Vaucluse

So I had to wake up and go to the last school trip yesterday. It was kind of a total disaster. The regions and places that we went were really pretty and I liked them, but the atmosphere was pretty terrible. And I mean really terrible. I was trying to be nice.

It started off alright where I just was so tired from going to the movies the night before that it was really crazy to have to wake up so early. It pretty much sucked. Plus because I hadn’t bee able to take a shower the day before and it was too early to do it this morning I had gross hair. I didn’t like it. I miss my shower! Then after that I had breakfast and talked to Madame. I didn’t have enough time to really straighten up my room. It is kind of a disaster now. I need to take some time and sort my stuff… I’m just running out of space to put it. I need my other bag! Oh well it comes on Friday. 

Then I had to rush and get to the hotel to meet the bus. I got there three minutes early and no one else was on the bus or anything. Then one of the adults was like don’t worry they are down there. All four other people. I was like kay I mean I knew we were having a low turnout but WOW. It was pretty crazy. So then we waited a while and some more people showed up. When we finally got on the bus and were on our way, we were a total of 22 students. Of the 140 students that were “required” to be there for the “mandatory” trip. Yep. Shows how much the students really like these trips. I should have skipped again but I didn’t…

On the bus we started playing the heads up game on the bus which I was terrible at and didn’t know anything. But it was kind of fun to watch them play it anyways. Then we got yelled at for talking at a normal level. And then we got yelled at for playing music which we weren’t. It was pretty stupid. Also because it’s not like we were being obnoxious but we were playing at a pretty normal level… We weren’t very happy. We also drove through the Valley of Hell. Which of course provoked us all to exaggerate how we were in hell with each other. But I’m sure that Hell would be a lot worse than that because it was kind of nice looking with all the rocks but I bet it was freezing out. 

 So our first stop was the Carrieres de Lumieres in Les Baux-de-Provence. It was kind of a cool as they projected art onto all of the walls and the floor of the quarry. It was super windy and also cold there because we were up in the Alpines. The monument was really pretty because they project art onto all of the walls and the floor of the quarry. These quarries were dug to extract the white limestone used to build the castle and the town of Les Baux. In 1935, the economic competition of modern materials led to the closure careers. After that the quarries were abandoned until the 60’s when they were rediscovered by Jean Cocteau. It wasn’t really until the 70’s though that they really started using it as a monument. It was really hard to take pictures of but I did get a few decent ones, taking pictures of art is pretty hard. The theme of the monument changes pretty often but when we were there it was the Artists of the Mediterranean. It was pretty amazing to walk around because they would take the original images and sometimes include animations that enhanced the artwork. They also accompanied it with music which made it a lot more interesting to walk around and see. The show lasted about forty minutes and was on a constant repeat. 

We got kind of bored of that place pretty fast. I did as well because though it was cool, I am not super interested in art and I wasn’t very excited to be there. It also didn’t help that right before we went in they had us take a vote about whether we would afterwards, go hike up the mountain to see the destroyed castle or to actually have lunch today. We were all like… WHAT? We weren’t planning on having lunch? And they were like “uhhh no we weren’t really planning on it”. We thought about going to this tiny town with a population of 400 people and because it is Sunday literally everything would be closed. WHAT?! Who decided that would be a good idea?! For some reason even though the castle was way out voted by the having lunch they decided to go through with the castle plan. Thankfully though it was closed so we couldn’t go there anyways. I got in a tiff with Patrick though because he was like I can eat anytime I can never se the castle again. And I was like… Seriously? I do not want to wait until 8pm tonight before I eat something. That is ridiculous and would be so cranky. But he just had to have the last say on his opinion and I was just like whatever after debating it with him for two minutes. Finally I was just like okay I’m done with this conversation and walked away. 

After the lights we went to the restrooms and I got designated to be the last person out of the building. Then we played some more of our game before we got back on the bus. Gina almost got sick on the bus so she got sent to the front of the bus. I also gave her some Tums to help her stomach. I would have offered her a motion sickness pill but I had taken the last one that morning. When we got on the bus we got told to not talk while they were talking. Which I ca understand and we wouldn’t talk while they were but it was really annoying because they would say everything in French twice. And then the same things in English twice. And it was just like yeah we heard you the first four times we got it. It was a bit ridiculous. 

