3 Month Mark

It's official - I am a resident of France. I have officially been here longer than 3 months, the limit one can stay as a tourist without having to obtain a visa. I have a french bank account, a french social security number, a french phone number, and a french health insurance card! I live here. I live in France.

"What did you do after you graduated college?"

"Oh, I just lived in France for a while..."

I take the bus. I walk around the shops. I run errands. I talk to strangers in a foreign language and people ask me where my accent is from. I speak another language on a daily basis. I hang out with my amazing European friends. I much on cheese and eat baguettes every day. I wear stripes and a baret and smoke cigarettes (kidding about the last one, of course).

I live in France.

The past three months have been such an amazing adventure and experience. Being TRULY away from home for the first time in my life - living somewhere other than LA. Not being able to run home whenever I felt like it. I've definitely felt the repercussions of that in the form of homesickness, but I also now get to call France home as well.

If you haven't heard, I will be coming back to LA for 2 weeks in January to visit. Then I'll be going back to France. I'll be going home to France? LA is my vacation? It's a weird concept to wrap my mind around... but I can't wait.

When I first booked the ticket, I felt a huge relief. I will admit, I am homesick. But as the date approaches, I find myself realizing that I will miss France and all it comes with. Two weeks will be the perfect amount of time. A nice refresher to refuel on family time and feed on the familiar (literally feed, I am so sick of eating nothing but French food).

After a hard bought of homesickness around Thanksgiving, I'm finally falling into the groove of things here. Last weekend, for example, was amazing. After work Saturday, I spent a cozy night watching movies with friends. Sunday morning, Giulia, my Italian friend, picked me up and we picked up Steph - who lives in Le Beausset. It's a tiny village up in the mountains north of Toulon. It was such a gorgeous drive - total french country-side. From there, we went to go visit Mary, a fellow American, in her town of Belgentier. It was even farther and smaller than Steph's village, but well worth the trip. It was quaint and very French, which I was thankful for. It was my first time meeting Mary, who is from Boston, and it was SO nice having another American around!!! You would not believe how much trouble me and Steph have communicating some times haha British English and American English are two completely different languages. So it was fun to compare them both all afternoon. Mary showed us around for a bit:

Pretty river running under the bridge in town.

HILARIOUS cat that sat in a flower pot and stared at us the whole time we walked around town.

*Fun Fact: Behind the cat is a giant sequoia tree that some American came and planted. I forgot to take a picture of it though...

view of the quaint little streets

park.

After walking around a bit, Mary drove us up to Sollies - a town east of where we were that overlooked the villages below. Amazing views:

There was also some neat castle thing behind us:

Afterwards we went back into town and had a coffee at one of 2 bars in the village (both located right next to each other). We ended up staying and chatting for almost 3 hours, much to the entertainment of the rest of the patrons I can imagine. Before leaving a random BASEBALL TEAM walked in for drinks. Weird for several reasons. 1) Baseball is basically non-existant in France. 2) Of all cities to find baseball, why in a tiny town in the countryside?? Regardless, it was an entertaining way to end our evening :)

Instead of going home, I went over to Steph's house to hang out. I really missed that, just hanging out a friend's house. Since we all live with the families we work for, most of our free time is spent blowing off steam at a bar or restaurant...so it's rare to just hang out and watch TV - which is exactly what I did at Steph's. We ate cheese, and homemade bread, and salad, and fruit, and sweet potato while watching some hilarious British sitcoms courtesy of Steph :)

It was a perfectly simple weekend.

Now enjoy a video of the view pictured above. Soundtrack provided by the lovely Edith Piaf and cameo by the lovlier Steph Wood.