Conversations with my host father or why I am glad I have less than 2 weeks living with these people

I like this picture because it has Hungarian on it, but also because it pretty much sums up France

(this was actually written the day I after got back from hungry- I’m super behind)…

Tonight’s dinner, the first after a week and a half of freedom from awkward dinner conversation, was as annoying as it promised to be. YAY.

            Unlike the last two meals I ate with them, during which not a single question was directed towards me, they decided they would ask me some questions. (translated, except when I didn’t have to)

HF: Did you speak French much on your trip

Me: No, not much.

HF: Probably not at all.

Me.: *considers*

HF: strong stuffy accented English Not … at … all

            So, I’m annoyed, but I let it go because I think my host father is a bit of a show off and likes to show off his “amazing” English vocab once and a while. Everyone knows that “pas de tout” is nothing at all like “not at all” except that it is an EXACT translation of the two common words plus a preposition.

HF: Did you see the Berlin wall?

Me: *finishes chewing-*

HF: SSAE wall

So now I’m fairly annoyed, but I answer the question. I tell them I visited the East Side Gallery and tell them about it. My host father then informs me that they saw it on television in suh a superior way that I had to suppress a laugh. They saw it on TV- how dare I suggest that going there is cool? You can’t make this stuff up.

The meal continues.

HF: Did you know there was just an election in California?

Me: Err- DUH (more literally: “Bien sur” (of course))

HF: You know, not for president, but for other things.

Me: NO WAY! (“oui”)

HF: Really? Because there is more than one kind of election in the US.

Me: Oh, never mind! It’s not as if I’m the American here. Clearly you know the way my country works better than I do. (“Yes, I know. That’s how it works.”)

HF: They voted on the legalization of marijuana.

Me: yeah, I know.

HF: It didn’t pass

Me: …

This is not the first time, and probably won’t be the last that they have asked me questions that imply that they think Americans, or possibly just me in particular to be completely moronic. Others include “Did you know in America that North Korea is basically a closed state” and after a completely biased report on the French news about people in America who have lost everything because of the economy: “Did you know this happens in America?”

Me: *face palm*

(I have now officially posted everything I've written so far, I guess this means I have to go home and type some more :) )

Are you hungry? No, but I’m IN Hungary! And other adventures.

At the airport, Lisa and I found the saddest panda in the world, and then we played Every Word (given letters you have to find “every word”, particularly the longest word) on my kindle.

We arrived in Budapest without event and found our hostel, “The Goat Hostel”, located in a nondescript building. We buzzed up.

Me: This is a pretty nifty windy stair case.

Lisa: Your FACE is a nifty windy staircase

Me: HEY!

Lisa: Would you rather your face was a boring staircase?

Me: I suppose you have a point there

Hostel keeper at the top of the stairs: …

Then we went off in quest for food.

To our glee, everything in hungry is pretty cheap because of the 260 Forints: 1 euro exchange rate. We were so excited that we ordered food until our meal cost about 9 euros each anyway. I had chicken wrapped in bacon with broccoli and corn, a fairly strange crepe (that they called a pancake on the menu) filled with cottage cheese and apples, and a strawberry colada. Lisa had spaghetti noodles, a fruit tart, and a cocktail of some kind. Then we did math for fun. Conversion math. It was surprisingly entertaining.

Food + cocktails + math = fun

Don’t you love math?

Then we wandered around a bit and met up with Tristan and his girlfriend, Reka. And together we went to a Scotland themed bar, and then a bar in which you can get 10 beers for the equivalent of $10 (this seems extra amazing if you have only ever been to a bar in a country in which one beer costs 6 euro). They were not large beers, probably more like half pints, but still.

Then we walked around with plans of seeing the pretty things, but it turned out they were no longer lit. So we went home, it was around 2:30.

The next morning we had plans to meet Reka and Tristan at the Museum of Terror at around 11.   On the way, we walked by a billion “Antiqukonivm” (used book stores), in one of which I bought Harry Potter és a Bölcsek Köve. Which brings me glee despite the fact that I can’t really read very much of it/ any of it.

