This is HARD!

Yeah, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. Everyone is probably reading this going "Oh, Jonah sounds like he's settling in well and having a great experience." And I am. But man is it difficult when everyone around you is speaking a language that you don't speak very well and sometimes you want to scream AHHHHHHHH but then you would just have to explain yourself in another language, which is very diffiult. Or they'd just think you're that crazy American. And it's not jst the language barrier, but also being thousands of miles away from people I know really well and the fact that all my classes (with the exception of English) are in French. At least I've seen most of this stuff before so that helps me towards understanding, but man is it difficult! At least my French teacher is letting me off the hook and not making me read the 500-page novel L'Education Sentimentale.

But besides that rant on me struggling, I'm pretty good. I'm learning quickly and I've noticed I'm conversing much more easily now. I had plenty of time to practice today because I didn't have class for five hours! That's right, in France when teachers can't make it there's no substitute, you just don't have class. Both my French teacher and Sciences de la Vie and Terre (Geology and Biology) teacher were absent, so from 11-4 I ate lunch, played foosball, talked, and sat in a beautiful park in Nimes called Jardin de la Fontaine. (Come visit me and I'll show it to you).

A couple things I forgot to mention in the last blog. Both are about the creation of the drink that France loves so much: wine. There are wine "breweries" spread throughout France called Cave Cooperatives. The word cooperative is used because the grapes from the surrounding vineyards are taken to the cave (which is a building, not a cave) and made into wine. Hence, it is a cooperative effort between the cave itself and the various vineyard owners. The caves also smell very bad, so you should be happy you don't live near one. I have to hold my breath every time I ride by one. Also, the grapes are driven to the caves immediately after they are picked by these gigantic tractor-like machines that I don't know the name of. As they are driven there some of the juice from them falls onto the road and the sugar of the grapes creates something the French call coal. It's very sticky, and as I learned last bike ride, slows you down quite a bit if you try to ride through it.

Okay, c'est tout! Bonne nuit!