70 Days

I'm back!!! I got home about an hour ago, and I'm really tired. It was a 7 hour train ride, with a train change at the Charles de Gaule station in Paris. I didn't sleep at all, but I triedd! I ended up just reading a magazine I bought yesterday and then just listened to my ipod.

Anyway, the trip went really well. Personally, I thought the weather was nice, but everyone told me that it was cold for the south. I don't know exactly what the temperature was (because I really suck at guessing), but it was warm enough for me to wear shorts comfortably two or three days! It only rained one day (Tuesday) when we were in Spain. The only thing that kind of sucked was that it was really windy. When we went to the beach, the sand blew so hard that it hurt my legs.

The beach itself was really pretty, though! You look one way and you see the Mediterranean Sea, and if you turn around, you get the Pyrenees Mountains. It's like, the perfect place for my family to go on vacation (hint hint ;D); you get the mountains for my dad and the beach for everyone else. haha.

While I was there, I met my my host mom's ex husband, (Pierre), his wife (Céline), their kids (Laina, 10 and Mathis, 7 or 8?). I also met my host sister (Marion), her husband (Nicolas), and their kids (Sarah, 4 and Charlie, 8 mos), as well as my other host sister (Fanny) and her boyfriend of 3? years (Hugo). They all live in towns around Perpignan, so I got to see them often.

My week was spent mainly chilling out with that massive family taking walks up and down the beach. There are lots of people that sell things along the sidewalk and a couple fair rides and games and stuff like that. My host mom, Pierre, and I went to a castle one day and took a tour of that. I took about a million pictures of that thing! It was so cool! I've seen tons of castles from the road before, but that was my first time entering one.

On Tuesday, we went into Spain to do some shopping and walking around. It took us foreverrr to get through the border, even though the gaurds don't do anything but watch the vehicles drive by. We got into Roses at about one o'clock and ate lunch at a café. There wasn't anything overly authentic, so I just ate spaghetti. After lunch, we went to go shopping, but almost alll of the shops were closed until 4 or 4:30! In Spain, they take the afternoon off for a "siesta" in some towns, so that kind of sucked. After walking around a little while, we decided to try another town. We drove to Girona, but it was pouring rain, so we didn't even get out of the car. We stopped in a town near the border called La Junctia (or something like that) and I went crazy. haha. First of all, in Spain, things are much cheaper than in France because of some tax or something like that, so my host mom wanted to go to a parfum store and buy parfums for herself and her daughters and Annick and i don't even know all who. Anyways, I, of course, went with and I decided I'd buy one, too. They weren't exactly what I would call "cheap," but they were less expensive than I've ever seen designer parfum so I figured what the hell, I'll pick out one bottle. Well, I had thee hardest time deciding between the new Dior J'adore stuff and this Angel stuff, so after sniffing until my head hurt, I bought them both. hahaha. I figured I will probably not be able to buy either of those parfums again (or at least, not for a longg time), so I might as well take advantage of the situation. The parfumerie was really all we had time for, so we went back to our "bagalo" (our rental moblie home) in Canet (just outside of Perpignan). We went back into Spain again on Thursday, but this time stayed just on the border. The town itself, Le Perthus, is actually half in France and half in Spain. It wasn't rainy this time, so we got to walk walk around more and do more shopping. I didn't make any other big purchases, though. Other than that and visiting the family (and the family visiting us), we didn't do much else. It was really just a chill week. I had a great time, though! I wish I would have gotten a little more of a tan, but I'll live. HAHAHAHA! That reminds me of a little story.

Hugo, Pierre, and I were sitting on a bench while Fanny and my host mom went to the ATM. Pierre goes, "My legs are like a polar bear with all the hairs." I missed the last part, and I assumed it was referring to the color, so I go, "Me too!" They both look at me and then at my legs and Hugo laaaaughs and then askes me if I understood what Pierre had said. I replied yes, and then told him that my legs were white like a polar bear. He cleared up the hairy part for me, and then I got it. haha. I got a pretty good laugh out of that, too. I dunno. It might be one of those 'you had to be there' moments, but we found it pretty funny.

A couple other quick things.. I tried mussels "à la crème" one night. They were good for a while, but I was served an entire pot full, and after a while they got kind of blahh. May 1st was the "Fête de travail" so no one had school and most people didn't work. Basically, it's a national vacation day. It's also the day when people give flowers called "mugets" to their friends. Fanny and Hugo brought me, my host mom, and Pierre some. They smell sooo good! ah! I wish they could have come with us on the train, but they probably wouldn't have lasted. We ended up dropping them off at Big Pierre's (my host mom's ex husband) house this morning. It was kind of a thank you for letting us use one of their cars all week.

I think that covers most everything, in short. I have school again tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. My host mom read my book and wrote up a summary for me, because I just couldn't read the damnn thing. My host mom said the vocab is really tough and it's written in an old style. I'm assuming that's kind of like the stuff we read in "Old English."

Anyway, it's late, I'm tired, and I have to get up early-ish.
à demain!
<33Miranda

Word of the day: Le sable = the sand