Europe

Saturday I brought my homework to the park.  It was such a sunny warm day.  The feeling of being in the sun is like no other, especially when it's one of the first occasions of the year.  Bradie and I me so we could study at the park, but we were distracted watching all the families, the kids and dogs and we stayed all afternoon.  
When the sun started to hide, it got surprisingly cold and so we walked home.  

Sunday was cloudy again.  I stayed in and worked on a short story of mine, avoiding all the midterm stuff I had to do.  I didn't start my homework until later that afternoon.  I went for a run and met Bradie in town and it started to rain.  We walked back to my house and we had tea and cookies and talked.  
We spent a lot of time together this weekend, but it's important to talk to someone who's going through these same experiences at the same time.  Especially someone like her who can articulate little things that I would spend too long trying to analyze and figure out if it wasn't for her and her quick wit.  It's not exactly the alone-time I was looking for in coming to France, but it's something similar.  She's not just someone to do things with, she's someone who's got the same state of mind as me, who's looking for the same things out of the time she spends here in France.
Today was the day of the municpal elections, which Colette has been talking about all week. We had learned about it in school, but it was at Colette's house that I realized what I big deal it was.  During dinner that night, we listened to the radio and she cheered at the voter percentage (70% in Aix, said the radio) and at the projections about how the socialist party would fair.  We ate dinner early tonight so that we could watch the programs about the elections that started at 7:30.  This helped solidify how centralized everything is in France, because when we have local elections, it's not a countrywide news brief, and we are generally not concerned with other states or places in the United States.  But here, we watched as they had reporters planted in every major town who reported back to the studio how the voting went that day.  Colette stayed up until 2am, rivited.  The next morning she listened to it more on the radio, and filled me in on the how the socialists were doing.