Today I've concluded that the best time of year for vacationing in France is in September. This is true for several reasons:
First of all, the weather is lovely. Minus a few days of rain (which, for an Oregonian, is not a bother), it's been absolutely wonderful. Sunny with a slight breeze is perfect for tours, shopping, wine tasting, or whatever you may be doing here in France.
Secondly, tourism is much less busy. Although it's not the best time of year to vacation due to school and work, if you can manage it, it'll be worth it.
Lastly, all of the wine vineyards, sunflower fields, and other crops are just about finished, so the scenery here is just fabulous. I'm not sure if this applies to all of France, because this is the wine making region, but from my experience it's great.
Now, to what I actually did today. My family owns a boat so today we decided to have a picnic on the river! We brought some stuff to eat, loaded up, and set out on the water. I'm not sure exactly how far we went, but we were on the boat all day. After the first couple hours, we stopped and set up lunch.
Now I'm going to talk about food.
As you can see, there's quite the assortment of meats with baguette, butter and cornichons. If you're not familiar with cornichons, they're very small, VERY salty pickles that go great with sandwiches. We bought 2 baguettes and each person got a half. I was free to eat whatever I wanted with my bread, so i went back and fourth from the lunch meat and butter. Basically, it was foodie heaven. It was the perfect lunch for me and reminded me of lunch that I used to eat with my family (because my real family is secretly French). It was also perfect with the weather.
After cursing around for a while, my host dad talked with someone on the phone and we ended up picking him and his wife up at a dock. They were family friends of my host parents and they were very nice people. I was nervous at first, because when ever I meet adults here I'm way too self conscious to talk with them very much. This is very different for me because in the U.S. I am very comfortable talking to adults. But as soon as I introduced myself, I noticed how much my language skill has improved. I was able to talk AND understand them! I thought that this was a very noteworthy moment. They brought a bottle of white wine, so we all drank and cruised and enjoyed the weather. Some of my favourite things all in one place; nice weather, nice people, and good wine!
It's currently almost 8:00 and we returned home about an hour ago. I woke up today a tad homesick and I found myself missing Sunday mornings with my family. But after this afternoon, I feel a lot better. After having a lovely day with my host family, it's hard to be homesick. I'm honestly really grateful for my life and situation here and I have absolutely no complaints.
Well, that's all I've got for now.
A bientot!
~Effy
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