You got peanut butter in my vegemite!

Avignon—April 30^th, 2008

Just over two hours remain in the month of April, and I still have not ceased to be amazed that so much time can honestly have gone by. True, I have settled comfortably into a routine here, but when I think about an entire month spent living in France, it's enough to make my head spin.

Yes, there is something of a rhythm now, I'm finally learning the room numbers for my classes without having to look at my schedule. I can officially walk to and from school without actively thinking about where I'm going. I even know the traffic patterns well enough to jaywalk. (The pedestrian signs in turn lanes turn green at the same time the traffic lights do, so it's better to cross when the pedestrian sign tells you not to. Go figure, not even the traffic signs are straightforward here.) And I guess that when I think about all this, that's when it's easiest to sit back and realize that no matter how much this might feel like a quick vacation, I am living in France.

My last update was either on Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which, but the point is that I still haven't talked about the excursion yet. On Saturday morning we all piled into the tour bus (everyone was on time this time!) and headed out to the Village de Bories for leg one of the Saturday adventure.

This bus trip was different from that of two weeks ago. On the Baux excursion, we were all sitting near each other, leaning into the aisle to talk to each other, all of us singing. This time, we were more spread out, conversation was much lighter, and more of us slipped on earbuds and watched the gorgeous French countryside roll by to our own personal soundtracks of choice. The difference? Well, two more weeks of near-constant contact. We have classes together, we spend our breaks together, we go out at night...together, we have excursions together, heck most of us live together in pairs or my trio. And while I wouldn't say we're sick of each other, I think it's safe to say that we have grown accustomed to each other.

It was maybe forty-five minutes to the village, or more specifically to the parking lot in the middle of nowhere where we had to wait for our tour guide to arrive. We stepped out of the bus and congregated in the empty gravel lot. Jenna and Ian found a metal hoop to kick back and forth. Major and Kristin passed the time as Richard and Madeline, their filthy rich British alter egos. I became their German servant girl, Bertha. I don't even bother asking anymore...

It turns out that in order to get to the village, we had to squeeze twenty four people into a bus-van hybrid that I'm guess-timating had twenty seats max. Once everyone was nice and...not comfy, we embarked on the most complex series of twists, turns, narrow roads, and terrifyingly close scrapes with small cliffs I've ever ridden through. All of this took us back to the Village de Bories.

A borie (which can be a masculine OR feminine noun, either is acceptable. Ooh, ahh.) is a dwelling made out of rocks. Okay, I'm being vague again. Bories are made entirely of short, flat rocks stacked in a shape somewhere between a rectangle and a dome. It's amazing the things they could make out of rocks a few hundred years ago—dwellings, storage buildings, pigsties, doghouses...of course, they all looked exactly the same to me. I only know what they were because there was a large stone outside each building with its purpose inked on it in black ink, and in three languages. I have no idea whose job it was to distinguish the function of one borie from the borie next to it, but I don't imagine it's particularly easy work. It was all rocks and dirt floors to me.

Then again, being there with nineteen friends, with the morning sun shining and hills rolling casually across the horizon all around us, I have never been happier to tour a village made of rocks. We were all a little camera-happy that morning, there was lots of posing and smiling as we trailed after the tour guide, who had a noticeable provincale accent that I found amusing to listen to. All of her nasal vowel were kicked up a notch, like they do in Quebec, and she pronounced more vowels than the Parisians do, and...well, I shan't bore you with the linguistics of it. As for the content...well, I'm not sure I remember any of it, aside from that the style of architecture dates back to 2000 years BCE. Funny thing about listening to her talk—I was hearing the sounds way more than I was hearing the words.

After we'd finished in the stone village, we squished ourselves back onto the van-bus. About halfway back to our tour bus we found ourselves hood to hood with a police car. The driver leaned around his seat, and with a quick hiss of “assiez-vous! Les fliks!” told everyone who was sitting on a lap to get on the floor so the cops wouldn't see them. That got a good round of laughter as we edged past the police car on the narrow walled-in street, our side view mirror and his just barely missing each other.

Gordes is where all the French celebrities and various well-to-dos have their summer houses. Danielle lived there for twenty years. It is situated on a big hill and, when we hopped off the bus (quickly, the bus can only stay stopped for two minutes!) and got our first good look at Gordes, it was as though we'd stepped straight into a postcard. This was not my first “living postcard” experience. Les Baux was the same way, and the top of the Palais gives you that feeling too. Anything with a view of Le Pont St. Benezet, of course, it's as though that bridge was built to have its picture taken from every conceivable angle. Just think, if every old landmark here had its own song, maybe they'd give the Pont St. Benezet some competition. The Pont St. Benezet is probably half the reason people like me knew that they city of Avignon even existed. Weird to think of that now, but I digress...

