The rest of the weekend update. So, on Sunday we took a field trip to Nîmes which is a city about 45 minutes away in a generally eastwardly direction. It was with the whole group which was a little intense... too many "like OMGs" as Sealia put it. Apparently it was Roman occupied back in the day, so there was bits of Roman architecture everywhere, including a bloody...

Mini-Coliseum! It's amazingly still intact, although there's obviously been a lot of restoration. Apparently during the middle ages all the portals were sealed up and it was used as a fortress of sorts--some of them are actually still sealed. Also, seeing Roman architecture done right (aka by the Romans, not the Renaissance-era Italians) makes me really happy.






Les Arenes, from the very tippy-top. We had to climb up these huge stairs to get there, which was intense, and my thighs are still sore from it. I think that they actually have events there sometimes, like bull fighting and possibly fake gladiators as well. I swear, this region must have a serious identity crisis--It's in France, but it used to be a Roman territory, and was also Spanish at one point...





So, not only was there a mini-Coliseum, there's a mini Parthenon! Very cute, and again, in amazingly good shape (although I don't know how much has been restored).










And, last but not least, the Pont du Gard, the aqueduct which ran into Nîmes. A lot of the tour went right over my head, as it was in rather quick French and I was tired, but there was some great story about how in the 18th century (I think) they came up with this story about the devil helping to build it in return for taking the first soul that crossed it, and he was foiled by someone chucking a rabbit onto it. This was supposed to explain a bunny-shaped marking on the side of it, which was, in reality, vulgar Roman graffiti. Oh boy.


So, we returned from Nîmes around 6, a rather tired and sandy (we had gone swimming, which was lovely--imagine, fresh water!) bunch. I got home, and decided to make fried rice for dinner. There were a few issues with this decision. A. the recipe was for 6 people, and my biggest skillet is about omelette-sized B. said recipe used measurements of cups and tablespoons, and my measurements were liters and milliliters C. fried rice requires a lot of stuff to go on at the same time, and I have two burners and no working space and finally D. I had no soy sauce. However, despite the difficulties, it came out decidedly edible and I was very happy.

A bit of a story about the soy sauce: So, I had a lot of leftovers from this meal, so I decided that I had to go out to Monoprix and get some soysauce, or I'd never be able to finish the remaining 5 portions. So, I got there and went into the condiments aisle. It wasn't there. So, I found a clerk to ask the whereabouts... and realized that I had no idea what the word for soy sauce was. Oops. So, we basically played charades. I'm looking for something, but I don't know the word for it. You put it on rice, it's brown and salty... They had no idea what I was talking about. Finally I hit upon the phrase "cuisine chinois" and I was directed to the exotic food aisle where it was sitting happily, right next to the instant pancake mix, microwave popcorn and the maple syrup (which I really wanted to buy, but it was expensive, and I wasn't sure what I would do with it anyways except look at it and get homesick). So, that was Monday's adventure.