On Monday I got up at the usual time 6.30 and cycled to school. I find school quite boring because a lot of the time I don’t understand but the extra French classes helped me with that a lot. On Tuesday, I got to cycle home early without Agathe but before I could I got a puncture which was a bit stressful. I took advantage of my cycle without her and stopped in the shop to stock up on snacks. Even though it was Pancake Tuesday we had no pancakes because apparently there’s no such thing in France! On Wednesday we had pe and went to the swimming pool this was actually quite enjoyable and also broke up the day. In the evening we had to go to mass because it was Ash Wednesday. On Thursday Agathe had an eye appointment at the opticians so we got to go into school later, when I came home Agathe had clarinet lessons so I watched a film (cheaper by the dozen in French) with her younger brother felix. Friday was one of my favourite days of my entire trip, not just because it was my last day if school! We got a half day and afterwards me, the German student called Clara and one of the Australian students called Ada took the metro into Lille. We went to a few shops and got a hot chocolate before I had to say goodbye to them. Then I cycled home before going back into Lille with Agathe and me, her and 6 of her other school friends took the metro to a place similar to Boda Borg. This was so fun and Without doubt one of my favourite things that I had done during my stay. On Saturday we went to tennis again in the morning. We had lunch and then Agathe and I cycled into town. I thought we were going to do some bonding by looking around all the shops (since we weren’t very close) but I was so wrong. This was by far my worst day over the entire trips. We met up with her friends and I was just ignored the whole time. Instead of going into any of the nice shops the only shop we went to was a book shop even though we were walking for ages. Then we went to the cinema which was very different to Ireland, bringing food into the cinema is actually very uncommon in France. I surprised myself by how much of the film I actually understood. On Sunday we went to mass again afterwards one of the older brothers arrived, we had lunch and then we all went to a religious art exhibition in a nearby town, it wasn’t very fun but at least it wasn’t scouts.
Aisling Delahunty 