Rough Guide: "More Women Travel" | Miranda Davies and Natalia Jansz

Like a lot of people, I seem to have an ever-growing list of dream holiday/travelling destinations. At the minute though, my student budget is hardly accommodating! Next on my must-visit list include Croatia, Barcelona and Hong Kong.

As I'm living abroad this year too, Mum gave me a Rough Guide book called “More Women Travel”, a comprehensive collection of women’s accounts of their travels to different places across the globe. I love hearing about other people’s experiences of different countries, where they’d recommend and things to see so this was right up my street as a bit of a change from my usual reading!

Obviously some accounts are better written and more vivid and detailed than others, but on the whole I liked the balance between cultural insights and hilarious or sometimes shocking anecdotes. It’s a little out of date now, but ladies, if you want to travel and find out more first-hand about different destinations, this is great - I particularly enjoyed the accounts of Thailand and Canada. It’s got me itching to go travelling next year!

I’d love to hear your opinions on travel writing! Which destinations are top of your list?

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia www.justthetravel.com

Hong Kong www.discoverhongkong.com

Barcelona www.travelwithscott.com

Paris and some home comforts...

So I’m now back at home in Bucks for the French uni half term – it’s so lovely to be back enjoying home comforts like bubble baths and OVENS (yes really, apparently it’s normal to not have ovens in France at home, so bizarre). Looking forward to spending time with the family and catching up with some pals!

The last month has just flown by and I can’t believe we’re nearly into November! Poitiers has been its usual sleepy self but I’ve been loving the Erasmus year so far. It’s getting much easier to understand French (though speaking it is still another matter), and we’ve spent many hilarious nights at either the student bars in town or friends’ houses. There’s not as much of a ‘clubbing’ scene in Poitiers – most of them are a little bit out of the centre and the French don’t get to the club until about 2 or 3am, which is hardly conducive with our 8am lectures! We’ve only been out to clubs a couple of times, and have made it our business to try out some more after the holidays. Instead everyone goes to the main student bars in town which are open fairly late, or house parties.

Last week a few of us made a very last-minute decision to buy Jay-Z tickets and head to Paris on Thursday after lectures – it was the most manic plan ever but we had the BEST time! Two of the boys drove us all up in their cars, and we had literally organised nothing so we were calling hostels on our way up and found a great one, very central, for 30 euros each for the night. After checking in there was time for a quick change before heading to the metro station to get to the Bercy stadium, via a quick detour to the Eiffel Tower. Jay-Z was of course INSANE and we were all loving life as you can imagine! He had just the right mix of Magna Carta and older stuff, and the crowd was absolutely buzzing.

After the concert we went in search of junk food and a bar, and eventually wandered back to the hostel at about half 3. The next day we got up relatively early to cram in as much sightseeing as possible – the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre, Moulin Rouge, the Eiffel Tower and the Jardin des Tuileries. I’ve wanted to go to the Louvre for ages but by the time we got there it was mid-afternoon and I’ll definitely be making another trip there next semester so it’s something else to look forward to!

This week, I’m glad to be chilling at home – I’ve got a couple of days’ work experience lined up and some uni work to get on with too. I was meant to include lots of Paris pictures in this post but forgot to upload them before I flew home, so I’ll be doing a photo post when I’m back in France! For now I'll leave you with this one I've nabbed courtesy of Milly...

 I haven’t forgotten my book reviews either and I’ve got a couple up my sleeve so watch this space!

'Grace Williams Says It Loud' | Emma Henderson

 Grace is put into the Briar Mental Institute aged 11. The doctors told her family there was no hope for Grace’s future. On her first day she meets another patient, Daniel, who brings out unforeseen life in Grace. Emma Henderson takes us through the following years of Grace’s life with refreshing honesty on mental illness - still a surprisingly taboo subject.

Grace barely speaks a word as she has severe speech problems. For me, this makes Henderson’s achievement of the compelling character all the more impressive, as she builds it up by depicting how others see Grace – doctors, family, strangers – and Grace’s own candid thoughts in the first person narrative. Grace notes everything about life at the Briar, from mundane activities, to her relationship with Daniel, to an account of sexual abuse at the hands of the dentist employed there.

