Vie, la France

Top news of this blog post is the fact that I fiiinnnally finished my online course, so that’s over and done with! Still waiting for confirmation that my transcript made it to Ottawa so that I can be officially graduated in a month, but I’ll keep you posted on that. Other top news is my weekend in SWITZERLAND!!

It was pretty much AWESOME. I left Friday afternoon, but Muriel (the mom of my family) was nice enough to offer to drop me off in town in the morning so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the car and parking in town for the whole weekend. That being said, I had a few hours to kill in town before leaving so I went for a nice little swim at the Olympic sized pool, then hung out in the lovely little park beside the train station to have a little lunch and read in the sun while I let my suit and towel dry a bit. By 1:20pm, though, I was on the train and on my way to Geneva, Switzerland. I had to switch trains once on the way there (at Lyon), so I didn’t sleep too much for fear of missing that. The plus side was that I got to watch as the countryside changed from the semi-arid of the south to the more temperate of mid-France, and the cool changes in architecture style that went with that.

I got to geneva around 5:30, and promptly met up with my friend Ian at the train station. The weather was actually pretty great even though the forecast was for rain all weekend, so we went for a little stroll around the old city and I saw the lake with its famous ‘jet d’eau’. We also grabbed some groceries to make ‘classy’ grilled cheese (grilled cheese made with artisan bread, brie, and red pepper spread) for dinner, and had a few drinks while we caught up and watched a movie. The next day was geneva touristing day. After a great brunch of an omelet and more artisan bread, we headed out to explore the city. I literally jumped up and down with the excitement of seeing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s house, which makes me a huge political thought nerd, but oh well! I also got to see the UN, the WTO headquarters, the Red Cross headquarters, the Canadian consulate, and I even rode the commuter ferry! We also happened upon a super cool botanical garden which had displays of plants from areas allll over the world; from North America to Siberia to the Andes to the Alps to Japan! It was super neat.

After the day of touristing, it was time to head back to Ian’s rez to prepare a dish for the birthday potluck that I was tagging along to. Ian proposed we just bring chocolate, but I said that if I was going we were most certainly going to bring something awesome, so I suggested a baked brie with the remaining red pepper spread from our grilled cheese. It was super fun to make, and ended up being a hit at the party which was good! The party was full of folks from all over the world – Italy, Quebec, Australia, France, etc. and so I had a fun time switching languages and finding out what everyone was doing in Switzerland. After the party, we headed back out into the pouring rain (which had finally arrived around 6pm) to get back to Ian’s rez where a whole group of fellow Canadians and a girl from finland were partying as they waited for us.

This is when the night took a turn for the university party... after debating some Quebec/Canadian politics with a Quebecker for a little while, we all headed out to a Philipino karaoke bar and sang such classics as Bohemian Rhapsody and Sweet Caroline (in our loudest and most awful voices of course). I made friends with a German there, if we’re keeping track of my nationalities encountered tally. Finally Ian and I had to head home so that we would be capable of waking up at 7am to get to the train station on time for our next Swiss adventure: Zermatt!
We did manage to wake up on time but it was noooot pleasant. My croissant and coffee on the train were a big help, as was the big bottle of water I downed on the trip. We had also prepared a huge lunch of sandwiches, apples, and chocolate (of course) the day before, so we were well prepared for the day. We had a 4 hour train ride from Geneva to Visp, with one transfer (on the way there we missed our transfer because our first train was late, so we had a bit of a panic then, but all was quickly resolved and we got on the next train to Visp with no issues) then in Visp we got on the Matterhorn Express to Zermatt!! That ride was another hour or so, but all through the mountains which was soooo cool. I was SO excited at this point, the scenery was incredible! We finally made it to Zermatt around 11am and the picture taking frenzy began! Zermatt is essentially a ski-chalet village, however it is surrounded by gorgeous mountain views and also has an area full of ancient houses and stables from the 16th and 17th centuries, so there was a TON of things to take pictures of. It is also a ‘carbon neutral’ village, meaning that cars are forbidden in the village (they have little electric bus shuttles to get skiers from chalet to lift), and they generate all their own electricity through their waste disposal. Eco-nerd me LOVED this, and just the fact of having no cars meant it was SOOOOOOO quiet there.

We looked at taking the little tourist train up to the Matterhorn (the mountain that’s on the Toblerone Box), but it was like 80 CHF (swiss francs...so like 50 Euros) and we decided to walk around and think about it first. The weather was unbelievable, I had been mentally and clothing-ly prepared for the forecasted grey, cool, and rainy weather, but it ended up being almost 10 degrees and glaringly sunny all day! It was magnificent! We had our picnic lunch in the garden of the village church, which was lovely, and then we kept on with our explorations. We made it to the other end of the village where there was the gondola up to the ski slopes, and asked about taking it up without the intention of skiing. It turns out we were definitely able to do that, with multiple options of how far up we wanted to go. Being broke students, we decided to go with the first stop then walk down, but in fact that ended up being a good choice because the walk down from there alone ended up taking almost 2 hours. It was an awesome walk though! What was really cool was that we went on one mountain side for half of the walk, a mountain which was totally covered in trees and snow about 3 feet deep at minimum, but then the mountain directly beside which we walked on for the second half (after crossing a slippery bridge over a very deep chasm) had barely a flake or a tree on it! It was an odd phenomenon to behold, that’s for sure. We also passed tons of the bewildering little huts which I still have no idea about as to the purpose they serve... I definitely must Wikipedia that, because it drove me NUTS the whole trip that I couldn’t figure out what these old little wooden huts were for... I hypothesized to no end the whole day, but must verify asap! After our big long walk down, we started to look for a place which would do fondue for a reasonable price (everything is ridiculously expensive in Switzerland...), but we were having a tough time finding any restaurant which would serve us anything at all before 6pm, and with our train at 7 we wanted to make sure we’d have enough time to get on it! After we gave up our dreams of fondue and settled on raclette (melted cheese poured over a potato), we finally found a little place that would serve us so early (5:30pm...) and had a lovely raclette dinner and a beer to warm up as the sun started to go down and the temperature started to get brisk. After dinner, we headed back to the train station and ended up being 20 mins early, so we hung out ouside and unfortunately our tiredness from the fresh air, altitude, long hike, and previous night’s shenanigans fiiinally sunk in and we were having a hard time waiting for the train to arrive. But arrive it did, and we hunkered down with various nationalities of ski bums as the train took us back to Visp where we did the morning’s trek in reverse. This time we didn’t miss our connecting train though!!

