Nature's Reward

It has been cold and rainy here all this last week (and when I say cold, I mean the lowest it got was 50F, which for here is cold, but for MN right now, would be considered a high) and so everyone has been getting sick and cooping up and feeling very lethargic. After a weekend in Barcelona, I've been staying indoors, napping heavily, and just generally been feeling unadventurous. And then...

I wake up this morning, open my shades, and find a sight I haven't seen in a week - perfectly blue skies. You know, when I got here, the weather was almost identical to MN: mid-80s, humid, a little cooler at night, period decreases in humidity and temperature often caused by impending rainfall. Not too much difference from what I've always known in the summer. Then October rolls around, and I'm unpacking the winter coat and long socks. I started off the month by going to Geneva, where I nearly froze to death. Now, finishing up the month, it is 72F, I'm in shorts and shortsleeves, and almost as if it was planned (it probably was), on the first sunny day in a week, there is a street fair in the main plaza of Montpellier. Everyone is outdoors. The only downside is that with this summer weather, I keep expecting summer solar time. So, when the sun starts to set at 7, I'm left wondering what's going on. Still, I cannot complain.


Also, I am starting to do Christmas shopping (since a lot of time to find things and also because I have to mail everything about three weeks before hand - I'm not keeping everything with me until late January. That'd be too heavy and useless) so if you want anything specific, lemme know. If you want anything that says Montpellier on it, I'll look around, but this isn't exactly New York. In fact, it is easier to find things that say New York on them than it is to find things that say Montpellier.

Nothing else new. Here are some pictures of when I went to a little village in the hills to the west of Montpellier. They are the *gasp* last pictures I took with the digital camera. Not working yet, but I will devote more energy to it this upcoming week. Why didn't I put these up sooner, or mention it earlier? Well, I'm lazy. That being said, I'm going to let the old cliché of 'pictures say a thousand words' take over, rather than my usual slash-and-burn approach of having no pictures and thousands and thousands of words. First set, the Antigone - Montpellier's upscale neo-classical development (complete with its own Winged Victory). Second set - the Grotte de Clamouse, a 37,000 year-old calcite cave discovered in the 1940s. Third set - St.-Guilhem-le-Desert, a picturesque small French town.