Whasblog

So you may or may not know that I spent July at a voluntary workcamp in the Alps to improve my French for uni. I didn’t end up speaking a great deal of French because the common language among the volunteers was English, but I had a fantastically wondermaful time there so I don’t really care.

At our most (the majority of the volunteers were there from 1st July – 1st August, like me, but some came and went), we were a group of 18. We worked from 8am to 1pm, doing things like digging a big long trench for a water system, building a wall, collecting rocks from the mountains (for the wall), some woodwork, creating campsites, and cooking for people who were staying at the hostel. The workcamp was at a renovated farm which is now part campsite, part hostel, so we did have French guests coming and going all the time and I got to practice speaking with them a little. In the afternoons we would often have a little siesta (actually it sometimes stretched to a few hours), or sometimes we would walk down to the nearby river. We were around 1000m up, and surrounded by mountains, so you can imagine how beautiful it was. I’ve tried to upload some photos but it’s being a bit strange so I’ll leave a few public links to my facebook albums at the bottom of the post, and you can see it all. :happy:

The weekends were obviously free time, and we did lots of fun things. One weekend we went camping at the Gorges du Verdon, which is the second biggest canyon in the world. We went shopping, swimming, sunbathing, hired pedaloes…it was such a good weekend. :happy: I made particular friends with a British guy called Joel (who actually also studies French at my uni – crazy ain’t it?) and a Spanish girl called Ingrid, and the three of us went camping together one weekend, which was really really good. We went swimming in a big man-made lake which was actually quite dirty, but filled with the cutest little frogs that could sit easily on one finger. We made friends with one and called him Fred.

For our last weekend, seven of us decided to hitch-hike to Briançon, which is the highest city in Europe. It was quite a way away, and it took us a while to get there. We all met up half way at a town with lots of pretty views, and then set off again. Three were going by car because one of the volunteers brought his van with him, and the rest of us had split into two teams of two – me and Ingrid in TEAM AWESOME, and Joel and Galya in ‘The bitch-hiking team!’ (name invented by Joel…you have to do that finger snap thing on the word ‘bitch’). We all arrived in Briançon at around 6pm and set up our tents, then went out for the evening. The next day we had a look around the city, which was filled with really cute little shops and lots of sight-seeing spots, and then we set off for le Fai (the workcamp) again. So I survived my first time hitch-hiking. :happy: It’s actually quite good fun, you get to meet lots of interesting people. And I got to practice my French. So all was good!

It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone on Friday. I made some lovely friends, some of whom I’ll never see again. But on the (very very) bright side, I’m going to stay with Ingrid in Barcelona for nine days starting from Wednesday! Wheee! So there shall be another blog from me after that adventure, I’m sure. (:

Hope you all had a good July, and are enjoying your August. Over and out!

Click here for album #1
Click here for album #2
Click here for album #3
Click here for album #4