There was more posing and grinning and we went through the age old camera shuffle—a duo or a trio throws arms around each others shoulders and poses, and suddenly the whole group is on them, shutters clicking. Then one or all of the people in the photograph give their cameras to friends, then the friend snaps the picture with both cameras, hands them off and joins the picture. Rinse. Repeat. We had a group picture taken, too (who's got the copy of that?) and then reluctantly abandoned our scenic view and carefully made our way down the hill we were on, then up the hill Gordes is on.

The hill Gordes is on is immensely, incredibly, murderously steep. Tiny little stone protrusions pretending to be stairs are more hindrance than help, and we were glad that there were gorgeous brightly-colored flowers taking advantage of every patch of dirt—stopping every now and then to admire the flowers gave us an excuse to stop and catch our breaths. I stuck to the back of the pack, moseying along and trying to figure out who kept calling my cell phone. We have program cell phones, so I knew the only people with my number were the other group members and Mom and Dad. Since the sun wasn't even up at home and all the group were with me, I figured it was a wrong number. I finally did answer.

“'Allo-oui?” I asked, playing it safe and answering in French. A long pause, then “Allo?” I paused too, then decided on, “Bonjour, c'est qui?” Who are you? Succinct, to the point. It frightened them off, and they hung up on me, never to call again. French wrong number. Crazy. And since I couldn't possibly have done all this and hiked full-speed up the hill of death at the same time (would that you could hear the sarcastic tone I imagine with the word 'possibly...') I hung back with the moseyers.

Once at the top of Mt. Gordes, we were given a few hours to wander freely, find some lunch (yes, mine was on a bun!) shop, do the whole tourist thing. We wandered uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, into a church*, into a zillion tourist stores, and wondered how exactly all the snobby French celebrities move their furniture into their lavish homes. Verdict was that they must have the stuff airlifted in by helicopter.

*Okay, random observation, that I possibly have already mentioned before. One of the crazy things about France that I have discovered since getting here is that there are big beautiful churches and chapels and whatnot thrown into the weirdest places. We can be walking through a crowded, narrow street cluttered with shopfronts and graffiti, turn a corner, and BOOM! There's some really old sinfully pretty church tucked in amongst the shops like a Van Gogh in the bargain bin.

Where was I? Gordes. Well, I kept my spending to a couple postcards and a ham sandwich (told you it was on a bun.) Then I tailed random people for the rest of the time, watching Amanda ambush people with her spray-on sunblock. Lucky for us, there was no more hill-hiking planned for the day, and the bus met us at the top of the hill to take us to Roussillon.

Here's what I know about Roussillon. You cannot possibly visit that place without hearing the word ochre. I think it's the same word in English...err...ocher? Spell-check says that's right. Ocher. Pigment.

So we toured an ocher factory. Our tour guide was, as Amanda put it “pretty.” Umm...he was a man, but a pretty man. I realized when I read back over that that “pretty” is ambiguous unless I specify gender. We hiked over the fine, red sandy ground and listened to him narrate the process of ocher-making. Here's what I got...

Step one: Dump copious amounts of dirt in a stone trough.

Step two: Wash dirt.

Step three: Drain water.

Step four: Take remaining dirt and put in a reservoir.

Step five: Wash dirt.

Step six: Drain water.

Repeat...repeat...cook remaining dirt, grind it up, and there you have ocher. By that time most people had put their cameras away (except Jenna, of course!) so I decided to take some pictures to distract me from the fact that I was in a dirt factory. They burned incense in the gift shop, so we retreated outside and played hide and seek in the “sculpture” on the lawn. Said sculpture was a forest of brightly-colored wooden cubes just big enough to play hide and seek in.

Back onto the bus, for a drive into Roussillon proper. Again, they cut us loose with a suggestion of some nice ice cream places, and what huge killer hills to hike up for a scenic view. I got a scoop of chocolat and a scoop of Cookies, and hiked up half of one killer hill. Very nice red dirt cliffs and, further into the horizon, a glimpse of enormous snow-covered mountain. Then Major and I investigated random bookstores, rock stores (I'm not kidding...it was a rock store—not rock music, rock stone rock.) and then I ran into Amanda.

