Hey guys. I am sitting here all snuggled-up in my bed at midnight writing to you to tell you what a great 2 weeks I’ve had. Nothing monumental has happened but it was just good. It’s school holidays here and we’re in the second week now. Clem is off at a camp preparing her for university next year (she’s gone for 9 days!), so it’s just 5 of us at the house now (plus all the animals). Speaking of the animals, my new addiction is brushing ‘absolute’ (the absolutely mammoth black Canadian dog at our house). You can’t get his to move and usually you have to slide him along the tiles out of a doorway or from behind a chair, but when you show his the brush, he comes running quicker than if you put a bowl of food in front of him!! Unfortunately for a ‘water-dog’, he hates water – and he really needs a wash, so when the time comes is gonna scrub him up nice and shiny! (Wasn’t that a thrilling opening paragraph!!).

The weekend before last, Malo and I went to Cannes for three days and stayed with his auntie Natalie (Marie’s sister) and her husband Pascal. It was a really nice trip because it was the first time I got to spend some decent time near the beach (although they are nowhere near as great as Australia and unfortunately it was too cold to go swimming). The scenery was also really beautiful, but to be honest, I don’t think I’m classy enough (in my northern rivers influenced outfits) to live/be in cannes – so  to recap it was very beautiful but I am glad I don’t live there.  We also went to Monaco and did heaps of walking and site seeing from old churches on top of hills right on the ocean. It was stunning, and the sky was completely blue!

I was so tired, that coming home to the comfort of my lovely house and family was pretty appetising. My sleep is not as solid as it usually is, and I think it is because the mattress is too soft. There’s nothing I can do about it and I’m not complaining, but it is to this conclusion that my investigating has lead me.  Clem threw a party as you know (for her best friends who are twins) and at the party I met lots of nice people. One of them was a girl called Cleà who is just so nice! My family went over to her house for dinner the other night and her mum is a really great cook and we had home-made hummus, tapenade, and crab dip with baguette and home cured olives for appro. Then for the entree we ate frois gras (duck liver) with fig jam stuff and some lettuce. After that was the main meal being two roast chickens on a bed of roast potato. After came... you guessed it... FROMAGE! And it was a big wheel of brie. We ate that with oil or bread. Then I had earlier prepared a strawberry tart which we took along, and Marie (not my mum but the mum of Cleà) had made ‘floating islands’ which is a very soft Pavlova concoction floating in a vanilla custard. Wholly crap I ate too much – as usual. Don’t even get me started on my weight.

So the day after the dinner part I went to my friend Samantha’s house for a sleep over and that was really nice too. We watched the movie “the boat that rocked” or in French it is called “good morning England”. I guess they changed it because the French wouldn’t have understood the pun in the other title. That was a late night with her, and the next morning I had to get up and go with Sam’s host mum to Aix at 8, where I caught a bus back to Rognes by 9. Then walked the 2km home from the bus stop to get ready by 10:30 because Cleà and her family had invited Louise and myself to the Zoo! Whoa, what a morning!

The zoo was awesome! I’m not a fan of animals in cages, but the sizes of the enclosures were pretty decent and there was every African animal under the sun!  Lions, tigers, bears (the classics), rhino’s (they were my favourite because I am a part of a page on facebook that is protecting rhino’s and poacher vut the horn off one of 2 of them, and one dies, and the other one is healing slowly but has a huge hole in its face and its really graphic and terribly – so what I’m trying to say, is that it was nice to see three perfectly healthy rhino’s with beautiful horns on their faces!), zebra’s, giraffes, buffalo, camels with one hump and camels with 2. There were Leopards, meerkats, snakes (so big!) and even a few kangaroos with babies. There were so many more animals then that but you get the picture.

After the zoo, we went back to the house of Cleà and went swimming in their pool for the fist time this spring. I had to borrow a swimsuit of their grandma (haha yeh....) and it was the same colour as Pamela Anderson in Baywatch! YEH BEBEH!

After the pool and an unfortunate dose of sunburn (although not as powerful as in Australia), I went to watch the girls (Cleà and her sister Emma) do silks (like in the circus - Those long strands of fabric hanging from the room that you climb up and wrap them around your body to do different things). It was really great!

 That night we had a huge girls night because the smallest sister Agatha had 2 friends over (louise being one of them), Emma had two friends over, and Cleà had me! We had home-made pizza for dinner and then watched the avatar. This family is really special because they have a disabled man called Robert working for them. He has the mental capacity of a 7 year old, and they let him live on their property in a mobile home for free. He does gardening and stuff and they feed him and take care of him. He’s part of the family! He came from a pretty difficulty family and I just think it is so lovely that people open their arms to someone in need and make a better life for him.  

Tomorrow hopefully I’m going out to lunch with the mother of a fellow exchange student from Australia who is living in Germany for a year! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Lots of love,

Danika xx