the rain in spai.. er, france. | aug 17 2004, 15: rain, rain and more rain. tan tan, and now, less tan. meh. this summer is not very fantastic, no, not even a little bit. ok yes, we've had hot days and gopodness all around, but now it has been really quite icky for about a week - and that isn't much fun. thew other day we planned a ghost hunt - we advertised it to about one hundred families and had huge interest. the morning was fine - with a forecasted sunny afternoon. however, come three in the afternoon, everything turned ratehr custard-like and the rain fell in swimming pool quantities. yet - forty children showed up and crammed in to our tent for a jovial old-skool birthday party style afternoon or games and fun. utter madness i tell you. i don't recommend storing forty children in a tent for almost three hours when the seas appear to be migrating to france. later we spent over an hour digging trenches, attempting to salvage what was left dry of our belongings. (fortuantely, all of mine was dry - lucky lucky.) now our live area looks like some kind of midget warzone with little trenches spanning every tent, merging together, and generally creating more trip hazards than we'd prefer on dark nights with no lights. oh the joys of campsite life. i love it really.
my my - the weather in these parts is very peculiar. we've had amazingly hot days and i've got "a tan to die for". the beach is all of a two minute walk from my tent and it stretches for miles in both directions to guilvinec and penmarch respectively. guilv is where i am now - quaint little old town with cobbled streets and a bustling market twice a week. it's nice... supermarket is a bit unfortunate though. nevermind.
Today we've had the remnants of a hurricane that swept through spain a few days ago, we had alternating rain and sun for about five or six hours this morning as each new front swept across our sky. i went out in shorts and tshirt, hoping the worst had passed... wrong again. i came back in a dripping shirt and shorts, but a tummy filled with local sweet things. you can't go anywhere without trying all the local delicacies - and when you don't eat the meats, and the cheeses are rediculously expensive, you have to turn to the pastries. a huge cookie, some big custard and apricot thingy, a baguette, a big pastry thing for later, and some little something with sesame that i'm not entirely sure what it was, but my was it tasty. so i swapped quite a large amount of money for a small selection of sugary goodness, and i feel very satisfied. just, poorer.
this last week we've done a space day, a italian pizza party, sporty things, crafty things, and all sorts of things, even mini golf... this week we're doing a pirate day! oh - the possibilities are... endless.
back in france. | aug 03 2004, 15:47 so, here i am in france again. actually, only about ten minutes down the road from where i was last month. I once again caught the train to quimper in western brittany, and got picked up and driven south, this time to guilvenecm on the other side of benodet to Beg Miel.
I left Duinrell, Wassanaar in Holland around 9:30am. I then got a train from Den Haag sometime later, arriving sometime later in Brussels, and then in Paris where i rode the metro (complete with ugly little dogs, and even one lady who quite cleary had lost whatever fury little creature she'd been carrying in her little pet box) to another station and caught a final train to Quimper. Twelve hours on stupid trains. Fortunately, most of the journey was first class, with the brussels/paris leg even having full service with wine and funny little sandwiches. French trains, while having more comfortable seats, don't have funny little sandwiches, so, my vote goes to Thalys...
So, I'm now living in a tent, with a welsh guy and an english girl (i trained her about five weeks ago). We have to cook, wash up, and pay 5 euros to wash clothes. This, I'm afraid, is far removed from the cushty little life i had in holland. Plus, the french don't particularly like the english (and because i speak it, i'm english by association) and like speaking it even less... Sadly, my french is shit.
Last night, my first night on site - about one int he morning, loads of teeny bopper english kids came running in to the campsite screaming and carrying. Evidently, some french kids had been hurling molotov cocktails at them. joy. My oh my, here's hoping the excitement goes on, without the molotov cocktails mind you...
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