The end approaches.

I have been very lazy about updating this blog lately. It is my last weekend in Angers and it is raining so this is as good a time as any to write about the past month.

The weekend after my parents visited Angers I thought I might try to meet them in the south, but I had too much homework to do so I stayed in Angers.  I was supposed to film members of our group at the market on that Saturday morning, but it rained and no one went.

The week after that was our Ascension holiday. Classes were cancelled for that Thursday and I left Angers on Tuesday morning with Marco. We went to Luxembourg to stay with his parents. He had been telling me all semester about how much I would like Luxembourg and I was not disappointed. We arrived in the late afternoon and after dinner we joined several of his friends and went to Maastricht, Holland. I’ll let you, reader, assume what it was we went to Holland for. The next day we slept late and Marlisa joined us in Luxembourg.  Marco showed us around Luxembourg City for a while and then his friends called and invited us to go camping. We drove to the north, Luxembourg is not a very big country and to get the northern part of it only took about an hour.  There are a lot of Portuguese people in Luxembourg and one of their traditions is to camp in the hills in the north on Ascension. They make some kind of pilgrimage there. Marco is Italian, but he has a lot of Portuguese friends. None of them were really there for the purpose of making a pilgrimage though. Camping with them was very similar to camping in Texas in that they grilled a lot of meat ever couple hours. We probably ate four meals of just sausage and bread in the 14 hours we were at the campsite. We didn’t leave the camp site until about 7 pm the next day and I pretty much immediately went to sleep once we got back to Marco’s house because I did not sleep very comfortably in the tent.  The next day we woke up and got a train to Brussels. Everything was closed because of the holiday but we walked around for a while and saw the Grand Place. Brussels is a really pretty city and I need to go back for longer one day.

Last weekend I met Melissa and her friend Pete in Paris. We stayed in Montmartre and I got to play tour guide because neither of them had been to Paris before. Since we were not there for very long we did a lot of site seeing in a very short amount of time. Melissa came to Angers two days after I got back and we got to spend more time together. It was fun and I am really glad I got to hang out with Melissa. We spent a lot of our time talking about Austin, our friends and restaurants that we miss. We decided that in the fall we are going to have a Prom party at our house, and it is going to be the best party ever.

St. Ed’s took our group out for a big going away dinner at a really nice restaurant in the old city. Benoit made a toast in French and it was a good end to our time here, although most of us are still in town until next weekend.

On 5 June Emily and I leave Angers for Berlin, Prague, Florence and Rome. On the 18^th we will take an overnight train to Angers, via Milan and Paris. We will spend 2 hours in Angers on the 19^th just to pick up our bags and then return to Paris where we fly home from the next day.  I am conflicted about returning home but once again I am too lazy to write about here. I know it will be good to get home and that I will surely miss France.