Then we arrived in the city of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue which is a small town in the Vaucluse department of Provence. It is a really cute town that has a lot of canals and foot bridges as well as water wheels. I saw about four water wheels which still work. Though I haven’t been to Italy the town reminded me of it a lot because of all the bridges and canals. The town is also famous for its antique shops and antiques market that happen on most Sundays. It also has a lot of waterside café’s and restaurants though most of them were closed with it being winter. I heard that there are usually more people there during the summer time but with it being winter the tourism season is mostly over. We were there on the market days so I got to walk around and look at all the different shops. 

When we got off the bus here Cassandra was in a lot of pain because during the drive the bus went over a bump and it smacked her already hurt ankle on the floor of the bus. She couldn’t walk and was crying and decided that she was going to just sit on the bench the whole time we were there. She was really miserable and I thought she needed to leave or get more meds or something because she was just in a lot of pain. If we had been in the US I would have insisted on urgent care with how bad it was. So not knowing what I specifically could do for her I decided to go to the adults and tell them what happened. They said they would go take care of it and insisted that I leave to go into the town. I figured they were going to have it checked out. 

We went and got pizza at a place and then ate it by one of the canals. It was pretty and naturally with so many canals there were a lot of ducks. Gina fed them a bit. We walked through the market and Sally bought a ring. I bought an apple and then dropped my wallet and had to pick up the coins. I had dropped it in the attempt to catch the apple the guy had dropped to keep it from bruising. I may have had a bad first instinct. After that Gina took some pictures of flowers and then we headed off in search of a bathroom. They didn’t like the public bathroom which was to me a no surprise. Bathrooms here are not anything like in the US where they are decently clean. Here they are more often than not super gross, no toilet seat or paper, and also without soap or sometimes even a sink most of the time. Bathrooms are not a right here and are not really a concern. We went there and then they decided against using them. So then they went towards the road with no sign of life on it so I didn’t follow them. Then they came back and I ducked into a store while they debated what to do. Then they followed me into it when I was on my way out. So I ran across the street and found my white elephant gift for here. I already have my white elephant gift for back home. Though as a result of tonight I don’t know if I will be able to do it… :-/ But then we went and sat by the river until it was time to get back on the bus. 

When we got back on Casandra wasn’t thee and we assumed she got sent home but then when we asked they said no that she had wanted to stay. I was a bit suspicious about that. She likes to pretend she is fine even though it is clear that she isn’t. I called her and she said she was on her way and then hung up. When she got on the bus we asked her what happened and she yelled at us saying that because one of us told what happened she had to walk around the village instead of si and now she hated us all. I was like… I didn’t say anything. And I honestly thought I was doing something good for her. If it was really that bad she should of told them when they asked her that it was. And is. But I knew not to take it personal and that it was just the pain talking. 

The next stop was the Fontaine de Vaucluse. This was also a really small town with not very many inhabitants at all. The town is built around a spring in a valley at the foot of the Vaucluse Mountains. The spring is the source of the river in the town we had just been in which is the Sorgue River. The spring is the largest in France and is also the fifth largest in the world. I would have liked to get a really good look at it but because we are on the schools insurance policy during these trips they didn’t let us actually see the spring. They only let us get to where the water level would be in the Spring. I thought it was kind of silly to hike us up there only to tell us that we couldn’t actually see the spring. But I guess that the water is so cold and so deep that if you didn’t die from the fall or drowning, you would die from freezing to death as the water is extremely cold.
 

