La Dernière Semaine

Here's a strange occurrence, brought upon by my own and a friend's awkwardness. So Monday evening we decided to get pizza at this little shop with maybe three tables out front. We order our pizzas and they make them in their small wood burning pizza oven behind the counter and we take them and sit down at one of the tables. We open our pizza boxes and realize it's just one round pizza; they haven't been cut or anything. We discussed whether or not we should ask for knives, but for some reason decided that wouldn't go down too well. We looked around as we debated whether to just eat the pizzas calzone style or rip them with our hands and we came to the conclusion that the area in which we were seated was for customers who were waiting for their pizzas. Why? I don't know. Maybe not having knives threw us off our game. Perhaps it made the sitting area feel unwelcome. I have no idea. Sometimes these things are inexplicable. So we left and we were just
wandering the streets of Montpellier looking for somewhere to eat our pizza, which is more difficult than you might think. We passed a bus bench by, I have my standards, and we finally decided to sit on the wall next to

In Nîmes

the sidewalk in front of an apartment complex where we proceeded to eat our pizza, wondering why we didn't just ask for knives. I mean, we had just read a story claiming every French person has a knife on them so there really was no excuse. Anyways we were well into our pizzas when an SDF (French homeless man) walked by and asked for some pizza. This guy was wearing no shoes and had a flower/feather in one of his hands... My friend having eaten enough pizza, told this SDF that she was full, was a British student (she's American), and to please take the rest of her pizza... and yet we couldn't ask for knives. He actually only took a small piece, and the olive. Then we left. Ah, Montpellier...

That was my Monday.

Paul Signac

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were pretty uneventful as I spent most of those days writing my research paper on the globalization and Americanization of French cuisine. Friday we were allowed to skip class and most of us went to the Musée Fabre to see the Paul Signac expo. I thought his paintings were really nice and colorful. Especially the St. Tropez ones. Friday night was also our last night to experience les Estivales so we went to that and got food, ending the night with delicious Nutella crêpes.  It was a bit sad leaving everyone, but most of us will be back at W&M this fall.

Saturday was a day of travel. My host mom was off hiking in the Alps that weekend, so we had our last dinner together on Thursday and then Saturday I took the tram to Gare St. Roch, boarded the TGV train to Charles de Gaulle, and successfully made it to my hotel. The hotel I'm staying at is much
nicer than the one I chose in London, meaning that there is an elevator and there is enough room for me to open my suitcase fully and stand beside it :) I'm probably going to spend the rest of my evening repacking and then tomorrow I fly from Paris to Canada to Philly, then I'll finally be home!