Questions.

After spending far too much time trying to figure out the quickest way to Montpellier from Marvejols, I resigned myself to the 4.5hour train ride through the coastal city of Beziers, not a bad view at all. As always, I was surrounded by punk French teenagers who blast music and smoke cigarettes at every stop of the train; c'est ma vie. All in all, it was a relaxing ride. I got into the city around 5 and booked it to our favorite juice bar where these hilarious guys make us fresh juice while doing magic tricks and playing the didgeridoo. Definitely my favorite place in Montpellier.

The weekend was the full of meeting new assistants, exploring the city and getting to know each othe rbetter. Everyone is finally getting apartments, so we had house warming parties each night. As always, we were quite the multinational group, or as my Maltese friends say "maltinational." At my friend Lisa's apartment we had Americans, French, Algerians, Greeks, Mexicans, Maltese, Germans, Austrians, Colombians and British party goers. Our only common language amongst us was French and occasionally English or Spanish. It was a great time!

Sunday was anther beautiful day spent at the beach. It is gettin a little colder, or so I'm told, but it's still in the high 70s! It was quite windy at the beach so I didn't fully go swimming, but we stayed until sunset and had a great time. After that I had to stay in the youth hostel in Montpellier because my train was at 7am and i didn't want to burden anyone with my presence on their couch. The hostel was an absolute animal house as were the roads that surrounded the building. It was perfectly safe, but definitely not perfectly clean. I showered at a friends place so I wouldn't be subject to hostel showers and I went right to bed as to avoid the rowdy crowd. In my room, which was made up of two bunk beds there was a woman... a 60 year old woman. In a youth hostel. It was odd, but she was, of course, very nice. I guess I just figured there was an age limit!

So this morning, I took the 7am bus and train to Marvejols to arrive at 10am. I saw the same kids from last week, who recognized me immediately and smiled and waved. Upon arrival, I nearly ran to my school to make it to class at 10:30. The teachers here are so flexible, it's incredible! But I got there on timem thankfully. I made it to class to answer more of the same questions, my name, age, etc. It wasn't until my second class that things got more interesting. The following ensued:

Student (Hossni): Do you like pizza?
Me: Yes, of course!
Hossni: Do you like rugby?
Me: Yes, I used to play rugby
Hossni: Do you like to cook?
Me: Yes, I love to cook.
Hossni: Ah bonne, bonne femme. (translation: oh good. good woman.)

Thank god I'm marriage material for this young man of 12 years. But, the day got even better. My next class had the oldest kids in the school, so their English was much more advanced. They had a list of questions for me, but one boy, Guillaume, was much more curious:

Guillaume: Have you ever been on, what do they call it, spring break?
Me: Yes, I went to Florida one year and North Carolina last year.
Guillaume looks absolutely and utterly shocked and horrified. We move on to another question.
Guillaume: Wait. You've been on spring break? It's like, a huge party in the south, non?
Me: Well, I mean, it is vacation for students, so we like to go to the beach, it really depends where you go. Where I went, it was about relaxing and being in a warmer climate.
Guillaume: But, isn't it a huge rave? Don't people die?
Me: What? No... how do you know about spring break?
Guillaume: Well, I know on spring break that what you do is wake up, go to the beach, drink all day, go to raves and finish your day with sex.
Me: Silence. Laughter. WHAT??? No, Guillaume, that's not what it's like... I mean, that's not what it was like where I was... where did you hear about this?!
Guillaume: I've seen a documentary. It's what you all do, non?
Me: Alright, well, spring break isn't like that. I don't do that. Oh my god.

The rest of the day went on without any other hugely ridiculous question. Though in my class, with the youngest students of the school, a couple of students brought me presents. One brought me a picture of an airplane, another brought me brochures about Marvejols and another pictures of her farm with captions in the old language of the region, Occitan. The best gift was definitely the bit of tin foil filled with dried mushrooms. Apparently mushrooms are really expensive in France, but they grow naturally around here. JACKPOT.

Other than that, my day ended with a bunch of boarding students inhaling flan in the cafeteria at dinner, which promptly came out of their noses. Pretty average night. It's their bedtime now, so they're starting to calm down as they run by my door yelling "goooood nighhhhhht."