TCF Is Nothing.

Yesterday, after our final French exam, Stephanie’s family flew in from Ohio. So we spent the evening making a few new friends. Today was much of the same, with a lot of packing and cleaning interspersed. I move out of my dorm tomorrow, which is kind of a surreal experience. But the other big story of the day is that it’s Stephanie’s 21^st birthday. That’s still a milestone for her, even though she’s been legally allowed to drink in France the entire semester.

We started the day (at almost 2 o’clock) by heading down to get some pizzas for lunch. We achieved our goal despite being beset by the most extreme storm I’ve witnessed since being in France. The storm was probably about normal for Reno, but for France it was kind of weird. Rain was falling sideways. Yeah, wrap your heads around that.

The rain stopped and we headed downtown. Stephanie and her family were going to go to Avignon with me, but didn’t realize how far it was. They opted for the shorter train-ride and decided to go to Carcassonne, which is a pretty great idea if you’ve got less than a week in Southern France. Sadly, the trains were too full for them to get all the way out there. So I guess they’re heading to the neighboring town, Lourdes, which is a world-famous religious site but is otherwise un-noteworthy. I’m kind of sad for them.

We walked them around downtown Pau and showed them all the main sites, some of which I haven’t seen since my first few days in town. It was pretty weird, it feels like such a long time ago now. We went to the 50’s diner for Stephanie’s birthday dinner, where I finally got to try some horse meat. Then we headed back to the dorm rooms with Stephanie and her sister. We had planned on going out to a bar (really, Stephanie had planned on dragging the rest of us out to a bar), but the rain had started coming down pretty hard again, so we stayed in.

We did our best to enjoy our last night together as a group. Tomorrow Emily leaves for Paris and then the States. I’m going to Avignon for a couple days, and I’ll probably be back in Pau for one night before catching my flight back to the U.S. I’m getting pretty excited to be home. In fact, today I thought of another item to add to my “things I miss” list: pickles. I haven’t even seen a damn pickle in four months.