After France: A Retrospect

Well it's been a long time since I've returned (about 4 months now) but I figured it'd be best to sum up my experiences, at least briefly. France was absolutly amazing. The traveling we had the oppertunity to do (I was lucky enough to visit London, Rome, Barcelona, and Paris twice) coupled with the overall experience of learning a new culture, is irreplacable. I am very fortunate this school has given us such a wonderful chance to experience Europe. The France reunion party is taking place in a week or so and I look forward to meeting many of the alums. There was, without a doubt, a fair share of ups and downs during my stay overseas but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

What is it, 3 weeks now?

Well I'm actually back home (USA!!)  now for a few days because my grandfather recently passed away.  I flew back to attend his funeral and am heading back to France tomorrow.  I missed an excursion this week but from the photos I've seen it looks amazing.  

This past weekend we had a terrible storm.  Jerry says it was the worst storm in years.  I woke up to no power and no running water.  That means no shower, no computer, no pretty much anything you'd want to do.  To entertain ourselves we played some Pictionary and then Tim decided to rent us a hotel in Albi for the weekend.  It was nice to be right outside of the city and also to be right behind a Mcdonald's.  A few of us managed to stumble across a bowling alley and we definitely had lots of fun there (even though I bowled in the double digits).  I hope we head back there sometime soon. 

Well I'm not looking forward to the journey tomorrow (coming in I clocked in 19 hours of total travel time) since I'm going Pittsburgh to Detroit to Amsterdam to Toulouse but I'll be glad to get back.  Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading!

1 week into the trip

Well I've been in France for 1 week now and so far it has been a great experience. We traveled to Albi today which is the largest town nearby and had a chance to finally do some exploring. As much as I love Ambialet, the rural town where we're staying, it was good to get out there.

Today is Saturday and we just finished a busy week of classes. Monday and Tuesday we had French class with Sandra. As if French wasn't tough enough already, she spoke virtually no English! Paying attention was especially hard since the class lasts about 2 and a half hours, although I was grateful for the little break we had. Wednesday we had an excursion to see some old churches near the Spanish border. When we went into town for lunch nobody was there an it looked kind of like a ghost town. This is partially because in the winter months there isn't much tourism so most of the places just shut down. We have also gone on numerous hikes in our time here, played bachi ball and ping pong, learned how to do some French cooking, and watched some French cinema in just 1 week!

I have definitely been kept busy so far but I'm glad I came. I hope my time here goes nice and slowly. Oh, and did I mention it's like 60 degrees here? No snow!!