis pas a huge fan of politics, but it was intéressant all the same. Après avoir mangé (not very much in my case), it was time for a (traumatic) après-midi doing work which would have been far more utile au début de l’année. Au moins, I did manage to acquire a new poster pour ma chambre. Cependant, the best bit of the day wasn’t even part of the scheduled trip; Adrienne, Julie, Simone et moi decided to take a detour home via un café called ‘Bistrot & Chocolat’ for un chocolat chaud.
The important room; I’ve forgotten the official name.
European Parliament, Strasbourg
At la fin de la working semaine, je suis allée en ville to find a birthday present pour ma mère with aucun succès. I did, however, buy a French book: Les Monsieur Madame et la Galette des Rois. How éducative!
Top purchase, most enjoyable French book ever.
Hier, je suis allée à Nancy with Chrissy and Simone; 151km away by train isn’t “trop loin” for a day trip à mon avis! After picking up un plan de la ville at the station, we headed in the direction of Place Stanislas.
Place Stanislas
We had a pizza at ‘L’arrosoir’ avant de découvrir la vieille ville de Nancy. After walking through Place de la Carrière, we arrived at the Église St-Epvre (aucune idée on the pronunciation of that name) and found une boulangerie: time for an iced manala!
“The Watering Can”
Église St-Epvre
En attendant the magic hour of 2pm, when everything would reopen, we walked up to Porte de la Craffe and had a wander around La Pépinière which was a large park.
Porte de la Craffe
Ensuite on a visité le musée historique lorrain, housed in the Palais Ducal. We then wandered around a few magasins, had a look in la cathédrale and (après wandering around in a big circle) located the ‘CharlElie NCY NYC’ exhibition à la galerie Poirel, which turned out to be gratuit pour les étudiants! Before leaving Nancy, we went to a café called ‘Amorino’ which served chocolat chaud, that was literally like melted chocolate, and focaccine, which was ice cream served in a brioche bun!
Place Stanislas
mango and chocolate focaccine and hot chocolate
Place Stanislas (encore une fois)
Aujourd’hui has been spent largely dans mon lit, with tons of tissues and a horrible cold; hopefully my mal à la tête will disparaître in time for school demain.
from angleterre to alsace 