(300) Days of Sunshine

Unlike you poor folk at home, the past couple of days here have been remarkably warm and beautiful. No snow, no rain, and hardly any clouds. The temperature has been in the fifties, and the sun has been dazzlingly bright. Ever since the drizzling, freezing rain we had last week, I feel like Provence has been making a serious effort to show us those supposed 300 days of sunshine we have here each year.

I just finished cleaning my apartment to an old-time jazzy swing mix with my windows thrown wide open. The current temperature here is a clear 60 degrees (Farenheit, of course--it's 15 degrees Celsius). Today is only Friday, but it feels like Saturday because I don't have school on Fridays--or Thursdays, for that matter.

I celebrated the traditional French holiday of La Chandaleur on Wednesday night with some of my friends. Tradition states that we all make crepes together, everyone taking a turn flipping the crepe in the pan with their right hand while holding a coin in the other hand. If you flip the crepe successfully, you'll have a year of good luck! It seemed a lot harder than it actually was, but I didn't exactly get the crepe all the way flipped. It was more of a flop than a flip, but I'm not too worried about my luck for the next year anyway. Oops, I hope I didn't just jinx that.

After crepes, we all played Spoons together, which I then lost--but it's okay! I'm still undefeated in Euchre (in France), so I'm not completely disheartened when it comes to cards.

Sunday is the Superbowl, and I'm going to be watching that with my friends here, although I really don't know if I can root for either team. I'm surrounded by Wisconsinites, so of course they keep rubbing it in that Green Bay is finally in the Superbowl again, which doesn't exactly encourage my sympathies for their team, but I refuse to root for the Steelers. I think I might just cheer any time anything bad happens for either team. We'll see.

We've got a theater outing tonight with the program, so we'll all be getting snazzy for that, tomorrow I'm touring an absinthe factory with some of my friends, and next Saturday we have a day trip to Arles--I'm keeping busy, don't worry!