"J'aime le travail...

"... il me fascine.  Je peux rester des heures a le regarder." - Jerome K Jerome

M. Jerome's quote seems quite apt for my situation the last few weeks here.  Despite knowing for several weeks that I had an immense amount of work, I frankly had a difficult time motivating to do it.  Instead, I would write down all I had to do and set aside a few hours to do it, and manage to get very little to nothing done.  And normal me, for example, would have only gone out maybe this past Friday and stayed in the rest of the weekend in order to make sure I got everything done on time.  But nope!  Instead I had one of the busiest weekends of the trip, visiting Cassis and going out Friday, spending the day and night at a friend's house outside of Arles on Saturday, spending the day in Avignon and then attending a Bach concert in Aix on Sunday.  There are just so many fun things to do and so little time to do them!  Maybe it's summer laziness or possibly just lack of motivation given the fact that I'm not getting credit for this program, but minor work ethic problems are definitely coming back to kick me in the butt.

In other news, had my first real bad scare walking home alone last night after the opera (and a tiny excursion to Mistral).  Even after changing into sandals, still had a car follow me for a few turns and another car full of guys backing up and trying to talk to me in the street.  Had to take a few detours which made my trip 15 mins longer (and 15 more minutes of stress).  Lesson learned? Do not walk home alone while wearing only a dress and jacket, and definitely not while wearing heels...

The opera was amazing though!  We saw an adaptation of Les Noces de Figaro by Mozart, and my gosh, it's truly incredible what some people can do with their voices.

Since I'm not trying to make this a negative post, going to say that I'm feeling both happy and sad about the end of this program.  Sad, because of course I don't want to leave - life here doesn't always feel real, with the beautiful weather and people and culture.  I feel really comfortable here, and it's become such a joy to speak French.  And the people here are really so fantastic, so generous and friendly that I feel like I'm constantly blown away by each person I meet here.  I sincerely hope that I can come back and visit sometime during the year to see some of the friends I've made here (if I haven't sufficiently weirded them out haha).  But I also feel happy, not necessarily about leaving, but about having some time in between this program and Paris - the four week break allows me to be even more excited about coming back in the Fall.  And I guess I can't wait to see my lovely family and teach them all about wine :)

But now, I must finish my final paper.  Shoutout to the gorgeous Aidan, who is officially 21!

Bisous!! xoxo