April Part 2...?

I said I would post again soon enough, and from my subjective point of view I would argue that this still counts. I got back to the states two days ago after traveling around all of May, so there's a good bit to cover. I'm going to try to summon all of my motivation to catch you all up 100% instead of trying to break it up into two posts, which would ultimately result in my laziness taking over and another month long delay.

SO. We'll start with the end of April. After exams, everyone was pretty confused with what to do with themselves. No work? No school? What the hell can we possibly do with all of this ridiculous time on our hands!? It took us a week to figure out that we were in the south of France and had an infinite number of awesome things to do. This immediately sent us into a panic and made us try to fit every possibly activity one can find in the Languedoc region into 4 days.

It had ALWAYS been a dream of young Rachel to return to the Pont du Gard, a gignatic (maybe biggest?) Roman aqueduct. I visited this site when I was around 11 with my grandmother and all I wanted to do was be one of those cool teenagers down on the shore of the river drinking wine and laying out and being cool and old. Finally, this dream was fulfilled and it was everything I imagined it to be. Young me would be proud.

Although, admittedly, I thought I might be a little cooler at this point

Before we left for our travels, we also decided to go on one last hike. Saint-Guilhem, a beautiful, mountainous place with various hiking trails, was the obvious choice. We took the bus a town over to catch a connecting bus to Saint-Guilhem. We were in our best attempt at hiking clothes, had a months worth of food packed, and were prepared to hike the crap out of this mountain. Unfortunately, since it's France, the bus either didn't come or had an invisibility feature, and we ended up waiting for an hour before we realized it was a lost cause. Discouraged and extremely full from having eaten all of our hiking food out of sadness, we took a bus back to Montpellier and decided to just go to some park that Maggie knew about. Luckily, the park was beautiful and filled with sprawling fields and flowers. We walked around a bit, and serendipitous stumbled across a 26 km hiking trail that pretty much went around the circumference of Montpellier. The walk was gorgeous, and we were shocked that no one had suggested it to us before. The path led us by a long river, through the zoo, and into a giant field of yellow flowers. By the time we were tired, we had more or less no idea where we were. We ended up asking a family with two children how to escape this hidden nature fairyland, and they told us we had to walk about 20 minutes and then we would hit a road that we had to walk down for about 1 or 2 hours before we hit the nearest tram. This was not good news, considering we were all exhausted, but since there was no other way we headed out. When we finally hit the road, everyone was silent and the only thing on our minds was reaching Le Petit Comptoir and immediately drinking a bière pêche (might have already mentioned this since it's one of my favorite things, but it's just beer with peach syrup. I am determined to make it catch on in the States). When I was about to lay in the middle of the road and call it a day, the same couple who gave us directions drove up in their tiny car. The man quickly jumped out of the front seat and into the backseat, put one of the two kids on his lap, and they insisted that all four of us get in. We were hesitant (especially Maggie, who forgot that we had talked to these people and thought we were willingly getting in a car with complete strangers (even though, I guess, they were complete strangers). BUT that's beside the point. We all piled in and they drove us down to the nearest tram stop, where people stared in awe as we tumbled out of this veritable clown car. A few minutes later I got my bière pêche and we reflected on what was one of those magical days that only ever occur by chance.

So nature

Stephanie was too adorably excited to frolic in this field

Learning how small European cars really are

The last few days were surreal and nostalgic. On our last night before leaving on a train to go to Barcelona, a bunch of us went to the program director's house for dinner. It was sad to say goodbye to Carol, as she is an angel of a woman and the reason the program in Montpellier is so great. When we left her house, we all rode the tram to our respective stops. Stephanie and I live in the same direction and were waiting for our connecting tram line. Somewhere in the 20 minute wait, we started getting emotional to the point that we were crying and detailing all the things we would miss. The conversation took a turn for the weird when we started sobbing over how much we would miss the tram controllers (who had giving me a 33 euro fine just the week before), the homeless people and their dogs and the dog poop that lines every street. We ended up opening the bottle of wine I conveniently had with me and reminiscing for over an hour while all the French people stared in awe at our open display of emotion. There was no better way to spend my last night.