Hey everyone, this is Emma (kates sister!)
Since Kate is being lazy i'm going to post re Montpellier! It turns out we didn't have internet at all in Montpellier so its been almost a week since the last post, so here goes...
Well, you know that 'possibly odd' French party? Slight understatement! Was it odd! The thing is, French teenagers (most of these ones 18 or so) seem to have 0% selfconciousness - yeah, weird! Even the least selfconcious person at an Australian party is ten times as selfconcious as these guys. Well, us three and Alice (Australian exchange student from our school staying with Chloe in Montpellier) took up valuable couch space for most of the evening while the French people, even the surprise birthday girl on crutches, worked off every single patisserie they'd ever eaten on the living room floor, making up their own odd dancing techniques from scratch. The SURPRISE was a little unsuprising for us because a) she already knew and b) instead of shouting 'surprise' when she arrived everyone started singing 'joyeuse anniversaire'... odd. Also, via french custom, everyone kissed everyone 3 times on the cheeks, so we got kisses from the birthday girls boyfriend (!) and, naturally, the birthday girl herself, though I am quite sure she had absolutely no idea who we were. Anyway, odd yet fun party and strange shaped couch was all good for a Saturday night.

Yummy pain au chocolat for breaky before going home to our actual apartment (from Chloes house) which was tres cool! Run by a random englishman with 2 gorgeous labradores, its in one of the centremost squares in montpellier and has a view of the post office, not to mention is above a chocolatier (see picture above - our apartment is the 2 windows just above the chocolate shop, those french exchange people will probably remember this place...mmm) and around the corner from Gilbert and Joseph and La Brioche Doree. For the next 3 days in Montpellier we were constantly in and out of there shopping and dropping off purchases, having lunch and sleeping. We ate out with Chloe, Marie-Odile and Guy on the third night, after they'd hosted us at their house on the second (on the first they'd taken Mum and Dad to a restauramt in a tower Guy - architect - designed). They were lots of fun with Guy talking at dad in french (did he understand...?) and occasionally at mum (when not understanding, smile or laugh!) and Marie-Odile talking constantly, swapping from english to french depending on who the audience was.

The shopping in Montpellier is amazing!! There's the Tintin shop, the random gifts shop Trait, the postcard shop, the toyshop (clockwork mouse!!!) countless patisseries and the chocolate shop (real hot chocolate). In the polygone there's even The Body Shop (there's one here in Paris too). So as you can imagine us three had a great time shopping down the cute streets and through the crowded squares of central montpellier while parentals...washed clothes in a Autolavage with a window missing and crossed most of the town between Post Offices trying to cash travellers cheques...

just some of the things we bought include:
2 clockwork mice
a piece of wrapping paper to be used as a poster
a rock each painted with a random face (From left, Gerard, Buddy, Pierre 2 and Pierre 1) presents from Marie-Odile
mini childrens books
a new luggage bag for everything we've bought...

So Montpellier was lots of fun and we were sad to say goodbye to Guy, Marie-Odile, Chloe and Montpellier at the airport (after an amusing encounter with the Renault car cleaner...) but we were getting excited about Paris (though not the imminent Metro trip with all ourselves and our luggage to our apartment in Montmatre, but that's for next time)...

To all those Amelie lovers; see you tomorrow when we hope to have hot chocolate in Amelie's own cafe and walk some of her favourite streets (not to mention step outside our front door and straight into her very own Metro station, Lamarck).

Bye for now.