My last day at CROUS.

I am sat on my bed in room 335 Crous campus, Besançon. This small room has been mine for a year, it has been cramped sometimes lonely and other so full of noisy jolly people there hasn't been room to move. it has been a fun year and as I wait for my parents to come and collect me I feel a sense of complete satisfaction of my time here and the people I have met and the things I have done. I have been to Paris, Strasbourg, I have spoken french, taught English and held my own exhibition. Exhausting. I am going to go home relax for all of five minutes before i start my final year at Huddersfield.

so long, farewell, Au revoir, Auf Weidersehen,

We have had our last lesson in school. Sian, myself and Marta had our last lesson with Didier. We have been completing the book we have been working on this term. Didier has helped us to glue all the pages together and cut out the box we are to store it in (though actually he had to cut mine out for me cos I am hopeless and cutting in a straight line). He has told us we should be very proud of the achievements we have made in our year here. I admit I am pleased with the thing that I have done here, I am especially pleased with the book I have made this term. i am sad that my lessons here have finished and that now i must pack up my very cramped room and return to England. 

Poster Exhibition.

ERBA has visiting artists in to, do exhibitions. They often have old students in to exhibit as well. This month the exhibition was about advertising 100 Beste Plakate Exhibition, it was all imaginative advertising posters by a German artist. The pictures were very inspiring and adventurous. They presented the exhibition really nicely, they had some of the posters up on the wall they layered them on top of each other on the wall and then they displayed them on the floor on wooden pallets. It was really cleverly done. I have uploaded some of the photo's I took whilst I was there you can see how they displayed them and how effective it was.

Photos from the exhibition!

these are the before, during and after the exhibition.

 

   

 

Our exhibition!

Today was the first day of our exhibition, we had chosen the room we wanted to be in January when we got back from Christmas we didnt want to be in the room that is usually assigned to the student exhibitions as we thought that it would be to big. We were meant to be sharing the exhibition space with the two English lads that were coming after Christmas. As it happens they were useless and left after a week because they couldnt get the food that they got in England and they couldn't and wouldn't try to speak French.

( can I just say to anybody who actually reads this Blog... if you are planning on going the study/live abroad  it is a good idea to actually look into the culture of the country you are going to. Don't expect it to be the same as England its not it is a foreign country, Not everybody speaks English, learn the language!!! I know for the intelligent ones who are reading this already know this. I apologise)

Ok stress over. But they were a waste of time for Siân and myself but also the school. they also made Huddersfield students look bad, the tutors at ERBA were very unhappy about it all. Getting back to the exhibition, in the end we chose a basement exhibition space. there was enough room for our work and also room to display some things about our university to show the French students how we work in Huddersfield, but also to have a table of food and wine.

As the weeks crept closer we began to form a good body of work, and a good variety of skills. not just things that we had been taught in class but also things that we had developed ourselves. I came down with a stomach bug a week before the exhibition so my work was put on hold for a bit but I Managed to get it all done.

Siân did two really good powerpoint presentations to run on our laptops for the exhibition.
Today we have just got back from setting everything up, it looks really good. the space is just big enough for the two of us it has worked out really well.

poor old me!

I was feeling lonely feeling blue
feeling like I needed you
and I hoped you'd call
I hoped you'd see meA+E

Its been my Birthday and sadly I have been nothing but ill, and to top it all my bank account has been hacked into and my stupid bank is useless not being very helpful and costing me a fortune in international calls.  

So the work for the exhibition and the book have come to a bit of stand still. Not because of the bank but because I have been sick constantly for about four days with and temperature and head aches. JOY!  I am not writing this to get sympathy but to make the point that when aboard you have to deal with so much all in one go. 

Lessons

The lessons are progressing well, as are the designs and pages for the book. Didier to us that for our assignment we had to set our books to a theme either a story or something that is continuous. I have decided to set my book to a song one of my favourite folk songs by Martha Tilson, Winter Flowers.

I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do now
I don't know what to do about my love, It seems his heart is a-turning
Where once the white water flowed was stagnant now is my yearning
& I don't know what to do about my love, the cards he deals keep a-changing
Where once he placed me as a queen well he shuffles now rearranging,
Oh I see it, Mmm... and I know it, Mmm

What's he hangs his roses upside down he says he keeps the last love and then yeah
The great thing about winter flowers is they look alive when they're long gone
So hang your roses upside down yeah & keep the last love and then
The great thing about winter flowers is they look alive when they're long gone

So I don't know what to do bout tomorrow with the promises I made now seem hollow
I dream of moving to Galway and I'm not sure I want him to follow
Oh but then he rolls me over in his arms
and when he rolls me over in his arms I adore him, ohhh...need more of him, ohhh
So I don't know what to do, and I don't know what to do now

Hang your roses upside down and keep the last love in yeah
The great thing about winter flowers is they look alive when they're long gone
So hang your roses upside down yeah, & keep the last love in then
The great thing about winter flowers is they look alive when they're long gone
The thing about you and I my love is we keep it going though it's long gone
The thing about you and I my love is we keep it going though it's long gone

So I don't know what to do, really don't know what to do now
And I don't know what to do, really don't know what to do now
I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do


I have been combining an technique of layering images on Photoshop and linking in the text from the song. i am pleased with the progress of the book.

whistle while you work!

