Sunday, 6 January 2013

A Bicycle Tour of the Countryside



Today was a relaxing day.  The weather was extraordinarily beautiful; I was wearing only a tee-shirt and jeans for a good portion of the day.  After lunch, my host sisters and Sophie’s family left.  I helped Thibault fix up the family’s bikes, some of which were having issues changing gears, and the four of us left at home went on a quite a long bike ride down from St. Jean de Vedas to the neighboring countryside.  It was very beautiful.  We stopped at an old abbey and looked around for a while, but we could not go inside because it was closed due to being Sunday, which is a little ironic to think about now that I actually type it out… don’t ask me, it’s a French thing.

Continuing on, we went up and down a few more hills (there are quite a few in this region, the “mont” in Montpellier being derived from the French word for hill) and through another small village before heading back home.  It was quite a pleasant trip, overall.

I helped the family put away some of their Christmas decorations, which they had left up until their children had left and helped Thibault disassemble the crèche, or nativity manger.  Thibault practiced on the piano, playing classical music.  He was incredibly skilled at it.

Then, before dinner started, we began watching The Matrix: Reloaded, dubbed in French.  I have only ever seen the first Matrix movie, so while I wasn’t completely lost, I had a slightly hard time following it.  The voice dubbing was very well done, though, and the French voice-actor dubbing for Neo somehow managed to make Keanu Reeves sound cool.  So, hats off to him.

Tomorrow begins my first day of classes, so I aim to try and get a decent night’s sleep.  Bonne nuit!  

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