sur le pont d'avignon

Last Friday night was quite an evening! My host-family had several people coming in for a conference they were all going to. My host-sister, Violaine, came in town because she’s on vacation for about a week and a half. I got to meet my host-dad’s sister and her husband. They also had a friend come over because he was looking into getting my computer set up to work with the wireless here. (Still getting back to writing all those emails I’ve been postponing for months “until I had internet in my room”). Anyway, dinner with all these people was a blast! I enjoyed the conversation and we laughed so hard. It made me excited to be able to share with them with out having to have EVERYTHING explained to me.
Saturday morning, my study abroad group to a bus south for an excursion to Aix-en-Provence. It was so beautiful, a bit of a change of weather. I felt like it was summertime again. In Aix we toured the town, and then we went to a workshop (“de Santons”) were they make little figurines from clay for nativity scenes. Apparently this is the most well-known place for it in France. (P.S. the nativity scenes there include more than just what we normally see, but a whole village around it)
Sunday morning, we got our extra hour of sleep with the time change. We left Aix after breakfast and headed to Avignon. There we toured the Pope’s Palace, built between 1334 and1363. After walking around the city a bit, we drove 45mins to the Chateauneuf-du-Pape for a wine tasting. The vineyard was gorgeous! We couldn’t have asked for better weather!!! It was fun to do the wine tasting and learn some about them.
When I arrived home, another host-daughter, her husband and two little ones were here. The kids are staying here this week because the parents are on a retreat. It’s been fun to play with Theophane (3 yrs) and communicate with him. He is so adorable. Anselme is also very cute, but he’s just 9 mos old, so I understand him just as well as everyone else does.
Tonight, after class, I'm going with a classmate from Colombia to have dinner with her and her boyfriend. We're going to speak SPANISH, eat non-French food, watch a movie and just hang out! I'm excited!