In the end we ended up splitting with Tristan and Reka, as they had some specific things they wanted to see, and we wanted to see the main things because we only had one day. We went to this gigantic park and saw some really beautiful things:

And I found my favorite bridge in all the world.

And we explored to the sound of “native American” music which was slightly confusing.

I climbed in a fountain in order to put my teddy bear in it.

Then we wandered aimlessly and saw a girl riding a pony through the awesome Hungarian park and we were extremely jealous. 

We became peckish (word just automatically corrected this to be “puckish”. What does that word even mean?!)  and tried to wander out of the park to somewhere that might have food. Tristan called us and asked us if we wanted to meet for Mexican food. Did we ever?!

It took us about 45 minutes to get there as we had walked quite far away, but the quesadilla was totally worth it.

After that, I had to convert more money and Lisa discovered that her money had mysteriously multiplied- I was jealous.

Then we headed over to Buda Castle. On our way we stopped for coffee because we were pretty tired (or at least I was). We had been walking/ standing for basically 6 hours, so when we reached the hill we took the tramy (/funicular) thing to the top for 800 Ft = $4 each. It was totally worth it.

We admired the most beautiful, epic parliament in the world. FACT not opinion. 

I am a bad photographer

That’s when viola man attacked.

VM: *is suspiciously eager* I take picture for you.

Us: Err, no thank you.

VM: Here, I take camera and take picture of you.

Us: No, thanks

VM: It be very nice. Pretty view. Largest parliament in the world.

Us: No, we’re good. Thanks

VM: Okay, you hold my viola and I take funny picture. *shoves viola at us*

Us: No, thank you

VM: It will be really funny!

Us: NO, I think we are okay.

VM: AMERICAN IDIOTE. *undecipherable yelling* You don’t even know what No, thank you means!

Us: *OMG, we made crazy man angry*

VM: *walks away to find next victim*

It took us like 15 minutes to recover.

Everything was beautiful. We admired and talked of wubbles and got more coffee.

Then we tried to get over to the hill to see “the sky worshipper.” We asked some threatening looking police officers. Unfortunately, their directions required us to walk through a gate in front of which stood scary viola man. DUN DUN DUN.

We waited for Viola man to be distracted by harassing others, and we ran for it. Seriously.

The directions turned out not to go where we wanted to go. So we walked down the hill via the sketchy path.

Once we reached the bottom, we sat on a wall above the street and talked. Every once in a while the cars would slow down as if they expected us to jump down.

Eventually, our feet stopped actively hating us and we walked to the other hill and climbed the badly lit path in the dark. As we got closer to the top, I tried to remember the four steps of self defense on the off chance we got attacked.

Step 1: Figure out what’s going on/ get in fighting stance

Step 2: Blow smoke, ie distract attacker by making loud noises or causing physical injury.

Step 3: get out

Step 4: run away/ prepare for a second attack

Only I couldn’t remember all of them then, so we probably would have been screwed if we had been attacked. *solemn nod*

Really my experience in Budapest can be summed up in one word: beautiful.

We walked down a different badly lit path with aching feet and empty stomachs. So we found a restraint in which to spend some time. We settled on an Italian place, and Lisa had pizza while I ordered of the Hungarian menu – ordering a meal of paprika chicken with dumplings. I was a little nervous because my whole life I’d thought I hated dumplings based on a vague early childhood memory. It’s weird how you can live by decisions you made more than a decade ago and NEVER question them. I liked the dumplings.

By this time it was getting late, and we were both exhausted (or at least I was). In one day we had managed to see all the main sites of Budapest. My flight left at 6 am the next morning, and my taxi was coming at around 2 am. Therefore, I had vaguely planed on staying up all night to enjoy the city and the company. Additionally we had vague plans of meeting up with Tristan and Reka again.

In the meantime, Lisa and I went back to the hostel and played Every Word on my kindle (by this time, we were getting pretty decent).