We were sitting on a wall outside the three-story bookstore complete with cafe. Suddenly this family walks by with a troupe of kids of varying ages, and they sit down on the wall next to us. Somewhere during the process Amanda and I discovered to our delight that the little kids were speaking...

They're Italian! Amanda and I mouthed to each other in glee, scarcely able to believe our good fortune. As linguistically intimidating as young children are, young children speaking foreign languages are still fascinating, and oh joy, these ones were jabbering away in Italian.

“Giocchiamo!” one of the boys crowed, which I actually UNDERSTOOD to mean 'let's play!' and then they were chasing each other around. They played hide and seek for a while, and Amanda and I gleefully whispered the numbers one through ten around with the counter. As far as I was concerned, I speak Italian like a six year old anyway, so these kids were right at my level! Katy walked by, politely looked only a little puzzled at why Amanda and I were sporting enormous grins and surreptitiously looking at the kids.

“They're speaking Italian!” we whispered.

Well, the Italian kids left, and then a bunch of us ended up in a cafe with Katy. Keeping true to typical French cafe tradition, I got charged for water...eye-roll...

We stayed in the cafe until meet time, making idle chitchat in French. Katy told us about how the airport confiscated her peanut butter from her carryon bag, dismissing it as a spreadable. “Like I'm going to make a bomb out of peanut butter,” she sighed in English. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard Katy speak any English, but as soon as I'd noticed the codeswitch, she moved straight back into French, which was fine by me. I realized about ten seconds after climbing back onto the bus that I'd forgotten to buy any postcards, and listened to grumpy music halfway back to Avignon.

Not that my postcard streak has been perfect...I'm trying to buy a postcard for myself at every city I visit, but...and you're going to laugh...I didn't buy any in Paris.

It was a twenty minute walk home, then I scraped the ocher dust off my shoes and dozed off a little before dinner. We told Danielle that we wouldn't be joining her and her daughter in law in Sorgues on Sunday morning—we all chose to sleep in a little rather than visit the market for a third time. But she was also going to take us to some event Sunday afternoon that she just described as a “party” over and over. Cathy opted out, but Kristin and I met yet another of Danielle's friends (I forget her name...I forgot her name five minutes after meeting her, I was rather tired...) who offered a handshake rather than a set of bizous, which was a welcome change. I'm used to bizous now, used to meeting a perfect stranger and being swept into the routine—right first, then left, then right, with cheeks touching and audible kissing noises. It is a little startling the first few times, but it's another of those things I've gotten used to now, like paying for water or the concept of a coin that's worth over three dollars.

The “party” turned out to be the Fete Saint-Marc, and we missed most of it. All that remained of the artisans market was a few stalls sticking it out until the end of the day, and one organ grinder (no monkey, unfortunately) who whistled very loudly and popped more balloon animals than he completed. Apparently, the traditional dancing was set to start at 3:30, but schedules in France, much like pirate codes, are more like guidelines than rules. (Sorry if you didn't get that joke but I couldn't resist a good Black Pearl reference.)

The dancers appeared over an hour after the scheduled time, but it was interesting. I've seen traditional Provencale dancing before—at market, at that place Michelle took us, traditional dancers pop out from around corners all the time here—but this was different. The dancers grinned, and whistled, whooped, and waved around farming implements! Rakes, baskets, scythes of various sizes, fake torches, wooden shoes, fake horses: these people had more props than you could shake a rake at. The music was live, the dancers really knew their stuff, and all in all it was a really fun afternoon. Kristin and I compared which dancer's skirt was our favorite, exchanged a grin when one of the dancers did the worm to great applause, and snuck into a pastry shop for some nutella-themed goodness. Nutella, by the way, fantastic.

Then it was home for dinner, then time to face facts—we had a Resistance test on Monday, there was journaling and reading and studying to be done.

It's all part of this weird double-standard—vacation and study. Weekends packed with adventure after adventure, weekdays stuffed end-to-end with class and work. On excursion weekends, it's a little too easy to forget the 'study' part of 'study abroad.' Then the classes suck you in come Monday, get you feeling trapped...Rinse. Repeat.

Monday night, the crazy trio and Amanda fought our way through a deluge to O'Neill's in hopes of meeting our respective British Isles boys. Kristin and Richard, Amanda and Scott, me and Ireland (I do know his name but I'd rather call him Ireland than spell it wrong). It was pouring down rain, plus wind, and my shoes and socks were thoroughly soaked, and my jeans were saturated up to the knees. The umbrella had done no good—not even my three layers of shirt (long sleeve, short sleeve, button up) were safe. In the end, only Muhammadu showed, Cathy's correspondent, and those of us hoping for a glimpse of the British boys were disappointed. We greeted Laurent with a stubbly set of bizous, taught Muhammadu to play poker with my dog-eared Nightmare Before Christmas deck. Headed home pretty early.

