Another Week gone by!

So another week has gone by without a blog update!

Thursday I went into work for about 10am having been asked to get there for 9.30. It became apparent that there wasn't a lot for me to do. I spent about an hour sorting cards into piles of 50 so they could be sorted into piles of 50, 100, 150, 200, 400. There were 3400 of them. Then I read for 2 hours before lunch. The afternoon passed in much the same way except I had new exciting things to sort into piles and then work out which piles went with which piles. I again spent 2 hours reading. As 5pm neared I tried to talk to the boss to tell him that I wouldn't be coming back, but he was just impossible to talk to. I overheard him saying that he wanted me in the next day but he didn't actually say that to me. Then he left in such a way that just made it impossible to talk to him. So I sent him an email when I got back telling him I was leaving and asking him to pay me!

The next day volunteering was cool, I got chatting with a really nice girl called Sarah and her friend who was visiting for the weekend, Aude. Sarah is part of a society that is spending 9 months volunteering; they spent 3 weeks at La Chorba and then now they have moved onto 7 months with an association for old people. A lot of the others in the society seemed very immature and loud. Sarah, Aude and myself biked to the 19th on velibs, Sarah is a true Parisienne on the bike, no regard for red lights or other traffic!! The distribution went well. It was different to the other place; less school like. The food was all obviously home made too (by me and other volunteers!).

Saturday I met up with Emily, my cousin from Mauritius, who was in Paris with her school. It was lovely to see her. We went to a Starbucks and Emily was delighted because they don't have them in Mauritius. My Aunt and Uncle were there too and we just generally wandered around Paris. It was horrendously busy seeing as it was a Saturday and my uncle favoured using his car to get from A to B rather than the metro which was actually a lot of hassle! Then that evening I went back to Châlons-en-Champagne with my aunt and uncle and stayed the night there. My cousins were there who I haven't seed for a couple of years now and I met their girlfriends too. The next day we were heading to St Dizier for my other cousins birthday meal celebration. We were supposed to be leaving at 11 and I was ready to leave at 10.45 (surely not?! I hear you cry!!) but yes, I was actually ready to leave at that time! We didn't actually leave until 12.30... Clearly the late gene is something I can do nothing about! It is in my blood!

We arrived and had champagne and nibbles and a spectacular meal; starter was a salad of some sort with some kind of saint Jacques fish, I'm not sure what the english is, then turkey AND duck with cooked pineapple, potatoes and sauce, and 3 desserts; chocolate cake, raspberry mousse and swiss roll with home made custard and fruit coulis. It was soooo good, but I ate enough to feed me for the week! It was all home made and delicious. It was lovely to see everyone too. Then Carole and I got the train back.

Monday I was back in the soup kitchen and again it was great. I didn't go to the distribution in the evening and instead met Georgia at 6pm at La Comédie Française to queue for our free "jeune" tickets to the evening's performance of Figaro Divorce. We queued for an hour and a half before the guichet opened, by which time Sarah from La chorba had joined us, and we didn't even get seats together!! To be honest it wasn't worth the wait. The seats we had meant it was very hard for us to see the stage without leaning right forward and the play was a lot of dialogue that was hard to follow. Even Sarah who is French found it boring! I dozed through the second half and then we headed home. I was starting to get ill :-(

I took all of Tuesday and Wednesday off because I was ill and I did not want to pass it on to all the homeless people of Paris. Tuesday evening I did meet with Sarah Leahy (from the uni) and Georgia for a hot chocolate. Sarah was finding out all about how we are getting on and letting us know that the uni still loves us!

Anyway that's all from me before I bore you to death! Tomorrow is my day off anyway so I shall try and do something exciting and Parisian if I'm feeling up to it; I'm feeling a lot better now after 2 days of bed rest.