Vacation Time!

All packed and ready to go!

So I'm just wrapping up week number 2 of working at the school and it's already time to set off for a 2 week vacation starting tonight! All schools get a two-week break for La Toussaint (All Saint's Day) - France used to be very religious and although it is much more secular now, the tradition of taking a break at the end of October still stands...I'm not complaining!

Consequently, I'll be on a temporary blogging hiatus while I enjoy my time off - but fear not, I'll post all about it when I return!

I'm leaving Forbach tonight and heading to Paris, where I'll stay with my friend Kasey for the night until we set off for the city of Toulouse in southwestern France tomorrow morning.  There, we'll meet up with Eric and explore the area (including taking a day trip to Bordeaux to do some wine tasting on Sunday) until Tuesday morning when we'll take a train south of the border to Girona, Spain. Thursday night we head to Nimes, where Eric lives, to spend a few days seeing the sights there, and finally we'll travel back up to Paris next Saturday night to end our trip.  Eric and I are spending a few days with Kasey at her apartment and then we get to crash with our former host family for a couple nights before parting ways on Halloween.  

Trains, trains and more trains

I'm really looking forward to some warm, sunny weather down south, as in Forbach we've been stuck in the low 50's with overcast skies everyday - temperatures should be topping out right around 80 where we'll be this week, which is a much welcomed change!

Nevertheless, I was ecstatic to find pumpkins in our local supermarket, so I bought one to decorate our apartment & am hoping it will still be good to carve once I return to Forbach! As someone once said, you can take a girl out of New England, but you can't take New England out of the girl!  

Ma citrouille - my pumpkin!