Last days in Chambery..

Apologies for the lack of posts for a few days, been busy packing and unpacking!
Thursday night was lovely.. At dinner Madame Andre enjoyed meeting Melanie, they both liked each other and the pizzas were consumed pleasantly. Mme A insisted on paying for us both, very sweet of her. She then dropped us off at Mel's apartment, where we made some lovely pina coladas before going out dancing.

Unrested, I went to my last class on Friday morning; I was quite sad to say bye to some of the students but very happy to have met all of them. I think Friday afternoon was the slowest, most unwelcome and dragged-out period of time in the past 3 months.. it only took me 2 hours to pack everything calmly but it felt like 4! Emptying all the drawers in my room felt cold, distant and lonely, but I managed. Mme A kindly gave me a nice gift and some photos to remember, I offered her the rape-alarm wishing her to never need it.

On the way to organise Saturday's bus ticket to the airport I admired the city centre one last time and did a last bit of shopping, which kind of helped my mood.

After the 'last dinner', I met a group of students at 'Charly's Pub', a fairly nice English-style bar. Had a few nice chats with some people I didn't know too well... it's jsut in the last 10 days that I'm happy to (and able to, really) have French conversations wish English speakers. Met a bizarre German guy, Marco, who was here for the intensive French course (thats 40 hrs/week) and could also speak English and Italian! Strangest of all, this lingo maniac is an engineer. He happened to live on my same road though, so I didn't have to walk home alone late.

On Saturday morning, after concerned phonecalls from my parents and Rob, I took the bus to the Lyon airport. I'd been kindly stuffed by Mme A one last time with two large sandwhiches for lunch, and given a box of chocolates by two of her neighbours, who were interested in meeting me because their grandchildren live in Adelaide. Saying 'au revoir' to Mme A and Melanie (who'd come to wave me off) wasn't too bad but not a happy time. Anyway, got to the airport and two hours before boarding would commence I'd checked in and was sitting at a cafe. The Lyon airport's fairly large, with 3 terminals, but I was in the newste and probably smalles, so there wasn't much to do but read a magazine and study the French dictionary :p

A while later an Italian man joined my table, we started chatting (he'd been in Lourdes for a spiritual retreat..) and were overheard by an Italian woman, who joined our conversation, so we actually stuck together through the flight as well.

For my first flying-alone experience, I was relieved in not finding it difficult, I think the practice I had in France and Italy using trains and metros helped, after all they're almost the same thing ;)