Nostalgic Tuesday.

words: Fleetwood Mac 

picture: my own

Last days of magic.

And then it's there before you know it, the day to leave Erasmus paradise. My last weeks in Montpellier I've just been ignoring the fact that day would come and now I'm already 3 days home and I just find myself scrolling the whole day through pictures of these last wicked 5 months.
Last week my dad came to Montpellier to kidnap me back home and finally on tuesday the car drove us back to the country of beer. A car filled with roadsigns, other collected stuff from the past months and a grumpy daughter with loads of precious Erasmus memories spinning trough the back of her head.
Before my lapse into post-erasmus depression, lucky me still did a lot of cool stuff.
Camping on the beach with a bunch of friends, crashing some goodbyeparties, attending "Le Apéro Géant" which was a bit overrated so we all decided to dive into a fountain, a short visit to St. Guilhem Le Désert, buying some muscat for on the way home and then finally attending my own last dinner in Montpellier...

Sunset on the camping night

waking up at the beach.

Apéro Géant

Last Night in Montpellier

Benji and Samuel, hero's for walking home at night over the aqueduc.

So Mr. Erasmus, thanks a lot for these 5 wonderfull months of my life in  beautiful Montpellier but most importantly for all these friendships and hilarious moments carved in my mind untill I get alzheimer. I return back home with this bittersweet itchyness in my mind. Bitter, to know that I won't see all the people I've spent 5 months for a while. But also sweet, cause I'm about to see my loving friends and family back after a long period of abscence.

"Ceci n'est pas une fontaine!"

Insomnia.

Threeee more days and I'm a freebird. In the meantime i fill my days with staring at my purple wall, turning some pages of Géologie des aquifères, making some refreshing fruit salads, doing my laundry, solving some exercices for "Hydraulique" or "Génie des Procédés", trying not to think about all other erasmusninja's in holidaymodus and every now and then I stretch my legs for a walk in the garden. As you see, I'm more passive than a retired grizzly bear on Prozac and still I can't sleep at night. So annoying, it happens to me all the time in exammodus. I feel as zen as yogateacher during the day but then when I try to sleep I start stressing out. For example stressing out about: "will happen if I don't fall asleep and I will be to sleepy tomorrow to study" or "what if my box of oatmeal will be finished before the exam on tuesday and I don't have time to go for groceries..."  Ridiculous I know, but it's tough material for thought (especially the oatmeal-issue).


 So what to do in examperiods to find sleepiness back:




- physical activity (example: Jogging, very effective but very impossible in this blistering-lazymaking-Montpellier heat)
-watching series (I'm the kind of person who wants to watch 3 episodes in a row if I have access to the whole season, so I fall asleep eventually but somewhere between 2 and 3 am...)
-new since my stay in France: a glass of Muscat before sleepytime! was effective 2 weeks ago but now I think my body got used to it and since I decided to wait with becoming an alcoholist until my midlifecrisis, I refuse to double my Muscat-dosis per evening


So my solution for this insomnia night to come is...              blogging!
I allready apologize for the language errors caused by lack of sleep of previous days and this useless post, had to write some anger off. I maybe think sleep gives me a chance today so sweet dreams and I promise, more interesting news to come after this period of  boredom.


Ps. For all other little silly billies (in exam or holiday modus) who appreciate a new tune every now and then, these music blogs will keep your ears from bleeding:

http://disconaivete.com/

 http://www.gorillavsbear.net/

Friday Wisdom.

A little tornadoooo.

Round 3 of the most annoying exam period ever is happening right now. Studying makes me a bit twisty so folks be warned and walk in a circle of at least 500 m around me if I cross your path. The last exams went "comme ci comme ça" so we keep or fingers crossed and hope for miracles and forgiving professors who are mentally incapable to read my scientific epistels in Erasmus french.


So what did we do in between these periods of nerdmodus lifestyle?


Visiting the FISE (festival internationale des sport extrèmes every year in Montpellier!) and extreme it was!

"holy guacamole"

wakeboarding or as Lien calls it "watersnowboarding :-)"

And it rained in Montpellier and if it rains it rains for a loooong time so...

Little raincloud above my room

... let's go to town and buy weird second hand stuff

Sarah tried on the granny hat

...or a Kazoo and scare the hell out of innocent people or try to start a conversation with a pigeon

... and rain or no rain a bbq is always possible

awesome garbage bin construction

Theresa thought it was all fine.

Sebastian and Jenny

Sofie and some FISE fellows

Mexicans, how awkward

 And if you order " un petit steak pour le bbq" in a hallal butchershop this is what you get...

I still feel sorry for the cow.

And in the meantime seven more days waking up with the thought of starting a carreer in the fruitsection of Lidl's supermarket and never ever studying again...

