I can’t believe how fast time is flying by; because of the two week spring break, I have just three weeks left living in Montpellier, and my mom will be here for one of them (she is now in Europe! I’m meeting her and Will in Milan on Friday morning). I hope you all had a lovely Easter—mine was pretty low key, I went out to the Creperie with Rachel, saw Juno, had a chicken nugget happy meal for dinner, and skyped the fam. I loved getting to be in contact with everyone at my house on Easter! I was super bummed that I couldn’t figure out the video thing at first. I figured it out while talking to Sophie and Alyx, and let me tell you, discovering Olivia sitting quietly there on that bench gave me such a happy surprise that I’ll remember it for ten years! She told me about ballet and Cinderella, and I told her I liked her haircut, and we gave each other kisses through the webcam—it was fabulous! Then I spent a couple hours skyping Will and exchanging funny stories. I really enjoyed Easter.

Monday Rachel’s friend Sara flew back to Rome and my friend Miles came for a visit. He goes to Macalester, is best friends with Liza’s boyfriend Mike, and is studying in Denmark. He mostly came to visit our Macalester friend Diana, but I was happy to host him for the week.

Liza came on Friday night! It was the best weekend I’ve spent in Montpellier. Not only did she pick our first nice-weather Saturday, she picked Francois’ birthday weekend so she got to meet almost everyone. We spent Saturday at the beach collecting shells and digging our feet into the soft sand, and then we got to eat at our friend Diana’s host family’s house! She got to see our Dr. Seuss music park (that’s what I call it), eat dried strawberries from les Halles, get a Crepe at Café du Theatre, and be “disco” with all of the frenchies. And I dragged her into my favorite stores—a lamp store and a children’s bookstore called Nemo that I spend hours in.

Some things I may not have written before: only café’s are open on Sundays, so you have to make sure to buy enough groceries on Saturday for two days. If you forget groceries, you can survive with the cafes, but Rachel and I have had more than one miserable Sunday because we forgot to buy toilet paper. Toilet paper is mostly pink, and ours smells like peaches (though I hate the scented toilet paper, it’s my turn to buy the next pack, and I’ll just go for the plain pink paper). At home my goal was always to get rid of my coins, here my goal is to get coins—and there are many! There’s the 2 Euro coin, the 1 euro coin, the 50 centime, the 20 centime, the 10 centime, the 5 centime, the 2 centime, and the 1 centime. The 1 centime’s are useless; I don’t know why they exist. And the 2 centimes annoy me too. On the other hand, at least they’re marked! Our coins in the US have no numbers on them, so foreigners must have trouble!

Well, as I said, I’m meeting Mom and Will in Milan this weekend. Then mom will come home with me, and we’ll meet up with Will again in Paris. From Paris I’m going to spend a week in Greece with my friends for spring break! I have one more week of spring break after that and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I think I’ll try to go to Normandy beaches and see another region of France. I’ll see you all bientot!