Nous sommes malades, encore une fois.

So, I hope everyone else had a much more enjoyable weekend than we did.  Jon has been sick with a cold since Friday, which he has so wonderfully passed on to me.  This resulted in an extremely mediocre weekend.

Saturday morning started out nicely though.  We got up at a reasonable time and headed to the beach before the little brat could actually start screaming (yes!) and enjoyed a little over an hour in the sun.  Seeing as I have yet to purchase sunscreen, an hour was all I was willing to risk.  Fortunately no sunburn, unfortunately still no color.  We came home, made some lunch, and pretty much did nothing the rest of the day.  We’ve run out of things to do in Nice.

Sunday was definitely even worse.  I had a paper I had to write that I had been putting off forever because of the sheer stupidity of the assignment.  I’m going to vent for a moment: I am a Sociology major.  One of the core classes for my major is Research Methods, of which the objective is obvious.  Now, the class I am currently taking is a Sociology elective called Social Psychology.  Any professor who teaches a class for Sociology majors aught to know the requirements for the degree, therefore, they should go off assigning papers and assignments that meet the requirements of other classes.  This is exactly what happened.  Last semester I took Research Methods and completed an article deconstruction paper that teaches you how to properly read academic research articles, where to find these pieces of information and so on.  My Social Psychology professor assigned an identical paper; same questions, same objective.  Kind of a waste of my time, don’t you think?  Anyway, so given the fact that I knew it was a waste of my time, I didn’t work very efficiently on it.

While trying to avoid my paper I decided that, although I currently seriously detest running, I want to teach myself to enjoy it because its the easiest way you can work out and can be done almost anywhere you go.  So after looking at various running plans, picking a 5K for me to do when I get home (as a goal for myself so I don’t just blow it off), and enlisting the partnership of my sister, I decided that I would walk down to the Promenade des Anglais and see exactly what sort of running I am capable of.  Bad idea.  It being the beautiful Sunday it was, promenade was PACKED with people; stupid people too, you know, tourists. The kind that step right in front of a person thats running and then stops dead in their tracks.  I can’t count the amount of people I ran into, and nearly knocked over a few small children.  It was frustrating, and did not give my new running habit a good start.  And now that I woke up with Jon’s cold, it’ll be at least a few more days before I can find a better time to try and run in Nice.  Wish me luck!

I will however, say that I finally got my mother to Skype me.  I say that like she’s been able to the whole time and just hasn’t, but really she just hasn’t had a camera to do so.  Well I finally got to talk to her and it was nice.  I also had some much needed conversations with some friends back home, so at least I can say some parts of the weekend were enjoyable.

Today we started our third level of French.  We also moved to a smaller classroom, but ended up with pretty much just as many students.  I like this classroom better because its more intimate, but until the three fifteen year old girls from Italy leave after this week, it’ll be a little crowded.  Thats not to say they aren’t nice, just that they’re only staying for a week, along with a bunch of their other classmates scattered throughout our classes.  Must be Spring Break?

On a farm update, we have yet to hear anything definitive from Ireland.  Just a maybe should a Spanish couple fall through, but they have until April 15th to confirm.  Send good vibes!

Vous allez faire quoi pendant vos vacances?

Alright, enough about my Italian adventures.  I hope you enjoyed something a little out of our normal routine!

Since we got back from Torino, we got straight to seriously working on booking all of our farms for the second half of our trip.  We had been trying for weeks to just focus on Spain, but that was proving to be extremely difficult to plan.  While planning our first destination is obviously important, I felt it was equally as important to start looking in the other countries before they all book up too.  So I took over the emailing and started with the smallest countries with the fewest farms.  We had to change our plans slightly; originally we planned to see Switzerland, but after emailing all 3 possible farms, we decided to start looking at other countries too.  For the Switzerland slot I also emailed farms in Belgium (all 4 of them) and then several in Germany.  I also emailed all the possible farms in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (3 and 5 respectively), and simply crossed my fingers that one of them would respond positively.  I had the support of my two friends at home, Jenna and Cristina, along the way, each of them insisting I keep my chin up, thoughts positive, and emails will come.  Believing them, I asked for good vibes, and went to bed feeling optimistic, several emails later.

The next morning we woke up to no replies, but given that we leave for class a little before nine o’clock, I decided this shouldn’t worry me.  When we got home from class though at one, we had 3 emails in our inbox.  One positive, two negative.  I was excited, we had officially booked our dates for the Netherlands!  Thankfully, this farm is only an hour away from Amsterdam, and the family has lived in the city for the majority of their lives.  Nothing like insider information on what to do and see!  That night, along side my homework, I continued to send emails to farms in Germany, and then started looking into Italy and Ireland.  After a long chat with my mom about my planning for the summer, planning for the fall semester, and getting updated on things at home, I went to bed feeling the same as I did the night before; optimistic.

The following morning went exactly the same as the previous.  Nothing when our alarm went off, but we had a positive reply from Germany (a farm between Berlin and Hamburg) waiting in our inbox when we got out of class!  Two farms officially confirmed, we were a third there.  Given that we hadn’t heard anything from the Czech Republic, and how badly Jon wanted to return, I insisted he call the farm there that looked the most promising, one just a little over an hour outside of Prague.  After buying the minimum amount of Skype credits allowed, and waiting 15 minutes for them to apply to his account, he nervously called the farm, fingers crossed that they spoke English well.  It was a quick conversation, but all positive.  She would send us an email confirming the dates, and we were booked.  All in a span of less than three full days, we had half of our farms booked.  Now thats what I call progress.

The next day we were able to confirm a farm just outside of Madrid in Spain, and today we finally confirmed a farm in the heart of Tuscany, Italy.  I am ecstatic that this has finally come together.  At this point, all the gaps are filled.  We still have Ireland to plan, but thats our last destination, and therefore doesn’t worry me as much.  Since we don’t have a ticket home to Florida yet, should Ireland prove to be impossible to book, we just go home early; not preferred of course, but definitely better than having a two week gap to try and fill on a limited budget.

Needless to say, I’m relieved.  At least I can stop stressing for now; you know, until I have to magically come up with all the money for this, despite the fact that the exchange rate from the USD to EUR has NOT been moving in our favor?

Okay, I’ll take the good as it comes, and worry about the rest when I need to.

Until next time, passer un bon week-end!