Dr. Pepper -- LIVE from France

Wow so here I am finally in France. Gotta get used to these damn French keyboards again. All the buttons in the wrong place, so excuse the typos.

It was a LONG journey from KCI to France. They almost didnt let me board my plane in KC -- my return flight from paris is more than 90 days away, and technically I cannot be in France for more than 90 days, so I got this big lecture on illegal immigration and how I can be deported and yadda yadda yadda.

Did not sleep a wink on the flight over here... so needless to say, arriving in France at 9am with no sleep and an entire day of traveling still ahead of me was not going to be fun. I had a 3-hour layover in Paris where I was able to catch a 45 minute nap at the gate before departure to Toulouse.

I arrived in Toulouse after a short one-hour flight, and made my way to the bus which would take me to le gare, or the train station. Here; I was to meet Alex a.k.a. "Mr. Sweater", my friend from American Village last year who is living in Toulouse. After waiting for almost 2 hours for Alex's train to get in from his work, we headed on another bus to his house.

So circa 5:30pm, we arrive. Alex has the coolest house; which he shares with like a bajillion other people. It's almost like a commune. They had the coolest garden in the backyard, and even a chicken named Brigitte. After a couple beers, I gave Alex 20€ to grab stuff to make dinner. Meanwhile, I took a well-needed nap. I awoke to pasta, chicken provenciale, and courgettes (zucchini). Top it off with a bottle of wine = Trés bon!!!! Then we just sat around with some of his roommates and just talked. Most everyone had very limited English, so the conversation was mostly in French. Ergo, I didnt understand a thing. However, French is one of those languages that you can just sit and listen to -- it is a beautiful language -- almost like music. And i was too tired to really try to follow the French or speak at all. Midnight came, went to sleep.

I woke up the next day at 5pm. Yes 5pm. I had plans to see toulouse, get a cell phone, and visit tourist sites -- none of that was possible now because everything closes at 5 or 6pm. So I walked to the city center and tried to take in as much as possible. But my feet were killing me in new flip-flops so I hailed a taxi back.

Since everything was closed, we decided to have a soirée and invite friends and order pizza. 60€ for 4 pizzas!!!! ouch lol but it was delicious. Sipped on wine and vodka w/ caramel in the garden while the sunset, enjoying listening to the French. A couple people took pity on me and had conversations in English with me.

Funny thing: France has not seen the LOST finale yet, so I was the envy of the party since I've seen the finale of season 5. lol The French LOVE lost!!!!

And this morning, I woke up bright and early to catch my train at 7:45am to Mâcon. 5 hours later I was greeted by Sun, the director for Azé. She is French, but she has great English!!! The site is absolutely beautiful! It is a castle with all these posh gardens and sculpture gardens -- it looks more like a resort or posh country club than an American Village camp lol

I'll post pictures ASAP, but now we must clean up the site. The next two days we have off, so tonight we are all going out to eat at an Indian restaurant!

That's all for now!!!!

- Dr. Pepper