And another relaxing Sunday night in Southern France is
here. With the full moon shining outside and the breeze coming in through the
window, I am loving Provence spring. Since I have returned to le sud de la
France, it has been sunny with blue skies every day, with temps in the mid 60s
to 70. That’s right folks – 70 degrees in early March. Maybe I’m becoming a
southern girl after all!
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| Another sunny day at school! |
When I returned to Avignon on the last Friday of vacation, I
met my friend Clara at the TGV station. I studied abroad with her in Aix two
years ago and she is an English assistant in Andorra for this school year. As
she had her vacation the second week of mine and wanted to visit Provence, I
invited her to come to Apt for the weekend that I returned from Paris. It was
so nice to have her come – we spent a lot of time talking about our various
experiences from this year from assistantship stories to traveling accounts to
foreign language woes. It is refreshing to reconnect with someone who is doing
a similar experience as you, sharing what you have found and realized from all
of it.
On Friday night, we stayed in and made a meal in the
crockpot, though we might have gotten a few desserts from a nearby patisserie.
On Saturday, we woke up and went into town for the market in the morning.
Seeing many familiar student faces, it was nice to get back to this pace of
life again, especially coming back from a whirlwind week in Paris. For lunch, I
took Clara out to Chez Sylla, and of course we enjoyed the wine and cheese
tasting with salad. This is becoming a standard place I take visitors now, and
I am not hating it! After that, we went to rent some bikes for the afternoon.
As this was my first time renting them here in town, I explained to him what we
wanted and asked when we should have them back by. His response “la fin de la
journée”*. As vague as all Provencal men are, I noticed that they closed at 7pm
and planned to be back by then.
It was a perfect day to go on a bike ride – sunny, slight breeze
and 70 degrees. I found myself pedaling down the path, racing some imaginary
person next to me and smiling like I had just won the medal. The plan was to
try to go to Rustrel, a village nearby that has amazing ocres. It is named le
Colorado Provencal. Unfortunately, the directions the man gave us at the shop
proved to not be very helpful. So instead we just rode further into the
countryside, which I didn’t mind so much, as the beautiful weather could not be
wasted. We stopped for a rest by a clear creek and took in the rays.
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| Perfection. |
On the way back, we saw signs that led to Saignon. Since I
hiked there before, I knew it was quite a steep climb but thought it would be
nice to see over the valley with the sun starting to set. However, I misinterpreted
the climb a bit…. After ditching our bikes at the bottom of the hill, we hiked
up to the top to get a magnificent view over Apt. It was not for long though –
looking at my watch which read 6:15, we hurriedly biked back to the shop.
Although we arrived at 6:45, the owner was waiting outside with all the other
bikes put away, clearly waiting for us. He smugly said “je pense que c’est la
nuit…”. My response “oh no no
monsieur, c’est presque la nuit!”** Either
way, we dropped off the bikes grabbed pastries, pizza and wine and headed back
for a relaxing night watching My Fair Lady and eating. Thought biking was
wonderful, I forgot how painful it can be – my muscles were sore for two days
after!
After seeing Clara off on Sunday, I began to plan for
classes during the week and took the day to relax. I was trying to get my mind
back into work mode. So when I walked to class Monday morning, fully prepared
and ready to teach, you can sense my surprise when I walked in to find 5
students. In a class of normally 20. I turned and looked at the teacher with a
bewildered expression. She said “Oh yes, they are not so many!” If that wasn’t
obvious. Then, she explained to me that all the Spanish students were going to
be gone the entire week – they were going on a school trip to Barcelona. The
week coming back from a two week vacation…. and they miss the entire week for
another trip. I just don’t understand things around here! Anyway, because of
this news, nearly half of all of my classes were gone, leading to smaller class
sizes and, for the most part, more manageable classes. But it still begs the
question, I thought I was going back to “real life” here. I guess that is just
what real life is like in France.
Along with temperamental class sizes (with randomly all my
Thursday afternoon classes being cancelled… without anyone telling me..), this
week gave me lots of time to work on the future travels I have coming up. All
my main transportation is booked, now it is just time to reserve some hostels
and do a bit of research on things to do and directions! I can’t believe how
real it is getting now – booking all the planes, trains and buses made it even
more so!
Saturday, I decided to take the bus into Aix to see
something I have wanted to see since I studied there: Cezanne’s atelier. I was
the first to arrive there, walking in at the same time as a 40 person high
school tour group from the U.S. but as I was the only one with the tour in
French, I got to have a private tour of the atelier. VIP status right here! It
was wonderful to see where his vision stemmed from, and the tour guide did an
amazing job describing his life story. I was left to wander around when the
first part of the tour group came in, so I got to hear the tour in English too
(and therefore assess my listening comprehension skills, I did pretty good if I
do say so myself!). I also got to enjoy some sunlight sitting in his garden and
reading a bit of Harry Potter II in French. It was a lovely morning.
After grabbing the obligatory Pizza Capri, I met up with
Clara and her friend Aly at Giovanni, my favorite gelato place on the Cours
Mirabeau. Clara just happened to be visiting her friend who is studying at IAU
the same weekend I was planning on
making this day trip, so we stopped for a nice sugary treat. It was
great to hear from a current student perspective how much IAU has changed and
stayed the same. That paired with sunshine and gelato made for a wonderful
afternoon. After some more time reading and shopping, I boarded the bus back to
Apt. This ended being the worse 2 hour bus ride, with screaming students,
several stops because an elderly woman would not stay in her seat, and even one
unexpected stop with no explanation but the driver ran outside with ducktape
and was fixing something on the bus. Needless to say, I was happy to make it
back in one piece.
After a relaxing Sunday of laying out, catching up on shows,
seeing Dallas Buyer’s Club and talking to my Fifi, it has left me to reflect a
lot on time. One month from now, I will be done with the assistantship and starting
a 4 week travel adventure and two months from now, I will be HOME! It has all
gone so fast and although I am SO excited to be reunited with everyone at home,
it’s weird to think about leaving this place. After all the hard times I have
had trying to adjust to living and working in a foreign country, just when I
think I am starting to get the hang of it, it is time to leave. Either way, c’est la vie and I am always feeling
grateful for being able to have this opportunity. Until then, I am going to
post some pictures of my future travels...(not to make you jealous or anything...)
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| Barcelona, Spain |
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| Dubrovnik, Croatia |
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| Cinque Terre, Italy (this picture is of Manarola, one of the five villages I will be hiking to) |
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| Santorini, Greece |
*Translation: the end of the day. Well, as if I didn’t guess
that!
**Translation: He said “ I think its night time…” I said “Oh
no, sir! It is ALMOST night time!” Since he said to bring back the bikes at the
end of the day, and the sun hadn’t set yet, I kind of was being a little smug. J
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