Last week-end 6 exchange students came to Dinan for a tour
of Brittany, hosted by my friend Marie.
Having been sick at the start of the week, I only got to meeting up with
them 3 days into their trip, but the 3 days we had left were PACKED!
It started with my calling up Marie Monday night, having
cancelled on a party minutes before, to see if they were doing anything the
following day. Turns out I didn’t have
to wait that long: It was bowling night!
I got to Marie’s at 8pm and settled down with the other
ESes; I heard about how the boat-ride had gone earlier in the day and helped
with dinner. And then we ate
dinner. And we took our time about
it. When we had finally cleared the
table it was 11pm and we were a little tired.
After a quick vote however, we decided to go anyway. It was the right decision. I haven’t bowled in forever and as the night
wore on my aim went increasingly off, but it was fun right through to 1am. Getting home, I stumbled into bed, got a
couple hours sleep and was up again at 9 the next morning. Off to Dinard!
Dinard is a small town beside the sea, much like the more
widely-known St Malo. It was an overcast
day and still way too cold to be frolicking on the beach, but Dinard does
feature an indoor salt-water pool. That’s
where we were headed.
To be honest, I didn’t really see the point of a salt-water
pool. It was just like any regular
swimming pool; only the water tasted bad and stung your eyes. But the Jacuzzi was as good as any, and after
swiping a couple floaties from the pool’s swim lesson stash, we had a good time
finding different ways to abuse them. (We
even named some of our methods, such as the Magic Carpet and the Drowning
Buddha.)
The rest of the day was relaxing; we ate, played with the
dogs, watched tv, ate. Normally, I would
have had to have been looking forward to school the following day. However, it being the last day the Eses were
in town, I convinced my host-parents to let me take the day off to visit Rennes
before they all caught their trains’ home. Another mostly overcast day, and we didn’t do
anything extraordinary – poked our heads into a couple shops and explored the
gardens, then waited together for the trains to arrive.
And this part was interesting. Because about half of the people I said good-bye
to at the train station, I would never see again. Some of them would be departing for their
respective countries within the month!
And then I thought, well that’s not so odd, I have less than two months
left now.
I still don’t know how I feel about this fact. Only that it is a short time, and I had
better make the most of it.
