Coming Soon

So the internet connection in the hotel in Bilbao is pretty slow, so I'm not so sure I'm going to post anything while we're here, but here's what I'll write about when I do have the chance (and the wifi capacity):

1. Christmas day
2. A cool bridge in a very ugly town
3. Chapels on a cliff
4. Bridget the GPS lady who is very bad at her job
5. 40,000 year old cave paintings
6. Spain

Perigueux and Sarlat 2.0

First off, Merry Christmas/Joyeux Noel one more time. I hope it's been great for anyone who's celebrating!

Now, time to catch up on what I've been doing for the last few days.

Mom, Dad, and Colleen arrived in Perigueux on Friday afternoon after a very long time of traveling. I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning showing them around the town, which they enjoyed. Maybe I feel a bit more charitable toward Perigueux now, since they had nice things to say about the town. We also did a lot of shopping, which is always a plus. I got some crazy shoes and ordered a purse from a cool leather shop that I like. Unfortunately, the weather was kind of gross and rainy, as it had been in Perigueux for about nine days.

The cathedral with holly berries in the foreground and the enormous manger scene set up inside.

We went to the Gallo-Roman history museum in Perigueux, a place I've been once before. You can walk amongst the ruins of an old mansion from Roman times, which is very cool. Dad, however, was more interested in the architect who designed the building (a famous guy, apparently) and spent a lot of time talking about the expanse of the roof.

It was funny to be in Perigueux but staying in a hotel instead of my apartment. But it was good, too. It made it feel like I had started my vacation, which I was definitely in need of.

After Perigueux we made our way over to Sarlat, a town I've written about before, which is where we still are tonight. Sarlat is very pretty, very cool, and very old, so it's not a bad place to have to visit twice.

I didn't take a ton of pictures in Sarlat because I got a ton the last time I was here. But we had pretty weather, so I did take some!

The weather was so nice in fact that we sat outside in a cafe and had drinks. It was definitely not Christmas-y weather!

Pretty, pretty!

Sitting with some geese. We tried to get Dad to take this picture but Colleen decided he's only good at taking pictures of buildings, so we had Mom take the picture instead.

I was going to write about/put up pictures of the other cities that we visited, but I'm really tired and the internet is slow to upload photos, so those will have to wait until tomorrow. We have a five hour drive to Spain tomorrow, so maybe I can draft a post while I'm in the car. Our goal is to stop to see some cave paintings (because this is the area of France that has lots of Cro-Magnon cave paintings) and maybe in Bordeaux for lunch, so hopefully all of that will happen as well, because that would be cool (particularly the cave paintings!) I'll also have more to say about the trip up to this point when I post the next post because I'll be able to talk about new stuff. I've already talked about Perigueux and Sarlat on this blog, so I don't have much else to say tonight - plus, like I said, I'm super tired!

Merry Christmas!

Joyeux Noel!

I'll probably start writing some real posts soon, but for now a quick update: family arrived Friday, we spent Friday and Saturday night in Perigueux and then came over to Sarlat, a Medieval town in the Dordogne, on Sunday. More details later!

Merry Christmas from France!!

Frenching up my hair

Yesterday I got my hair cut and highlighted by someone other than my stylist, Vivianna, for the first time in about 12 years. I was (overly) nervous that I was coming to come out of the salon with hair too blond, too short, too streaky, or just bad. I actually sat in the chair rationalizing that most people have a bad haircut at some point in their lives, so it would be okay if mine didn't look that good after the guy finished.

As you can probably guess, it all turned out fine. The guy actually did a great job and my hair doesn't look that much different than before. I still think Vivianna does it better, but I'm happy with what Nicolas did, and I'll definitely go back to him in the spring. (Plus he was nice and gave me the student deal on my haircut. Oh, and I got locked in the bathroom at the salon and couldn't get out for a few minutes. But that's just an aside.) So that was a huge relief. Now I know that I'll look normal in all my pictures with my family. I was dreading that we'd look back on the pictures in the future and everyone would laugh at my weird over-dyed hair, but it looks like I'm in the clear. Though Mark did tell me on Skype that it looks more French than normal. Maybe so.

