Le carnaval de Toulouse

The annual Carneval of Toulouse took place yesterday. I met Aroa, Chiara and Nicole on the bus and we then took the metro to the city centre to meet with Andrea. We stopped for coffe, since we were all more or less tired and then we went to the park near Pont Neuf to meat with more people. We hung out in the park until the carneval started. It was really nice and super long and everyone was throwing confetti everywhere. 

Andrea, Chiara, Eduardo, me, Aroa, Nicole and Casi.

Family picture!

After the carnival we went for some french crêpes and wine at a nice place near Capitole. There was quite a mixture of languages during the entire night and a lot expression explainations. Luckily, more or less everyone speak english and french, and one half of us speaks spanish and the other half italian, so we had no trouble communicating at least :). After dinner we went to an Irish bar before the lovely Eduardo drove all of us girls all the way home.    

Next week, the italians are going on an erasmus organized trip to visit the basque country. I have asked the people if there are any tickets left. In that case, I'll definately go. I'm crossing my fingers and toes! ALso, I'm very proud that I managed to work out both saturday and today despite the great evenings :). Thumbs up! 

3 weeks left!

The past week it has been the "Movidays" at Movida where I work out, which basically meant that they were releasing new songs and choreographies for the next three months. This they celebrated with what they called "Movida Games" where the original classes were changed into challenging games where one for example was supposed to do the maximum reps of squats in BodyPump, punches with weights in both hands in BodyCombat or freeze standing on the elbows and toes for 5 minutes. Fun!

It all ended on thursday with a party with the theme USA. I was chocked when I got up to the reception after my shower and found it had been changed into a club with lights, smoke machines, a DJ, loud music, and all the people that work in the reception were now bartenders. I hesitated when I got to the bar and was handed a glass of punch, "can it be? are these super natural people who are always working out drinking alcohol?" I took a sip from my glass. "Yep!". At that moment, my favorite instructor (in the picture it's the girl standing with the guy when they hand out prizes from the Games) goes past me with a big chunk of pizza end a beer in the hand "Whaddare ya drinking?", I told her and we said cheers and she mingled on. After a while I also felt for a beer (haha) and went to the bar. "How much is a beer?", the girl opened a beer and smiled "but dear darling, everything is free! Enjoy!". My, apparently very Swedish, way of seeing work out clubs drastically changed, and I liked it. These people are actual people, that enjoy real life, fat food, alcohol and donuts. So there is hope for me! haha. I had such a great time. It was a really cool party, all ages, types of people, instructors and not, and everybody had such a good time together.

Me, Aroa and Chiara :)

Yesterday, I went town with Aroa and Chiara from Italy to have some drinks and meet with their friends. Super cool evening that sadly ended a bit early because of the buses as usual. But I don't mind because in that way I could go to my CAF and BodyPump this morning at 9.30. So I was happy haha! Tonight there's a carneval in town which we are going to, maybe we'll grab a cab today since there will be four of us and we don't want to leave at 00.30 again. 

This is where I usually hang in the evenings. I always feel ashamed when I want to take a picture of it, so I sneeked down during the party and took one super fast haha! 

When I got home from Bléré, this little cat girl, Baly, was waiting for me when I opened the door to my appartment. Really cute and cuddly little cat, and I'm happy to have a cat again for a little while :)

Bléré!

Last weekend I went to visit my family in Bléré. It was super nice and I had so much fun! My cousins' daughter Olivia turned 12 so we were all gathered there to celebrate it. My cousin Gregory, his wife Julia and their wounderful son Abel, which you can see in the picture above when we were out on an afternoon walk. Beside them is my other cousins' daughter Eva and her baby :).

We ate so much good food and we had such a great time! On saturday we went to Tours and walked around in the old town, on the market, we had some drinks and we saw a giant dead elephant. Then we went home again and had a lovely meal prepared by my lovely cousin Mélanie. I love my family so much!

       

Now, a new week has started however. The first week of the last month of my stay in France. Time flies and I feel like I'm slowly getting my results sorted out. In the left picture, there's a kit, which you recognize from before of course. Cute and lovely as always. In the right picture, you can see the scale that I use to rate one of the rabbits' maternal behaviours; fur plucking. Rabbits pluck their fur to build a so called maternal nest for their nude kits, so as to keep them warm, and how much does do this, varies a lot. The fur grows back quite quickly, but for rabbits in intensive production (as this is) the fur may not recover fully between the births of the kits. This obviously gives a horrible look to the does. Moreover, my rabbits have suffered from disease lately, which has not ameliorated their fur recovery rate. The one in the upper left corner has given milk to her kits already, and is now laying down, "chilling" (the backpaw was put up when I approached with the camera however, one can never be too sure, being a rabbit). The one beside her, to the right, has not given her milk, and is completely full. She looks like the one to the right after a few minutes, which is very impressing. She has a scared look in her eyes because she didn't expect me to barge in with my camera when she was expecting to gain access to her kits. The one in the lower left corner has plucked her fur, but quite evenly over her body, and she even might have regained some already, she has also given her milk already. The lower right one does not have any kits this round, which is why her fur has fully recovered, and she has gained so much weight comparing to the other ones (since she eats the same feed as the other does which give milk and need huge amounts of energy every day). 

So, I agree it doesn't look nice, but I can assure you, (most of) the does are in really good shape (they have of course suffered from disease and have not all entirely been cured). Nonetheless, this is not how I personally would have carried out animal production. It works, but is it nice? That's another question. 

Tomorrow is AI (Artificial Inseination) time. Performing AI on a nice looking rabbit (lower right picture) seems fair to me, on a bad looking one however, I'm not so sure. So tomorrow I will go to the farm with mixed feelings. As previously mentioned; "When in France..."

Hope you have a good week!