Night on the town

Chateau de Montauban.
Cause everyone gets a chateau in France!

My host family went to the cinema to see a movie called Avis de Mistral, which was filmed in this area.  It sounded lovely and heartwarming, my least favorite type of film (see: Second Hand Lions), so I opted instead to explore Fontvieille, the town it was playing in, while everyone else was at the show.

 The Moulin (windmill) d'Alphonse Daudet.
                                                                  1 of 4, this is the only one to be restored, in 1935. 

This area is Provence, called Bouches du Rhone (mouth of the Rhone river).
Beautiful pastoral scenes like this are available whenever 
you can get a good look through all the trees.

After a little mini hike up around the 4 windmills, I wandered back down, past the Chateau de Montauban which, unfortunately, was closed, and through town.

A lot of stray cats, for some reason.




Yes, of course I took pictures of them.

Bullfighting!! It's not just for Spain!
I wandered past this and thought,
"That's not a..."
"No way is that door unlocked..."
But hey, yes it was, and hey, yes it is - a bullfighting ring.




If I want to make myself available on May 1st, I could really watch a bullfight.

They're going to have to roll me home!

My friend and I were kidding about all the bread and cheese and chocolate I would be eating while in France.  As if that's the only thing French people eat.  But holy cow, can I just say, I am eating so much bread and cheese and chocolate! Copious amounts of the stuff!!  Let me just add at this point, that it's really not that foreign of an experience living here.  My host family may as well be American, except for the fact that they speak in French all the time, and live in a beautifully quaint little village in France.  Meals are much like they would be in America.  A couple of small differences, however.  Processed foods are a newer thing here - my host mom recently discovered poptarts.  The yogurt is white, no matter what flavor it is (yay no food coloring!).  And we have a bread and cheese course at lunch and dinner.  I didn't realize this right away, so I would eat a normal amount of dinner, either salad or pasta or a lovely tart Provencal that we had one night.  Then someone will bring out the cheese.  Oh man, the cheese.  3 or 4 or 5 different kinds, and we will smear it on baguettes and eat it.  The bread is really more of a cheese holder; there is easily as much, if not more, cheese than bread going on here.  Let me point out that we have bread during the main course as well.  So much bread!  Baguettes for days!  I'm not in any way complaining, by the way!  And then we always have dessert, although it's very often just a yogurt cup.  Which is good, because I'm very full of bread at this point.  Yep, I'm getting along with the meal plan here.

Tart Provencal (mustard, tomatoes, epices Provencal)

I was skeptical of the mustard, but it tasted great!  And even better the next day.

Some people would probably stone me if they knew this, but I'm not such a big fan of cheese.  I mean, it's good, in the right circumstances, but let's just say, it was probably the thing I was least excited for on this trip.  HOWEVER... the cheese here is really good.  I mean... reeeeally good.  It's so creamy and tangy and each one has a slightly different flavor.  More cheeses than I am familiar with, and that's just the soft ones.  It's growing on me, I'll just say that.  Interesting sidenote:  you know the  bottom crisper area in the fridge?  Where we keep fruits and vegetables?  Yeah, it's filled with cheese here.  

Sidenote to the sidenote:  Appliances here are slighly smaller than American versions.  Cute.  Also, would be slightly annoying to use.

Remember all the stories of how French people have lunches that last 2 hours and dinners that last 3 or 4?  Well, this may not be true anymore.  At least, not with my host family.  My host mom and dad both work during the day, and come home for lunch when they can, but they usually only have an hour.  We eat a snack around 6 (this is where all the chocolate comes in) and then dinner around 8.  This schedule really works for me, even though it means we finish up dinner around 9 (only 1 hour or so for dinner) - this is pretty much my dining schedule when I'm at home.  I really like that they have a family dinner every night.  They sit with their family and talk and talk about the day, and eat and eat, and it's lovely.

Ok, I promised more pictures, so here are a few from my evening yesterday.  I explored a small town called Fontvieille, and discovered a few fun things.  More later, but first, my first official pastry!  I can't believe it took me this long!

Called a Provenceaux, but it's not very descriptive.  This area is Provence, and I think it's just named for the area. Almonds, shortbread crust, some gooey something-or-other in the middle.  It was delicious.

 

After Easter sale, at a Patisserie in town.  All handmade.  It's incredible.

