let felicity fly: Les Vacances

Where to begin? This week has been pretty much jam-packed with adventures. First of all, my vacation in Valence was fabulous, and so were the Dawsons, the very kind family who hosted me there. I left on the train Monday late morning, and managed to accomplish everything beforehand that I needed to, including getting my new French bank card. The train first ride was uneventful, and I changed trains once in Lyon. The train station where I changed trains was actually pretty big, and I had some time to walk around and ended up buying a pair of sunglasses, which I really needed. The second train was a bit longer, but finally I got there. The train station in Valence was small, about the same as the one in Clermont-Ferrand, but not being familiar with it, I came out in the wrong place and had a hard time finding Mrs. Dawson. But finally we found each other, and we took the bus to their house.

Later that night, the Dawsons hosted a Bible study. It was, of course, completely in French, which was a stretch for me, and certainly I didn't catch everything. But it was a good experience. Then the next day, Mrs. Dawson, one of the daughters, and I, went to the open air market. Valence has a different open air market each day of the week, but the main ones are on Tuesday mornings and Saturday afternoons. After lunch, Mr. Dawson took me to see his work, which is the French version of Wycliffe. For those of you who don't know, Wycliffe is an organization that works on Bible translation around the world. I'm connected to Wycliffe in that my dad has done some work for them, and I did an internship for SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) in Dallas, which is closely connected to Wycliffe. Then we went to a Christian book store, where I got a French Bible, and Mr. Dawson went back to work while I set out exploring the town.

The Rhone River


Valence cathedral

Valence is a lovely town right on the edge of the Rhone river. It has an old cathedral, a gorgeous old town hall, a kiosk (gazebo) that's very old and pretty and so much more. Basically, I spent the whole afternoon wandering around taking pictures, and I never ran out of things to see. I won't be able to post all my pictures here, but if you want to see more, you can look at them on my Picassa album (which there is a link to it on the right). I highly recommend that everyone look at all my pictures a lot, because I recently had to pay a whole five bucks to increase my storage space so I could hold all of them. So everyone should look at my pictures to make those five American dollars worth while. After wandering around town all afternoon, I, Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, and their two lovely daughters, went out to dinner and had traditional French ravioli.

Crussol

The next morning, which was my last day in Valence, Mrs. Dawson took me to Crussol, the ruins of a 15th century castle just outside of Valence. It was a bit of a climb, but well worth it! It was so beautiful! We explored the castle for most of the morning, and then we went back for lunch. After lunch, Mrs. Dawson took me to the nearby village of Chabeuil, which is a cute tiny old village. We walked around a bit, took some pictures, and found the main cathedral, which was very lovely.

Then my train left around three. My trip back home was uneventful, and I arrived quite tired. Thursday I slept in, and then set out to find Notre Dame du Port, the oldest cathedral in Clermont-Ferrand. And find it I did! But you'll have to wait for pictures, because for some reason Picassa's not letting me upload any more right now. Yesterday very little happened besides sleep and homework, and today I slept in, wrote a paper (in French of course), went shopping and came home with a new book (Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, it's for school), a baguette, more nutella, and wasabi peas. And that brings us to now.

This week, my family will come visit me! This means my parents and both sisters, Haley and Lauriana, will be coming. They'll stay in Clermont-Ferrand for three days before going on to Prague where my dad has a conference. I may end up skipping my class on Tuesday because it's the same time they'll be coming in on the train, not speaking any French and not knowing their way around. So I'll have to get them checked into their hotel, and then we can have fun for three days! Well, kind of two and a half, since I have classes on Thursday, but Wednesday is my day off, so that works out perfectly. More later!