There is only one class now standing between me and vacation. It should be okay because it's with middle schoolers, and they tend to be a happier bunch. This morning I had two classes with high school seniors - and they were extremely surly today. I guess mostly because everyone is ready to be on vacation.

Mom, Dad, and Colleen arrive in Perigueux tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward to it! I need to pack my clothes and make sure my apartment is clean before they get here, so I have lots to do this evening and tomorrow - but that's okay with me!

Dreaming of a rain-free Christmas

Just about four days until my family shows up! I'm so excited!

Also, it rains a lot in Perigueux.

I actually had a pretty good weekend. Karen came over from Villefranche which was fun, and we got a ton of Christmas shopping done with Marina on Saturday both in the shops in Perigueux and in the Christmas market.

Shopping in the market. For some reason I look utterly exhausted in this picture.

We actually had a really good night on Friday. After dinner with Cathi and Marina, we ended up at an English pub in town. I made a spectacle of myself by falling down some stairs in front of a room of people - but really the important part is that I neither broke the glass in my hand nor spilled a drop of the beer in my other hand. So people laughed but were also impressed. Anyway, after chatting for awhile, a guy came over to our table and asked us to join him and his friends; a couple, another French guy and an Argentinian girl. The girl had been an assistant in the past in Perigueux and had met her boyfriend while she was working here. Long story short, we talked to them for awhile and ended up having a big dinner with them and a few other friends on Saturday evening. We officially have some French friends in Perigueux now! More young people to hang out with - and the fact that some of them are French is great, cause now we can really speak real French! Anyway, we were really excited to have found some new friends and they were all a lot of fun and very nice, so we had a good time with them both nights. We're looking forward to hanging out with them in the future.

This week is the last week of classes, a fact that I am thrilled about. I'm doing a lesson on Christmas and New Year's traditions in the United States, so it's not too tough. I can't wait for Friday to come though! Though I do have a whole list of things I need to get done before my family shows up...

This evening we went to the English pub to see a couple of the assistants play Christmas carols. It was really nice! Unfortunately, the room was chock full of old British people so there were no tables for us to sit at, so we didn't stay too long. But it was nice all the same!

English pub sing-a-long!

I also used the opportunity of being out on the street in the evening to take pictures of the Christmas lights again. I tried to take a video of some of the particularly tacky lights but it didn't work out so well - so that will be a project for another time this week, maybe Thursday night when most of the other assistants will have already left Perigueux.

The street in front of the cathedral actually looked quite nice with the lights and everything - though I still think they would look nicer if they were yellow-ish rather than blue-white.

Giant round snowflakes on a tiny road.

These are the kind of lights that look like they're icicles and dripping. (They actually were dripping because it's been raining for about four days straight.) They're one of the only blinking effects that doesn't look totally tacky - or doesn't almost give you a seizure.

Pretty(ish) lights close to my street. Plus the nightly pile of garbage next to the Christmas tree! The garbage gets collected every night though, so the city is very clean during the day - and since no one is in the street at night, it's no big deal!

And this is my street. A dozen trees, forty strands of garland, tinsel, ornaments, flashing lights, and, for some inexplicable reason, a red carpet. Which has been sopping wet and disgusting for days. Walking down the street is like being in a snow globe - actually in a snow globe, with water and everything since the carpet squelches under your shoes.

I also tried to make my apartment a little festive and cheerier. I might keep the lights up even after Christmas because they do make the place happier. It's better in general as an apartment cause I have decorations up and I have a rug that covers part of the hideous floor - but, eh, it's still just okay!

So that is life in Perigueux at the moment. I'm hoping this week goes by quickly so I can see my family and travel and celebrate the holidays! And then Mark comes! I have lots of traveling and company for the next few weeks.

Also, the Redskins are in first place. What the heck.