The Resistance test didn't quite kick my butt, although the first essay question did a little. Plus I got As on the graded papers Chistophe handed back to me, so I left feeling pretty good relatively speaking. Tuesday started off with Creative Writing out in the courtyard (recipe poems. I wrote: Recipe for a Poem A La Major, which according to Major is dead-on accurate.)

Recipe for a Poem A La Major (roughly translated.)

Ingredients: 500 grams sarcasm, 500 grams cynicism, a spoonful of humor, a pinch of effort, and one crazy idea.

Mix the sarcasm and cynicism, let them boil for two hours. The humor must absorb the taste of these items. Use the mixture of humor and cynicism to create a crazy idea. Put the idea on paper, and while waiting for the end of the two hours, speak with an English accent. Say that you can't write poems. After two hours, read the poem. Savor the bitter taste of sarcasm. Finish with an awkward pause, a little confused applause, but always with a smile.

And I repeat, I received a participation grade for this!

After classes on Tuesday Christophe cancelled the scheduled film screening for Resistance and we played petanque instead. (That's peh-TONK, for you non-francophones.) I was actually more of a spectator slash photographer, but I think it's basically boccee ball. You throw the little yellow ball, then each player gets two chances to get as close to the little yellow ball as they can. The old French men play it in flocks. Two of them even wound up seated on the hoods of cars watching our group play. Christophe, Katy, and Professor Bory (our lit professor) cleaned up the competition, but it was fun anyway. Professor Bory is really cool, and suggested that the next time we have a tournament that the losers need to buy the winners a drink. I think it's because he's so confident in his petanque skills—the man has his own petanque set, for goodness sake, I'd feel confident about beating a bunch of rookie Americans too if I were him. The only way it could've been cooler to play petanque with Professor Bory would be if he'd worn one of his trademark neckerchiefs during gameplay, but hey, the world isn't perfect I suppose.

Avignon, May 1^st, 2008

Wednesday we had classes because of the long weekend this weekend. Civ was akin to torture, and as usual Professor Boura (Boura, Bory, I can hardly keep them straight...) lectured gleefully past the scheduled end time for the class. Then lunch break, then Bory's class, which was significantly better. Problem is that any day starting out with Civ just shuts my brain down for the rest of the day. I feel bad for Bory—I'd pay so much more attention to him if we didn't come to his class straight from Civ, aka the Bane of Grace's Existence On This Continent 101.

Today is the start of the first of two long weekends, as well as the first day of May. Which means that every establishment in France that's got employees is closed. Makes it difficult to track down lunch. We hung out in Amanda's apartment and ate Ramen, and ordered train tickets. Cathy and I are going to Aix-en-Provence for the day tomorrow. We went to the train station and bought our 12-25 cards, which make train tickets cheaper if you're between the ages of 12 and 25. They cost 49 euro, but between the Aix trip, next weekend's as-yet-undetemined location, and the train back to Roissy to fly home, they should pay for themselves.

The train to Roissy. Wow, it's hard to believe that that ticket is starting to become more and more pressing a need. Exactly six weeks from this moment, I will be on a plane home. Hopefully with a better in-flight movie than Bee Movie. I'm just about at another big milestone: halfway through the program. That's in a few days. Today I had to sit down and ponder the fact that I officially spent the entire month of April without standing on US soil. Without seeing my family, playing with my dogs, eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in real cheese sauce, and doing all the other things that I've been taking advantage of for years.

Avignon, May 3^rd, 2008

When I wrote that date, I tried to write 'April.' Whoops.

As I write this, I am officially closer to coming home than I am to leaving home. Today is my halfway mark—39 days behind me, and 39 ahead. More on that later.

Thursday, Cathy and I went to Aix for the day. This involves walking, bus, train, bus again, walking again, bus, train, bus, and walking. See, there are two train stations in Avignon: Avignon centre is right in the middle of the city in easy walking distance. Avignon TGV is where all the big trains pass through on their way to Paris, Marseilles or other bigger cities. There are buses that run from centre to TGV and back, so Cathy and I hopped one of those. On said bus, we met an Australian couple who heaved enormous sighs of relief when they overheard Cathy and I speaking English. Soon, we were hearing about the wife's studies in Sydney (Italian and Linguistics, small world right?) about studying abroad, receiving another encore of the “aren't you lucky to be just at the perfect time in your life to be doing this?” speech. Cathy and the wife (never asked her name) did most of the talking, while her husband and I just nodded and smiled a lot.

