Things are going well here! Two weeks of classes are over. This weekend we're going to Avignon. After this next week, I have a week break, so some friends and I are going to travel Italy a little bit. It's gonna be fun times! Some recent adventures we’ve had:
Dimanche, le 26 août, 2007
All of the American students (there’s about 100 of us) here in Montpellier had a scheduled excursion to Carcassonne, which is about a two-hour bus ride away. It was all done through the IEFE, the Institute for Exchange Students. Apparently, the other bus was cold, but I don’t know if our air just wasn’t working right or if our bus driver didn’t want to turn the air on very high, but it was hot on that bus. But it wasn’t completely unmanageable, I managed not to get sick, and after two hours we were in Carcassonne, which is a medieval French city that has been restored to it’s 13th century self. It was daggone hot outside. We walked around the castle, then had about a two-hour break for lunch, during which I got to see the church there (it’s gorgeous! And it has one of the oldest organs in Europe). Then we all were so privileged to be able to go so a reenactment of 13th century European jousting. We were sitting on metal bleachers in full sun for about an hour and a half. We were sweating galore, and I definitely got sunburned. The jousting finally finished, and hot and tired, we went back to the buses to start the drive home. Our bus driver wouldn’t start the bus before we were actually leaving, so we all stood outside, where at least there was a little bit of breeze, and sweated til we left. It was still really hot on the bus but someone had opened the ceiling window vent things, so there was air coming through and it was alright.
After about an hour, the bus pulled over, and the bus driver got off. We in the back had no idea what was going on, and since the bus had been turned off and now there was no air moving, it started getting hotter and hotter in the back. After about ten minutes, it was no exaggeration at least 100 degrees and we decided that whether or not we were allowed to, we were getting off. As it turns out, the bus had an oil leak, so from then on we would have to stop every 6 kilometers to refill the oil tank. The bus driver was able to call another bus to come meet us, but it was going to be about 50 minutes before he could get there, and we would have to drive a little ways to meet him. When you got back on the bus, you could feel yourself walk into a wall of heat. We sat on the 100 degree bus for about 15 minutes as we drove to meet the other bus, and even in that short a period of time, there were several people on the bus about to get sick. We finally reached the spot, which fortunately had a gas station so that we could get ice cream, and then we stood outside in the sun, which was still cooler than in the bus, and waited for another bus for like 45 minutes. After that bus arrived, we still had about a 45 minute ride back to town, from where I would need to walk about 10 minutes and then take a tram for another 30 minutes to get home. I was so exhausted by the time got home that I went to bed at like 9.30.
Mardi, le 28 août, 2007
Two days later, the IEFE had arranged for everyone to go to the beach. One bus was leaving at 2, then another would come back for anyone who wanted to go at the 3. Most of the UNC kids signed up for the 3oclock bus, along with five or six Minnesota kids. For all of the IEFE excursions so far, the buses had picked up the Minnesota kids in front of the dorms they were staying in and then swung by the front gate of the school to pick up us UNC kids, which is a little easier for us, since the university is like 30 minutes from most of our homes. So we met at the gate, all of us before 3, and waited for the bus. And waited for the bus. After about half an hour our graduate assistant was making jokes about how everything runs late in the south of France. After almost an hour, she decided to call one of the assistants, who was already at the beach, to see what was going on. So she called and found out that the 3oclock bus had come and gone, and that what had happened was that it stopped at the dorms and then another assistant who was on the bus, despite the fact that like 20 people had signed up for that bus and only like 5 were there, said that they weren’t going to make a second stop and that they were just going. So they left us there. I’ll be honest, we were pretty livid. At first we were just going to play in the fountains in another part of the city, but then they called back and said the bus was going to come back for us, and that we should be able to leave for the beach by about 4.30, though we’d still have to come back at 6 like had been scheduled. It’s about a half an hour to the beach, so we ended up getting there around 5 and leaving at 6. So we did get to go, but it was an ordeal. And I don’t even like the beach!
We’ve decided we like France, but not the buses!
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