August
Yes, it's been a while!I do apologise, I've been seriously slack about updating. So you'll get a really big update now, and my promises to try to be better next time! ;)
For now, a quick summary of August!
I did quite a few things in August.
I met up with my brother Andrew and his friend Andrew in Paris. We had a fantastic time, I think I pretty much saw most of the things you might want to see in Paris! We went to some beautiful churches and cathedrals, to the Louvre, the Moulin Rouge, the Tour d'Eiffel, the Arc du Triomphe, l'Opera and some other interesting places as well. I loved the Opera House and the Louvre particularly, but I think some of my most beautiful pictures were from Saint-Chappelle, which has to be seen to be believed.
Saint-Chappelle was built in medieval times as a reliquary to hold the Crown of Thorns and parts of the Cross (well... apparently they were so!). After the king at the time spent a hell of a lot of money on the reliquary, he then paid more for the relics themselves, which makes me think there was a particularly pleased con-man somewhere around those times! Anyway, the place is just gorgeous, especially when the light is kind:
Andy and I also went to the Luxembourg gardens, where Andy fulfilled his dream to be a yacht captain:
After the gardens, we found a delicious ice cream place which served some of the best icecream I've ever tasted, served up with different flavours in a "flower" shape. It was just what we needed after a really hot day!
Of course no trip to Paris is complete without seeing the Louvre -- I was amazed at how much stuff they have there, and it's not just the contents that are amazing but the rooms themselves are incredible -- the ceilings extravagantly sculpted and painted, and the Napoleonic apartments showing just how lavish the extravagance was. I did a fairly whirlwind tour through, and would like to go back to look at some things in detail. The Babylonian lions were definitely a highlight!
Andrew of course made his presence known to the local scary people by accidentally kicking over some guy's touristy display of crappy souvenirs (which he'd put in a very silly place) -- even though Andy put them back the man tried to run him down to extract some money from him (though I'm sure he didn't damage anything to be honest) but we managed to get away. Don't go back to Paris Andy, that guy knows who you are!!
You can see more of my Paris photos here.
What else did I do in August...? Ah yes! I had some visitors! Adam came to visit me first, and used his amazing shop senses to find me not only a tea shop but also a yarn shop right here in Namur! Fantastic! We went for a wander about Namur which culminated in a lovely trip up to the top of the Citadelle. We also found a weird market at its base with a vendor of delicious Belgian chocolatey goods -- I bought some nutella-like yumminess named "Choco-Nads". Teehee.
Then Björn came to visit as well, and we went in to Brussels to see what all the fuss was about. It turns out not much -- Brussels is a huge sprawling city with not a lot in easy walking distance of each other -- apart from La Grand Place and the plethora of bizarre touristy restaurants in maze-like alleyways and the Mannekin Pis there isn't really much to it. And the Mannekin Pis wasn't really even worth photographing, to be honest. He's tiny. And really underwhelming. I honestly don't know what the fuss was about. However! One thing that was very awesome to see was the Atomium. It was a stupidly long metro ride out there (take a book) but highly worth it.
The Atomium is a seriously imposing figure (an iron atom!) that was built for the Brussels Expo approximately 50 years ago but never got around to being torn down as originally expected (just like the Tour d'Eiffel!). People were riding flying foxes from it, which looked awesome, but there was also a huge queue to get up the top so we just observed from below.
You can get some pretty cool reflections going on with those massive balls, too.
You can see more photos of our trip to Brussels here, with special weird cars (they must have been having some sort of gathering).
Then the end of August rolled around, and I had a lovely birthday -- going out for a picnic with my new couchsurfing friends, and going bowling with my boss and his family. And of course on the day, lots of phone calls from Australia! It was really a lovely birthday! Thank you all very much! <3
And so here we are, September. I'm still loving my market shopping each Saturday: this week I picked up some super amazing strawberries, a tart, a quiche, bread, vegies, fresh figs, and more! Work is going well too, busy busy busy! I'm spinning and knitting a lot -- went to a Ravelry meetup on Saturday in Brussels again, where we sat in a park and became a tourist attraction with all of our gear spinning and knitting! Met some lovely people too, hope to be able to keep contact with them! Shame none of them live in Namur.
This weekend I'm heading off to Lille for a workshop, then the week after to Tampere in Finland for another workshop! So it's workshops all round. I'm partly dreading and partly looking forward to trying a real Finnish sauna, hopefully I won't wuss out. At the beginning of October, I'm whooshing back to Paris to meet up with my parents and recover some giant suitcases of Things that they are bringing. Most of it is wool, haha. I'm a tragic :D
My French is coming along well, I'm learning verbs as necessary but I'm honestly picking up a lot of stuff just by listening to conversations and extracting context stuff. I can have fairly complicated conversations with people in French as long as they're the ones doing the complicated conversing and I just get to say simple sentences. Today, for example, at the station, I worked out why the guy couldn't find my booking reference (I'd stupidly written an X instead of a Y) and explained it to him in French, the other day I gave someone who mistook me for a local directions to the newspaper office up the road, and I managed to do about 80% of the conversation I needed to have with the administration in French. Speaking of administration, a lovely, polite and friendly police officer showed up yesterday to fill out a form for my residency. So finally -- 2 months and lots of phone calls later! He spoke great English too, and seemed happy to be able to practise it with me :)
I'm also doing a French course -- a conversation course at the university on Fridays which is so far very cool - one of the PhD students told us all about his motorbike trip around Europe over the holidays. Made me want to learn how to ride a motorbike! :) Or perhaps just hire a car. At the end of September I will be doing a proper French course (not just conversation) with a test that will determine my ability etc. so that will be very good for me. I'm currently quite good at understanding, but ask me to write or say things and I'm pretty awful. I'm still doing fairly novice errors like getting the which/when/what/who/whys mixed up and mispronouncing things terribly. But yeah, it's slowly worming its way into my head which is great. :)
I've been doing some entertaining things recently too -- rewatched season 1 of The Wire, watched True Blood (up until the current episode), spun some things and knitted some things too! What would an update from me be without a picture of some spinning:
This is one of my favourites -- it's some of Mandie's merino/seacell, but it's plied with some vintage 1910s silk thread that I bought in an antique shop in Montmartre in Paris. It was still on its bobbin -- I couldn't resist! :)
So there's my update! I will be better next time I promise!
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