Tarbes Day 2: good news all around!

I am staying with the English English teacher Anne (not a typo), and her english parents are staying with us as well.  So I get the best of both worlds, being able to speak english but also french, as her husband is french.  They don't actually live in Tarbes, but in a really really small village about a half hour away, so I'm going into town with Anne when she starts work and coming back in the afternoon with them.  We're up in the hills opposite the Pyrenees.

These are several cool things I have done or found out:

• I can in fact live at my school, which will not only save me a ton of money, but it's right in the center of town (not that you can't walk the town in 40 mins)
• The tallest mountain in the Pyrenees is called the Pic du Midi, and is about an hour from Tarbes.
• The school often takes the students on ski trips on Wednesday afternoons, and I could go with them as a chaperone.  This means I will have to learn how to ski.  Oh, my life is so hard.
• I'm re-reading the Millenium trilogy (girl with the dragon tattoo, etc) in French.
• Everything is waaaay cheaper here than in Paris.  I got my whole lunch yesterday for less than a cup of coffee costs in Paris.  There is also a store called "c'est 2 euros" as in, it's 2 euros, as in the tarbes version of a dollar store.  LOL
• Everyone is REALLY nice here.  I have never found Parisians to be particularly unpleasant, but people are even nicer in the south.
• There are a disproportionate number of parks/gardens for how small this town is.  The big one, le Jardin Massey, has palm trees and flowers (still summer!) AND peacocks.
• There is a thing going on till the end of september called "la foire au vins", which is basically a big wine sale so they can get last year's stuff out to make room for this year's stuff.
• Tarbes is hosting an annual international military music festival in October.  Not that I'm into military music (is anyone?) but it's just a curiosity...

Anyway, things are going well here, I'm happily being taken care of by French/English people, complete with kettle-putting-on, my favorite thing EVER.

Bisous!