Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistant weekend :(

So this weekend was AMAZING but very sad at the same time. Saturday me and my friends walked from the centre of Clermont-Ferrand all the way to the summit of the Puy de Dôme. The Puy de Dôme is the largest of a chain of extinct volcanos on the Massif Central (Click here for a more informative Version Française). The chain is called La Chaîne des Puys and is a natural park and consists of more than 80 puys spanning about 30 km. We bought food for our picnic and left at 10am. I can´t remember what time we arrived at the summit but we didnt get back into Clermont till about 8pm. Its height is 1465 metres and its about 20 km from the centre of Clermont. Meaning that in one day we walked about 40 km (a little less than 25 miles!!!) all of this very steep climbing or descending. Anyway it was amazing! I don't have time to write much right now because my friends are waiting on me. Me and Chris got sunburned pretty bad and Rob royally screwed his ankle up. He's now in a cast for 2 weeks...and somehow has to get all his stuff back to England Wednesday in that condition. Poor guy. At one point climbing Dan, Chris, and I left the path to do a scramble straight up the face. Well, i thought it would just be about 20 meters because the path zigzags but I was wrong. I basically climbed the face of the puy de Dôme from about 1/3 of the way up. I had a mild panic attack when some parts were practically climbing straight up with not a lot of footholds but it was amazing. Anyway I gotta go like NOW! sorry but will write more later. I'll post the photos.

Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistants weekend :( Vol. I

Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistants weekend :( Vol. II

talk to you soon sorry I didn't have time to finish...

Le Printemps!!

So we've finally been having nice weather here in Moulins! And all over for that matter! Everywhere I've been in the past two weeks has been beautiful! Like I said Amsterdam was amazing because the weather was perfect the entire time! It was the perfect temperature where you would wear either pants or shorts and be perfectly comfortable in either one. So has Moulins and Clermont up until this week where we've had a veritable heat wave because today it was 31C (88F) which is obscene for April in this region of France. The high today on the south coast of France in Montpellier was only 22C! After Amsterdam for the second week of vacations me and my mates went to Vichy for a couple of days then down to Ambert where Chris and Lalo live which was great. Its a town of about 1500 people situated in a valley. It's a great historical town which really feels like "France" in that it seems it hasn't changed much over the past couple hundred years. Plus the people there were AMAZING everyone was incredibly nice and Chris and Lalo knew pretty much everyone in the whole city. Coming back to work after the vacances was pretty difficult but I'm getting situated in for the long haul 'til the end. This will be the longest time I've worked since I've been here! I worked 4 weeks at first, then 2 weeks off for Toussaint, 7 or 8 weeks before 2 week Christmas break, 6 weeks to Winter break then 2 weeks for Spring break and now 11 weeks until the end of it all. I'm planning on going down to Montpellier for at least a week to visit the UGA en France group. It's gonna be a bit annoying cause I'm going to miss July 4th in the USA and I'm pretty sure I will miss the French equivalent of July 14th in France as well. Blah.

So anyway this past weekend was Le Printemps de Bourges which means Springtime of Bourges. Bourges is a city of about 100,000 people one hour northeast of Moulins by train. Its another great town that feels very "French" in the architecture and just the general ambiance of the town...Not to mention there were people EVERYWHERE for the festival which basically consists of tons of free music, concerts, and street performers and basically every single hippie in France relocated to one city! What more could you ask for?? well perfect weather would be nice. Oh what? What's that? We get perfect weather too? Great! Basically what it boils down to is one of the best weekends I've spent with my mates in France (Lalo you were deeply missed) which is a good thing since this upcoming weekend in Clermont-Ferrand will be our last weekend together before they all abandon me and head back to England/Mexico/Scotland/Argentina. Anyway I'm posting some pictures of the Printemps de Bourges and I've also added a few new pics to the Amsterdam Round III and France in general also. I'm gonna add another album too as well with just some general springtime pics around Clermont and Moulins.

Le Printemps de Bourges Album 1.

Le Printemps de Bourges Album 2 - Springtime in Moulins/Clermont

I forgot to mention that the Sunday after the night of concerts we hung out with Dan's Sister, Naomi and her friends from Poiters, France and we went and had an amazing picnic by a lake just a bit outside of Bourges where we grilled out and sat around chatting and playing games and stuff. Anyway take it easy folks! You'll hear from me soon!

Springtime in France and Holland!

So yeah.. I like never update this thing... And I'm not really going to right now either... What happened to the great and enthusiastic writer I was growing up?? Anyway for now I'm just going to post pics from Spring Break. And here they are!

Amsterdam in Springtime!

Amsterdam in Springtime Vol. II


Amsterdam 3 and all over

Peace out all! I'll write more soon.

Spring Break

Just a short update for everyone. I'm on spring break and I'm in Vichy, France now with my mates from England and about to leave Tuesday morning for Amsterdam, Holland. I've been pretty busy lately hanging out with my friends here and as all the other assistants only have 7-month contracts they are leaving at the end of April, so I've been trying to spend as much time with them as possible. The German assistants are leaving during this Easter break. Ok I can't write now because my friends are around me being crazy. So Im just gonna post my pics for everyone to see. We'll be in touch after Amsterdam and the rest of Easter break. I may be heading down to south France for the second week but that depends on how much money i've got left...

Five more weeks of "work"

We Live for the Weekends

...almost there...

AMAZING Clermont Weekend