Emily left today...

        Emily left today so Lea and I went to the train station to say goodbye even though we didn't want to.  On the one hand I know that I am going to see Emily again, we have spent far too much time together to think anything else, on the other hand though, Emily lives in San Jose and goes to Davis which is far away...putain.  This whole saying goodbye thing is so much like summer camp, only this time I am wiser and know that the ending is so good.  We have all grown up a lot and have taught each other invaluable life lessons.  I am so happy for the time spent with all of my friends here and I know that this must end.  It is impossible to continue growing in the same way with only a small group of people.  My time here in France has been incredible, but now we will see just how much France has met to each and every one of us by what we bring back home.  Whether it be the cuisine, the language, the fashion, the work ethic, or whatever else we have learned, I know our experiences here will be rated by how we change in our daily lives back in California. 

La (dernière) Campagne

         I went to the campagne for the first time in a while, but it was probably the last time I will go there while I am here in Bordeaux.  As I have expressed before, I love the french countryside, it is by far my favorite place I have ever been.  It is beautiful and calming, rolling hills and rivers, small villages with the nicest people.  It’s so dear to my heart that I don’t believe I could ever fully express my love for it.  This time we (Patrick, Maylis, Mayli's mom, Mayllis' sister, her husband, their daughter, her boyfriend, and I) ate a delicious meal of rôti, haricots verts and the best pommes de terre I have ever eaten.  For Dessert we had gotten a bunch of little gateaux from a bakery  so I had the tarte framboises which was to die for! After lunch, I was slowly slipping into a food comas so I took my book (I am reading Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast, which my mom got for me for Easter, thanks mom!) and sat underneath a tree to read.  The cat came by and laid on me, purring.  It was perfect temperature, on the hotter side of warm, with a slight breeze blowing over the vineyards.  The tree was lush and green, but let a few speck of sun light through.  After a solid hour of reading, I was obliged to take a nap, so I curled up next to the cat and just slept.  I listened to the silence of the countryside, the wind, the horses, the dogs, the grass—it was beautiful.  When I woke up, I took a little promenade around the house.  It looks so different now that it is spring.  Everything is green and in bloom, it all just looks so much brighter (not too mention warmer, when I first visited I had to wear my northface!).  My host parents and I went to visit one of their clients in Dordogne (This client also happens to run a family-operated foie gras business, so we got our own little tour of how it’s made! Plus my parents bought a bunch, I guess I will be eating good tonight!).  It is beautiful in Dordogne, there is a gorgeous river, beautiful villages, and a chateau where Michel de Montaigne lived in for a time! We started heading back home as the sun was setting and I almost cried.  I was looking out the windows of the car and I didn’t know where to look.  All of the views were so gorgeous; it was overwhelming.  The sunset over the river was beyond breathtaking, and the shadows cast over the hills were glorious.  I have no more adjectives to give; no more words to describe the utter beauty of the campagne.  I will miss it dearly, but I know that some place as moving as that cannot be forgotten and will not be left unvisited.  

This is the difference between Winter and Spring in the countryside!

 Baby grapes! Too tiny!

 It was such a beautiful day

 If any of you are interested (and I am sure you all are!) this is the name of my host family's vignoble : Minvielle

Leaving la campagne, quelle tristesse,  Elle me manque beaucoup!

FINIT?!

           I can’t believe it! I just took my last final of the semester! Monday May 9^th—who gets out on May 9^th?!  I am officially on summer break, officially done with school in France, and what’s more, I am officially a 4^th year! Senior baby! It was rather anti-climactic I must say, the end of my exams.  This whole year was so gradual.  It started off pretty slow, building momentum, and then March was the busiest work-month, but then work started dwindling again, classes were becoming fewer and farther apart, and then it was just…done.  This is the last week with all of us here (Coral has already left and Emily leaves a week from today!).  Today we ATTEMPTED to make crêpes, both sucré and salé, but they didn’t really turn out that well so instead we made this tasty disaster for dessert.   

 Only a few more days of baking, laughing, cuddling, franglais-ing, and randoming to our hearts content, then it’s wait wait wait until California!

