Squash, a swimming pool and a surprise...

A couple of hours ago the one thing which would’ve made me really happy was a glass of apple and blackcurrant squash. Unfortunately I had none. This is the kind of thing which sometimes hits you in a foreign country! I have way too much to tell you in one go, so for the sake of your eyes and my fingers/brain, I’m going to try and catch up with the last week or so in a couple of posts. I’ll just put the interesting bits in, but I have been working as well!

Unusually I didn’t have to work a week last Thursday (4th), so I went to ‘La musée de la Piscine’ (‘The Swimming Pool Museum’) with a French lady I met back in December on the trip to Rochester. In Roubaix, where the museum is situated, there used to be a large textile industry. The museum is in the original building they used for a swimming pool for factory workers and they’ve kept the original layout. So you can see showers and bath tubs and there’s a shallow and thin pool stretching down the middle (they have filled in a lot of the pool, but it’s nice the way they’ve done it). There were interesting paintings and sculptures and textiles there and we sat down for a drink and cake stop half way through, so it was lovely.

On Friday night (5th), I celebrated the birthday of one of my friends, Emma-Liisa, round someone’s house (not a typo, a nice Finnish name). Nicola was meeting Emma-Liisa in order to ‘go to a restaurant together’ and she faked a bad ankle, in order to merit going to Sarah’s flat to get a bandage. At this point, Emma-Liisa suspected there’d be a group of us waiting for her, but when no one was there and Sarah was more concerned about Nicola’s ankle than Emma-Liisa’s birthday, she doubted her former thought. When Nicola and Sarah slipped the word ‘duster’ into the conversation (yeah random, but impressive!), we all jumped out and said ‘Surprise!’. The poor girl got quite a shock because people and balloons descended from stairs up opposite her and me and another girl jumped out from the curtain directly above and behind her. The two of us behind the curtain nearly gave the game away as we’d started to giggle, but thankfully she hadn’t heard. The evening proceeded with nibbles, chatter and games – great!

On Saturday I had a nice dose of fresh air, with a walk around the Parc du héron with Nathan. Then on Sunday evening I organised a bowling evening for the GBU, which went down a storm. We ate at my place first and then had two games of bowling for a good price. It was great fun to enjoy some time together outside of the usual Tuesday night slot. This isn't the whole group, but I think it's fair to say we're the regulars. :)

I’ll be back asap as I know you probably want news of my birthday, but I’ve got so much going on at the minute and I’m very tired out by it all.

Fiona x