I loved Orange. It was so … provincial, and so Stillwater. It was Provence’s version of Stillwater. The differences? The colors, the colorful little houses, the vineyards, olive orchards, and Van Gogh trees lining streets and back yards. It was exactly what a provincial town should be. For our “historic” (that word has a much different meaning in France), for our historic lift bridge that we’re so proud about (one of what is it, three remaining? Or is it just us and Duluth now?) Orange has an ancient theater (one of three remaining). For our Main Street, Orange has a few store-lined streets. I even had a good café in Orange (100% Arabica from Sumatra—my favorite origin). And on the way out we grabbed a couple boxes of really good pizza to eat in the car. It was a great weekend. We spent some time in Pablo’s garage listening to band practice (how normal is that? totally). Wandered around his area (on one side of the house + yard there were grape vines, on the other rows of olive trees, perpendicular, a stream). Pablo’s house itself was very cool; his dad is an artist, so there were paintings hung amongst the murals. He does deco art, so it’s totally different from mom’s, but at the same time much like our house at home with the hung paintings and murals. Sunday I got to meet Loris’s nine-month baby sister Lio (for Lionella)—she was adorable! So smiley! That was after Loris’ mom took us to see how the French people vote (they had municipal elections on Sunday). We shook hands with the mayor. We did it because we were just following Loris and his mom (we didn’t know it was the mayor, just thought it was a friend); his mom thought we were hilarious for doing it. The weekend trip to Orange definitely ranks highly on my French experiences.

My presentation went well, I think. I think Allison was satisfied with it. We got together before hand to practice, I was trying to tell her that I had seven and a half hours of class on Monday’s so that I wouldn’t have a lot of time, but luckily she has my schedule memorized, so she thought that if I got out of class at 2:15 that would be plenty of time to take the tram back to Centre Ville, eat lunch, and return to Paul Valery at 3:15 for practice. I was late to practice, but the presentation still went alright. I’m looking forward to Wednesday lunch with Allison (she comes over almost every Wednesday for lunch before phonetics) without this project looming over our heads!

Mom sent me a couple pictures of Josie Jones, she’s adorable! I can’t wait to meet her! I also liked the display of your portraits at the exhibit, mom. I love getting pictures!