Today is my 4 week anniversary of arriving in Rennes!

I'm not going to write about EVERYTHING I have done in 4 weeks because then this post would get out of control, but here are my top 10...

1. I found somewhere to live! After a week of getting (brutally) rejected by potential flatmates looking for people to stay for a whole year, I found a flat with a French girl Claire whose flatmate has just left to study in Canada for a semester. It's 20 minutes walk from the IEP, 10 from the town centre and 5 from the metro if it's raining.

2. I did a 2 week "intensive" French course before term started along with all the other foreign students. During this time I realised that actually I know quite a lot French. I also realised that a) all the french I know I learned either from Madame Sanwal at Emma Willard or at Oban High School and b) I haven't learned anything much since I went to Aberdeen.

3. At the end of the 2 weeks we had an international buffet for lunch. Everyone brought something from their own country and then we shared it. I didn't have access to haggis (some would say maybe for the best...) so I joined forces with the other Brits to produce an Afternoon Tea with cucumber sandwiches, scones with jam and cream and tea.

4. We took a trip up to Saint Malo on the middle weekend of our French classes because the weather was gorgeous. All those people who told me it was going to rain all the time in Brittany lied. We walked around the walls, had galettes and crepes for lunch then went to the beach. Some of us went swimming (Europeans first and after a lot of persuasion the Mexicans got in too) in the sea water swimming pool on the beach.


5. We went to Saint Malo again. There was a tall ship in the harbour called the Gorch Fock. It's a German Navy ship and apparently it's very famous in German so we decided to go and see it during open ship times. Then we went swimming, in the actual sea this time, and played a bit of frisbee on the beach.


6. Afternoon trip to the Chateau at Fougeres, about 50 minutes away from Rennes.
7. There is an AMAZING market every Saturday in the Place de Lices. There are 2 permanent market halls which have most of the boulangerie/charcuterie/boucherie type stalls in them, then around this are all the fish and seafood stalls, the cheesemongers and of course the vans selling galettes saucisses (a sausage wrapped up in a savoury crepe, the Breton equivalent of a hotdog!). Then on the road at the side and leading all the way up to the next square are the fruit, veg and flower stalls. In amongst all the vendeurs are people busking. Quite often there are people playing Breton music and a few times there have been demonstrations by a tap dancing school. It's a lot of fun but I always come back with several kind of things which I have no idea how to cook!

8. Miró Cassetta is here! She is studying at Rennes 2 and living with a family near La Poterie, the last stop on the metro. It was her birthday the first week we were here, so of course we celebrated by going out for galettes and crepes followed by some cider.

9. I played Ultimate for the first time since May. The team here is called Mr Friz and they play in a park in the north of Rennes. I wasn't sure what to expect and it turned out to be a fairly serious practice with lots of drills and stuff before we actually played any games. It was quite hard because I didn't have any studs with me so I was sliding all over the place on the grass but it was a lot of fun and all the French people were really nice and helped me learn some of the vocab ( a lot of which just involves saying the English word in a French accent). I paid for it the next morning though as I could hardly walk!

10. I took advantage of the Journées du Patrimoine which took place this weekend in Rennes and other cities in France. But that's the subject for another blog...