Teaching in France

Tuesdays are my longest days of work but Wednesdays I only have one class – so here’s yesterday’s promised update.

The reason I haven’t talked much about the teaching job is because, well, it’s not easy. I’ve never been a teacher before – and probably won’t be a teacher again; I didn’t get the teacher gene from my mom. Unfortunately the job description implied that we would be assistants in France; at least the way I understood it was that we would be working alongside a teacher in his or her classroom or individually with very small groups. But that hasn’t been the case for me – or for many of my friends here. For nine of my twelve classes, I’m really a teacher, not an assistant, which has been frustrating (and exhausting!) for me because I was not at all prepared to be thrown into a teaching job.  I had no prior experience, and I’ve found myself preparing all my lessons alone and working by myself in a classroom with up to 18 students. The job is also doubly tiring because I have to spend at least half, if not more, of the time speaking in French with the students. In some ways that’s good because I’ve learned some new words from them – like the word for “creepy” (glauque) and the world for “octopus” (pieuvre) – and I’ve gotten to practice my French, which is always good. But when you’re already unprepared to be a teacher, it’s a bit unnerving, and utterly exhausting, to have to do the teaching in your second language. And as a kicker, the room I teach in isn’t equipped with any form of technology. I’ve been borrowing a projector from the library, but the computer that goes along with it (mine is too new to work with the projector) isn’t exactly stellar. I know that people learned without computers for years – but I never did, so it’s hard to come up with ideas for teaching that don’t require technology. And when you’re teaching about American culture, it’s tough not to need to show videos and pictures (and the printers at the school don’t print in color, so I can’t really just print pictures as an alternative). All that is just a bit of an added stressor.

In retrospect, I wouldn’t say that learning all this and dealing with all this means that I wouldn’t have done this program at all – but I do wish that the application had been clearer in describing the job. And, frankly, I don’t think they should accept people into this program who don’t have teaching experience if the schools are going to use us as teachers; it would be better for the students that way, too, to be learning from people who really know what they’re doing, or at least have the training and concepts.

Essentially all this means is that I’ve had to work pretty hard. Luckily I’ve come up with ideas to teach about (stereotypes, sports, American television, Christmas in the U.S.) – I just hope I don’t run out of ideas before the end of April. And, thankfully, a few of my classes are enjoyable. The middle school classes are my favorite - something that surprises me given how awful middle school was for me...and most of the world. But the middle schoolers are still pretty excited to learn and tend to want to participate. The high schoolers are much more difficult, particularly the tenth graders; I don't think 16 is a good age in any country.

It's all been quite a learning experience!

I'm also giving private lessons which I enjoy very much. Once a week I tutor two kids, a girl who is seven and a boy who is ten, who are wonderful. We have a lot of fun together and they love the lessons. I work with their mom also, and after the vacation I'll be starting with another student to help her with her conversation skills. Once a week I also meet up with a girl at the high school to practice conversation, though we split the time between French and English (so I can get some practice with a real-live young French person), and I don't get paid for that lesson. I'm glad that I've found all these lessons. Though, really, they've found me. Being one of the few native English speakers in a small French town has its advantages...

So that's my day-to-day life in a nutshell. Tomorrow I have a few classes and then it's only one week until my family gets here! Karen is visiting this weekend as well - so lots to look forward to!

Guilt trip

I started a blog post today all about teaching and my job here but didn't finish it. I'm posting this to say that I'll write about that tomorrow and give some updates on my life.

This is mostly just serving as a reminder to myself (a public to-do list with one bullet, if you will) to actually post something tomorrow. Because I'll feel guilty if I write this and then don't write one tomorrow. Particularly because I have precisely one class and then utter nothingness for the rest of the day. So I'll have no excuse; watching four episodes of Dexter will not count as an excuse and that's probably the likeliest thing to happen, particularly if it's raining tomorrow.

Anyway, thoughts on teaching tomorrow!

So about those lights...

