Le week-end

I can't believe it's already been a week since I've been here! It's gone by so quickly but at the same time it feels like I've been here longer.

This past weekend was fun. Thursday night we went out to some bars around le centre ville and met a group of British kids studying abroad, but they were only here for three weeks and they left Saturday. We went to a bar called Barberousse that's pirate themed and they make their own flavors of rum, very pirate of them.

Friday we had class and then went to the Maison des Relations Internationales in la place de la Comedie (the main part of town). They have a really pretty garden (inset) and we had snacks and met the woman who was in charge of organizing study abroad for students who go to school in Montpellier.

Afterwards, we went to the summer wine festival called Estivales (which means summer festival or something along those lines). They have them every Friday in the summer, but there are only two left! They set up a whole bunch of wine tasting, food and vending tents in one of the gardens in the main part of town and you just go around, taste wine and eat food. It's only 4 euros for a glass and three wine tastings, which isn't too bad of a deal. I didn't have any wine this time because I'm not the biggest wino, but I think I will have some at this Friday's festival.

Saturday we had class :(. It's not so bad because it's only for two more weeks. Actually, this Saturday we go to a museum and get to sleep in til 10:30!! That will be the latest I'll have slept in the entire time I've been here. We swear they don't want us to sleep here because we always have to be up so early. Class ended at 1230 and Melissa, Becky and I decided to go to the beach again. We went to a different part of the beach from when we went with the whole group on Thursday, but it was nice because it was a bit quieter and had more scenic views.

That night we had a night tour of the city, which was cool because we went in chronological order, starting with the oldest parts and ending up in la place de la comedie. It's funny because the French consider Montpellier to be a young city and it's about 2000 years old (I think that's right). And then for the U.S. a young city is like 50-100 years old. It was kind of scary because one of my friends got mugged during the tour. He was lagging behind smoking a cigarette and these homeless people noticed he was dragging behind in a group full of tourists and they dragged him into the shadow and took 50 euro and searched his bag. Luckily they didn't take anything else like credit cards and such-- they were pretty strategic about it. But my friend was okay, just a little shaken up. After that, our tour guides and group leaders were very protective and made sure everyone in the group was together and not lagging behind.

Sunday we went to Nîmes and Pont du Gard. Nîmes was a cool city dating back to the roman times in the BC era, so it's one of the older cities in France. There's a big colosseum where they hold bull fighting events called La Feria. They have two per year and one is coming up at the end of September so we may go check it out since Nîmes is only about an hour from Montpellier. It was pretty hot outside that day so everyone was sweating and suffering in the heat.

Things got better when we went to Pont du Gard, the giant aqueducts not too far from Nîmes. The water was really cold and felt so good. It was also really clear which I wasn't expecting, I thought it was going to be gross run-off water. There were some guys that jumped off the first tier of the bridge and one of them busted his shoulder and then the guards had to stop other people from jumping off. It was at least 30 feet up so that must have hurt a lot. We jumped off some rocks but they were only about 8 feet up so it wasn't quite the same thing haha.

I got a rock in my foot and my skin closed over it pretty quickly so I had to go to the croix-rouge (red cross) and they only spoke French! But I think I did a pretty good job of speaking to them. Also, going back on what I said in a previous post about it being annoying that the people didn't speak French (and by "the people" I mean the two girls who are kind of our group leaders), it's good because I have to talk to them in French and therefore, améliorer (improve) my français. The two girls are really nice-- their names are Flo and Elodie and are both students at the same Université.

Now I am ready for this next week! We go back to the beach on Friday, a museum on Saturday instead of class and then Avignon on Sunday. It's going to be fun!

Also, I'm really excited because we get about 5 days break in between when the pre-stage ends and when classes start and I think we might go to Ibiza for a couple nights and then Barcelona for a night! We have to wait and see what the days for registration are, but I think it will work out! So excitedddd.