We got back to Geneva around 11pm and pretty much crashed immediately, as I had an even earlier train the following morning to head back to Montpellier. At 6:40 am Monday, I hugged Ian goodbye and hopped on my TGV back home to the sunny south and promptly passed out for the majority of the journey... arriving back in town early enough to fit in another short swim at the Olympic pool before making it to the bus back up to St. Vincent de Barbeyrargues where I had to pick up the girls from school at 4:30pm. Needless to say after a whole weekend of adventures, I slept extremely well that Monday night!

This whole adventure was the weekend of April 20th, meaning is was the last weekend of yet another set of vaccances for the girls...yes, that is correct, another 2 weeks off from school, a mere 6 weeks after their first 2 week set this year. Vaccances was much less nanny-intensive than last time, especially with having toulouse the first weekend and switzerland the last, and the parents took more off days this time so I didn't actually have many more days of working than a normal week. I did go to the pool with them a couple of times, but other than that it was much less work than february vaccances. Seriously though, it’s crazy how much vacation time they get... in fact in May they have the first two weeks where they have civic holidays, and this year the holidays both fell on Tuesdays which means they have 4 weekends in the span of two weeks (with them not having school Wednesdays as per usual)!!

This isn’t so bad for me because the parents are off too, so they have things planned and I get to tag along, like last Tuesday we went on another hike in the area which was nice. The hike itself was less pittoresque and fun than the previous two, however it did end in a wicked cool old castle ruin, so that made it worth it! This past weekend was a busy one too. Saturday was a regular day, gym, help clean, have lunch, etc., then I babysat the girls that night so Fred and Muriel could go out. Sunday was MOST excellent however, because although I was woken up by being jumped on by the younger girl (Gabrielle) and her friend Jeanne who had slept over, it was to go to a sand sculpture competition at the beach! Nooo, not a real one, just a throwtogether fun family thing where families all come with friends and the like and we have a ‘competition’ to build a sculpture within a certain theme – this year it was ‘voyages de sable’ (sand journeys). Then each sculpture wins the grand prize for something different...I don’t even remember what ours was, something ridiculous, that’s for sure. We built a big maze and I made a traveller looking at it with his bag and his hat (you could use props). Once again I ended up with weather not at all as predicted, rather than gray and bleak it ended up being almost 30 degrees with barely a cloud in the sky! The girls had no shorts or bathing suits or anything, so they swam in their undies, but I had in my state of constant solar optimism brought myself some shorts so I waded in a bit too. Being a sea, it was brisk, that’s for sure, but I kept forgetting that it was salt water because it was such a scene from sauble or wasage really. It was really nice, or ‘sympa’ as the French say.

Fred didn’t come with us to the beach thing because he had an afternoon shift as a scrutineer for the presidential elections. After we got back from the beach, we all went over to the little community room to listen as the votes were tallied. They read them all out loud here. Two people open, one person reads, and about 6 people record to be sure the tally is accurate. Here you don’t mark your ballot, you pick up a ballot with each candidate’s name on it and then, once in the hut, you put only the ballot sheet with your choice’s name on it into your envelope. An empty envelope or one with multiple sheets is the equivalent of a spoiled ballot here.

It was really interesting to see how it’s done here. And the experience continued as I got to tag along to yet another potluck picnic for dinner as the family went over to a friend’s house to watch the results and all the speeches. It was weird here because a) it’s all one time zone, so you get all the results at once, and b) the polls close at like 4pm, so you find out by 7pm who the new president is, not like in Canada where you have to wait til BC gets to 9pm or whenever before there’s even a hope of knowing all the results.

And finally that brings me to today...after a magnificent run, some cleaning, and a little sunbathing, I had the older girl come home for lunch because she asked me if she could this morning and I said sure, why not. Well, here’s why not... I had thought it would be nice since we already knew the girls were having friends over for dinner tonight to make a lasagna, and since Julia loves to cook I asked if she wanted to help during her 1h20m lunch break since she was going to be home, only to get into a screaming match with her about the fact that it was vegetarian lasagna – which only had vegetables which I have specifically asked if she likes on various occasions. In any case, it was severely unpleasant lunch hour, but my lasagna turned out wonderfully (at least I think, we haven’t eaten it yet because Muriel had a roast to cook that had to be done today or thrown out). It was honestly ridiculous; she literally stormed out of the house when she heard that it was vegetarian lasagna. Luckily this afternoon passed much better, she did her homework without the need of any prompting or commanding or bargaining or threatening for once, and then she and her sister played nicely together with their friends without me having to intervene at all! It was amazing! I’m sure I was just as horrible at times as a child, but it’s hard to deal with sometimes when they go and be completely and illogically ridiculous.