We punched our tickets, got on our train, and had been moving for about ten minutes when the train slowed, and slowed, and then stopped. Our TGV had some technical difficulties, and we were to expect a delay of fifty minutes. Lucky for us, it was only about thirty in the end. I hid behind my sudoku and my headphones, listening to the little kids across the aisle play a card game and the businessman sitting next to me muttering on his cell phone. I could've taken a picture of the man and in the background you would've seen the “turn cell phones off” sign pasted over our seat. Eye roll..

Usually being stuck on a train is something that would freak me out a little, but I was curiously laid back, considering. After all, I didn't have any deadlines except for my return train seven hours later, I had stuff to do, people to watch if I got too desperate, and it was a pretty strange moment. I realized that I would usually be really anxious in that type of situation, but that I'd somehow learned to look at the bigger picture. Sure it was hot, and the businessman was blatantly ignoring a posted sign that prompted courtesy, and our train was broken, but what did I care?

Once we got to Aix TGV, we had to take another bus to get to the city itself. Go figure, TGV stations are all in these crazy remote locations perfect for scalping tourists on bus fare. Aix en Provence has an even stronger feel of tourism about it than Avignon does. In Avignon, all you have to do to escape the tourist vibe is walk away from the Palais des Papes and the Pont St. Benezet. In Aix, it was pretty obvious everywhere we walked. There were lots of stores involved in that afternoon, a lemon slushie, and a museum of natural history involving several dinosaur eggs, the freakiest fake ostrich I've ever seen, some dinosaur bones, a sound box playing reptilian screeches, and big plastic replicas of other dinosaurs. Amusingly enough, placed in what used to be a hotel, with painted cherubs gallivanting over the ceiling of every room.

After we were done in the city, we hopped the bus back to the train station. Our train was headed for Geneva after it stopped in Avignon, so needless to say we were very careful to be at the doors in time for our stop. Then we took another bus back into town, and walked home. It was past dinnertime, but Danielle had potato chips and leftover quiche for us.

Yesterday we decided that we'd rather stay in town than take another day trip, so I ended up leaving the house at lunchtime, getting a steak-frites, and sitting in my park for five hours.

Samedi, le 2 mars.

Translated from the original French journal entry.

I'm not in Arles today.

Danielle says that it's too bad we stay in Avignon so much.

But this afternoon is perfect. I have two benches in the park—one's in direct sunlight, the other in the shade. I move from one to the other when I feel like it. I listen to my music, read, write a little in French, write a little in English. I watch the people walking by. I'm happier like this than leaving Avignon for leaving Avignon's sake.

My bench in the shade: an old woman (black skirt, white hat) breaks a baguette and throws the pieces to the birds in front of her. There are thirty or thirty-five of them. She doesn't have a particularly happy air—her expression is more pensive than content. She has a somber rhythm about her actions—break, pause, throw and again—break, pause, throw. The living sea of wings and beaks is thrilled.

My bench in the sun: a child, barefoot, plays in the fountain with a purple balloon. He kicks the balloon. He thinks it's funny the way it floats away. The English tourists like it too. Like me, they are watching the boy in the fountain, like one watches a mildly amusing film.

I ate a steak-frites from the kebab on the corner—the one with the man in the glasses, who says “grazi” instead of “merci.” I think he recognized me today, this is the third Saturday I've come. He wished me bonne journee for the third time, and for the third time I replied Merci monsieur, bonne journee.

Back to the bench in the shade. The little boy isn't there anymore. Now there's a little girl (pink hat.) She plays in the water. Her father takes photo after photo. Her mother holds her sandals. I wish I could play in that fountain, barefoot like a kid. Children don't see the strangers who watch their game with envious smiles. For us, the simple pleasures aren't so easy.

In the sun: tourists. Italians this time. They enter the park, take pictures, leave the park. My precious corner of France is nothing but a photo opportunity to these people. In the fountain, three brothers have followed the girl with the pink hat's example. They throw their shoes and jump into the water.

A young couple has taken my bench in the shade, but I'm not concerned. The sunlight is the gentle sunlight of early evening now, and I can stay here. I have three hours until dinner. I've been here for four hours. An afternoon wasted, Danielle would say. Danielle doesn't like waste. But I'm not thinking about Danielle anymore. She can do what she likes with her afternoons.

