Virtually Home

I've been meaning to get this blog up and running again, but wasn't sure what direction it should go. And frankly, I'm still not sure. It's definitely no longer a chronicle of my time abroad, since I'm back in Oklahoma, where things are much the same as they were when I left them. Everything is different and the same. I've been missing my friends in Bordeaux like crazy, which is not alleviated by the photos posted by another OU student currently living in my apartment on Rue du Loup. I miss life in France in a lot of ways, and I feel like I'm living abroad sort of vicariously by meeting a lot of exchange students. I'm participating in a program that matches students studying abroad with students interested in cultural exchange. My student is Japanese, and we've so far had a lot of fun together. I envy the newness of everything she's getting to do, and the linguistic strides she's making. I teach her as much slang as I can work into the conv...

These two are not really related, it's just that I remain sick while all around me, people are falling victim to the plague. Erin and Andria were feeling bad when they moved out on Monday, and Maria and Alex are both sick. I've relapsed. However, Amber arrived on a train yesterday afternoon. She got stuck in the middle of Auvergne due to snow, and they all had to sit tight while people got out and poked at the wheels to dislodge ice from them. She finally did make it on time, since they held her connecting train, and I picked her up at St. Jean. We went out to an Italian restaurant, where I had a pizza with apples and olives and honey and onion jam. It was pretty fantabulous. Afterward we took a kind of epic walk, down to Place de la Bourse and along the river, then across Pont de Pierre and farther than I've ever walked on that side of the river, to a church that turns out to be called Eglise St. Marie. We walked in a circle around it, and found that while the front wa...