We decided that we wouldn’t meet up, after all. The commute was kind of ridiculous, and AWAY from the airport for them. So at 11:30, I decided to give up the staying up all night plan.

Lisa and I said a tearful goodbye and an eager desire for it to be time to go to Istanbul together. And then I went to sleep for a meager 2 hours.

At the airport my suitcase was completely unpacked by the security guy. I kept thinking he would stop, but then he’d keep going. I stood there and thought “Seriously?  You better repack that” – he didn’t.

So I know what you are thinking- you’re on your flight now in this story, how could possibly have more to say You have no idea.

So you know how leg room is a problem on REGULAR airlines? Try flying budget. Furthermore, try flying budget with a total douche canoe sitting in front of you. I think we have established that by this time I was VERY TIRED, therefore I was attempting to sleep on my tray table. Even at the beginning of the flight, it was necessary to lie sort of diagonally – unfortunately this guy was determined to make it WORSE. Every ten minutes or so he would recline his chair MORE to my significant displeasure. The more he leaned back, the more diagonally I had to lie which resulted in me falling off the tray every time I fell asleep. By the end, folding over had become completely impossible and I had added another person to my list of people I will murder if all else fails and decide to pursue the rewarding career of serial killer.

Then we arrived in England. As we got off our plane they had all male persons show their passport and walked by a military person with a scary looking gun. Then we had to go through passport control which had the longest line I have waited in at an airport on these trips by FAR. Luckily, in this case, being a non-EU member worked to our advantage, and we got to cut everyone. MU HA HA.

TAKE THAT EU- AMERICA PWNS YOU ALL.

Then we had to walk back into the airport to check in, which was annoying. Only when we got there the guy was like: “Dude, here in England we tots don’t even pretend that we don’t do racial profiling. You are both white Americans, you didn’t have to come here to show your passports.” Only he sounded more british.

We pooled our money (my pounds and euros, and Tristan’s euros) and got starbucks for breakfast.

On our next flight, we once again had lamesauce people in front of us. This time they were climbing on the seat and leering out the window (I’m not sure if it is actually possible to “leer out a window,” but that is the best way to describe this guy’s behavior). They were both in their thirties, AT LEAST, and were the type of people you’d expect to see sleeping at the train station.

This is unlikely to mean anything to anyone else, but this hilarious conversation ensued:

Tristan: You know how there are supposedly less than 6 degrees of separation between every person. There are way less than 6 degrees of separation between these people and Nix.

Me: I bet they slept at the train station with someone who is friends with Nix.

Laugh, it would be hilarious if you knew what we were talking about.

Then: FRANCE

Much to my immense displeasure the zombies (my host family- I occasionally use this term, thanks to some wonderful advice from Devyn). Didn’t go on their Sunday excursion because of the rain L . And I had to wait for 30 minutes for my “short-cut” bus, because it was Sunday.

And it basically hasn’t stopped raining.

OMG BURITOS- or in which I visit Berlin

I was starving to death when I wrote this, that probably explains the title of this post and the amount of times it mentions food.

I left my Edinburgh hostel four hours or so before my flight, mostly because I didn’t want to leave and then come back, because that just seemed silly. Because I am an addict, I made my first order of business returning to the Starbucks I had visited the day before for peppermint mocha, num num. (side bar: something is making a weird clicking noise, and it’s very distracting). The nifty thing about this Edinburgh Starbucks is the pricing. At the one I went to in Paris (there are none in Bordeaux :( ), the pricing is redonc. That is, if a tall peppermint mocha costs like $4 in the us, than it costs 4 euro there. Which is totally stupid because 4 euro is like $5.80. At this one Edinburgh, the price was more like 2.40 pounds which is something like $4. (side bar: word grammar is really irritating. I SPEAK ENGLISH BETTER THAN YOU COMPUTER.)