In any case, it’s fairly late now as we watched a movie (since it’s essentially a Saturday tomorrow), and I’m not too sure what the vacation day plans are so I’ve got to make sure I’m well rested in case it’s another big day! Send me an update on your lives soon so I have something to do in my not-busy-but-can’t-leave-the-house times (like when both girls are at friends’ houses after school).
Miss you all and hope you’re getting nice and ready for summer time which is just around the corner!!
Bisous!! XOXO

Well, when I last left you I was just heading into a super fun weekend – I put the pics up ages ago with the intention of blogging soon thereafter, but my month turned out to be WAY more jam packed than I had anticipated. First of all there was the Carnavale de St Vincent, which was super cute. All the little kids dressed up and there was a big parade through the streets of town with music, dancing, confetti, and of course Mr. Carnavale (a wood and paper maché man, pretty much the size of a normal man) who was rolled along with us on a trolley. After the parade there was crepes and cider in the schoolyard while Mr. Carnavale was set on fire (?!), and the adults got to chat while the kids ran around and played. Overall it was a pretty neat little village thing to do, and I got to see the ‘old’ village part of town, which somehow I had neglected to actually do thusfar. It’s really pretty and european, but very, very small!

The next day (Sunday) I had a soccer game in the morning with my Jacou team, and then that night I went to my first ever professional soccer game (or football match, as I seem to find myself calling more and more....the result of always hanging out with brits!) It was way fun! The game was pretty good – very European though with some diving and some time wasting strategies. It wasn’t a ‘big’ game, so the stadium wasn’t packed to the brim, but it was still pretty full and there were still the diehards at each end behind the goal and they were HILARIOUS to watch. They all had signs and flags and were totally rowdy, they had coordinated cheers and everything, it was pretty great. Montpellier won, of course, so for a leafs fan it was kind of a nice change of pace to have the team you’re cheering for actually amount to something.... haha (</3).

The following weekend was equally packed – but of course it would be, it was St. Patrick’s weekend! Friday night, it was my friend Suzie’s birthday celebration (her actual birthday is st. Pats, but she had to work at her job at the irish bar on actual st pats. So we celebrated on Friday night). It was a hilariously good time, and in true Europe fashion we stayed out til almost 5am! The next day was grey and miserable out (noooo fun), so we basically just hung around in town, got some fast food, watched some of the 5 nations rugby tournament or whatever it was...essentially regained out strength to go out yet again that night. Poor Suzie had to work from 11am til 2am at the bar, and we’re pretty certain she was still a little tipsy from the night before when she was leaving that morning. St Patricks night was probably the best night I’ve had out here so far and I wasn’t even drinking! All the people I’ve met so far were there, it was a great irish bar, the music was pretty good, and it was just a grand old time. It really felt like an Ottawa night out, which I’ve definitely been missing of late. I left relatively early to catch the last tram to my car (around 2am) so that I could drive home and sleep in my own bed before having to go to soccer the following morning.
Soccer was great the next day – we went to Sète so I finally got to travel a bit, and I finally saw the sea for the first time!!! We lost, as per usual, but it was a team that was actually much better than we were, so for once it wasn’t because of my team giving up after one goal against, so that was a positive, and I’m starting to get more adjusted to playing defense so I actually felt like I was contributing rather than just being a flailing yellow body on the field. My picture of Sète are pretty terrible because I took them all out the window of the car as we were leaving... but you get the general idea of what it looks like I think.

The day after Sète, Monday, I went to crossfit as per usual, and then afterwards I finally took on the explorational journey to get to the beach! In between the weekends, my weekdays have been better now that I can drive. I usually wake up, have breakfast with the fam, do a bit of cleaning or tidying, then head to crossfit. After crossfit, I have lunch and do some coursework, then pick up the girls from school. It’s a pretty relaxing existence. Except on Wednesdays of course, when I have the girls all day. The family and I did have a bit of non-communication creating some of tension in the house, but we had a chat and it really, really helped the situation. Now things are really starting to go well – I’m finally getting a grasp on what’s expected of me and how to do it ‘their way’, and they’re finally starting to ask me to do things they want done, rather than just assume I’ll know I’m supposed to do it.

So that explains the old batch of ‘new pics’, as well as my day-to-day lately, but now let’s move on to all new content!

The weekend after Sète, my friend Ian from Ottawa came to visit! He’s studying in Geneva and has later exams than the folks in Otts, so he came down to get a little dose of the Mediterranean lifestyle and some sunshine. He was super lucky because after a few weeks of total cold, drizzly and grey, he come on a weekend of pure sunshine and 25 degree temps! Saturday afternoon he arrived, and we went to the beach straight away to enjoy the sunshine. It was great but as always, I got super lost (not a big deal, I`ve come to accept the fact that every time I go somewhere new I get lost, but in the end it helps me out because I start to recognize places since I’ve been lost there before, so I can always find my way home). That night we went out for thai in town (suuuper good!) and tried to see who was going out so I could show him some south of france party scene, but unfortunately, all the brits seemed to be out of town or staying in, so we met up with my one Canadian friend for a little and had a few drinks, but in all it was a pretty low-key night. The next morning I had soccer anyway, and I felt terrible for having to drag Ian all the way to St. Pargoire (a tiny, tiny little village almost an hour away) when he only had about 24h in Montpellier...especially after such a bust of a night before, and extra especially because we had to leave my place at 8am.

