vacations are a wonderful way to distract oneself...

as i discovered heading up to saint malo with bryan and malek. it was gorgeous! rode through the country side on a two story tgv, saw lots of cows and sheep which made me miss home. i think at one point i shouted 'HOLSTEINS!!!' and got funny looks. we had some serious time to kil in le mans, so we wandered around there, i chatted with one of my scottish friends because i couldn't remember the name of the new prime minister of britain (gordon brown, who is as a matter of fact scottish) and just hearing the accent made me long for scotland. but. i went to bretagne instead.
we arrived in saint malo, the weather was GORGEOUS. walked to our youth hostel to find discover that the buses were on strike so getting to le mont st michel the next day was going to be interesting. after checking in, we dropped our luggage and headed for....
THE BEACH!!!!
THE ATLANTIC OCEAN!!!!
SEASHELLS!!!!!
GIDDY HILARY!!!!!
yes so i started giggling like a small child, the yeminite and the floridian had some problems with the water temp (it was like cape cod or old orchard beach at this time of year). we watched a storm come in over the ocean, sought cover under the shelter of a restaurant that was closed due to it being france's labor day. then we made our way to the old city of saint malo. had a bit of an edinburgh feel to it (kind of makes sense, there was an intense british influence over that part of france for a while) with the small streets winding up to the cathedral all steep like. i loved it. thought it was great! ate some galettes (savory crepes) which are supposed to be a specialty up there. i noticed the graveyards up there had some of the most intense graves and mausoleums i had ever seen! they were huge and expansive with intense crucifixes... it was impressive. the next day we were off to le mont st michel. the buses were still on strike. let me tell you - getting there and leaving was way more stress than necessary. we got there - it was some anniversary (1,050th maybe?) of mont st michel, so everybody and their mother was there too. but - the city is very, very cool. fortified teeny city with the abbey (which still has monks chillin out in it!) and cute little shops. driving up to it was amazing - to see this abbey with the town around it set on the rock - amazing. hundreds of stairs (my thighs were BURNING), great views, and marsh sheep! these little sheep graze on the salty marsh of mont st michel when the tide is out. they're supposed to have extremely tender meat because of what they eat. i don't know - i didn't sample it. i did take some pictures from the view up top - which was quite entertaining. we found fountains to play in while we were in rennes, that was super fun! coming back to tours was a bit difficult - we had an hour delay in le mans because.....
they couldn't find a conductor for the train. he had to be driven in from tours. THAT my friends ... was ridiculous.
so here i am, back in tours. a group of us led jen to st pierre des corps today, she left to head to paris to go home. it was so sad. she started crying. it's insane to think that everyone's leaving. i hadn't thought to hard about it - we had our good-bye party at whitney's the other day. but to have one of my closest friends here leave, that was kind of a wake up call. it's all happening so fast - in three days i'll be in nice, and when i get home aly will be gone. i'll be coming home to my apartment, but there will be no roommate. i may place money on me crying in that moment. perhaps. i meet up with whitney in nice, and she's around here for a while. bryan's sticking around until the end of may. then that leaves me and stephanie and the other 9 month contract people. i'm not overly close with them, i think that's the hardest part.
grahame, cody, joanna, roman, tim, jen... they're all gone now.
but on a happy cute note - the yesterday when i had the door to the yard open, and normally we get nasty ass wolf spiders in here. but i looked to my right and our neighbor's cat was prowling around our kitchen. it was super cute. but he scampered away. he was in our yard again today, but we had the door closed so he didn't come up. i'm seriously contemplating stealing him for the next two months. i'll need a buddy.