Picture Overload?

Tons of awesome things have been happening here that I want to tell everyone about, but I'll try to make it brief. (I make no promises though!)

Barcelonnette is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been! Mountains everywhere, animals (there REALLY are marmottes - tons and tons), all kinds of stuff we don't have in Louisiana!
Here's the view from my window at Jean CHAIX:

Pretty, huh?

So far, we've been on two hikes starting in villages near us but further up the mountains. I have some gorgeous pics that I just don't have time to post on here, but upon my return, I promise to show or send them to anyone who wants to see them. Just imagine splendid mountain scenery like what you saw in that last pic (only actually being in it), and you've got the general idea.

The hike during the afternoon two days ago was my favorite so far. It was actually a series of different hikes interrupted with returns to the minibuses and driving to another little village down the minuscule, mountain road for the next part. The best part was walking through the frigid water (read: freshly melted snow) of the Ubaye River to stand on one of the islands of rocks in the middle.

My feet and calves were pretty much frozen, but it was totally worth it.

In other news: We started our internships Monday morning! :)
My main internship is pretty awesome - except for the fact that, despite help from SS with sites and magazines in French related to horses, only about half of what is said in relation to horses makes sense to me, but over the course of 3 days, it's gotten much better. Part of the problem is just that my conversational French is terrible (that's the whole reason I'm here!) and the other part is that I just don't have specific vocabulary. It makes me feel way better though that everyone else is having the same problem with their internships. (Although, I doubt any of them let out the wrong goat on the first day at their internships. Oops... I either missed something - most likely - or the guy leading me around left out a major descriptive word or two. It wasn't really a big deal though. We just had to catch him and put him back, which didn't take long at all - like a minute.)

There wasn't much to do there the first, and I wasn't super talkative either because it takes me a while to warm up to people sometimes. I met François and Flo (the owners) and their son Thomas, got the grand tour, and helped François move horses around, clean the stalls, and water the horses. That didn't take too terribly long, so after that, I mostly just watched Thomas work with his horse and listened to Flo and François give him instructions and ideas.

Tuesday and today there was much more to do. The apprentice who works Tuesday-Saturday was there. Her name is Marine. The first day, I helped her completely clean out some of the stalls down to bare floors, sweep out the stables, lead some of the horses to the farrier and other places around the equestrian center, and clean and oil one of the saddles. (Oddly enough, it was the only western style saddle there, which got taken out since Marine became curious about riding styles in the US. François suggested that we clean it since it looked gross and we had it out.) After that, she gave me a more specific grand tour that included the names of most of the animals, most of which I either can't remember or can't even begin to spell. There are 30ish horses, probably 25 goats, a sheep, a lamb, a bird (looks like a little raven kinda - don't remember the name in French), a bunny, a donkey, 3 puppies, and about 6 or more dogs. Today we, of course, mucked stalls, watered horses, and did that sort of thing, but I also got to help her groom a few horses, tack them up, and either watched her do groundwork with them or watched the students in their classes. Oh, and I ended up serving as a translator between the owners of the equestrian center and a guy from England who was visiting and wanted riding lessons for him and his son. That was fun and way more successful that I thought it would be. I haven't gotten to ride yet because it's been so busy, but I can with Marine and Flo when things are less busy. (Turns out they aren't really doing trail rides with the students right now, which is what I thought I was going to have to do - ride in the rear to make sure no one got left behind.)

Of course, I took about a million pictures there:

Bunny!!! (I forgot his name.)

Sleeping baby Haiko!
He's only 17 days old! ADORABLE! And you should see him play around!

Donkey called Poupette :)

Saël - one of the young horses Marine did groundwork with today.

One of the puppies - Fanette!

This is Marine with Patatte! (I think that's how you spell it.)
She kept moving around and not really looking at the camera, so this is the best shot of her I could get. :-/

Fanette, Patatte, and Apple :)

Kitty (whose name I never learned)!

Other than TONS of animals and mountains around here, there's lots of speaking weird (but VASTLY IMPROVING) French, coffee, wine, and awesome food!