French Castles

June 11^th –

Taking the advice of Hervé and Katia, we decided to explore remnants of an old French castle, Quéribus. We were told it was only 40 minutes away, but it turned out to actually be an hour and a half long. We were really hungry by the time we got there because we didn’t stop for breakfast, so we had to backtrack a little bit to stop for some food. After our stomachs were full again, we went back up the steep hill to the castle.

Unfortunately, the weather in Narbonne tricked me into thinking that capris, a t-shirt, and no jacket would suffice for the day. It was bright and sunny there. However, when we arrived at the castle, it was very cloudy and since it was on the very top of a mountain, there was a good amount of wind. Needless to say, I was freezing! It was nice of Will’s dad to let me borrow his sweater, because I would not have been a happy camper if I had to go the entire time without anything protecting my upper body. Despite the cold, I enjoyed visiting the castle. We explored every room available to us, and the view up there was pretty incredible.

As we were walking back down the hill to the parking lot, we hear a noise behind us and I look to see a military fighter jet coming around the castle…extremely close to the mountain! Before I have time to prepare, the noise increases to the point where I’m sure the jet is going to crash right into us. It was so close! I got really scared and latched myself onto Will, who was smart enough to plug his ears as soon as he saw the plane coming. I really wish I had thought of that because the jet was louder than anything I’ve ever heard before. I’m surprised I’m not deaf right now. Will and his dad estimated that the jet was about 30 – 35 feet from us. It was close enough to see the pilot, although I didn’t see him as my head was glued to the back of Will’s shirt. Man, talk about an interesting way to end our tour of an old French castle! I don’t want to be that close to a jet ever again, thank you…

I slept a little bit on the way back, and when I woke up we were close to Hervé and Katia’s house. We hung out at their house again, like the night before, and this time Katia’s grandparents joined us for dinner. They don’t know any English, and even Will has a really hard time understanding the grandpa because he mumbles, speaks really fast, and doesn’t enunciate. He’s kind of funny though, because he likes to make sound effects when he speaks. His family started making fun of him for it at one point.

Before Manon (the younger daughter) left for a birthday party, we were looking through her English book for school. I was really enjoying looking through it, to see what they are teaching French students in 5^th grade. What is really interesting is that they teach them British English, so some of the words seemed strange to us. For example, an exercise read “Do you often hoover the living-room?” which is supposed to mean “Do you vacuum the living-room?” I also thought it was weird that they taught them abbreviations such as “ ‘cos” for “because” and “ ‘t was” for “it was”. I think I looked through the entire book because I was trying to find some weird English in there.

Dinner this night was probably one of my favorites of the entire trip. Katia made lasagna, and she told me the recipe came from one of her Italian friends. It was really tasty! Also, I finally drank an alcoholic drink that didn’t make me cringe. Before dinner they served Sangria, a Spanish wine with fruit in it. We had lychee in our drink, which I also had never tasted before. I have to say that it was the easiest alcoholic drink for me to handle so far. It was sweet, and I even managed to have two glasses. Look out…I’m a wild woman now! ;) They served another drink after dinner that was also not as bad as I thought it would be, although I prefer the Sangria. This drink was called Cathargene, which is unique to Southern France. Katia’s grandpa actually made the drink we had, which was aged for 10 years. I only had a sip of Will’s drink, but I probably could have handled a little bit more. Look how adventurous I’m being here in France!

After the drinks, we went to the community center to watch a Pétaque tournament. That’s the game that Will taught me how to play at his graduation. There were some really good players. It was interesting that there were no women playing the game, and when Will asked Katia why there aren’t any women playing, she said that women were just never interested in playing, and prefer to take walks with their girlfriends while the guys play. I’m supposed to play it on Sunday with a lot of people, so now that I know it’s not really a woman’s game, I’m kind of nervous. Although, you’d think as a student of computer science I would be used to being outnumbered by men. I’ll just have to put my game face on and show those men up on Sunday! 

*Note: Sorry I'm behind on the pictures. I promise they will be up soon!