It actually ended up being super fun – we went in the ‘mini-bus’ (9 person van thing), and we were up to our usual rowdy antics singing along and honking at people on the street and he thought it was absolutely hilarious. The game was a gong show – one of our girls sprained her knee about 5 minutes into the warmup, another one ran off after 5 minutes of the game to throw up, another one pulled a calf halfway through –it was crazy! Ian went off to the village to take pictures and tourist a bit so he didn`t see any of this craziness go down. We lost, of course, but a) all of that happened, b) we were already missing our top goal scorer to the flu, and c) it was the first place team, and we’re 7th out of 10. All things considered, we actually did play really well – if we had been a little more accurate with the shots and if a few lucky bounces hadn’t happened for the other team, the result would have been a little different. It’s all good though, we only play teams that are just above or below us in standing for our last few games, so hopefully having played all the top teams first means we’ll be able to win the last few games with ease.

The ride home was equally if not more anti-ful and fun! Usually after games we hang around the clubhouse in Jacou and have baguettes and cheese (and cold cuts for everyone but me) with a drink or two while we watch the senior men’s teams play their games, but since Ian only had a few more hours in town, I wanted to actually show him a little of Montpellier, so we jetted into town and did some great touristing that I had yet to do. There was an AWESOME garden terrace thing called Jardin de Peyrou, and it had a spectacular view of the city. The weather was perfection, so we had a great time walking around town. We had lunch on the grass in a little park beside the Gare (that means train station) – it’s the same park as in the St. Patrick’s day photos, except this time the sun was just blazing down and the rock fountain was sending a magically cool mist over us every once in a while, so we stayed there for a good hour just relaxing in the sun. We also saw the arc de triumph, the esplanade, the justice building, etc. It was a really great day of touristing around.

The following weekend was my first real trip out of town. I went with a group of the Brit/Scot/Welsh contingent to Toulouse! It was about a 3-4 hour drive there, and we went Saturday morning. Unfortunately this weekend the weather was not to indulgent and it was grey, rainy, and pretty cool the whole time. We still managed to see some cool sights – really elaborate churches, and even St. Thomas of Aquinas`s remains!! I was pretty surprised that such a major historical figure was laid to rest where he was, because the church was not at all restored, there were no plaques explaining things, there were ladders and buckets just kinda strewn about, the ‘info desk’ was like an 1970s office desk with a display shelf beside it... it was pretty raw looking. Even the info sheet explaining the fact that it was St. Thomas Aquinas’s remains was just a poorly done photocopy in a protective slip... it was really strange I thought. After an afternoon of touristing around, we went on a mission for cheap dinner (the rest-stop restaurant we had stopped in was astronomically expensive, like 1 euro to add an egg to your salad and 3 euros for a drink! That being the case, we were all looking to preserve our pennies). After our macdo dinner (they have goat cheese wraps at the mcdonalds’ here!!) and our Carrefour wine finding expedition, we went back to our hotel to get warm, get ready, and get partying! We hung out a bit at the hotel, which was pretty minimalist to be able to be super cheap – it was pretty much like being in rez: shared bedrooms with the beds attached to the walls, communal bathrooms, communal showers, etc. And then we found our way to the metro station and took the subway into town. Suzie had some Scottish friends in Toulouse, so we spent quite some time wandering around town trying to meet up with them which made for some pretty funny adventures. We did finally find them and we all headed off to the bar together. We danced and drank and had a grand old time until around 3, when we decided to change bars to go to the ‘afterbar’. By then though, I had realized that I’d lost my necklace pendant which totally killed my mood, and it was 3am so I was just tired. That being said, a bunch of the others were pretty much done for the night too so we grabbed a cab back to the hotel. The other half the group decided to stay out though, and ended up coming back on the first metro of the next day at 6:15am! The next day we had to check out for noon, so around 11:30 everyone was up and packing up into the 2 cars. I woke up super early as I often do after drinking, but I just had a shower and then managed to fall back asleep until the rest of the group started to stir.

For Sunday afternoon we went back into town and split up to find something to eat for breakfast/lunch, and then met back up to decide what was next. We really wanted to do either a little tourist train or tourist boat tour, but it was so miserable out and everyone was just exhausted and hungover, so we decided to just do a little more walking around through the big market that was set up, then get a coffee to warm up before heading off. On the way back we had a bit of a Chinese firedrill because people needed to be dropped off in places before Montpellier, and I needed to get back up to the village, etc., so I ended up being with a girl who is also living with a French family in a village right beside mine, so it did us both some good to be able to compare stories and see if it was just us of if French families are super weird. We both decided it was not just us, and that French families are indeed super weird, haha! It was good to know that I wasn’t the only one who was sometimes a little at odds with the ideas and habits of family I was staying with! When I got home, the family was out for easter dinner at their grandparents so I had a nice quiet evening to myself which was good after having been with people 24/7 all weekend.

This past week was once again Vaccances (this current week as well), so I was with the girls all day every day. Monday was Easter Day, so the parents were home and I was less responsible for occupying the girls, but the rest of the week it’s been tough because I didn’t expect to have the girls so I had nothing planned. They were meant to stay with their grandparents this week, but apparently their grandmother has a sore leg or something, so they ended up coming home after all. I felt bad that I had nothing for them to do all day – especially since the weather hasn’t been awesome all week, but luckily they have some friends who aren’t away for vaccances so they had a friend over or went over to a friend’s house each day. Friday was my day off off, Muriel and Fred took the day off to do a family day with the girls, so I had the whole entire day to myself to work on my course assignment. It was a much needed day of work, and I ended up finishing my whole assignment and submitting it (meaning I only have ONE 2000 word essay left in my whole undergrad!! YAY!!), going swimming for the first time in a month (aaaamazing), and still having time and energy to make it down to town to go out for my friend Christian’s birthday which was just a blast. They surprised him with a potluck in the afternoon, which I missed because I was already at the pool, then we went out to a really neat bar for ‘happy hour’ (8-10pm here, rather than right after work like in Can and US), and after that we went to a pirate bar! It is literally like you’re in a pirate ship; it was pretty cool but WAY too packed for my non-drinking self to totally enjoy. At around 1am, they decided to switch bars and I decided it was time to catch the tram to my car and head home for the night because I knew I had a busy day the next day. I hear the night got pretty messy after I left though!