Due to a super disappointing change of plans that was out of my control, I actually won't be going to Lyon this weekend. Very bummed out about that. It's now a major goal for the future to make it to the Fete des Lumieres.

But moving on.

I'm finally going to put up some pictures of those Perigueux Christmas lights. When I saw all the light strands going up around town, I was picturing that they'd let off this lovely soft yellow-gold glow when they were lit up. Weelll...not so much. Most of them glow a slightly painful bluish color - and about half of them blink on and off. They are delightfully tacky. They make me laugh every time I see them. They are quite simply not at all what I was expecting. But a lot of this experience has been, well, something new and not what I was expecting. And this town certainly has its weird quirks. So somehow these horrible tacky lights fit right in. Not to say that Perigueux is tacky, because it isn't in the least. But sometimes it seems like the city is shooting for the bull's eye and the arrow flies wide right. And that's pretty much what these lights are, too. But that makes them delightful in their own way.

First there were just lights on my street. Then this absurd amount of garland with hanging ornaments. Then several dozen Christmas trees appeared. And today they rolled out a red carpet. No joke. A red carpet just appeared down the center of the road. I'm expecting Santa any day now.

Some of the lights are the bluish color while some actually are yellowish. It has quite the effect on your eyes.

This is over one of the squares where the town holds the market. I really like these decorations actually.

Chandeliers and sparkly things. Also rain.

Entrance to the Christmas market (which I have yet to enter) which wasn't open the evening I wandered around. I don't know which evenings it's open actually. I should probably look into that. I should also get some more pictures. Those lights toward the back of the picture were all light fixtures in the shape of enormous insects. Cause I guess that puts everyone in the Christmas spirit...?

This probably gives the nicest image of the lights. Also I took these pictures at about 8pm - where are all the people?? Pretty much from 6pm on, this is Perigueux.

Some of the trees just have massive blue lights lighting them up. There are also a few enormous Christmas trees with blue lights on them. The lights blink so it looks like there is water dripping down them. Not such an eloquent description - but the top lights light up and then the lower ones so it looks like drops of water running down the tree. It's...unusual? Creative?

Despite me making fun of all the lights' tackiness, it's still fun to have them lit up. (Though I'm pretty sure the city turns them off at about 10:30 at night.) I'm really looking forward to seeing all the other displays in other towns when I travel with my family and then with Mark.

Happy Thursday. I'm off to get in bed and not set an alarm! Love having Fridays off - I'm sure these are the last few months I'll have that, so I need to cherish them.

I lied a little bit

I'm not actually going to make observations on Perigueux's Christmas decorations, because I didn't manage to take any pictures of the lights tonight. It was raining, I had to work on some stuff for classes (still not totally satisfied with them really), and I had to spend some time at the laundromat (22 euro to wash and dry a load of laundry and a comforter - fabulous!)

I am going to put up pictures from this past weekend though!

I had a great time in Villefranche with Karen. It was great to speak English and catch up and reminisce about UVA and watch too much TV. Villefranche is a tiny town! But it's very pretty. It's in the "Midi-Pyrennees," so it was a big change of scenery from Perigueux. Perigueux is in the Dordogne which is rolling hills and vineyards. The Midi-Pyrennees are the beginning of the Pyrennee mountain range, so the landscape is totally different. I actually didn't real at all on my train rides over (three trains to get to Villefranche!) because I was looking at the scenery. Though I was also falling asleep because I had gotten up at 4:30 in the morning. Anyway, here is Villefranche-de-Rouergue:

Karen's apartment building in the first one on the left with the brown shutters. Not a bad location!

Main shopping street - where we both successfully purchased a pair of shoes and chatted with a friendly French shopkeeper. (I guess I should have said "store owner" but for some reason "friendly French shopkeeper" just flowed better.)

Arches surrounding the central square for the market.

Bridge built in the 13th century in the center of Villefranche. Pretty cool. And sturdy.

