I just got back to Tarbes after spending the weekend at home with a different english teacher, Gisele. I met her at school on friday, and after having lunch at school we went back to her village, Maubourguet. Friday afternoon we walked around the town, which has a Roman church, and then went to one of their friends' house to pick figs from his fig tree, which Gisele made into fig jam the next day. I brought a jar of it back to school with me.
Saturday I got up early to go to the market with Gisele in a neighboring town/village called Vic en Bigorre. We bought fruit and pork and then came home to finish making lunch. I am going to describe every meal I had this weekend in detail for my mother. If you aren't interested, feel free to skim over the foodie parts. Saturday's lunch began with melon, and then we had the main course which was pork roasted in the oven with tomatoes, onions and potatoes. After the pork roast we had cheese, a bunch of different kinds that I can't remember. Dessert was strawberries from the market with whipped cream, followed by coffee. After lunch, Gisele, her daughter Céline and I took off to go visit Lourdes. Most Catholics probably know that Lourdes is where Saint Bernadette had visions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto, and now the water there is supposed to have healing powers. In any case, it was packed with tourists, especially pushy old Italian ladies, although I'm told it was nowhere near as bad as it would have been during the summer. Normally, we should have been able to see the mountains but seeing as it was cloudy that day they had completely vanished from sight. After seeing Lourdes, we drove back to Maubourguet and had dinner--stuffed tomatoes.
Saturday night, Céline invited me to go out with her and some of her girl friends, which was really nice. She's only here for a week; she normally lives in Barcelona, so I didn't really think she would make an attempt to get to know me, but it was really fun going out with her and her friends. We drove into Tarbes and went to a bar near my school, where Céline informed me that I will probably run into all my students whenever I go out, so it was good to have an anonymous outing before I start teaching. After that bar closed we went to a nightclub on the other side of town, and stayed out dancing till 4am. I'm not really big on staying out until morning, but I figured it will be a while before I have the opportunity to hang out with french girls my age. My french is coming along well, I'm getting to the point where I understand pretty much everything everyone says, but when they're talking to each other they talk so fast it's hard to jump into the conversation so I pretty much just listen unless the person is talking directly to me.
Sunday, Céline and I slept until noon; I barely had time for a coffee before we sat down for lunch. We had grilled duck, which was rare and juicy and delicious, accompanied by french fries and green beans with garlic. Then cheese and then dessert, which was a tarte tatin. I always thought tarte tatin would be something really exotic but I found out that it's nothing more than an apple-upside down cake. After lunch we went to Pau, which was about an hour from Maubourguet and probably 45 minutes from Tarbes. We went there to visit the chateau, and then walked around the town a bit. It is absolutely gorgeous. It's a bit bigger than Tarbes, and there is a university there, so it would have been a really fun place to live. In any case, it's not far so I'm sure I'll go back often. The terrace of the chateau has a panoramic view of the Pyrenees, which is spectacular. There were banners of Swedish flags hanging all over town, and when I asked it turned out the the princess of Sweden is coming there next week, and that someone from the Swedish royal family called Bernadotte moved from Pau to Sweden, so the current royal family of Sweden is still named Bernadotte.
I got up early this morning to go back to Tarbes with Gisele, and finally got settled into my room at school. I had left all of my suitcases there on friday so I wouldn't have to dig through them all weekend, and after basically wearing 3 outfits for the last week, leaving everything packed away for fear of not being able to get it back into my suitcases, it was glorious to take all my crap out of my suitcases and throw my clothes all over my room. My room looked really small when I saw it on Friday because it was full of extra furniture, but once they got everything out of there it's actually quite nice. I have 2 desks, a large window facing the courtyard, an armoire, a small closet-thingy, and one very small bed.
Today I've been walking around running errands and seeing the town. I went to Monoprix to get bath stuff, and let me tell you, I have never been so overwhelmed by bath and beauty products. The french are apparently obsessed with skin care because there were about 3 aisles of creams, facials, etc. And that's only in the supermarket--there are tons of stores devoted entirely to skin care.
The mountains are absolutely beautiful today. Apparently when it snows in the mountains, it's cold here because the cold air comes down from the mountains. It snowed up there this weekend, so it was pretty cold, but now it's nice and sunny and you can see the mountains from far away, clear and covered in snow. Another weird thing about the Pyrenees is that here it's totally flat all the way to the mountains, and then they rise really quickly, which means that when you're driving out in the country and there's nothing around to block your view, you can see the whole mountain range from one end to the other. For an idea of what they looked like today, there is a good photo on the Tarbes tourism website.
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