The next day was a busy one indeed! First of all, I had a huge breakfast and headed down to the cross-fit gym for my first ever crossfit competition!! I was certainly not expecting it to be so official, I was just expecting a regular WOD with a few extra people as judges...instead I showed up to reebok reps, a whole setup in the gym, a warmup area, and a TON of people....what’s more is that I was the ONLY person signed up for the 9:15 group :S! Luckily Marv, one of the coaches, decided to do it with me so I wasn’t totally alone. The workout was AMRAP 12’ (as many rounds as possible in 12’) of 10 Box Jumps and 10 Thrusters (a fullsquat and overhead shoulderpress combo). It was way harder than I expected because the box was a few centimetres higher than the one I’m used to – not to mention the fact that I went out and danced all night the previous night and that because of vaccances I hadn’t actually been to crossfit in over a week! In any case, I still did ok I think, a little short of the goal I had set in my head but people said it was good so voila. I couldn’t stick around to see how my results compared to the next groups’ because I had to rush home to get ready to go on a little trip with the family to a place called St. Gilhem le Desert.

This was a great trip, we went on a mini hike just above the village for a picnic lunch – that’s where all the pictures of the nature and the big castle on the rock come from. Then we went into the village for a little while, it’s a medieval village which dates back a good couple of centuries but it’s all restored and touristy now. It has a gorgeous little monastery, and it’s picturesquely nestled into the surrounding hills. After the village, we went back a little ways by car to go to La Grotte de Clamouse, which is a series of caves made by water over millennia – the last cave we visited (the first one made there) was over 500 MILLION YEARS OLD. Cool huh? There was also all sorts cool stalactite and stalagmite formations in the caves, ones that were spiky, ones that were swirly, ones that were like huge waterfalls or like coral formations, even one that looked like a drape. It was SUPER neat for a water nerd like me. I put up some of the pics I took, but since you aren’t allowed to use the flash (it causes plant life to grow), they turned out pretty terribly...here’s the website if you want to see a more accurate portrayal: http://www.grottedeclamouse.com/

After the Grotte tour, we headed home for the evening – with one small detour to get some wine from the region. At home, after a short ‘repose’, Muriel tucked into a bunch of baking projects and the girls and I helped out a little, as well as helping to prepare dinner as Muriel and Fred had invited a neighbor over – a quebecoise in fact! He husband and one daughter were in Paris so he could run the Marathon so she and her other daughter came over. Usually when a friend comes over I eat with the girls and then either hang out with them of go off and do my own thing, but this time I decided to hang out with the adults for once, which ended up being a pretty good time with lots of really good wine.
Today I slept in pretty late after all my weekend adventures, and then spend the most part of my day writing this – the family had a big family dinner with out of town aunts and uncles so I didn’t want to be a burden with my extra mouth and vegetarianism to boot, so I decided that unless I was specifically invited I wouldn’t join them. That being said I got another day tranquil sans enfants which was nice. I did go for a swim at the pool in Jacou (I don’t like it nearly as much as the pool in town, but it takes an hour to get to the pool in town and only 10 minute to get to the one in Jacou), and I’m just about to head off for a run with Gina (the Quebecoise), so in all I feel like this has been a SUPER productive weekend!

And Voila! That’s my life update of the last month or so!!

What have YOU been up to? Send me an email update at awebb050@gmail.com soon so I can live canadianly though you...I’m missing the homeland for sure and I’d love to hear what’s going on back there!

Miss you all and hope to hear from you soon!!

BISOUS XOXOX

Driving in Europe is INSANE. I finally get the hang of a manual transmission, and the roundabouts, and the tiny roads, and the tram lines, and the gazillion speed bumps, and the weird traffic lights, and what do they do? Put traffic lights and tram lines in the MIDDLE of a roundabout. YEESH. I also had the most stressful journey of my life trying to get to the crossfit gym I found about a 25 min drive away…. I got lost on the way there for an hour, and on the way back for another half hour. Not to mention that there were Gendarmes and Police cars EVERYWHERE so I was ridiculously stressed out about being pulled over for breaking some unknown rule or another, and the fact that I was lost, AND to top it allll off, being late for my babysitting engagement that afternoon. Needless to say it was quite the Tuesday.

Other than that, things are back to normal in terms of schedule with the girls back at school for a little while. Just to tell a little more about the pic-st-loup, it was a great afternoon! The Pic St Loup is what the area is named after, it’s kinda like living on the “waterfront” or “escarpment”, you can see it from all around, the highschool here is named after it, etc. The trail up is kinda like the bruce trail on crack, it’s way steeper, way rockier, and wayyyy higher up; also less wooded, but still really neat. We ended up taking a slight wrong turn about half way up and had to essentially rock climb our way up part of it – the girls though it was AWESOME, but their parent were a little more uneasy about it, especially once we got to the top and were right beside a straight up cliff down to the bottom. It made for some awesome photos of the countryside though – You can see right to the sea in some of them! The sea being one place I still haven’t ventured to, though I most definitely intend to go this week if I get through enough school work.