Like I said, we didn't do a whole lot in Villefranche, but we did get some shopping in and watched a lot of TV and caught up and laid around. It was really very nice. But since it would have been unacceptable to do that for 48 straight hours, we also went out for a day trip on Saturday afternoon. We took the train to the next town over, an even smaller town called Najac.

It gets cooler than this picture.

When we first got off the train at Najac, we were a little concerned that we hadn't done our research because we were at the bottom of a small mountain and could only see the backs of houses way up on the mountain top. We ended up having to walk about two kilometers up a road that wound (winded?) up the mountain to the cathedral and castle.

We thought this was going to be the hardest walk of the day...we were wrong.

Cathedral in the center of town which was delightfully accompanied by "public restrooms" - or my first experience with using a hole in the ground as a toilet. It was lovely. I guess it's keeping in habit with the age of the cathedral. The Najacois were forced to build the castle in the 13th century as a punishment for being a religion that wasn't Catholicism.

Oh, hey.

The castle was on the left in this picture, but we couldn't actually see it because it was closed for the season. We walked all the way along this ridge past the castle through the main part of town.

Most of the town was closed up (like the other towns I visited the weekend before last) because it's mainly a vacation town. Almost all the buildings were original and from the 13th and 14th centuries - it was a pretty amazing place to see.

Unfortunately the light wasn't great - but what a view!

Many of the houses had grape vines growing on them. Leave it to France to have the makings for wine right there on the side of every other house!

Najac was a really gorgeous town. We both got a ton of great pictures. Because the town was fairly empty, you really got a good idea of what it must have looked like during the 13th century. It was really interesting! It's been a good experience seeing all of these tiny little towns.

Remember how I said that we were wrong about our first walk being the hardest? Well we took the "pedestrian route" back to the train station - which ended up being more of a hike down the side of the mountain. We were not dressed appropriately for a hike at all... And this was no mistake on our part, no "Megan and Karen didn't know enough French so they hiked down a mountain by mistake." No, no. The sign told us "This way to the pedestrian route to the train station." Hm...

Hooray! Picture together! (Which we took sitting in the middle of a road because we couldn't find a wall high enough to take our picture standing. And there definitely weren't many people around to take a picture of us!)

So that is Najac and Villefranche. Two more French villages added to the list.

I also keep saying that I'll talk about teaching - but I'm too tired to do that now. The only thing I can say right now is that I find it exhausting, and it also confirms that I have no interest in being a teacher as a permanent career. But I'm surviving! I'm teaching about American sports this week, so that means that as I've researched the topic, I've gotten to watch a lot of highlight reels and "This is SportsCenter" commercials. So that's always a plus. :-)

There are probably typos in this post. Too tired to fix them! Sorry!

Tomorrow's post

Weekend stories
Observations on Perigueux's Christmas lights
A few thoughts on teaching

Coming soon!

Weekend Plans!!

Payday in France = spending your money at the market and on travel plans

This evening I booked tickets for this weekend to go to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to see Karen!








It will be just like this picture! Minus the UVA-setting, the fraternity, and that dude in the background. Also, I'll probably have on a scarf.

And we'll be here.

I'm excited. Mostly because I'll be happy to see Karen but also to go and see a new place (plus we might take a day trip or two) and to get out of Perigueux again.

Big things are happening in Perigueux, though. Christmas lights are all set, Christmas trees are going up, the Christmas market is being constructed...too bad that the big unveiling (which I'm guessing is going to be Saturday, December 1) is going to take place while I'm out of town. But there's going to be some kind of Christmas festival in Villefranche this weekend, so I'll still get my full French Christmas dosage for the weekend.

It's funny that the French go all-out for Christmas yet are much less religious than the Americans. Not that we don't go all-out for Christmas...but there sure are a lot of lights here. (This has probably been the 15th blog post I've mentioned the unlit Christmas lights in. I'm also going to stop saying the word "Christmas" because when I look at the last two paragraphs, it's the only word I see.)