Then after we did that we walked back into town with the promise of going to a French Resistance museum and if we had time a Paper Mill… We were NOT thrilled about either of those two options and after all the crappy respect we had gotten all day we were just like seriously? I ws really not in a learning mood and was really tired. LaSia and I just kind of took the take of if we have to be there we might as well make it fun for ourselves. We pretended to be super interested in the stupid things in the museum. I found a copy of an electric bill. That was pretty great… But the museum probably would have been better if we had had time to actually read the signs and information and all that. But of course we were kind of rushed through and there really weren’t very many signs explaining anything in the museum. It was kind of a dud. Then at the end there was a little film which I fell asleep for. It was only like ten minutes long but I was like yep now I am really tired. After that we found the one bathroom of the museu and started the line. After us there was about ten people. We decided that instead of running through the papermill we would just sit and pretend we were waiting for the bathroom so that the adults in charge wouldn’t make us go. 

Finally, it was about time to leave so we headed back to the bus. I bought some postcards and then also we were looking at a chichi stand. Chichi’s are a kind of beignets that I guess are really popular to the region. One of the adults said that they are made from fried garbanzo beans. But I couldn’t find anything out about them. They definitely didn’t taste like beans though. One of the adults let us try one and they were like doughnuts. They also were kind of like elephant ears but more fluffy and covered in sugar. I really liked them! They were supposedly made from fried garbanzo beans but I don’t believe it. They didn’t taste like beans at all!

After that we got back onto the bus and Cassandra was still mad at us/me. I just sort of ignored it. We all ended up falling asleep. On the way back I was thinking to myself… I could just go home and sleep and be happy. But after walking home with Patrick and Sara, I got there and Madame offered me some treats so I had to not. Then she asked me how the trip was and I told her everything that happened. She was kind of surprised. She told me not to worry about Cassandra and that she would come around. Then after that I got a message from Casandra saying sorry for freaking out. Then Paul came home carrying this big Santa doll. We heard that their tree was there so then we headed down to help.

We helped un=plastic the tree and then Paul got the decorations and once we got it put in the log stump trea stand we started decorating it. It was kind of fun! And then Laurence showed me her idea for her store window. She wants to make a tree out of sticks which is a cute idea. After that we took pictures of the tree and all that we had some wine and chips. It was very good. Paul showed me his like little plastic dudes that on the bottom have the rock paper scissors pictures and you battle and whoever wins get to keep the other persons monster. It was kind of fun. Paul is really attached to me. When I was leaving to go upstairs to grab an allergy pill he was sad. I was like I’ll be back in two seconds! When I came back he showed me his window stickers of penguins. Then he decided to give me half of them to take home with me so I could put them up on my windows at home. I was like awwwwww! How sweet! 

After a while we went upstairs to eat dinner. Once it was ready I came and sat at the table but instead of bringing outdinner she brought out Christmas present saying that Santa came! I said Oh no it isn’t Christmas yet! She said because I wasn’t going to be here the next two weekends she wanted to do it now. She gave me a book of Aix and wrote a really sweet little note/ paragraph in it, and then also she got me a Christmas ball with Callisons and nougat and specialties of Aix in it! It was so cute and pretty! I said thank you a thousand times and we did the cheek kisses again. Then I ran into my room to my hiding spot and brought out the tiger painting that I got her in October. She was really happy with it. I told her more presents were coming from the US but that I did have one here for her already. She LOVED it. She wants to find a frame for it and then have Jean-Claude hang it up for her. It is really pretty and because she likes tigers it is perfect for her. :-) It was a very happy time. Then we had vegetable soup and talked about recopies for it and also about her day and how Christmas works in the family there. She says it is hard this year because Laurence has to work the day before and after. But it was really a nice dinner. We had delicious fruit for dessert and also chocolate and meringue and callisons. They were all very good. She told me we would have a little Christmas before I left too. 

Then after that I Skyped the family (Helwig) who were there for Thanksgiving. It was really fun and we also sorted out the old books of my Grandmother on skype. We did it sort of like as a who wants what. I got about 8 books I think. I am happy with that number. Most of them I had never heard of, but I did get some good ones. After that we talked about Christmas plans and then I went ot go to bed. I wanted to talk to Thad right after but I forgot that he was in Church because I was thinking it was night time there. Silly time change. Oh well. Hopefully today!