weekend recap

So.  All the Tarbes assistants were planning to go to Toulouse this weekend, but since the strikes are still going on, we decided not to even bother trying to get on a train.  Plus we wanted to save money.  As fun as it would have been to be in the city, it was actually awesome spending the weekend in Tarbes!

Friday I invited myself and Hadley over to Sam's to use her kitchen, so Hadley and I met at the grocery store to get stuff to make a quiche lorraine.  We made the quiche (which was delicious and super easy to make!) and drank a bunch of cheap and delicious french wine, then decided to go out.  Sam lives with Nancy and Marta, the Venezuelan and Spanish girls, in a really big apartment building with a bunch of other people, which is really cool, but unfortunately we couldn't convince the others to go out with us.  Anyway, we went out to the (only) street with bars on it, where all the high school students hang out (that will be pretty awkward once I start seeing my students at bars...) and had a drink at each of the 2 good bars.  At the second one, we found flyers for an 80s night at the club that Céline took me to a couple weeks ago, and we decided to go, because how can you pass up 80s night??  It was excellent--we somehow ended up dancing there till 5am because we were having so much fun.  Whoops!

Saturday, after sleeping in until 12:30 the three of us got lunch at the kebab place across the street from my school, and ate sandwiches in the park.  We wandered around town a bit, and something really loud was going on so we had to check it out.  It was a bunch of guys break-dancing on a stage.  Go figure!

After an exhausting half hour spent watching other people exercise, we decided we needed coffee and pastries so we went to this cute organic bakery we had been admiring in town.

After that we decided to go to this sports store to look for bikes, since they were having a sale.  It was much further away than we thought but we managed to walk there anyway, then took the bus back.  We went to Hadley's to have dinner and then went out again, this time keeping it tame by only going to 1 bar.  We called it a night early, since we were still tired from Friday night.

Pictures from our long walk

Hadley and Jessica in front of the Rex hotel, which has really cool lights at night

Today, after laying around in my room all morning, I met up with the other assistants for coffee.  There were the 3 americans, Nancy and Marta, and the German assistant, Birgit.  It's great to have met all the assistants in town, and since we're not all English assistants we have to speak French with each other (I'm actually pretty sure they all speak english really well too, but we pretend our only language in common is French since we all want to practice).  There was a fair today, for the fête de Sainte-Térèse, not really sure what the holiday is but anyway the Place Marcadieu has been overtaken by carnival rides and food stands for the past week.

(Please note the woman in the hairy coat)

We got crêpes and french fries (yummm) and then Sam, Hadley and Jessica came back to watch The Holiday in my room :)