Speaking of school work, my last course is coming along nicely. It’s very interesting subject matter, discussing the different theories on the philosophical and moral shifts over the past few centuries that have lead to the present day ecological crisis and our difficulties in solving it, so I’m having no trouble motivating myself to do the readings, but the actual assignments are a whole other level of motivation. A level which I really need get up to this month so I can be finished mid-april as planned, and I can finally start to profit from the fact that I’m right beside the Mediterranean and a quick train ride away from EVERYWHERE cool! I do have a plan to visit Geneva next month, so I’m going to try and use that as a goal to be entirely done my course by then. Good luck to me!

My second soccer game was not nearly as successful as the first, seeing as it was a much better team we were facing, aaaand I was perhaps not in the best of form this past Sunday morning…. I may or may not have gone out Saturday night with the English teaching assistants and some Montpellier rugby players to the Australian bar downtown…..(and a side note for Fiona, you’re right about rugby players, nicest guys in the UNIVERSE, way fun to hang out with! And I’ve been watching the sport a lot more too, really a neat game! We’ll for sure be frequenting the Crusaders club together when I get back!!). In any case, I’m hoping that tomorrow morning it goes better as I’m planning on having a night of homework tonight to get a move on in my course progress. Plus my game is at 9 am tomorrow, so even going out without drinking would mean a tough match in the morning. I’ll make up my lost social time on Tuesday since I should finally be able to make it downtown to join the English assistants for their weekly pub quiz night (TRIVIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! <3). Up til last week I wasn’t confident enough to drive down on my own at night, and then this past Tuesday I was babysitting, but this week I think I’ll finally be able to make it!! Woo!! And then I have no doubt that there will be something on for St. Patrick’s day next weekend so I’m definitely not worried about missing out on social time this week!

In other news, I went back to the crossfit gym on Thursday with much more success and much, much less getting lost and stressed out. I really like it there, they are a small gym, so you get a lot of attention during the WOD and they’re a really nice, focused little group. They also have a punching bag, though it isn’t hung up, so I’ll have to work on getting that up on a wall somewhere so I can keep in WBK shape too! I swim about once a week with one of the English assistants at the big Olympic pool in town – she’s no Trisha Petrosoniak or Lindsay Robertson to kick my but in the pool, but it’s just good to have someone to chat with during a standing non-party date each week. There’s a much closer pool that I can go to on my own if I ever want to have a killer swim workout. I’m also doing yoga once a week (it’s with some older ladies in the village so it’s no hot or power class, but it’s 2 hours and it makes me stretch!)
The only downside to having the car is that I’m running a lot less now that I can go and do other things during the day, so I’m going to try and get that back into gear, especially now that the weather is back to “normal” temperatures of about 13-18 degrees every afternoon. Yesterday I took as a “sick day” for myself and watched track and field world championships in the morning, then harry potter all afternoon, but since I feel better already I’m going to head out this afternoon. I’ve got a vague idea of perhaps training over the next 8 months to run the Montpellier marathon in October, but we’ll have to see how that goes – training for a marathon by oneself is a little bleak, even in countryside as lovely as this. There is a group of women that I run with when our schedules coincide, but they only ever go 7-10km, and have no interest in going further, so it’s good to have people to run with, but if I want to go further or faster I’ll have to do it by myself.

Oh, and other side note, I gave up chocolate for lent, which has been awfully tough given the million tons of chocolate (really good, dark and milk, mint orange, and hazelnut Lindt and Cote d’Or chocolate) that are in the house allllllllllll the time – that’s one thing I definitely have to say about the French, they eat a staggering amount of bread, cheese, chocolate, and flaky pastry for people that are all so thin. Like, literally, a staggering amount. I can’t understand it at all. Luckily I’ve never been overly partial to cheese, so I only eat it every other day or so, instead of 2-3 times a day like the family, but resisting the omnipresent chocolate is proving tough. I did crack once when we make chocolate chip cookies and I forgot to leave some dough aside to make sans chocolate chips, but other than that I’ve been doing a pretty good job. The endless supply of delicious mandarines (clementines) makes it easier, and the French habit of often having cake or tart on hand for dessert means there’s often something else available for dessert or 4h (4:30pm snack) when the girls are eating pain-au-chocolat, nutella on toast, or Kinder Bueno for their snack.

Another side note, alcohol here is a totally different creature than in Canada – not only is it sold EVERYWHERE (you can even get beer at mcdonalds), but it’s also ridiculously cheap. A 6-pack of 1664 Blanc which is like $13 at home is only 5 euros, so like, 8 dollars. And that’s the pricey stuff! You can get cheap (gross) wine for like 2 euros at the cornerstore, or even moderately good tasting stuff at the grocery store for only 3 euros. It’s nuts! It makes going out much less of a financial burden, let me tell you, which is good news for us non-natives who need to save all our euros for travelling! All those poor Europeans who come to Canada must think we’re barbaric to sell our booze only in specific stores and at such a cost!

That’s more or less all for now; hopefully I’ll have much more exciting adventures starting in the next month once I’ve gotten settled, friended, and brave enough to start to travel more! After Geneva I’m hoping to hit up Barcelona, Morocco, Bordeaux (I think you can surf there), Paris (of course), Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, London.... and so on during my time here. It’s hard because of the fact that I work during the week, so I really only have weekends to go exploring, but the family has said that if I want to leave on a Friday morning for a three day journey every once in while they have no problem with it, I just need to start making the plans – so stay tuned!