Anyway, I also bought tickets this evening to go to Lyon with Marina next weekend. We're going for the massive "Fete des Lumieres," a huge tourist attraction that takes place every December 8 in Lyon to celebrate some holiday about the Virgin Mary. When I was in Lyon in 2011 in the middle of July they were talking about the Fete des Lumieres (which, by the way, means "Festival of Lights" for those of you who don't speak French). It's a huge deal and the whole city gets flooded with hundreds of thousands of tourists. We'll be staying on a mattress on the floor of Marina's friend's room in Lyon - which is great! (There are no hotels available in Lyon. Or outside of Lyon. Until you get about 30km away.) The videos and pictures of this festival are amazing (plus I'm excited to go back to Lyon and show Marina the city), so I think it will be a really amazing experience.

This is the only picture I'm uploading because if I put up the Google images or a YouTube video, the pictures I take next week will probably pale in comparison. So you'll just have to stay tuned for those. (Lyon filles, I'm super bummed you can't be there with me!)

I started looking into tickets to go to London and Oxford in March (during the winter/spring vacation we have then) to see my friend, Michelle, who attends Oxford. I can find cheap plane tickets directly from Bordeaux to London - and her break overlaps with mine...and I can be there for her birthday as well. So many small victories! I'm in the process of figuring out those details, but that is exciting, too.

And (cause I really was on a travel planning binge) I reserved some of the tickets/hotels for the trip I'll take with Mark after my family leaves. After I travel with my family (around France and a little bit of northern Spain - I'll explain in detail when we're actually traveling...in three weeks!!) Mark and I will travel as well, mostly using Toulouse as a home-base to do some day trips. But, again, more on that later when it's more pertinent.

I also occasionally teach while I'm here...someday I'll write a post about that. That will be my goal this weekend while I'm taking the train to and from Villefranche: prove that I also have a job here.

French names

Popular names in my classes:

Boys:
Romain
Florian
Maxime

Girls:
Anaïs
Aude
Clémence

Most stereotypical French names:

Boy:
Pierre-Michel

Girl:
Camille

Weirdest names:

Boy:
Tanguy

Girl:
Loes

Name most like my name:

Girl:
Mégane

The tale of five villages

Big news: I finally have internet (real internet - a router, unlimited access) in my apartment; I won't have an excuse for only updating once a week anymore. I'd forgotten what it's like to respond to e-mails when I feel like responding to them! I still, however, don't have a functioning cell phone. Long story, but to get it to work with the new cell company, I needed to get it "unlocked" so I took it to an internet cafe on Wednesday night. They told me to pick it up today (cause for some reason they needed several days to unlock it) and then for no reason at all, they were closed today even though they were supposed to be open. And tomorrow is Sunday, so they are of course closed. Maybe Monday I can finally end the cell phone saga...

There is plenty of other stuff that still needs to be figured out (stuff with the government paperwork, health care, linens in my apartment - it's all never ending) but that is uninteresting and also bums me out. So instead I'll talk about what I did this past week.

Perigueux is very nice - but it is also small and very quiet. Our coping mechanism is to go out and see other parts of the region, the Dordogne, as often as possible. Even if we go to other quiet villages (which is pretty much our only choice in this part of France), just getting out of Perigueux gives us a much-needed refresher. Luckily, it's hard to go wrong. There are a lot of beautiful and interesting villages close to Perigueux, so we've seen a lot of great stuff already!

Wednesday, Marina, Azahara, and I only had classes to teach in the morning, so we rode to Bergerac (like Cyrano, the main character of my favorite play Cyrano de Bergerac) with one of the teachers I work with who lives there. We wandered around the city for the afternoon and then took a bus back to Perigueux for two euro. Not a bad deal.

Cyrano statue #1.

Cyrano statue #2.

The cathedral in Bergerac is clearly totally different from the cathedral in Perigueux. It's cool to see all the different architecture - and how much it varies between towns, even though the towns are fairly close to one another.

