Way too much time has been passing between posts. I’ve been meaning to write something for a while but I got caught up in planning my February break which led to planning weekend trips which led to spending a lot of my free time looking up cheap flights online. And then midterms started, which weren’t exactly stressful except that they sparked feelings of “holy shit I’ve already been here for over a month” and “this is going to go by so fast,” which made it even tougher to sit down and write something.

I am currently en route to Bordeaux, where I will be spending the next two days before continuing on to Pamplona, Madrid, and Morocco. It’s going to be a whirlwind of a trip and I will have a lot to write about, so be looking for more posts in the near future.

Anyway, the last few weeks have been alternatively exciting and tranquil, so I’m sorry if this is kind of vague and all over the place. The coolest thing that happened was a day trip to Saint Malo and Mont Saint Michel on the Normandy coast. The first is a small, fairly unexciting town notable mainly for its striking coastline and a medium-sized chateau. The second, however, is an old monastery on an island off the coast of Normandy surrounded by an artificially quaint tourist town and is one of the more awe-inspiring sites in France.

Perched on an island and jutting out of a large expanse of flat rock, water, and quicksand, this chateau is imposing and magnificent, and, in seeing it from a distance, I was suddenly reminded of the incredibly long and varied history of the country in which I am living. The visit brought back the excitement I felt during my first week here and an awareness of how lucky I am to be having this experience in such a sweet place, both of which have stuck with me in the two weeks since that visit.

Other than that, things have been pretty low-key, characterized mostly by a few nearly life-changing culinary discoveries (such as the ker-y-pom and the tartine au chocolat), a decent amount of clubbing and bar hopping, and just hanging out with friends. I’ve started rock climbing and will start kayaking once I get back from break, but even with that I have had a lot more leisure time than I’m used to. Lunch breaks here are generally at least two hours long, university classes usually meet once a week and aren’t nearly as structured or work-intensive as classes back home, and extra-curricular activities are much less common. People seem to spend most of their time just sitting around and talking or slowly flipping through a newspaper while sipping an espresso.

This slow-paced lifestyle bothered me at first, but I’m gradually adjusting to it. I have come to appreciate spending time every day reading or walking around the city, discovering new places and remembering that, though I’ve been here for a month, there is still a lot left for me to see.  That, combined with my heightened awareness of how awesome study abroad is and how quickly it is going to go by, has given this experience the novelty, fun, and leisure of an extended vacation, but one in which I have the time and the means to really dive into a new environment and, if you’ll excuse the cheesy metaphor, learn to swim.

That being said, I am really excited to get out of the city for a while and see other places. So, since the vineyards outside my train window are much more interesting than my computer screen, that’s where I’m going to end this post. A bientôt.