Le Weekend

Cloisters

I was so excited about sleeping in on Saturday, but it turns out that I'm unable to sleep in. It seems like a waking-up-early habit has developed. So I was up at 8 AM on Saturday and I decided that today would be the day that I would get my packages into the system (i.e. mail them home to avoid excess baggage fees at the airport, hopefully). Well I carried them there, and they were heavier than I originally thought they would be so that was a tad difficult and I was a bit out of breath by the time I arrived at the post office. I was able to fill out the customs forms and shipping forms easily enough, but then things got difficult. For future
reference, in France a driver's license doesn't count as a form of identity and when shipping overseas you need valid proof of your identity so I ran home to get my passport. The post office was only going to be open for 45 more minutes so I had to be quick. Thankfully I returned with time to spare, but then their card-swiper machine thing wasn't able to read any of my credit/debit cards so I had to withdraw a large sum of money from the ATMs with 5 minutes left until they closed. Luckily the ATM worked and I was able to successfully send my packages on their way. Hopefully they'll arrive. Fingers crossed!

After that I headed for the beach where I spent the remainder of my day. It was great because there was a breeze by the water and it had been an absurdly hot day.

At Pont du Diable

Sunday my group and I travelled to Saint-Guilhelm-le-Désert, which is a really picturesque village that looks like it should be on House Hunters International or some related HGTV show. Some of us decided to climb up a mountain. The sun was brutal, as was the incline. The views however were amazing. We walked back down to the village and ate lunch in the center by the church/cloisters and then our professor treated us to ice-cream. After we went to Pont du Diable, which is an area where people swim. It was nice there, though a tad uncomfortable with all the river rocks. The rest of my week is going to be dedicated to this research paper I need to complete before I leave, which is basically in 1 week! I'm going to try to stay optimistic about this as my research basically consists of me eating at restaurants :)