One Very Busy Week

It's been one very busy week, thus the whole not posting thing. So much has gone on that I'm going to have to go back through pictures to write this.

Wednesday and Thursday we did our internships, so of course, the better part of both of those days were filled with fun with horses and Marine for me. Wednesday night we also had what went from "dinner with the mayor" to "a quick intro + snacks with the mayor", which was kinda fun but mostly a little awkward. Thursday I finally got to ride for the first time since I got here and ended up falling off a horse for the first time ever. (Reason: I forgot to recheck the tightness of the girth. I went to post since it's English style riding, and the entire saddle rotated around the horse, dumping me off.) I have a few cuts and bruises to show for it since I fell on some rocks, but it was really nothing major - mostly just a pride-bruiser.

Friday we got to go make bread with one of the locals who sells her bread at the farmers' market here.

Alice working with the dough.

My bread. Nice, huh?

The outdoor, wood-burning oven.

Lots of bread.

Friday evening we had dinner at the home of the Roberts, one of the local couples who hangs out with the group some every year. They are really nice, and dinner was fun. Afterward, we went to one of the cafes here to watch the USA vs. England soccer match and have (more) wine/drinks.

 

Candid shot during dinner.

Saturday was the day of our giant hike up one of the mountains starting at the home of the Boscos, another couple who spends time with the group, and lead by M. Bosco. Our hikes leading up to this hadn't been so bad, so when I suddenly realized it was going to be 2+ hours of non-stop climbing, I knew I was in trouble. If you've never been at this high an altitude and tried to do athletic things, take it from me: breathing is extremely difficult if you're not used to the lack of oxygen. Extremely. Coming back down the mountain, while hard on the knees, was exponentially more enjoyable and was followed by a BBQ lunch at the Bosco's. :)

 

Deciding whether or not crossing the stream is a good idea. 

Verdict was "no" after 3-4 people had made it across already.

  

Hiking back down the mountain. (I was too worried about breathing to try to take pics on the way up. The views were spectacular though!) Pictured: Katie, Carla, Angela, Kaitlyn, & M. Bosco.

Sunday morning we left for Aix-en-Provence. We wandered around for the afternoon in Aix and saw the home of impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. After that, we drove about 20-30 minutes outside of Aix to get to the place where we would stay and immediately started swimming. That only lasted for about 10 minutes though, then the clouds rolled in (quickly), and it began to storm.

 

Coffee in Aix.

At first, we thought these were to mark the path to where Cézanne lived, but then we saw them going in several directions. No clue what they actually are, but they're paved into the streets and fun looking.

Aix.

Kitty at the home of Cézanne. :)

Today we went to Les Baux de Provence and saw the show at the Cathédral d'Images. It was amazing - probably one of my favorite things this entire trip. It was an image/video presentation about Australia (especially Aboriginal Australia) projected onto the rock walls of the inside of an old limestone quarry with some sound from the footage but mostly just very well-chosen music to match the presentation. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I absolutely didn't want to leave. (The presentation looped, so I probably watched it almost all the way through a second time before I absolutely had to leave.) I have some pics and footage (filming/photography was allowed w/out flash), but it just doesn't do it justice (especially since, to get a good image, I had to lengthen the exposure time which brightened the entire pic a whole lot).

 

This shot is probably the closest to the actual brightness in the Cathédral d'Images.

That was followed by lunch. I had fish with vegetables and what basically amounted to garlic mayonnaise. Now, I'm not usually a fan of mayonnaise, but this stuff was good!

After lunch, we headed to St. Rémy for a while to wander around again then made the 3-4ish hour car ride back to Jean Chaix for dinner.

 

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

There are, of course, stories and more details to everything, but in an effort to keep these to a readable length, I just can't include everything. I can't wait to get home to show all of you more pictures and tell you about everything in greater detail. 

Miss you all!

Bedtime now? Please? :)

Exhausted doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling right now, but it's the good, I've-learned-a-lot, I've-done-a-lot-of-cool-stuff, my-brain-is-adjusting-to-another-language type of exhausted.
Since I'm so ready for bed, I'm going to keep this short.

We went on an all day hike Sunday (from which I am still a little sore).
We saw how artisan goat cheese, soap, pottery, and honey are made in the region yesterday.
Today we went to Italy, ate pizza, and hung out in a huge market. (I bought clothes for the first time in forever for RIDICULOUSLY little money!!!)

Here are a few pics!:

Fierce! Getting ready to hike.

View from the trail.

A tiny portion of the valley where we stopped to play and explore.

Cat belonging to the Jean-Luc, the maker of the goat cheese. 

Kitty was so adorable and very friendly!

Jean-Luc & M. Dubernet & lots of fresh goat cheese.

Pottery!

Lake where we had lunch. It's so turquoise because of the minerals from the stone from the mountains. 

(This was one of the last pics I got that day before my camera battery ran out of juice. I forgot to charge it. Boo!)

Candy with alcohol (and very strong amounts of it!) in Cuneo, Italy.

PIZZA FOR LUNCH IN ITALY!

AAaaaannnndddd...I really did eat the entire thing. :) YUM!

Headed back into France! 

(PS The sign was really reflective! It's a much darker blue in real life.)

Video!

This is one of the things we did today:


It was totally awesome, but there were lots of wet, cold bums at the end because none of us had on proper snow gear. Oh well! It was a blast!

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!

So we left Paris...

Paris was a great experience, and I can't wait to get back there after this program is over, but there's so much more fun and excitement to be had in other areas of France!

I spent my last day in Paris just hanging around. I walked around a lot, mailed my way-too-heavy ski jacket home so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore (that is a story in itself but involves lots of half-French, half-English jokes with the post office worker), and did laundry.

Hello, Parisian laundromat! 

That was actually really fun. (And I freaking love front load washers and dryers where you can watch the clothes when you're not reading Harry Potter in French.)

I also encountered a Parti de Gauche demonstration regarding constitutional changes (with the whole Euro-Greece issue, I gathered).

There was a tug-of-war. 

This is the sign to mark the opposing side of Parti de Gauche's stance.

Here's the video:

That was fun. There was some singing afterward which I also filmed.

This morning we left at 6:30am to reach the train station to travel to Avignon by train then to Barcelonnette by car. This year the group was given 2 minibuses rather than the usual minibus and car. It was easy to fit the luggage, but there ended up being some Franglais (mostly English after a while) explanation of the "manual" mode on what was supposed to be an automatic vehicle by me to Carla. It was automatic, but one could switch to manual if one wished, which was suggested by M. Dubernet to Carla. It sort of worked, but it wasn't all that necessary. The roads here, while in the mountains, are well thought out and not as hilly as they could be. The vans did fine.
Pics from traveling:

Picture of me (as requested by my fam.) in Gordes.
I couldn't see anything! The sun was in my face!

Pretty kitty in Gordes.

More of Gordes.

Did I mention that this is the most expensive city to live in within France? 

Also, did I mention that Johnny Depp has a house here? (We didn't see him.)

Photo of the Alps from the minibus.

Another picture of the Alps.

And then my camera died, so I have no pictures of our actual arrival in Barcelonnette or of Jean CHAIX (where we are staying). We passed the equestrian center where I will be working though! It looks awesome!

Now it's bed time, so I'm signing off! Bonne nuit!