Another old woman (sunglasses, blue sweater.) She's talking to herself, with a very serious air. Tourists (English again, I think,) enter the park. Watch the girl in the pink hat. A dozen photos, and they leave my sacred corner. Hour after hour, week after week, May after April after March, the grand parade of tourists never ends. I can see now that the grand parade will never finish. They will always come into the park, smile into each other's camera's, and leave. This park is my sanctuary in Avignon. For them it is a row of flowers in a photograph.

A French boy (Spiderman t-shirt) is speaking rapidly to his mother. She isn't listening, I can tell even though he can't. Her son will speak French effortlessly, and so much better than I will.

Tourists. I'm not exaggerating. They come, they approach the fountain for a wave of photos, they leave.

I've decided to put my feet in the fountain. It's not important who's watching me, just like it's not important that Danielle thinks I should leave town more. If the girl in the pink hat can play in the water, I can slip off my shoes too. We aren't that different, she and I, but for a country and a language. I just need a pink hat and a carefree laugh. Or, she needs glasses and a tendency to observe details that others find insignificant.

The pigeons are making a noise like old mens' laughter. Yes, maybe that's the metaphor. I've been trying to think of one for the past hour.

Tourists. Americans. Same game.

The girl in the pink hat has left the park, and the pigeons have retaken the fountain. They're thirsty, and nobody is playing in their fountain anymore. Some kind lady has brought a bag of birdseed. Ten, twenty, fifty pigeons—a bigger crowd than for the pensive old lady in the white hat.

A little girl just took my picture. She thinks I didn't see her, but I did. Am I particularly interesting, or is she just the younger French me, finding strangers more fascinating than the average person?

Two hours until dinner. Five hours spent here, four pages in my journal, three Aerosmith albums, a steak-frites, one phone call, and a slight sunburn.

I am profoundly content.

Not much to do today, except marvel that this is my halfway point, that for the first time here I'm closer to coming home than I am to the day I left. I wonder if I'm going to change. I wonder if things are going to be different after June 12^th, 2008. I wonder if, come the morning of June 13^th, I will be a different person than I was on March 26^th. I wonder if I should buy myself a cookie tin for when I'm home, and if I should stop making my French journal entries so long and metaphorical. I wonder if Ireland will be at O'Neill's tomorrow, and if, despite what I've said in my journal*, if I'll let a regret or two surface once I'm home.

*Jeudi, le 1er mai

Translated from the original French journal entry.

Six weeks from this moment, I'll be in a 767, destination Boston Massachusetts, USA. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And it's true that I want to see my family, that I want to live a familiar life again, but at the same time I don't want to think of this future. June 12^th will arrive without me thinking of June 12^th. I want to think about May 1^st, 2008.

Cathy and I are staying in town today. We have tickets for Aix tomorrow, and maybe we'll go to Arles on Saturday or something, but I'm not sure. So today I cleaned my room, I read a little out of the forgotten books of old students, I write. [...] Now almost everything that needed done has been accomplished. All that remains is two hours of reflection in the journal before dinner.

Danielle doesn't think we should stay in Avignon. At every opportunity she always says that “c'est dommage, rester en ville.” It's like everyone wants me to leave Avignon at every opportunity. Danielle doesn't understand why I prefer to stay in town on Wednesdays and weekends. But I'm not here for Danielle. I'm not here to live the life others want for me. I think I'm happier staying in Avignon with my friends than leaving town alone for eight hours in a town I know nothing about. Everyone has their advice for me, but they're not here. Can they really understand the choice between a day alone in Nimes and an afternoon on the island with two baguettes and three good friends?

I'm nothing less if I choose to spend my free time where I'm happy. It's no less of an adventure. I'm not going to regret one single thing. I will refuse the idea of having regrets of my life here. Good or bad, I'm taking it as it is. What's the value of having been here if I start thinking of everything I didn't do, instead of everything I did?

So I don't say anything when Danielle starts with “c'est dommage.” I have my excursions, I have Aix tomorrow, and somewhere to go next weekend. That's enough leaving for me. If I'm so happy here in Avignon, why on earth should I leave just because others say I should? And I don't have to explain myself. I'm too lucky to be here, I've worked too hard, to live eleven weeks in France for other people.

I think I've lived too much of my life for other people, loathe to make their opinions of me suffer. Maybe if that's what this trip is going to change about me, then I won't be so afraid of letting it change me.