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.

(Un)Wrapping Up

Today I pretty much finished up school by acting out my sketches in the Spectacle. I would have had video for you all (all three of you reading this), but my camera’s battery died just seconds into my first sketch.

Les Papiers

Apparently I did well, because I’ve heard nothing but how funny my sketches were. I credit the luck of the draw, I just happened to pull the two funniest parts in the whole dang show. I didn’t even have to do much.

The Aftermath

 We also celebrated our Christmas as a group; it was the last night we would all be able to gather together. After an informal dinner we got to opening up presents. Jennifer and Elizabeth unwrapped the boxes of chocolates that I got them, but for some reason Alejandra refused to unwrap her present. I don’t know why, but she absolutely refused. She opened up the other presents that were given to her. It kind of hurt my feelings.

Yep, she opened everything else but mine...

 Emily got her mini-painting that Stephanie and I got her from Mont St.-Michel, and Stephanie got the quill and ink set that I got her from Chinon. They got me a trophy for best historian/taste in television/salsa maker/procrastinator. Lots of awesome memories all around.

Emily and I with our food products.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas...

Sorry for the lag in posting… I’ve been wanting to update on the concert I went to last weekend, but have been waiting on pictures of the event from Stephanie and Emily. Well, as it turns out, there’s not a whole lot of good quality pictures of the night. But, as we’re counting down our last two weeks in the country, pictures don’t seem to matter so much. We’re on a mad dash to hang out as much as possible.

 We’ve planned out our Christmas party, and I’ve wrapped up presents for my friends here and most of the presents for my family at home. I’ve realized now, though, that my favorite presents are the two life-long friends I’ve made. I don’t know why I’ve hit it off so well with Emily and Stephanie… maybe it’s because we’re all in the same boat in a strange place, but I don’t think I’ve ever become this close with anyone in this short a time. It’s too bad that I can’t bring them home with me. They’re my two favorite souvenirs.

A lovely assist from Emily on the tree... I'm so glad I know an artist now.

 Oh, and also the armor I bought. That’s my favorite, too.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

So tonight we had some fun. For the past month, we’ve witnessed Christmas lights being hung up all over the city of Pau, but they’ve been left unlit. Until today. Today they had the “illumination festival,” where they provided some entertainment downtown before lighting up the entire city like the Griswold’s house on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Seriously, there are places in Pau where there are so many lights, I not only didn’t need a flash for my camera, the images were completely washed out.

You see before you the only picture to date which features both me and Emily

 So the festival started with what I wanted to call “Salsa Night” outside the town hall. It was a very South-West inspired night of entertainment, with a unicyclist, two cowboys, and a Mexican looking guy doing who knows what with badminton racquets and drumsticks. And then there was the “Urban Dance Troupe.” After that, fireworks, the lighting of the Christmas lights, and then a band singing Edith Piaf songs. Very Christmas-y.

I'm not sure either...

 I’ve got to say that the Christmas decorations are very impressive, especially at Place Clemenceau, which is the big outdoor mall. Sadly, by the time we got there, the crêpe stand was already closed. So then it was back home to watch Kingdom of Heaven. Oh yeah, it was a good night.

Carcassonne Encore

This weekend I headed out to Carcassonne again, but this time with Emily. It was fantastic. She and I have pretty much the exact same sense of humor, so I have six-pack abs now because of all the laughing. We got to the city and found out that the castle and church would be closing early, so hurried up to make it up into the city.

 I didn’t take a lot of photos of this trip, because I’ve already got most of those photos from the first time. But I did get some more of the castle in different lights. After the castle, it was time for me to go shopping. I wanted several items: a small tapestry, gauntlets, a rapier, a particular statue, and a piece of medieval clothing. The store that sold the clothing was gone completely, the stores that sold the rapier, gauntlets, and statue were all closed, and the store that sold the tapestry was out of the tapestries that I wanted. Well, bloody hell.

Shower instructions: Be ashamed!

  We checked into our hostel, which was actually within the fortified medieval city, then headed out to the lower city to find something interesting. Well, we found it: there was a small fair in the city. It was awesome, because it had all the classic midway games. But after you knock down the milk bottles, or lasso a rubber ducky, you had the option to choose an AK-47 pellet gun. Or a samurai sword.

 We got a quick McDonald’s dinner before looking for a public toilet. Emily paid and went in to use the toilet, then when she was done she did what many other people do out of kindness: she held the door open for me so I could use the bathroom without paying. The problem was that moments later the toilet started cleaning itself by spraying down the entire interior. I ran out of the bathroom while only suffering water damage to my feet. Emily laughed hysterically.

 We headed back to La Cité, took some pictures, and headed back to our hostel room. The next morning, I went some more shopping (La Cité seems to be the only place in France that doesn’t completely close on Sundays). Finally, I gave up on all my other buying goals and headed into another store where I found a couple of pieces of armor that I liked. Then, we hurried down to the train station to make the train to Toulouse.

 In Toulouse we headed over to the Jacobin church, where we took a look around the strange interior. Emily’s an art/art-history major, so there was a lot of discussion of the architecture and décor of the church before we headed out to the cloisters.

  The cloisters disappointed me a little this time because the refectory was closed, and the scriptorium and chapel were barred off by scaffolding. But it was empty and quiet, so it was a nice twenty minutes or so that we spent out in the cold.

 We hiked back across town to St. Sernin cathedral. That was the Romanesque one that I got to go into the crypts. This time I managed to get a photo of the reliquary which contains a “Shard of the True Cross.”

 Overall it was a fun weekend and was good to travel with someone again (it’s been about a month since I had a friend with me on a trip). And Emily was really good about listening to my history and contributing her art-history, so it was a very engaging weekend in general.