There’s something quite Cuckoo’s Nest about the novel in some of the frank and honest sections of dialogue and scenes narrating the subject of mental illness, but Henderson still manages to keep her style and plot admirably original. It’s well thought out, creating a complex web of responses and judgements – about the institution, the friendship, and perhaps most of all, Grace’s parents. Henderson writes with sensitivity, integrity and thought; and I finished the book with the satisfying feeling of having learned things from it.

A law student abroad

It’s Sunday night and as a way of putting off my work for droit constitutionnel, I decided it’s about time I wrote another update about my year abroad. I’ve been in Poitiers for about seven weeks now – it seems to have gone by quickly and we’ve all settled into French life now, though of course there are still days where I miss home and need to call my mum! But most of the time it’s just a lot of fun, meeting new people every day and doing things you would have the opportunity to back home.

I was initially going to write a little bit about different aspects of French life that are really different, but I ended up writing so much about the university that I’ll have to put off the other ones until next time. A thousand words later and you’d all be bored to death! So here we go…

Uni is the most obvious thing to start with. On the first day we filled in a mountain of paperwork (France living up to its stereotypes from the get-go) and picked up the generic timetables, then it’s down to you to pick your modules and make sure nothing clashes. A few days later when proper lectures started we went to what we thought was European Organisations. Obviously nobody had told us that the timetables change a bit and you need to check every few days. So we ended up sitting through 90 minutes of indescribably dull public finance until a fire alarm went off and we made our escape. Saved by the bell!

At Bristol we’re so used to the routine of literally seven or eight hours of teaching a week, that coming here and having about 25 hours a week was a shock to the system! Lectures start at 8 most days; never again will I complain about one 9am lecture a week back home… On Tuesdays we have lectures 8am – 6pm with a break for lunch, more hours in one day than I’d have in a week at Bristol! No excuse for not picking up the language quickly then.

The other main thing is that the lecturers speak so fast and once you get behind you’re pretty much stuck there (as if it’s not already hard enough in another language). Some are alright and the lecturers repeat every sentence, but others just speak as if in conversation and you don’t stand a chance! Our tactic is to sit behind French students on laptops and copy them when we fall behind on the dictation – and it really is a matter of dictation. Another Bristol Erasmus student pointed out that we were including phrases like quoi qu’il en soit in our lecture notes (which translates roughly to ‘be that as it may’). Don’t think I’ve ever started a sentence with ‘Be that as it may’ in English, but here it is apparently the conjunction of choice, if there can possibly be such a thing

What I find very weird is that all our exams except one will be oral rather than written; this seems an odd way of doing things but hoping it will all work out when it comes to exam time! To get the diplôme from the uni we have to do one TD (tutorial) and even these are totally different – each week we have a test, but instead of understanding case law etc, you have the questions (like ‘what is the Magna Carta’) in advance and basically Wikipedia and memorise them. Not a case reading in sight...

So many things to experience and get used to and that’s only with the uni; I wanted to write about clubs, friends, food etc but that will have to wait till next time – probably more interesting than me rambling on about law lectures! A bientôt xx

'Delirium' by Lauren Oliver

This little gem was another gift from Hodder & Stoughton. I’d heard about it before; there are a lot of reviews comparing it to the Hunger Games and Twilight series. I can say with little doubt that Delirium is much, much better than Twilight! As for the Hunger Games books, I haven’t read them – I keep meaning to, but to be honest I think I’d rather keep girl crushing on Jennifer Lawrence on screen…

Back to the point, dystopian fiction isn’t usually my first port of call; I’m always a bit cynical of it for some reason. But Lauren Oliver actually had me enthralled early on – I finished this within a few days, and that’s with 25 hours of uni a week! Delirium is about Lena Haloway of Portland, Oregon who lives in a post-apocalyptic world where love is a disease – those with it are shunned and teenagers undergo a procedure to prevent ‘catching’ it. Oliver constructs this clinical and harsh world with brilliant precision and description, juxtaposed with the rebellious personalities of Lena and Alex.

If I have to pick out a criticism it’s only that at times it was slightly too lovey and mushy for me! I don’t generally go in for all that though so generally I doubt readers would find it too over the top. Other than that, you’ve got an original storyline, believable and warm characters and a series of exciting events. Without giving away the end, Oliver ends the book on the most tense cliffhanger that I just can’t wait to get my hands on the next in the series!