 Chantilly for Emily

(Side note: yes, I dyed my hair)

 Yes, we do take petit poses on the floor of my kitchen

Greece

Part 4: Deux Nuits, Sans Lit, Sans Amoureux!

         It was a good thing we had such a good day that because we knew we had a loooooong day/two days ahead of us.  While we were at the beach, the hostel let us leave our luggage there to come back to for later (check out was at 11 but we had a whole day to kill, that’s why we went to the beach).  We got back to the hostel at around 9 PM or so, played a game of cards, had a mini-dance party with reception, and then were out of there by about ten to take the metro to the airport.  The metro only took us part of the way there but thankfully the buses were still running and we met up with a bunch of other study-abroad students from Chicago (all studying in different places) who were trekking to the airport as well—making friends left and right.  We get to the airport, wait around for a bit, and then Sandy and I head off to our 4:25 am flight to Paris with a layover in Prague.  We get to Paris and meet back up with Emily (it's now Monday at around 11, and there was no sleeping on the plane).  We have one full day to kill in Paris because our train doesn't leave Montparnasse until 8:20, so we take a metro to Parc Luxembourg (fun fact: It was in this park that I played a concert in high school with the band trip!).  We wanted to take some naps on the grass, but we didn't realize that this was a no-walking-on-the-grass parc.  Lame.  So we just chilled on some benches, talking, people watching, etc.  We mosey over to the Macdo (Mcdonald's) for free wifi and coffee and then walk to the train station (oh yeah, did I mention that we have all of our luggage?).  We get there at around quarter to seven, hang out there for a while, and then go over to the train when the terminal is posted.  We had all been preparing this for the entire day: we got a cheap train back to Bordeaux...with standing room only.  Fortunately, there are little tiny fold-down chairs in between the cars to sit and we each got one, we were separated though because our tickets had a car number but no seat number and we each got different cars.  Another sleepless three hour and forty-five minute train-ride and we are back to Bordeaux!…but not quite home.  We each have to take the tram to get home: Emily takes a bus to a tram, I take a tram and then walk 15 minutes, and Sandy takes a tram past Quinconces, a major hub.  Our train was late and Emily's bus came early.  The tram was running late too, but it wasn't going beyond the hub that Sandy needed to get past to get home (the street gets a little shady near her neighborhood).  I was going to end up taking the tram to Quinconces anyway to walk home, so I was fine.  Sandy ended up taking a taxi and Emily spent the night at my house so it all worked out fine.  We both had to shower off though before bed because, if you haven't noticed during this entire tale: we hadn't showered since Saturday, and we had been traveling, sight-seeing, beaching, and just having fun in general. 

 Exasperated Emily

 All-too-tired Adrianna

 Sleepy Sandy

This trip was such an interesting one, while we didn’t do as much sightseeing as we did in Spain, we each had our own little adventures. I really surprised myself at how well I did on so little sleep, but also I got to take a chance and do some self-reflection, something that I hadn’t done in quite a while.  It’s such a different experience when you go somewhere expecting to have these great adventures, and then come back and realize what was most important about your trip was the time you spent alone on a beach, by a church, on the tram, in a hostel, just thinking. 

Greece

Part 3: Figuring out our Funk

         When we got back to Athens (after a much more peaceful ferry ride) we checked into our hostel and grabbed some food (Lea met up with us in Mykonos that day because she and her family had gone to Tinos for Easter).  It was now Easter Sunday and our hostel was going to Easter mass.  It was so interesting the way they do it.  They form a procession and move the service out of the church, everyone lights a candle and stands around the platform where the service is held facing the church.  It was really a treat to see.  For some reason all of us girls were in a funk.  We were all really pensive and it was obvious that we had heavy hearts for our own reasons.  Whe we went back to our hostel, Sandy and I were chilling with our roommate Chris.  He had a guitar and I asked to play it, next thing I know, Coral, Emily and their two roommates came in and Chris and I were going back and forth playing and singing.  It was a veritable campfire.  In spite of the fact that we didn’t sleep that well due to the freezingness of our hostel, we all were much better the next morning, we went to the beach and had such an amazing time just hanging out, laying around, listening to music, and of course laughing and singing.