Anyway, then I failed at finding my bus stop a lot, and had a ten minute conversation with this Scottish man. And by conversation, I mean he talked a lot and I could only understand like 10% of the things he said, and so I mostly just made agreement sounds based on tone. “OH NO!”, “Really?!”, “Wow!”.  It’s important to be enthusiastic, lest the other person realize you don’t have the slightest idea what they’re saying despite the fact that you both supposedly speak the same language fluently. Occasionally, he would ask a question that seemed like it might require an actual response, in which case I would have to say “what?” at least 5 times before getting the gist of the question. Finally, I escaped his clutches, found my bus, and paid 2 pounds to ride it the airport (remember this for comparison with the NEXT time I take an airport bus).
Then some general travelly stuff happened. And I ate a prepackaged panini that they heated up for me, which was surprisingly good for being overpriced prepackaged food. OMG I’M STARVING. Then I sat on the plane for a bit and had Ryan Air try to sell me stuff to make up for the fact that I only paid like 15 euro for a ticket, and then I landed and Ryan Air played their unbelievably corny “we arrive on time!” sound effect. YAY, budget airlines.

I exchanged my remaining pounds for euros on my way out of the airport, and I’m pretty sure that I got totally ripped off.

Then I met Lisa, bought a tram pass of some girl for a 6 euro reduction, and then went places.

She showed me her university, and this nifty memorial for all the books that were burned in its library, and most importantly DOLORES. Dolores is amazing. Dolores is my hero. Dolores is a California style burrito place that serves burritos that taste like they are supposed to- like joy in a tortilla. And I had a burrito which was amazing. AMAZING.

I also met Lisa’s roommate, who is very nice, but who had a minor medical emergency that was completely harmless except that it resulted in her having a very unpleasant evening at the hospital, which wasn’t completely harmless.

Lisa and I went back to her apartment which is on the fifth floor and has no elevator, and I dropped off my stuff.

Then guess where we went…McDo. And we had mcflurries which were cheaper than the French ones, but also less amazing. Then we watched some Dr. Who, because it’s awesome.

The next day after Lisa got back from class she took me to Kreutz burger which has authentic curly fries which they serve with not so authentic mysterious white substance that is possibly sour cream, and then she took me on a tour of parks in her neighborhood. Starting with this one which is in a graveyard:

Graveyard

park

(you know what Microsoft Word? Your FACE is a fragment. And no, I’m not going to capitalize you- just to SPITE you.)

In other news, it is possible that typing snarky notes to a computer program may be a first sign of insanity.

Anyway, it’s most definitely fair to say that German parks pwn American ones, and that American parents need to chill out on the whole “OMG THIS WILL KILL MY CHILD” thing and realize how amazing these contraptions are.

SERIOUSLY FUN STUFF.

Then we went back to the apartment, after a quick stop at the grocery store. Then we did some stuff, I think. And then we made pizza, actually mostly Lisa made pizza, and I sat around and laughed at her. I am GOOD friend who performs irreplaceable moral support activities.

The pizza was fantastic though. OMG, starving.

The next day, Lisa didn’t have class, so I she took me to see all the Berlin touristy things:

Straddling the Berlin wall, or where it was at least

For being a bunch of rectangular blocks the Holocaust memorial was surprisingly effective and moving.

The bunker in which Hitler killed himself was located under this parking lot. You wouldn't know...

This is the space ship of love = representing America it pretty much sums up the Global Stone project (which has a stone thing for each of the 5 continents 5 because German people are apparently unaware that there are actually 7). The male viewer is supposed to use his imagination a specific date to connect these rocks with their sister rocks in their continent of origin, thereby envisioning peace. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT ...)

Then we ate amazing burritos at Dolores before going home for a nap (because it was cold and rainy and we were tired) after which “we would do more stuff”. (I want a burrito, SO BAD.) Only we didn’t actually do stuff because we were lazy and sleepy. Unless by *stuff* you mean watch Dr.Who, make yummy hamburgers, and invent mixed drinks (The Friendly Chipmunk: 1 part red orange vodka, 1 part Orangina).