Old church in Bergerac + Cyrano statue #2

Example of the architecture in Bergerac (with the wood on the houses and the different colors). Perigueux is mostly stone and very Renaissance-looking.

The river in Bergerac.

We found a "barbe a papa" (cotton candy) stand at a fair in Bergerac...

...and Azahara got the biggest cotton candy I have ever seen in my life.

All in all, we really liked Bergerac (though I really think that most of the reason I liked it was because of Cyrano) and had a very good afternoon there. We found some cool shops and bought presents and ate yummy food at the fair (Marina and I bought what were essentially hollow churros filled with Nutella) and wandered around.

Today we basically repeated that - but in four villages! One of the Spanish teachers at Bertran de Born offered to take us out into the country to see some villages and castles. So the aforementioned crew set out again! Be forewarned, I don't have a ton to say about all the villages, because mostly we just wandered around and took pictures - so I will make up for that by putting up lots of said pictures.

First we went to Sarlat, a medieval village I'll be visiting when my family comes in about four weeks. Basically all of the buildings in the town are the same color - they're required to be - and are reaalllyy old. The streets were very winding and narrow. It's also apparently the home of the cathedral where they filmed a movie about Joan of Arc.

Sarlat's cathedral.

Pretty house with pretty ivy and cool stones. A lot of Sarlat (a lot of France, really) looks like this.

An old church that has been turned into a covered market. Those enormous doors actually work and they open and close depending on the hours of the day.

The region of Perigord (I know that I've called it Bordeaux, the Dordogne, the Aquitaine, and now Perigord - but they all mean different things and they're all true; Perigord is a cultural classification) is none for it's foie gras - but also for it's walnuts. A lot of the oil on this table was made from walnuts. In this market I also tasted alcohol made from truffle. Sadly I mean the mushroom type of truffle, not the chocolate type of truffle.

More Sarlat.

We left Sarlat and went out into the "pleine campagne" to see some other small towns and castles. First we went to Beynac, a town built on a cliff overlooking the Dordogne River and capped by a castle that was owned by the French during the Middle Ages and beyond. That may sound obvious since, well, I am in France, but across from the castle in Beynac is another castle in a town called Castelnaud - and that one was owned by the British. The two towns/castles spent several hundred years fighting and throwing stones at each other. Yeah, it was stupid. Seems like they could've moved farther apart. Or ignored each other.

View from top of the cliff in Beynac. Looking down the river, beyond the bridge, you can see the castle that was owned by the British.

The (very steep) streets of Beynac. They were a joy to climb back up after we walked down to the bottom.

But I got to take this picture when we walked all the way down! Pretty cool, right?

Looking back on Beynac and the castle on top of the cliff.

So since we were only a catapult's distance from the castle at Castelnaud, we went over there next. We visited the castle at Castelnaud, which is now a museum filled with weapons from war during the Middle Ages. Aside from catapults and canons and guns there were also crossbows that could shoot arrows that were four feet long. And shields that weighed 40 lbs. And weird knight armor. But it was all pretty cool and we got to go all through the castle (which was freezing because it's made of really solid stone and has almost no windows - gotta keep those pesky Frenchies out) and had some cool views of the valley from the towers and walls.

Walking toward the castle.

Looking down on the village of Castelnaud from the walls of the castle.

One of my few pictures with people in it.

Examples of the many catapults that were used during the Middle Ages. Apparently the strongest and most powerful catapult could shoot stones weighing 225 lbs up to 200 m - precisely two times an hour.

To finish up we stopped in one more town, Domme. It's a tiny town on top of a cliff and surrounded by a wall. We saw maybe 12 other people in the town because I guess it is also a vacation town - I don't know where all the French people go during the year, but all the towns we visited today were very quiet! Apparently they're busy in the summer...

Walking along the walls of the city.

Looking down on a garden and the valley. I didn't take too many pictures because it was getting dark and there weren't many lights in the city.

It was a good day - but now I'm so tired that I'm falling asleep over my computer. More later! Enjoy the pictures! I'm still loving my new camera!