And now I’d better get to work on my Canadian tax stuff so I can get some more travel money in time for the spring! Plus my dad might just fly over here to find out if my fingers are broken if I don’t do it soon!

Hope all is well with all of you wonderful folks! I miss you all tons and wish you could be here to share all these cool new experiences with me! Send me an update on YOUR lives soon so I’m not missing out even though I’m far away.

Bisous!

Photos up and a blog post to follow once I'm a little more caught up on school work....

Some weeks here pass quickly, and others crawl - this is one of the slow weeks. It seems like it's been going on forever because it's been such a busy one. Why so busy? Well it's "vaccances", which is a two week february vacation from school. What it means for me is occupying the two girls all day every day for two whole weeks.... plus countless friends and cousins who have been coming in and out of the picture all week! It all started last weekend....

On Sunday the 12th we went to Fred's brother's house for a big 17th birthday lunch for one of his nephews. The two younger nephews (Elliot and Gregoire) got along so well with the girls that it was decided that they would come later on during Vaccances to stay for a few days. After that busy day, it was the first monday and the only day so far with just me and the girls... We went into town to have a quick stop at the mall for me to pick up a little valentines treat for the girls, then swim at the big pool there, and ended up swimming for almost two and a half hours! We then went home and planned for our next 2 big days - the most imminent being "Spa Day" on Tuesday. Tuesday dawned and my valentines treat spirit caught on and Muriel also had gotten us little gifts - for myself a bottle of organic oil to put on nails, skin, and hair which is really lovely, it was really nice of her and I wan not at all expecting anything when I mentioned that I would be getting a little gift for each of the girls for valentines day. But after that lovely breakfast surprise, it was time to get to work - at 10:15am the invitees to spa day arrived, giving us a full house of 5 girls plus me for a full day of home made face and hair steams, rinses, and masks; plus a little bit of baking and cooking since it was valentines day and we also had a little surprise planned for Muriel and Fred! After the last Spa guest had leaft around 5:30, we cooked a meal for the family but ate our dinner before Fred and Muriel got home, and we also set the table for two with a few candles and a bottle of wine so that they could have a valentines dinner without having to cook, plan, go out, or deal with us three. It was a hit, the food was good if not overly pretty (I let the girls do as much of the cooking as possible), and the intention was very well recieved.... in fact we have a similar scheme underway for this upcoming tuesday too!.

After that super busy day, it was a full morning of homework on wednesday before the next big activity began - the Fashion and Film soiree. The girls arrived at 6:30pm and while we waited for the pizza to arrive, all the girls changed into a dress or sparkly shirt that they had brought, and had their hair and a little makeup done by me. we then took a few glamour shots and mowed down on some Goat cheese and honey thin-crust pizza and brownies. After din we all washed off out makeup and changed into pjs to watch the movie "LOL" - a french movie about a girl in highschool - for the sleepover portion of the night. Eventually the girls went to bed - luckily I have my studio so I got to sleep right away but they were up pretty late chatting away and goofing around I'd bet, because they didn't emerge until after 10am the next day, when usually they're up at 7:45. After a little breakfast, and some play-time, it was time for the friends to head home and for Julia, Gab and I to have a little down time. Julia and Gab were not happy when I said no friends over that thursday afternoon because they needed to relax a little and because their grandparents would be arriving that afternoon sometime. But once Mammi and Pappi arrived, the fun began once more! Because not long after, in fact, the very next morning, two young cousins arrived as well - Victor and Enzo. I’m not too sure what mischief they all got up to that evening as I had soccer practice from 7-9pm, and were all cozied up watching a movie when I got home. Practice was brutal but fun, as it has been every time this past month. It’s been a while since I actually trained with drills and a coach and everything and I can feel my old soccer skill returning more and more with each Thursday night that passes; it’s a great feeling.

We wasted no time getting back to full speed as we went on friday afternoon to the skating rink and had a great (but tiring) time! After standing in line, paying our entry, getting our skate rentals, then getting onnnn our skate rentals, it turned out the younger two (gab and enzo) could barley stand on their skates on the ground, let alone on the ice. Luckily Victor and Julia, the two older ones were competent enough to not need me fully supporting them at all times because I only have so many limbs!! Despite the slow going and many falls, Gab and Enzo had as good a time as the older two as the rink had a super neat layout. There was the normal hockey style rink to go around - well lit, quiet music, skate in a circle, etc. - but there was also a wicked "leisure rink" which was lit with multicoloured strobe lights, had blaring club beats, had two dance floors, a big tunnel, and even a ramp to go down on your skates. It was so cool!! They need stuff like that in canada for the young suburban folks to visit on a friday night - if meadowvale four-rinks or River oaks CC or wherever had had one of these it would have been a THOUSAND times better to be an underager in the 'burbs!

