twenty three!

yes! that's how old i am now folks. and i must say, although there were some special people from home missing in my life here in france, i had quite a wonderful birthday. the day of my birthday i spent in chinon with alyson and bryan. chinon is a town not too far from me, which has a castle, and some very, very good wine. it also is home to another assistant friend of ours, who joined us for a birthday lunch in a cafe called "le cafe de la paix" the peace cafe! lovely! so after that we headed up to the castle - up quite a few stairs to get there - to find that it's 3 euros to get in due to the fact that they're doing renovations and restorations to many parts of the castle. so we got a nice little tour from a woman (the tour was in english! we figured why not?) and then pranced around the parts of the castle that weren't under construction, up to a seriously tall bell tower with a view of the rivier (la vienne) and discovered that both bryan and i are not okay with heights. oh well.
we then went to a special little wine store, where alyson bought me a birthday bottle of red which was labelled "elegance". we figured that was fitting for the birthday. we then sampled some other chinon wines at a cafe, grabbed some baguette and cheese, and headed back to the train so i could come back for a birthday dinner with whit, jen, and aly at one of my favorite restaurants in tours. it was a good birthday. good food, good friends, good wine, and a castle! how lovely.
the next day was a nice lazy saturday, which included some lesson planning, grocery shopping, the arrival of tim (with pastries!) and my birthday party. i decided to do something with a black and white theme. i had 30 people in my apartment. have i mentioned that my apartment is about the size of... well. studio b at dancers' corner. and one part of that is alyson's room which we weren't allowing people into. so it was crowded. i had to turn the heat off (which is insane because i'm always freezing in here) due to the number of people. countries represented include: USA, england, ireland, scotland, russia, germany, italy, france, greece, yemin, south africa columbia, poland, portugal. states represented from the USA: VT, PA, NH/GA (she moved), TX, RI, CA, FL, NC. quite a diverse crowd. it was a wonderful party. pic to the left is a USA/italy moment. hooray. and yes, i shot all pictures in black and white - that's all people were wearing! cause everybody stuck to my theme!
so for those of you who haven't heard - i will be coming home in april for about 12 days. i plan on doing nothing during this time. by nothing i do mean head down to mhc and get my rec letters in line for grad school and see my girls briefly. but in vt/nh... i'll be takin it easy. soakin up my parents and my dog and my dance studio and my restaurants and my bed and my room and my bathroom and shower and the view and the river and all of that. i've been doing some thinking about after france options (mom, dad, when i have a better organized list i can totally give you a solid power point presentation. i have ideas and plans and options. vous inquietez pas!). there are far too many options. but i'm now aware of what i don't want to do. HOORAY!
so i leave you with some lovely images of my birthday weekend.
left: 8 million people in my apartment
right: view of chinon from the bell tower.