Updates

So I am sorry I need to update you all on what has happened in the past couple of days. There was not a lot going on this weekend, but a lot of little things made the weekend special. Lets start with Friday. On Friday morning I went to the corkscrew museum. Now I know what your thinking, corkscrew museum, its like the paperweight museum once you see one, you have seen them all. But this was actually pretty cool... They have the oldest French corkscrew all the way up to stainless steel ones that you can purchase. My favorite corkscrews were the ones that had dual purposes, like someone put a corkscrew into a handel of a walking cane, or a tiny little hand gun, or a pen....ect. It was so funny. Another reason we went to this museum is because the man who owns it is in contract with the students at Lacoste this quarter. We are all eligible to submit a poster for this museum. The winner receives 1000 euro which is a nice reward. So we all wanted to go to the museum to know what we were designing the poster for.

Unfortunately the weather turned really nasty in the afternoon. It was rainy and windy and horrible. A nice afternoon to be inside and write my art history paper. (And I was a good student and did just that...hahaha) On Saturday the day started out relatively nice again. I went into Apt in the morning with my friends to the market and the store. It was a fun little side trip. The market is my favorite part of Apt, because they have everything!! And there is so much to see, smell and buy, I can never decided what to do first :) But this time I had my wits about me, and I bought some local honey....actually it was lavender honey, and it was amazing!! My student rep. Brett told me that if I liked honey, I needed to try the local Lavender flavor, and I am so glad I did!!! I also bought strawberries right off the stand. They are the best biggest, reddest (is that a word?) strawberries I have ever had. They were sweet and juicy and my roommates and I ate them all in two days!!

After Apt, I finished my paper and took a walk through the valley with my friend Nicole. It was a great walk, since it has been miserable all week. We ran into two couples who were walking in the valley too. It was very funny because we had the greatest French/English conversation ever. I figured out that they have a summer house in Lacoste and they love it here. They asked about our school and what we wanted to do after we graduated and where in the US we were from. It was very cute and they tried so hard to speak English, and we tried so hard to speak French.

Sunday was sidewalk arts festival, Lacoste style. I prayed all day and night for no rain!!! We were supposed to get nasty weather today, and everyone in the village had worked so hard to make chalk and organize everything, I did not want it to be cancelled on account of rain!! But luckily the day dawned bright and WINDY!!! I walked outside and it was the first time in my life, I thought I was going to be blow over the balcony!!! It was scary, if it wasn't light out, I would have thought I was stuck in a tornado!! Sidewalk arts was fantastic! All of the village showed up for it and many people also came from surrounding areas. The judges were three local French artists. I decided to do the chef Gusteau from Ratatoullie. I thought he would be a cute character to do. I think he turned out very nice considering we were not working on sidewalks but rocky asphalt. (Everywhere else is cobblestone except for one main road and the parking lot...so thats where the festival was) Almost all the kids knew exactly who it was and even some of the French locals too. So that made me happy. It was collectively decided that I won the children's choice award (this wasn't a real award) because they all liked my square :) There were a lot of amazing pieces and I am going to post pictures here in a bit that way you can see what went on. Though French judges have there own ideas about what is "art", it was still a good day.

Right as we were packing up the sky turned black (literally within like 30 minutes!!) And the rain let loose along with the North wind, called the Mistral. (Basically the wind of the French Alps that blows into the Valley....the Mistral sucks!!) It was the worst weather since we have been here. And I holed up in the library for the rest of the day. And thats it folks, my weekend in a very large nut shell. Hope you've enjoyed!!

Here's the Pictures as promised!!

http://s302.photobucket.com/albums/nn109/sarapitz/Sidewalk%20Arts/