And after that only five more days of Erasmus cause I'm going home the 21first of june... I'm getting nervous if I see my lonely planet standing silly on the bookshelf above my head cause there's so much stuff in it that I still need to do.

And still many people are leaving... but some come back like Anaaaa (crazy supagroparadisewomen who turned her room into a bar/hotel/restaurant)... So happy.

So my brain needs some sleepytime cuz the next days are gonne be legen -wait for it- dary, boring. (yes I finally started watching HIMYM)

Note to self...

Proof is here!
When temperature raises above 30°C my stresslevel reaches more than astronomic heights.
Nothing more to do than keeping calm (or cool) and grow a moustache!

Physiquement, je suis fou!

Finally a minute to write down my last adventures here in “I think I’m gonna melt to death” Montpellier. After the exams I had two weeks ago, I urgently had to “debrain” myself. Thanks to my crazy Erasmus entourage that was absolutely no problemo. The most exhausting thing I did that weekend was buying mint leaves for our “Mojito-afternoon/evening/night” and carrying another “found” traffic sign to my room. Life can be tiring.

But to every wicked weekend comes an end, on Monday I left Montpellier with school for 5 days to Olargues. Goal of the week? To study “le bassin versant du Jaur”. I study “water technology” here so every year a class of my school leaves to this village to do all sorts of experimental studies relied to the river Jaur. Hydraulics, microbiology, botanic, hydrobiology and more shizzle were daily bread those days. The last day of the stay we had to present our results to the village so they can see how their beloved river and relied features had changed over time.

Waking up every morning at 7h30 and doing all these research things can be quite exhausting. Especially if you just had a week of exams and a party weekend following to compensate that, so the second night in Olargues I decided to nap just for a few minutes after dinner but I woke up the next morning at nine and missed breakfast. Sounds all very serious but luckily I’m in France and work or no work, French people make party or at least soirées! So thanks to some party minded people of my class at night we could all drink away our research troubles. One night we went to drink at a medieval tower on the highest point of the village and the guys of my class found it a marvelous idea to climb it, so after 10 minutes the whole village was awake cause they started sounding the bell tower. Never heard a bell tower sound like that in my life before. Hilarious.

Doing some measurements

Au travail!

Also important: La ripisylve!

Roomies: Lauryanne, Caroline, Elodie, Mathieu (last one tried to kill me dropping a cellphone on my head when he entered our room "un peu bourée" at night ) haha

Pretty pretty Olargues

drinking at the bell tower with STE!

This weekend then were the last days before another awful schoolwork period (j’en ai ras le bol!!!!) so we went camping to this mini hippie festival “All in Wood” in the village Saussines. Ellen and François, friends of Lien at supagro knew the people who organize it and spread the news. On a well hidden field in the middle of nowhere suddenly this woodstock like place appeared with a mini stage and a wooden bar, crazy people, bbq, tents and even a swing and a petanque field. So cool!

the UKELELE band

Bartender with awesome hair

New roadsign for my collection

weird people

Fooood.

And now back to nerd-reality, a week of labs from 8h till 18h and two exams coming up. Did you ever do a lab in 34°C with a labcoat that feels as winterfur? NOT COOL.
Within three days I’ll be shouting the sentence “physiquement je suis fou” 100 times a day I think.

Yo para ser feliz quiero un camion...

I know half of Erasmus Montpellier is sitting behind their desks right now (other half lives at Supagro and is laying in their beds curing a hangover from last nights party)but still it's hard to concentrate on my upcoming finals. Especially when your course note's are writtin in your own exotic french and you notice that even bumblebees are sunbathing outside your window while flying with their fluffy asses in the burning sun.
But for every disease there is a cure! In this case the disease is called studying and the cure? Well scrolling through pictures of the days before I had my ass glued on this chair. Days of Sunshine, Chaos and Magic...

Strolling downtown with Laurent, Lien and visiting friend Jan.



Breaking into Hotel Pullman to test if their pool is "swimproof"...
This mission will be continued!

Eating Bagels in France...

Looking at drunk French students who like to climb in statues in the middle of a roundabout at my school.

More strolling through town...

Following strangers to an appartment party in a creepy house...

... and then spending tooo much time in the bathroom to make weird pictures:-)

Spending many nights at Supagro = paradise.

Supagroo²

Supagro³
Here you can see Fernando and Ana dressed in the local Supagro style.

And when it's sundaynight and you've got nothing else to do just go cooking with a bunch of crazy in the coconut people.

And from now on: Monday night = Pleine Lune night

 

Where the music is nice...

  

... and the people cheery

I wish it was already fridayafternoon again. Five more days of motionless staring at a wall. People burn down some candles on thursday and friday cause I have no idea what these french exams are going to be like.

Yo para ser feliz quiero un camion

Yo para ser feliz quiero un camiooooon.

LLevar el pecho tatuado,

En camiseta mascar tabaco.

Yo para ser feliz quiero un camion.