j'adore mes amis / j'hais le sncf

So, it got sort of depressing in the days leading up to Thanksgiving last week, knowing I wouldn't be able to go home and stupid facebook telling me about everyone who was on their way home to spend the holiday with their families. I'm so grateful that Isaias and his roommates decided to host an amazing Thanksgiving fiesta!

I was planning on driving to Biarritz on Friday with Kat and Kyle (we all planned to celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday because sadly France does not give people the day off work on Thursday and Friday) but on Wednesday evening, K&K decided that they were going to opt out due to lack of funds. So, I decided to book my train ticket for earlier and managed to find a €40 round-trip ticket from Toulouse to Bayonne and spend Thursday-Sunday with Isaias -- woohoo, right?

You would think -- except the stupid SNCF is always disappointing me (side-note: the SNCF, or Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer is the French National Railway service). It turned out that the train that was meant to go directly from Toulouse to Bayonne had to stop in Pau, a city in-between, because there was a problem with the line or something stupid. So from Pau, I had to get a 2 1/2 hour bus to Bayonne, which really wouldn't have been a big deal if they had bothered to alert their passengers to the fact that they would be arriving nearly three hours later than they anticipated. Instead, they just assumed that everyone was aware of the problem... Ugh, the french.

It wasn't too bad on the way there, it was the way back yesterday that was absolutely miserable. I figured that four days later, the SNCF would have the rail problem sorted out so I decided to take a later train than the one I had originally booked because given that we were celebrating Thanksgiving the night before, I knew I wouldn't want to try to make a 9:30 am train. Instead, I decided to go for the 12:15, so I got the bus from Biarritz and made it to the train station in Bayonne to discover that no, they hadn't resolved the problem. I had to take another bus to Pau and then would have to wait to take the train to Toulouse... but it didn't leave until 5:34. That meant waiting for three hours in Pau. I had no choice but to grit my teeth and bear it, so I had to try not to get too angry about it. I arrived in Pau around 2:30 and sat in the open-aired train station while it was 50 degrees and raining outside for three hours and was nice and frozen by the time they alerted us that the train was to be an hour late. Of course, now I'm beyond peeved -- the only thing I've had to eat were two clementines and a cup of chamomile tea and really really had to pee but the bathrooms were outside and looked less than inviting. All I could do was sit and wait until the train arrived so I got on and decided to wait on the train rather than in the cold station. It was then delayed another 45 minutes after the original hour delay and all the while I was fidgeting in my seat with a book that no longer interested me and a dead ipod. Finally, we left at 7:15 and I spent the whole train ride staring at my phone in a super-human attempt to speed up time which only made things worse. What seemed like several hours later, we arrived in Toulouse at 9:45 to which point I was practically running home. In all, it took me nearly 10 hours to get 300 km. Needless to say, I curse the stupid stupid stupid SNCF. Stupid stupid.

 10 hours. 300 km. Ridicule!

BUT! Despite my miserable journey home, I had such an amazing time! Biarritz is unbelievably gorgeous, it's like southern California but French style. There were tons of little surf shops everywhere that sold things like vans and quiksilver, things which french people normally do not wear. AND, there were Churros. Plus, Isaias can friggin' see the OCEAN from his bedroom. Connard!

Biarritz

Thanksgiving dinner was so much fun, we had fourteen people there, most of whom were from the assistantship program but not necessarily teaching english, making it very interational indeed. We had American (obvs), English, Mexican, Spanish, French, German people there and after a few drinks, we were all singing our national anthems which was hilarious. I'm so so SO glad I decided to spend the holiday there, it would be have been so depressing on my own! And the best part was that all the boys spent the day cooking while us girls sat back, drank and watched them. Ha, it was fabulous.

Anyways, I'm sure pictures will follow at some point (Sorry BH, I still don't have a camera and I'm still waiting on Jean & Alex for photos from Liverpool!) which I intend to steal from Isaias. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and I'm excited to see some of you over Christmas! Two weeks! YAY!!!!!!!

muchos besos!

un moment, un amour, un rêve, un rire...

Just a quick update to say that this weekend was a blast with Isaias here -- we mostly did all the same sorts of things we did in Aix... like eat, meander around aimlessly and people watch. We saw a film on Friday called "In the Loop" with the two movie tickets my boss gave me and it was a good laugh. Then on Saturday, we went to Carcassonne, a medieval town about an hour away, with Kat, Kyle and their friend which was cool but very very windy! We also did some good cooking and ate yogurt with muesli and had the most amazing mousse au chocolat, ate lots of brioche and drank proper English brekkie. I wish I had pictures to show you, but that would require me to have a camera... Which may or may not be in my near future. Anyways, I'm so so so pumped for Thanksgiving at Isaias' this weekend. Have I mentioned that already? Oh well. It's gonna be such a blast.

I'll leave you with a song to listen to... I had never heard Lily Allen before I went to England and for whatever reason, I really dug it while I was there. I've been listening some of her stuff lately which I mostly find to be very pop-ish and quite vulgar. Still, this song in particular appeals to the inner Brit in me :)

j'ai bu l'eau sainte, mais elle a goûté la même.

