Une grasse matinée

'Bathing Girls Galveston' Galveston, TX 1922
A picture I saw today in Montpellier at a free photo exhibit!

In french, une grasse matinée is literally translated into "a fatty morning" - the kind where you linger under the covers longer, eat breakfast slower, rushing nothing, meandering through thoughts and actions until you find the motivation necessary to continue the day. My school schedule - Wednesdays free, three out of the four other days I don't have to leave the apartment until 11:00 at the earliest - affords me many fatty mornings spent sipping coffee and reading my host mom's collection of TinTin comics (so I feel authentically French, natch). And I kind of feel bad for not being such a go-getter all the time, but its nice like this.

Today I loafed around for a little in bed, on the computer, trying to figure out potential travel plans for the nine days I have off in February. I started with a couple inexpensive travel websites (Ryanair.com, Voyages-sncf.com, EasyJet.com) and a myriad of different itinerary options and red tape to figure out. I came out an hour later with a general idea of my trajectory and a reassuring feeling that I could do whatever needed to be done.

Because it's overwhelming at first. When I curled up in bed in this strange apartment with people I didn't know, tired from my day of air and train travel, a small brief wish flashed into my head to find the next return flight to New York, run back to my own familiar bed, and admit defeat: I was not ready for this. And on the first day of classes, when nothing made sense and it felt like nothing would get done, I wished I was part of the group whose home school took care of everything for them - flight times, housing arrangements, weekend excursions, classes, etc.

Looking back with the loads of wisdom and experience two weeks here has brought me, I am now strangely grateful I had to sit through those several uncomfortable hours where a song to the tune of "What the hell am I doing here?" played over and over in my head, because I know I did it by myself. I was originally going for some big motivational lesson to be learned here, but I'll just leave it at that.

While I was out walking today, avoiding my homework for tomorrow (which I still haven't done yet, some things never change), I walked past a free panoramic photograph exhibit and went in. It was really nice and pretty extensive; a nice cultural surprise for a sunday.