Saturday was finally a day mostly for me as muriel, fred, mammi, and pappi all wanted time as a fam.... but it was by no means low-key as I had an away soccer game - my first one in france! In the morning I took the 4 cousins to the "barres de singe" (monkey bars, I just use the direct translation because they don't have a word for them here), which are about a half hour walk away. Then we all came back for lunch and right after that I was off to Jacou to meet up with my team at the Soccer Club as we would be taking the club mini-bus to our game in a city a little more than a half hour drive away. My drive to the club was almost solid except for a minor disaster at the end where I missed my turn off and failed miserably at a 3 point turn because it's WAY harder on a tiny street with a clutch to worry about. Fred got mad that I kept stalling and was across both lanes in mid-turn, so I lost the little trust-in-alex's-driving progress that I had made on the rest of the trip there..... but in case I forgot to tell you, the good news is that I have the Gulf to practice on now, so my progress will hopefully develop a lot faster now!! We've had it for over 2 weeks now but I'm only just now being trusted to practice by myself, without fred in the car, which was a pretty big obstacle to being able to practice ever. But Muriel's father (pappi jaques) who was here for the weekend went out with me driving a few times and it was much better than doing it with fred or muriel because there's no sense that every little error I make vastly outweights all of the progress I've made. In any case, now I'm allowed to go around the village on my own so I plan to capitalize as soon as vaccances are over and practice at least a half hour a day in the car because I can see how much of a bother it is that I can't drive when we make plans for things like the pool, where either fred or muriel has to come back up to the village on their lunch break and then drop us off in town, then we have to organize to get picked up and if they both have meetings then we're stuck in town from 1:30pm-6pm.... and really, there's only so long you can swim or skate or shop with kids before they get bored and tired and hungry. The next set of Vaccances is another 2 weeks in april I believe, so my goal is to be completely 100% comfortable with manual without any doubt on anyone's part by the end of March. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.... but back to the neverending 2 weeks! We were on saturday I think...

My game was really fun on sat - tough for the fact that I was in a totally different position than I'm used to (right defense instead of my usual left midfield), plus some of the rules are different as it's 7-a-side soccer, PLUS to make it all way more complicated for me, it's entirely in french. This means I don't know the vocab to clearly communicate or be communicated to - how do you say "man on" or "mark up" or "turn and face" or "first to" in french? You can't translate that sort of stuff, even indirectly. I tried to do so at the game I went to watch 2 weeks ago and the girls on the team are STILL making fun of me - also the fact that I have a Quebecoise accent apparently. I say Jaune with too much of an OOOO sound, so they literally just die laughing when I cheer for our team (we're yellow). But since my first game was also the first game they've won all season, I think they value my Canadian self a little more now, haha, in skill but also in positive attitude. Saturday night I was dying to go out, but with a botched driving demo earlier and it being night time already (The game started way later than scheduled, and we had a quick drink at the club after so I didn't get home til after 8 and still had yet to eat dinner) I knew I wouldn't be allowed to drive down to the city and quite honestly with the tiny, unlit, crazy hilly and very unfamiliar roads I wasn't overly taken with the idea in the first place. So like the other nights of the week so far, I hung out with the kiddies as they watched a movie. Enzo, I think, was a little taken by me as he would always ask for me to come watch with them and always find a way to sit beside me. He and his brother are both super cute and defy the rules of sibling-ry with how nice they are to each other at this age.

Sunday morning I got a huge amount of studying done for my course as the cousins all slept in late then played together for a while. Victor and Enzo's parents came for lunch before taking them back home, and Fred's mother came by as well, so all in we had a hugely full table of 13. I would have enjoyed the chance to chat in french but I was overdone with people after having had such a busy week so I was pretty withdrawn after lunch and read my english book (Dune Trilogy) instead of chatting with the adults or watching TV with the younguns. The troup of uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents all left around 3pm, only to be replaced a few hours later by the other two male cousins - Elliot and Gregoire. After dinner with the new boys, we set up the super-room anew (having all 4 cousins sleep on various mattresses and sleeping bags in the same room - it's what we had set up when Victor and Enzo were there) and then had another movie evening.

And then we get to today... this morning I slept in til 8:45 which showed I was tired as I usually rise at 7:30 or so no problem. Not a huge problem though, as the younguns didn't wake up til 10:30. After breakfast, I did a workout video and pointedly ignored the 4 kids so they’d occupy themselves while I did my video which worked super well. They went out to play on the big swing attached to a tree in the little woods down the street for 40 mins while I finished my workout and then got lunch ready. We had lunch really early despite a late breakfast because Muriel was coming to pick us up at 1 to take us to the pool. We swam for about 2 hours, then spent another hour and a bit getting showered, changed, blow-dried, and then having our snack in the lobby. We then walked over the Polygone (the mall) and did a little window shopping before the complaints of still being hungry overwhelmed the fun of listening to the music stations in FNAC (like Chapters, HMV and Best Buy combined, then shrunk to the size of a big-ish HMV), so we walked to Place de la Comedie to go to the mcdo’s there for the kiddies to share some French fries and for me to have a coffee (Americano sadly, because even McDonald’s only serves espresso here!) before heading on the tram to meet Muriel on her way home from the Faculty of Pharmacology where she does her research. Upon arriving home I got some time to read a little more while Muriel threw together a quick Goat cheese quiche and a tarte au poivrons (peppers with cheese and seasoning on a flaky pastry base and the kids played on their Nintendo DS games. After dinner the boys talked about their love of maple syrup and I told them about tire-sur-neige and maple butter and maple sugar candies in Canada... I think I made them want to move there based on that alone, haha. The fam then set up for a movie but I decided I really ought to write about the past little while before it gets overshadowed by the adventures of this week and next.

So as you can see, these two weeks of "vacation" for the girls are exactly the opposite for me - but it IS nice to have something to do since all my new friends seem to be back visiting England etc. or are busy in some other way at the moment, and I can't drive down to Montpellier on my own yet in any case... But having some time alone to make progress on my course, get my slightly abandoned running back underway, and especially to practice driving will definitely be a welcome thing come next monday!

Well, this was a long one - hope you made it to the end and that you'll reciprocate my update with one such pertaining to YOUR life goings on soon because I'm missing my nice, familiar Canada and dear friends and fam as I deal with so many new things and new people all at once!

Hope to hear from you soon!

Bisous,

Alex

PS. for those who don't already have it, my skype name is awebb050.... add me so that we can have a real chat soon too!