Greece

Part 2: Mykonos and the Ferry ride of Doom

         Mykonos was by far my favorite part of this trip, except for maybe the “getting there”.  We got up early in the morning to take a taxi to the port.  When we get there, it’s as if all of Athens is leaving the city.  Greece takes Easter very seriously, many Athenians have families on the islands, and so they leave the city to go spend the week-end with them.  We bought our tickets late so we were actually able to sit in business class, which has a bunch of couches and wasn’t AS crowded.  This turned out to be such a blessing.  Right as we leave the port, we can tell the water is a little rocky, but it was nothing compared to what the trip was like when we were in open waters.  Waves were hitting the windows, people couldn’t walk around, and they closed off the deck.  We were sitting next to a Canadian woman who travels a lot in these waters and she told us that this was the worst she had ever seen it, and she also warned us to not be frightened if people start getting sick and freaking out.  Not two minutes after she told us this, a woman in the corner broke down and began sobbing.  It was awful, people were throwing up, women were crying, babies were screaming.  Emily, Sandy and Coral all had to lay on the floor.  It wasn’t until the waters had calmed a bit that we realized the ferry gives out free dramomine!  When we got off the ferry, it was gorgeous: blue waters, green hills, and the friendliest of people.  We took a bus to our hostel (which turned out to be a resort) and were blown away.  You literally walk around a corner and are on the beach, the most popular beach in Mykonos.  Fortunately we got there the week before tourist season opens, so we had the beach essentially to ourselves.   

We ended up renting ATV's and taking them all over the island.  It is gorgeous there, I loved every second of it.  The people are friendly, the water is blue, and the gyros are delicious.  We spent our days riding around, laying on the beach, eating, day drinking, and just laughing.  We spent so much time laughing and bonding, it was absolutely fantastic.   

We were all sad to leave in part because we loved Mykonos so much, but also because we knew our trip was coming to and end which meant so any things for us all: The end of vacation, the return to the last part of our stay in Bordeaux, and the fact that Coral was leaving, she was not coming back to Bordeaux! We knew that our return to Athens and the two days spent there were going to have to be glorious.  

 Beach, Greek Salad, Corona, does life get any better?

Greece

Part 1: The Odyssey

         Emily, Sandy and I decided to save some money and spend the night in the Charles de Gaulle airport.  This seemed like a fantastic idea at the time because not only would we be saving money, we would also not have to worry about commuting from wherever we were staying to the airport at 4 o’clock in the morning (our flight was at 5).  We got there at around midnight and found some comfy seats by the non-crazy, non-homeless people.  Unfortunately these seats were by the HUGE window where at around 4 became ridiculously drafty and freezing, so needless to say, none of us got much sleep.   Our flights all went smoothly and we got to Athens without a hitch.  We took the bus into the city (getting a little lost on the way) and found Lea who took us to her place.  Lea is Greek, her family owns an apartment in the city that they haven’t used in years, but were nice enough to let us use for this trip! Right when we get there we drop our stuff off and get us some spanikopita (spinach puffs).  They were divine! We were all so happy to be there (Coral’s flight had finally gotten in!) together in Athens but we needed some sleep, so we saved sightseeing for the next day.  The next day we went to the Akropolis, the Akropolis museum, and the bazaar.  The bazaar is really touristy but it was still fun, we ate gyros, bought sandals and just walked around!  What’s funny about the market area is that the venders really sell their products and it is completely fine to talk down the prices.  While we were walking through, all we heard was , “please buy my product, please, please!!!”.  Athens is a very interesting city, while I can appreciate it for its’ rich history, ancient ruins, and being the birthplace of…well…just about everything, it is a city nonetheless.  It is probably the biggest city I have ever been in, it’s pretty dirty, and everyone smokes inside in spite of the fact that a law was passed within the last year or two prohibiting it.  We got to see the new Olympic stadium, Hadrian’s gate, Zeus’ temple, and this church atop a hill, which over looks the whole city, during our last day on the mainland.  Emily, Sandy, Coral and I were off the next day for Mykonos, and we were so excited, but also sad because Lea was staying behind (all of her extended family lives in Greece so this was her one time to visit them).  

 

Self portrait Parthenon shot!

My Lovely Ladies at Hadrian's Gate looking up at the Parthenon!