Time flies...

already, it's been another week gone by - and so much has happened.

Classes are going well. The french thing is still an issue, but there is general comprehension of whatever is occurring in class. This semester I'm taking two math courses - Integration and Topologie, a translation course and then four french lit fourses !! crazy! what happened to being a science student avoiding litterary thought!?! don't know. But so far I'm enjoying it. The majority of profs have recognized the struggle of studying in a foreign country and have lightened the load that I'll have ot carry. There is usually an expected oral commentary on a text, but after one brief conversation they realized that that would be too much torture for them, so I don't have to do any! which is great - because i really couldn't fill 35 mins with nonsense about how the character felt when her life ended as he knew it. Today acutally, I had my first french test - integration - it went well. The only problem being proofs, but they've never been my forté.

On Saturday, Melissa and I went to the smaller village Puy du Velay (65km away) where they were holding the annual Fete du Roi de l'Oiseau (King of the Bird Party). It was actually a medieval festival. I really enjoyed it. Everywhere you looked there were people dressed up (or down) in renaissance garb - even the attendees were in costume. There's a small chapel up on one of the two really random mountains in the town. We climbed up and got some amazing photos of the city from a bird's eye view. On the way up, a random old guy made small talk about the fesitval, where we were from, etc (the usual once they hear the non french accent). He then took us for a mini plastic cup of medieval wine. They used to add spices - it is actually really good. anyways, so we hung out and talked about his life story and the history of St Etienne. Our ville was a mining town and has maintained the small working town attitude and atmosphere. Then we were off exploring again.

There was so much to see. Not only were there the exibits and performances for the festival, but the city is much older than St Etienne and therefore the buildings and cobble stone streets were something to really admire. In our exploring we founda fromagerie (cheesemaker). It was really neat as they made the rind/crust of the cheese using small living organisms which he called . They looked like sand, but smelled not so cool. Later we had a traditional medieval meal - potatoes, onions, sausage and pork chunks all boiled together. It was actually really tasty. When we were walking away, there was a blonde err man headed in the other direction. (seeing as most of the city had been partying and partaking of this delicious wine since noon, when he turned around and started asking us where we were from, we were under the impression he was not so sober). It turns out he went on exchange last year - to Calgary - ha! He seemed like a good guy giving us his contact info. We're going to get together to practice our french and his english. Besides, he said he has friends.

Sunday, we attended the ERF again and chilled for the rest of the day, enjoying the lack of something scheduled tasks.