Another birthday and I still can't buy alcohol in the United States...

I'm not an alcoholic or anything, I swear! I just think it's kind of ridiculous...

Where was I? I think I left off before my parents' last full day here, which was Wednesday the 9th. On Wednesday it was kind of crappy weather again. It was pretty unfortunate that the week they came it was such bad weather, as it's almost always beautiful and sunny here. Almost two weeks of rain and clouds in Barcelona, France, and London can be a little depressing I think... But it could be worse if I lived in Washington state I guess.

Anyways, Wednesday we hung out around Nimes to see some of the monuments there. We walked around the Jardin de la Fontaine that I've previously mentioned, and then down to the Maison Carree, which we didn't go into because we weren't sure if we had enough time before we were supposed to have lunch with my host family, plus my host mother's uncle, aunt, and cousin. Instead we went to another popular building in Nimes - La Coupole - the mall, where my parents got me a Laguiole knife for my birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad! After a long lunch we went back to Nimes and tried to tour Les Arenes, the amphitheater, but unfortunately couldn't. In the winter it closes at 4:30 in the afternoon and they stop selling tickets at 4:00. We arrived at 4:08, so, BUMMER, we didn't get to see more than the outside. Instead we walked around the Centre Ville/shopping area and then went back to the house to hang out for the last evening.

Thursday was a mixed day for me. I had to say goodbye to my parents in the morning because I finally had to go to school on the day they were leaving. So that was a bummer, and kinda hard to say goodbye to them again as I won't see anyone again until June. So I went to school and got birthday wishes from a bunch of people, and had a long day with eight hours of class. Nothing special happened, as we had celebrated my birthday the night before with chocolate pistachio cake and dessert wine, and I realized that 19 feels exactly the same as 18.

Yesterday Benjamin invited me to go riding with his mountain biking club, which normally would be pretty difficult as I don't have a mountain bike. However, since the weather has been so crappy lately and the trails were muddy, they were going on a road ride, so I could come along. There were seven of us and we rode for a while and joked around.

That's about all I had to say. I wanted to catch up to where I was and what my parents and I did, and I finished that so for now I'm going to get off, read some more of This House of Sky by Ivan Doig and then go to sleep. I'll write again soon with some more thoughts and hopefully something interesting that happened. Chao