Une Rousse à Toulouse: Rainy Weekend in Toulouse

It was a quiet weekend here in Toulouse. It stormed all night Friday and continued Saturday morning. I woke up on Saturday around 10 after FINALLY getting a good night of sleep. I felt much more like myself after sleeping a solid eight hours. I wanted to walk around the city and explore some more but since it was raining a bunch of us decided to go to the movies. We saw The World's End at a theater in town. The title in French is "Le dernier pub avant the fin de monde" which roughly translates to the last pub before the end of the world. It was funny but also bizarre, but nonetheless an entertaining way to spend a rainy Saturday. After the movie, we walked around the city for a bit. I stopped in to a chocolatier to buy some chocolate for my host family because one of their dogs died Saturday morning. Bianca, the dog, ate something weird last weekend and had been having problems all week. I felt so awful. It's weird because this was our first weekend in Toulouse but we didn't have anything scheduled. We weren't sure how much time we should spend away from our host families, so after that we went home. I wasn't sure what to do when I got home before dinner so I started researching places I want to visit. Stress. I also chatted with Catherine for a while about the house and their habits and stuff like that which was nice. We also discussed the differences between raising children in the US vs. France. For us, we're told "you can do it! or great job!" from such a young age whereas the French are much more critical. I had read about that before in my French classes but to hear her actually say it was interesting. For dinner we had leftovers from the night before and after dinner I sat with Catherine and Philippe eating cheese and drinking wine. My life sucks right? Philippe told me that he's the expert on cheese and wine in the family so whenever I have questions I should ask him. He taught me how the French eat their cheese with bread. It was lovely.

Rainy day

The movie theater

View from the bus stop

Today, I woke up around 10 again after getting a decent night of sleep. At 11 I went with Catherine to a market in the city to buy stuff for lunch. It was incredible. There were vendors selling all types of food and I wanted to sample everything. We bought this amazing bread and some saucisse de Toulouse, a special type of sausage from the region. Afterwards, Catherine drove up to the top of a parking garage near the market to show me a panoramic view of the city. You can really see why Toulouse is called "la ville rose" from up there. We came back to the house for a few and then left to go out to the country to have lunch with memebers of the extended family. I met two uncles and an aunt. They were so nice and it was fun to be a part of the lively discussion around the table. As usual, there was a hefty amount of wine with lunch and honestly, I was a bit buzzed. We stayed there for a couple of hours just relaxing and taking in the view of the countryside. Cachou was running all over the place it was so adorable. Love that dog. We came back around 3 or 4 and everyone just lounged around the house. Philippe told me yesterday that Sunday is the day of rest and I definitely got that vibe this afternoon. I'm still nervous about getting enough sleep so I didn't nap, that way I could sleep tonight, but I did relax and watch an episode of the Sopranos on my computer. Before dinner I sat with Catherine and Camille and they showed me pictures of Bianca, their dog that passed away. Catherine also showed me a book of aerial photos of Toulouse which was really neat. Dinner was a delicious zucchini gratin with couscous. As well as lots of bread and wine. There is bread with every single meal here. It's heaven. During dinner the family was telling me about this famous french movie La folie des grandeurs. The way that they described it, it kind of sounded like Monty Python.. kind of. They showed me some clips on youtube after dinner and it looks absolutely hysterical. I need to watch it. I really love my host family. They remind me so much of my actual family, always joking and making fun of one another. I swear my host brother Simon is Ian's twin. It's freaky. It was definitely a great first weekend in Toulouse and I'm excited to start exploring the city even more this week.