Sunshine in January... does a body good.

An interesting thing happens between blog posts, it seems. Either nothing happens so you start mentioning that you would like to write about small things that amuse you or frustrate you, or a lot happens and you want to do it justice, so you put it off until you realize you should just write it anyway. This also is the case when a good friend emails you. You want to respond with something good, but you end up just living your life ad realizing that nothing big is really going on at the moment and you end up just writing a very bland and very belated response.

CouchSurfing is something I have known about for a while now, but we finally did it and had a wonderful experience! Kelsey spoke to a guy in Nimes who was willing to host us for a long weekend. This guy, Thomas, had dated and married an American assistant (who is currently in Grad school in NY) and was extraordinarily helpful because of this. In fact, Thomas wasn't even there for the weekend, but instead visiting his family in Grenoble! We were given a key to a real kitschy flat within spitting distance of the Roman arena and told to have a good weekend... and we did.

The first night was perhaps the most colorful as we didn't have the time, or energy perhaps, to go see any of the town, but instead made dinner at home and then, after some American television shows (Gossip Girl) and three bottles of wine, we went to an Irish pub. The evening started off slowly enough, but quickly declined/mounted into a lot of laughs. I suggested that Kelsey go talk to a young man who was pretty cute. He had a striped shirt and glasses and he was carrying a number of drinks back to his table. I told Kelsey to go ask him about what he liked to do in Nimes and to introduce herself. This she did... then sucked his face all evening.

Denim was originally created in Nimes. Those bluejeans you own, well Levi Strauss lived here and made his pants. In French "from Nimes" is de Nimes. So there you have it... denim. Well I had some trouble remembering the name of this new beau of Kelsey's. He was very nice, very outgoing, but I quickly tagged him with the nickname of Denim which led to Bluejeans.

Well Bluejeans was a cool guy and I told him that Kelsey would call him the following day once my older brother role was allowed to come out and play. So we did call him... or Kelsey called him, and we met for a picnic in the park. The picnic turned into driving to another town by the name of Uzes, and having coffee there because the Bonbon Museum was closed. He drove us back and we had a series of nice conversations throughout the day. Kelsey did not kiss him goodnight.

We had made plans to drive to the Camargue, a delta region of France where there are wild horses and flamingos, but, like I said, Kelsey didn't kiss Bluejeans goodnight, so we may have lost his willingness to drive us an hour away at 1.71 a litre of gas. He did meet us for a drink though, and we watched some soccer together at another pub.

Nimes itself is a gorgeous town that begs to be returned to. We left snow on the ground in Valence to sit in the sun over our picnics, coffees and monument tours. It was a perfect getaway from a wintry Valence, and will be even better when the weather is even nicer. The monuments were on a scale of really cool to... seriously? I would never have paid for that! but then we, of course, did not pay for any of the monuments because if you can prove that you live in Nimes, you need not pay entrance fees. With a fake document, signed by Thomas, we walked right in... well Kelsey was pretty funny in her apparent refusal to speak in French, or even English to the lady at the first monument who didn't know what Kelsey was handing her. That slowed things down, but free is free!

Coming back to Valence was horribly depressing. We passed through a tunnel on our way back north and, upon coming out the other side, we were suddenly faced with dreary weather and snow on the ground. We went back home and made some dinner with the warm sun still on our minds and on our sun-kissed noses (I was proud to have a peeling nose on Wednesday).

This weeks classes were uninspired and uninspiring. Want to share any ideas you might have? I am only working three days a week this semester... and that's pretty sweet, but not spending too much time at school leaves you thinking about time spent away from school and not your students... unless you're Kelsey. Did I mention that Bluejeans was only 17? Maybe 20, but I can't even remember his name let alone whether he could legally drive.

Until the next adventure... or bout of inactivity.

- Patrick