End of Week One

So either I sleepwalked last night or the cats can open doors, because this morning I woke up to the sound of the cat hacking something up on my pillow.  Son of a bitch, Haribo!  Puke in one of your own damn beds, you have like five!

But whatever.  Today we went to Arles.  I was pretty lazy with the picture-taking, but here is one of two things I found noteworthy:

I regret not putting something in the picture for scale, because it's hard to tell how impossibly huge this keyhole is.  The key would have to be roughly the size of a femur.  I'm confident it could double as a small club with which to smack assailants if need be.  I like practical multi-use items.  

Arles isn't my favorite town.  It was kind of run down, and several men tried to come on to me as I walked down the street.  One of the reasons I didn't take many pictures today was actually because I didn't want to mark myself as a tourist; it seemed like a bad thing to broadcast in this town.  But I did covertly snap a pic of this thing:

Whatever it is.  I just thought the carving was cool.  After a while in Arles, we went over to the mall because Edith wanted to book a trip to Scandinavia through an agency there.  I bought a sweater and then wandered through the French version of a Walmart.  The building was a similar size to our big box stores, but there were fewer shelves, so the place was disconcertingly sparse.  I bought some random stuff in the sweets aisle.  My swag: some hazelnut Milka chocolate, a box of apparently Christmas bonbons, a box of macaron mix (because every time I try making the damn things from scratch, they melt all over the place), and an avocado.  

Then we went to Edith's parents house for dinner.  They are currently entertaining a Swiss couple, so for dinner, we had authentic Swiss fondue.  I was kindly reprimanded a few times for insufficiently coating my bread in cheese.  The cheese to bread ratio must be about 3:1.  After two slices of baguette and fondue, I started to feel a little sick, and the Swiss man looked at my glass of water and flipped out.  Then Nico explained to me that drinking cold things while eating fondue can make you feel ill (who knew?), so it's best to only drink either wine or hot tea.  He poured me a cup of caramel tea (the best tea on the face of the planet, in case you were wondering), and after only half a cup, I felt totally great again.  Super weird.

There was a little 8-year-old girl at the party too, and it was nice to talk to someone whose vocabulary was closer to my level.  She was super sweet and really intelligent, offering me words to use when I faltered.  She asked me if I was going to "move in with my love," when I go back home to America, and giggled profusely when I said no, then suggested I fall in love with an Italian.

Lovely evening overall, as are all evenings here.