The day we ate one final time at Dolores, and I attended a class with Lisa. I slept through most of it. Also, I drew an ALOT of German Confusion.

Then we did some more touristy things in the rain:

Check point Charlie

Giant ball of stuff (supposedly representing that which an immigrant brings and wishes to bring). The truth according to Lisa, Kathy, and Delilah is that it was originally designed for Toon Town but was rejected because, WTF?

pretty nifty art on the longest stretch of the Berlin wall that remains

Fantastic quesadillas were had for dinner. Our plane left 2pm the next day, so we left the apartment at 10 ish, and stopped for bagels. I got a coffee. And a “california bagel” which was like a Chinese chicken salad in a bagel, because that’s what they do in California, OBVIOUSLY. It was pretty tasty though.

Word objects to the “like” in the last sentence. Please stop being prejudiced against my California dialect, Word.
For more pictures go here

Guess what’s fantastic… Money

Because of my early bedtime and the falling back I was awake at 7 and out of bed by 7:45 and out of the hostel before 9.

The early morning was crisp, quiet, and beautiful. I hiked up to the Scottish memorial to admire the view and the strange structures there. It turns out that this project, built during the 1820s to honor victims of the Napoleonic Wars, is considered to be folly because it appears that the over ambitious project was never completed because of budget problems.

The view from up there was gorgeous and the early morning lighting was perfect.

Then I came down and stumbled upon this really awesome Giraffe sculpture. I really liked the poem encircling them and how the little giraffe gazes at the larger.

I took a picture for a couple and they took one for me in return. Then the woman asked to take a picture with me. So I did….

Then I did some shopping and bought some of the least intelligent things to buy when you are travelling light and 4 plane rides left before home, 7 if you count the ones to return to San Diego. But I’ve wanted galoshes for forever and I’m all about practical souvenirs. And also that tea shop was filled with AWESOME and inexpensive.

This is one of the best purchases I've ever made. It started raining as soon as I got back to Bordeaux and it basically hasn't stopped

I would like you take a moment to ponder if I would go to Edinburgh without visiting “the birthplace of Harry Potter”… if you guessed “no”, you win.

Also, they didn’t give me any napkins. How am I supposed to rags to riches without napkins on which to write my first novel? If I never make it big, I will always hold you responsible, Elephant House.

Then I went to Edinburgh Castle and admired it and the view from outside, because I wasn’t about to pay 13 pounds to go in.

Then I walked down the hill, vaguely searching for the soldier’s dog cemetery I had heard about. But I didn’t ever find it.

Instead I found this graveyard in which the inventor of logarithms is supposedly buried. I couldn’t find his tomb stone. I can only assume this is because they were lying to me.

Then I made an awesome, yet somewhat offensive discovery:

This is a sculpture of Buddy, the beloved vagabond dog of San Diego. He was a gift from San Diego, as Edinburgh also has a beloved vagabond dog. I am offended because no one told me

For more pictures go here

Pretty okay for a disaster

As far as non-life threatening travel tragedies go, I’m pretty sure losing your credit cards when you’re alone in a country that you don’t have any currency for yet ranks as among the worst. I discovered my cards were missing when I went to take them out to stick them in the ATM to get myself some pounds. It was midnight in Edinburgh, that is, one am Bordeaux time, and I had gotten up at 6:30 am in order to jump through the last visa getting hoop. In a moment I saw all the times I had unzipped my wallet since leaving Bordeaux- more than 5 times at least. And I had no idea at point they had disappeared.

And that was the beginning of what proved to be a very long early morning.

I left the airport at nearly 1:20 am on a night bus I couldn’t afford to pay for. I had explained my situation to the bus driver and told him my stop. Forty-five minutes later as everything started to get less city like I began to suspect I had missed my stop, and sure enough 5 minutes later we arrived at the terminus. The bus driver got off, had a smoke, clearly saw that I was still on the bus, and got back on. I thought surely this time he would tell me my stop (because a person with an American accent who was picked up at the airport, and who rode the whole bus line without getting off probably doesn’t know where to get off the bus since the announcement are turned off).