Je suis arrivé

So I'm kind of sort of living in France now!  Like, in Europe and everything.  Once I heard back from GeoVisions that I had a host family that accepted me, everything was kind of a whirlwind.  I had about a month and a half before I left, which was, as it turns out, just enough time to take care of everything, without any time left over to freak out.  So that's a good thing.

Until the morning of my trip.  I had just finished up the final few things I had to get done before I left (I said there was JUST enough time to get everything done!), and my friend was coming to pick me up in a few hours, so I would have a bit of a breather before I left.  I thought.  Then I got an email from Expedia saying my connecting flight in Keflavik going to Paris was going to be delayed by 4 hours.  Turns out, there's an airline strike in Iceland.  No biggie, except for the fact that I would arrive in Paris with about 45 minutes between arrival and when my train to Avignon left, with my host mom waiting at the end to pick me up! (Anyone who's flown on a plane knows 45 minutes is probably not enough time to allow for disembarking, customs, retrieving luggage, and wandering through a new airport looking for where you're supposed to go next.  Maybe. But probably not).

Commence mad rearranging of plans.  After looking up train schedules, calling the ticket booking agency, waiting on hold, emailing my host mom that I would be arriving much later than anticipated, etc etc, it all finally came together, with me pulling laundry out of the dryer as my friend pulled into the driveway.  Yikes.

So then I'm off on my adventure!  I thought. ...
Turns out, my flight out of Seattle was delayed by 3 hours.  (Where was the heads up email on THAT change?)  Additionally, in trying to keep myself from running through the airport like a madwoman (been there before), I gave myself pa-LENTY of time before my flight, and got there two hours early.  Um, yay?

But hey, it's not an adventure if the canoe doesn't overturn, and the piranhas don't attack, right?  Things happen.  And, as it turns out, it gave me a couple of hours to hang out in the airport with a good friend, who happened to be arriving 9 minutes after my flight was originally scheduled to depart!  Things happen, but then other things work out.

When I go on big trips, I don't even bother trying to keep track of what time it is.  Should I be sleeping now? When's the last time I ate?  Who cares.  When I get on a plane, I zone out.  Maybe I'll watch a movie, but more likely I'll listen to Radiohead, and when I exit that time portal, it is whatever time my phone tells me it is. Luckily, I like to sleep pretty much whenever I get the chance, so, 6 hour transcontinental nap?  Yes thanks! It's night time when I arrive?  Not a problem.  I can't wait to snuggle up in my little bed.
  

Picture from the window of the train, going something like 300 km/hr

So, planes, trains and automobiles, after 24 hours of travel door-to-door, I have arrived at my destination.  And I wake up in a village that looks like a painting, and 77 degree weather.

This.  This I am excited for.

Adventure awaits.

So, somewhere back a couple of years ago, after a recent trip to UK, France and Italy with my bestie and her husband,  I decided I needed to live abroad at some point in my life.  Needed to.  I think most people who travel to Europe have those thoughts.   Unfortunately,  I don't have a super awesome job with a branch overseas that I can suddenly develop an interest in a project they're working on and transfer over.  So to make this happen,  I had to find another way.  I looked into employment options, joining the Peace Corp, volunteering at orphanages, until I hit on the idea of teaching English.  I only have a limited amount of time, money, and skills; finding the opportunity that made the most of those three factors was really the trick. And I have several friends who have gone that route and all had great experiences.  It seemed like a good option.  So I tossed the idea around for a while, and did some research on programs I could go through.

Then,  a little over a year ago,  I started a new job,  and it seemed to me that EVERYONE here had lived abroad!!  What was holding me back?  I had found a program called GeoVisions that I really liked the look of.  Lots of information, good reviews, they looked legit, but I hadn't applied.  Keep in mind that, at this point, I'm basically telling everyone within earshot that I really want to do go abroad and teach English.  Just not to the point of actually doing it, I suppose.

I finally got the kick in the pants I needed when I had a random encounter, at dinner with a good friend of mine.  She had a houseguest staying with her who had lived and traveled the world over.  Her motto was basically to follow your bliss.  I walked away from that dinner with the decision that I would just go for this.  What's the worst that could happen?!  Besides, you know, lost and alone or dead in a foreign country.  But whateves, the alternative was a lifetime of "what ifs" and unfulfilled dreams!  Not to be overdramatic or anything.  But really.. unfulfilled dreams, foreverrrrr......

So I decided to go to France to teach English.
So I sent in my application. 

So alright then.  Here we go.