Since I got back at Christmas and booking the exhibition room, I have started working on my designs and ideas for the exhibition. We have had a tutorial with Joscelin and Joel they seem impressed by the work we have done, Joscelin took us for a walk around the third and forth year studio's the work that they do there is fantastic, yes some of it is a bit out there for example dipping dead birds and animals in paint is a bit weird and grotesque for me but Joscelin seemed impressed by it. She stood in that section telling us all about the work process and the meaning behind it for ages ( all in french a good percentage of which I fully understood). Other than a few weird pieces the work was brilliant all to a really high gallery standard, most of which put me to absolute shame but I keep telling myself that I am a designer not an artist, but the way in which they work over here does make me more relaxed and more open to ideas than it does in England. I feel that my way of working is changing for the better from having this time here.

Learning about cheese

On the 9th December we went to a pretty little village in the hills getting close the the Swiss boarder. The village is called Mammirole, it is very picturesque when we went it was 8o'clock in the morning and the country side was frosty and crisp much colder than it was in the Besancon which is lower than Mammirolle. We were driven to the village by a mature apprentice to the school, he was very informative speaking very good English, he told us about the region Franche-Comte, spoke intelligently about travelling and the other countries he had visited but mainly he spoke about the village and school we were going to visit. 

The school we visited is called ENIL it specialises in the dairy industry biotechnology and water. We were taken on the tour of the cheese factory, we had to follow all the correct health and hygiene regulations which involved wearing a white plastic apron that covered you neck to toe, then a hair net over every inch of hair, and then just to finish off all that glamour we had to take off all our jewellery and cover our shoes with blue plastic socks. thankfully no photos were taken. The Factory was interesting very nearly put me off cheese for life the smell was appalling at some points making most of us poor English students wretch. After that we got to try some of the cheeses and then we were shown around the school by the students and taken to the local bar and had lunch at the canteen. after that we sat in with a couple of classes and helped the students with their English. it was really good getting some experience working within a school environment. Over all the day was really good. 

This is my group in one of the lessons, we were spilt into groups and we had to decide amoungst us what we were going to perform in front of the rest of the group in English (basicly we played charades) I know it is on one side but my computer refused to turn it the right way round.

Lessons

The lessons are going well this term. Didier is getting us to design and make our own books. We have experimented in with making basic books such as ordinary bound books and a japenese type binding for a book which is very interesting, but this time we are going to make a book by printing and creating our own pages and then we will bind them by glueing them together the way they do when making proper books. 

come fly with me, lets fly, let fly away!

Dealing with flights to and from home for Christmas was quite easy. Siân and myself decided that we should book well in advance because of the rush of people flying to and from France to get home for Christmas. We used Airfrance for flights, they were very reasonable and the flights were regular so we didn't need to worry about getting stupidly early trains to make it in time or have to sleep in the terminal at the airport. 

http://www.airfrance.co.uk/cgi-bin/AF/GB/en/common/home/home/HomePageAction.do

The flights were from Charles de Gaulle airport, it is a big international airport there is no need to worry about getting lost and there are a lot of security and staff to help you. At the same time we booked the flights we booked the train tickets, the trains from Besanҫon are quite regular from the main train station and go straight to the Gare de Lyon. Then from there you get the Airfrance shuttle bus which collects from just outside the train station. It is about 45 mins journey on the bus to the airport, it also drops off at all the terminals so you just have to make sure you know the right one to get off at, but it is very clearly sign posted so it is easy.  We made sure that we allowed ourselves plenty of time to get from the station to the airport and then enough time to check in and have time to relax before the flight. its best to allow yourself plenty of time and to allow yourself to eat something because it is an all day journey. 

Charles de Gaulle airport with it being a international airport it flys to a lot of the United Kingdom airports. 

Now we have come back from Christmas we have already booked our flights and trains back home for Easter. For trains we have a railcard you get up to 60% off prices and it costs 49euros. 

http://www.sncf.com/fr_FR/flash/#/SEARCH/ZGlzY291bnRz/ 

Tut tut!

Ok! I have been very bad with updating my blog... to be honest I forgot all about it. From now on I am going to be much better at keeping it up to date. 




So I have had time home over Christmas, which was fantastic it was so good to be home and see everyone and catch up. the journey to and from Besancon to home was easy enough to do. we caught a direct train from Besancon train station to the Gare de Lyon in Paris, then got a shuttle bus to the correct terminal at Charles de Gaule and from that point onwards it was fine, just checking in and waiting to be called for the flight. we were so lucky to be able to get home because the very next day all flights were canceled due to snow and several of our American friends were stranded in Paris until it was safe again to fly. The return journey was much the same other than a very cold and tedious four hour wait at the Gare de Lyon for our train to leave.