And so I watched everything go by in the opposite direction. At a stop next to a sign saying “Princes Mall” I wondered if this was my stop (“princes st”) but I wasn’t sure and I really thought he would tell me. I can’t explain why I didn’t get up and ask just that on a night that went on a scale from “cold, miserable, and tired” to “furiously happy” I was much closer to the first at this time.

We left the city again, and I started to regret intensely not getting off the bus, I didn’t even care if it might have been the wrong stop. I felt bus sick and wished that I had not left Bordeaux. We arrived at the airport. The bus driver asked me if I was going to get off, I said no and that I didn’t know which stop was mine. He said okay, he hadn’t known that and that he would be back in 10. I waited and we left the airport. When we got to town I decided I would ask him, lest I end up at the other terminus again. A large group of people got on the bus, and then I asked him before he pulled away. He said, “this is Princes St” and I was like, “Thanks for nothing!” only not out loud and got off the bus into the freezing cold.

It was windy and past 3:30 am. My google directions told me to walk “east” on Princes St. which was absolutely useless to me at this hour in a city I had never been to before. I choose a direction that turned out to be west, which I discovered when I turned around and saw a bridge (I was looking for “north bridge”). After that I found the hostel without much difficulty. On my way there, a homeless woman asked me if I could spare any change, but like her I was penceless. The hostel, thankfully, didn’t turn me away. Although the guy was kind of a jerk- I was like: “Brrr, it’s cold” because it was and my feet were wet and literally numb. And he said in a you-stupid-tourist tone “Yeah, it get’s like that in Scotland”. I actually really regret being so nice about this comment.

I woke up at 9 the next morning and was unable to sleep. I hoped I would be able to obtain money soon because I was starving. A couple hours later, after talking to a woman at the American Express office multiple times, attempting many calls with both my cellphone and also a payphone (none of which actually went through ) (do you have to pay to make toll free calls?) , and writing an email or two, I gave up my quest for money temporarily and adopted a furiously happy attitude, and decided to do my best to enjoy Scotland despite my hunger and exhaustion.
I made a kitty friend:

Eventually I ended up in a park, and I swung on a swing and wondered why it is that adults give up this enjoyable pastime. Then I played doggy stalker and took a nap on a park bench because I was pretending to be a homeless person.

I spent some time window shopping and by the time I was finished I had a list of things I would buy if I had money with me, and of things I would buy if I was rich. It appears that I have a Scottish sense of style because the stores were filled with awesome things.

TEA COZIES

I headed back towards my hostel, but I got a bit turned about. I don’t want to say “lost”, let’s say “exploring”

A cow is running into a building, weird

I finally got back to the hostel, where I hung out for like 10 minutes when my parents called me. Then I spent the next threeish hours waiting for the money to arrive.

Then at 6ish, edinburgh time, a full 24 hours after I had eaten last, I feasted. I had amazing butternut squash and coconut soup and a not really amazing burger and it was fantastic.

I obtained shampoo (the jerky French security people threw mine away because it was “too big”) that was also “too big” but it still made it out of Scotland and Germany.  Then I showered and sent some emails and I went to sleep at 9 Edinburgh time.

And that was day one in Edinburgh. It sounds kind of awful, but it actually wasn’t THAT bad. 

Once upon a time, I went to St. Emilion

Last Saturday (/a really long time ago, like 3 weeksish), I got to pretend that I’m one of the poor souls who lives 40 minutes away from the university, and got up at the awful early hour of 7 am. But unlike them, I did this to go to the train station, which I suppose beats going to the DEFLE. Because of this, for the first time since moving here, I ate breakfast with my host family, kind of. Honestly, I was beginning to suspect that they ate breakfast in the middle of the night, because all evidence of their breakfast eating (except two cold pieces of toast) has vanished by the time I go upstairs, no matter when I get up. My train left at “10ish” and the train station is about 1hr away by tram, and I hadn’t bought my ticket, and needed to go to an atm. Everything went smoothly, including a perfect of amount of time to get money from the atm before the next tram at my transfer, except it turned out that the train didn’t leave until 10:40, which isn’t really the same as “10ish”. I would blame Tristan for this, but really it’s my fault for always relying on him to know when things are. Also, he showed up way too early too, so I wasn’t waiting alone. At 10:40 all six of us were sitting on the train, and 45 minutes later we arrived in St. Emilion.

