SUMMER

Well, my first French summer is just about over and I figure I probably should blog about it. So, let's go in chronological order.

Le Bateau Albina

Inside of boat with Anastastia, 15 year old host sister

Here is the boat that I went cruising in with the Giambiasi family for the first half of July. It's a 15 metre long Jeanneau 46 with three rooms and things like that. I'm not too much of a technical boat master myself but it's a nice boat. Motor, goes really fast... Yes.

We went from La Rochelle to Brest, stopping on the way at the Ile d'Yeu and Concarneau. It would have been more pleasant if the weather hadn't have been cold and grey but it was still pretty cool to be on a boat. Novelty!

Our cabin

Coming into the bay in Brest

Once we had arrived in Brest, we went to the Maritime Festival... thousands of gorgeous boats everywhere! There was one huge Russian boat that Anastasia in particular loved, seeing as her mother is Russian and she could eavesdrop on the conversations of the russian sailors...

Anastasia and I

Part of the Russian boat during a light show...

The pretty Brittany coastline

Halfway through the boat trip I returned to Rochefort so I could go on the Atlantic Youth Rotary Meeting with all my southern hemisphere buddies in the south west of France. It was pretty awesome, we're like a little family...

Me at Marqueze, an old style Landais village

A Beach

We were rowed about on a lake

And much wholesome family fun was had by all.

The trip ended up more dramatic than we expected with a car accident in the Pyrenees. The driver managed to make the car flip over while asleep at the wheel. Although Maree from New Zealand was taken in a helicopter to hospital which was pretty damn scary, we thought she had spinal injuries, she's okay now. The driver and the passenger were both fine. Personally I broke a little bone, the 4th Metacarpal in my left hand. Little bone needed operation so now I've got 4 screws and a metal plate, as well as a cool story about an ambulance ride and hospitalisation in France.

A dodgy photo of the xrays from the day of the operation. The white blobs are the plastic thing that I have instead of a plaster.

Since coming back to Rochefort, I've spent the month of August doing not much... there was the operation, then I went with my host family to their holiday house in Fouras, a nearby small town on the beach. It was good, if not just a little bit slighty boring... I passed the days reading Enid Blyton books and playing Brain Training on the Nintendo DS (my brain is 22 years old). The nights were spent hanging with my host sister Marie Charlotte and her friends, which was sometimes great fun and sometimes booo-ring. Depended on who we were with.

Lea and Marie Charlotte waiting for the train

Karena and I on this train

Bensimons, France's favourite tennis shoes...

So there's a really short and incomplete summEry. School goes back in a week's time... not the thing I'm most looking forward to!

Lots of love to everyone, looking forward to seeing you all when I come back in only 4 months!