On Saturday, Kat, Kyle and I decided to take a trip to Lourdes which is a holy city about two hours southwest of Toulouse for something different. It was sorta interesting... I think maybe it would have been more meaningful to me if I were somewhat religious, but an interesting trip nonetheless.

In 1858, it is said that the Virgin Mary appeared to a french girl, Bernadette Soubirous, on several occasions in Lourdes inside a cave and, instead of thinking that maybe this teenage girl was just trippin', they all agreed it was for real and declared it a spiritual place of healing. Now this tiny french town of about 15,000 inhabitants gets about 5 million visitors every year of people going for a spiritual pilgrimage. Not saying that I don't believe in divine apparitions... but, um... Whatever, to each his own. 

Anyhoo, there's a giant cathedral there which is pretty modern and therefore really ugly. I'm not sure what it is about modern churches that try to look really old, but it never works. It was just kinda tacky and obscure. Case in point...

Un peu bizarre, non? Well anyways, it was worth the trip though because all over the place, they have these shops fulled with all this religious stuff, including jugs that you can fill up with holy water which I suppose people fill up and bring back to their sickly loved ones back home.

A little funny,  I thought. I decided to try the holy water and filled some up in my water bottle, but it didn't taste any different. But man, those priests must have a whole lot of water to bless!

A sort of strange town, mostly I think because when we went 70% of the town was closed due to it being the off-season. There are so many hotels there, I read that it has the second highest number of hotels in France after Paris and for a town so small, that's a whoooole lotta hotels.

Anyways, Isaias is coming on Thursday for the weekend and I'm PUMPED. Then we're all road tripping to Biarritz for la grand fete d'Thanksgiving la semaine prochaine! Hurray!!

bisous, xoxo.

ya'ahlrigh luv?

I thought I would make the title of this post in English as I just spent the last week in northern England hanging out with my rad Scottish pseudo-godparents. It was a really awesome and extremely necessary escape from France-land!

Anyways, they have this amazingly cozy little house that I've stayed in since I was a child and they're really like my second parents--they treated me so well and it was like being halfway home... Which was really rather depressing to have to leave again and come back to my stupid lonely apartment. But we did some super SUPER sweet things, like going to the Trafford Centre which is basically just a giant English version of an American mall and going to the theatre to see a George Bernard Shaw play. Also went to Primark which is this absolutely absurdly cheap store you can get loads of great clothes in -- I bought two coats, a thick sweater, leggings, tights, socks and a scarf for £50 which is a steal, even with the dollar-pound conversion. But I consider them necessary purchases because damn, it's cold in Europe.

I was also fortunate enough to be in England for Guy Fawkes night ("remember, remember the fifth of November...") which was so awesome. Quick history lesson of the holiday: in a nutshell, England celebrates the fact that in 1603, a Catholic man named Guy Fawkes failed in his attempt to blow up the houses of Parliament in London in protest of the fact that England had recently come under Protestant jurisdiction. His punishment upon getting caught was to be burned at the stake so they have a giant bonfire every year with a Guy Fawkes dummy sitting on top and burn it. Yes, they have a mock human bonfire every year. And this is 2009. God, I love being a citizen to two nations with such an incredibly violent and corrupt history.

ANYWAYS, back to the good parts. Due to the fact that it was raining pretty much the whole time, we didn't know if there would even be any bonfire celebrations but luckily it cleared up in time. So, we went to the Bowdon Cricket Club where they were putting on three sets of firework displays plus a giant bonfire and other fun stuff like a barbeque and candy floss and even a couple little kiddie rides -- the best part of all this was that is was about 38° and the grass was all sludgy and wet. But those Brits, they sure are devoted to their holidays. The fireworks themselves were pretty amazing, most of them were so high up, you had to crane your neck all the way back to see them and they played music to accompany the fireworks. There was a group of young boys, maybe about six or seven, standing right in front of us going absolutely beserk -- I was crying laughing so hard because were playing this song, the same song that Hugh Grant dances to during "Love Actually", and these kids were jumping up and down and shouting (no joke) "we like to boogie! we like to boogie!" I swear, they looked orgasmic, I've never seen children like this before. But with these kids dancing around and "Jump (For My Love)" blasting over the stereo, and cider in hand, I was feeling quite hilariously English.

One of the other highlights was going to Liverpool on Saturday which was really cool, as touristy as it was. We went to Mathew Street which is where The Beatles got their first start and even went into The Cavern where they played their first show. I really wanted to go to Penny Lane but we unfortunately couldn't make it as the rain started to come down heavily at that point. But we headed up to the Liverpool Cathedral where we stumbled upon a Bishop being installed which was actually sorta neat to watch. It's a bit of a grungy, rather dirty city, but full of really cool history. I wish I could have stayed longer... There will be pictures to come at some point.


So it was a wonderful, wonderful holiday and now I'm back to the grind of finding a second-job and figuring out what the heck I'm doing with my life. But hey, Christmas is not too far away now.

grossssssss bisous.