We started off the trip by eating at creperie, that had a beautiful patio that over looked the bottom part of St. Emilion. I had a crepe with jambon et fromage, and a delicious dessert crepe with mint chocolate filling, whipped cream, and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

St. Emilion, like most places around here, is famous for its wine production, but it is also home to the largest monolithic (For those of you who don’t speak Latin or know random architectural terms, monolithic means “one stone” or something like that- that is, this church is carved out of the mountain) church in Europe. St. Emilion supposedly was capable of healing people and performing other miracles, and it was his fame that led him to go to St. Emilion, where he hoped to live a more quiet life. He was buried in the catacombs at St. Emilion and rich people paid to be buried close to him. During the war between the protestants and catholics, however, his remains were thrown into a river. The catacombs at this church were reserved for those who were “pure” that is those who had never lived (still born babies), those who were important members of the church, and those who were rich enough. The church itself was dug out from the top down; it is believed to be modeled after monolithic churches that its builder saw during the crusades. Drainage pipes were dug underneath the church to prevent structural instability due to wet soil. These pipes worked fantastically until they were destroyed when rich people wanted to be buried right underneath the church. Over the years the water seeped into the stone, and today the churches pillars are held together by metal clamps, while scientists work on a way to restore the strength of the stone. Once a year they hold mass in this church, and this actually took place the weekend before we visited.

The last paragraph was brought to you by the 4 euro I paid to tour St. Emilion’s cave, the catacombs, and the church. These historical sites are privately owned, and therefore they cannot be toured independently. I don’t have any pictures of this, because the private owners are selfish jerks who want to be able to make as much money off of this stuff by selling pictures of it, or something like that. (rereading this post it comes off as very anti- wealthy people, huh…)

monolithic churches are more impressive from the inside

Later we visited a winery, and the caves in which they age their wine underneath it. The most fascinating part of this visit was the amazing silence of the caverns. If you were in one of the far corners and no one was walking around you the air was completely still – perfect silence. The winery offered free wine tasting, but they told us to come back in an hour, most of this time we spent at these ruins:

We sat on the wall surrounding the vineyard, and set a camera on self timer across the street in order to get a picture of all of us:

I haven’t fallen off the planet or anything, it’s just that my computer broke, so actually I take that back- I’ve been off planet.

The good news is that I have successfully resurrected my computer to thanks to the guy at FNAC who didn’t speak english, my handy new portable hard drive SHINEY, and the handy system restore function. There isn’t any bad news, except that I haven’t been writing any posts, but you knew that already, so it’s not really “news” per see.
Mostly I haven’t really done anything though, except Lisa and I went to Paris which was AWESOME, and then she visited me which was AWESOME. Basically it was an amazingly FANTASTICALLY awesome week. I’m working on a post about Paris, but don’t get your hopes or anything because the jury’s still out on whether or not it sucks. I also might write a post about Lisa visiting, or making fun of French bureaucracy, or French strikes, or how they FINALLY gave me my appointment time to get my carte de sejour a mere 11 hours before I leave the country for more than a week (I’m going to Edinburgh, BERLIN, and Budapest) and how about a week before I got this letter the program advisors were all “what do you mean you can’t leave the country yet? You can go to any shenegan country!” and we were all “that is TOTALLY not what you said before *you mean we’ve been prisoners in france for a month and half because you gave us misinformation*” (basically I just told you all of that story *check*), anyway the possibilities are pretty much endless now that my computer is alive again, yay!