Strike = No Barcelona

Caroline and Andrea were here visiting me this week for their spring break. Caroline is just packing up to go back home at this very moment, she leaves about 7 hours from now. We got to see Carcasonne which is the largest walled city in France, I think. We also went to Nimes which I have already seen but it is a beautiful city so I enjoyed seeing it again (and the weather was much nicer this time). The whole week here was actually the warmest weather we have had so far, it stayed about 70 all week. We also got to go to the beach, however that was a little cooler due to the wind. There were tons of kite boarders at the beach, it was pretty exciting. I would like to try kite-boarding but it looked very scary, cold, and difficult. We also had planned to go to Barcelona on Thursday and come back today (Sat), but unfortunately due to the national strike on Thursday we were forced to stay here in good old Montpellier. It was interesting to see the strike though.


I just got my video figured out from Carnaval de Nice if you want to see it it's on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSYs0R76QKQ
It's not very long but it's kinda interesting. You could also just YouTube anyone's Carnaval de Nice and see what it's like.

Sorry I wrote this post like a couple days ago but I was trying to put the video directly on here and it wasn't working so it's being posted a little late

Everyone is doing it...

So... I guess everyone has a blog except me. NOW I DO. I would like to blog about the wine, the cheese, the food and the bathrooms. Let's start with what I'm eating right now. I am having Nutella and crackers. I figured if you can eat peanut butter and crackers you can also eat nutella and crackers. I bought the Nutella because everyone was doing it. I figured that so many people can't be wrong. I didn't think I liked it when I had tried it at home but now I can't really taste the nuts and its just like eating chocolate :) yum. It also comes in a nice glass so when I eat it all I can have a glass of water. Now I'm just eating the nutella without crackers and I need a glass of water...

I also bought my first bottle of wine last time I was at the grocery store it was a Sauvignon from the Loire Valley. It was 2.90 (in euros of course). It wasn't anything too exciting.

I have also discovered that I am very knowledgeable about the animals in the region. I saw a bird I have never seen before and I said "hmmm I bet that is a magpie" and sure enough when I looked it up on the Internet it was a magpie. Then later I was using the restroom and I saw a bug and I thought "hmmm I bet that's a silverfish" and it was.

speaking of the restrooms... here in France the houses have different types of bathrooms than I am used to. The toilet is in a room all by itself, and everything else is in it's another room. They toilets also flush funny. There is a button on the top or sometimes two buttons (one for #1 and another for #2 I think). The water is a lot lower so it is a lot louder when you go to the bathroom which is annoying. The bathrooms in the building where I have class don't have seats on them. It is just a toilet bowl with a rim. This makes them very difficult to use. For some reason these bathrooms also smell very very bad. The bathrooms by the cafeteria are nicer because they have seats but they have automatic lights which seem to turn off as soon as I sit down, so I end up peeing in the dark a lot. I think the french should go on strike for better bathrooms.

Today they were on strike, I'm not really sure why. The students, professors, and transportation employees were all on strike. I'm not French so I still had to go to class. It took longer to get there because the tram was running a lot less frequently because the drivers were striking. Then I ate hot dog pizza...

Other than that it was a beautiful day here in the south of France.