Tom's French Adventure: Vacances de Toussaint

France is great. Last Friday the Vacances de Toussaint (All Saints Vacation) began, and it lasts for about a week and a half. Since the vacation started cecil and I have been having a lot of fun. It actually started off on a very interesting note. I woke up on friday morning, was in the middle of taking a shower, and then my roomate cecil knocks on the bathroom door and says 'Uh tom, we have a new roomate'. I was pretty shocked, but just responded 'Uh OK!'. The school did not warn us but, apparently a spanish assistant was coming to live with us in our apartment. So Cecil and I spent the morning cleaning up and moving all of his stuff into my room - the apartment is a 2 bedroom, but they are squeezing 3 people into it. I don't mind too much, since the rent is really cheap, but it was definitely a surprise. The spanish assistant's name is Milena and she is 29, from Columbia. Her french is really good since she has already been an assistant last year, and has been living in France for a year now. She goes to university in Caen 3 days a week, and will be helping at the same school as me on the 2 other days. She is nice, but having 3 people share an apartment is a lot different/more difficult than just 2. The fridge is stuffed to the limit, the washing machine is going constantly, and the dishes get used up pretty quickly. But I suppose it's something everyone has to get used to; I'm learning how important the skill of living with people really is - especially in an apartment where english is not the language spoken most often.

About France...
So this week has been nice, because milena has been going to Caen (another big city 20 mins away) for university on monday and tuesday so we have had some time to ourselves. In fact on monday we decided we have to get out, so we went to deauville. It was only a 20 minute train ride (2.90 euros!) to the beach, and this city is basically a ritzy beach town. The thing was we didnt realize it was going to be the worst weather EVER. Instead we brought our swimsuits, a nice picnic lunch in our backpacks, and short-sleeve t-shirts. All of a sudden while we walking through town, it absolutety POURRRED and we got drenched! Out backpacks, our jeans, even the baguette that we were eating got soggy. But we just laughed and continued walking to beach. Nothing was going to stop us from swimming in the ocean. And so we did. AFter a quick baguette cheese and salami lunch, we changed into our swimsuit, and ran to the ocean and dove straight in! You can probably imagine - its very similar to the oregon coast in the winter. Something normal people just dont swim in, but we did and it was very memorable! and cold!

Just yesterday we decided to leave lisieux again and go into Caen, just me and cecil, because I discovered online that there was a soccer game on wednesday night - Caen vs. Nice. Although cecil doesnt love soccer, he was content to come along and we both got pretty into the game. Although the caen team is no where near as big as a soccer club as Liverpool, the atmosphere was still really great. We got tickets for 10 euros each, and got to sit right near the raucas crazy young hooligans who were standing up and singing songs the whole game, some with their shirts off. And it was COLLLD. I dont know how they did it. Im guessing alcohol could have been invovled. anyway the game ended 1-1 and i was very glad to watch my first european soccer game in a stadium. I hope there is many more...Since the game was late, there were no trains back to lisieux from cean. but we had already planned for that and reserved a 'cheap' hotel - it was 32 euros total, 16 each, but had only one bed and a shower in the room with no curtains. hahhaha. we opted not to shower, but the bed was fine cuz i have slept in a doulbe bed like that with 2 other guys before (college trips to san fransisco and lss vegas come to mind)!! It was a great trip, and we just got back to lisieux this morning. However, we reserved another night in the hotel for friday (tomorrow) becuase cecil bought two tickets to go to a pretty famous french/english musician who has a concert on friday night. Her name is Camille, you may have heard of her. It will be interesting because i think she makes music with her body parts, as well as of course singing, but I will just be glad to bet out of our apartment and explore more of caen again.

I guess thats it for now. Cecil and I have decided that we have to start planning trips to take and do in our 2 week vacations that we have free, because everyone says you can get really cheap tickets if you purchase in advance. since the next two week break is during the christmas holidays, i dont know if i can go anywhere with him, since i might be celebrating it in the alps with uncle john. But for februrary we our looking at train tickets to the south of france, specifically to NICE, which is supposed to be beautiful. We were thinking of spending 3 days exploring that area (day trips to Monaco and Antibes), then taking a train across the border into Italy (GENOVA). And from there,we would spend the rest of the week on this great hike that cecil found in his travel book. Its called cinque terre, and it's basically a hike (not too hard) through small Italian villages on the coast line and it looks absolutely beautiful, and it says since its not really a touristy place, its cheaper so that sounds great. Then were thinking of getting a ryan air from pisa back to paris at the end of the hike. We want to do at least one big trip each 2 week vacation (once every two months) and then smaller weekend trips via ryan air at least once a month. For the april trip we were thinking of going to scotland (edinbourgh) to visit his friend, but it could be nice to visit greece, or spain might be really beautiful. Theres plenty of time to decide though. That's it for now :). I have included some pictures.