Mai a Nogent

Sorry about the delay but, no news is good news, right? At least, it means I've been keeping busy hosting visitors from the US and traveling around France. My parents came and we visited Monet's gardens, the Loire Valley (again), and the Normandy Beaches to see a bit of WWII history. The gardens were absolutely stunning and looked just like a Monet painting- full of light and flowers and lovely colors. Aside from the short rain showers, it was perfect! The Normandy beaches were also amazing, very impressive to see what WWII soldiers had to go through in order to start taking back Europe for the Allies. Very moving. We also stayed in 2 lovely bed and breakfasts, my new favorite way to travel. It's much nicer than staying in a hotel, and you get to chat with French families and have a wonderful breakfast, usually croissants, baguette and home-made jelly. It was great to see the parents and show them a little of what I've been doing in France for the year. Thanks for coming! :)

Then the week after they left (with only small delays because of volcanic ash), 3 other visitors came, my friend, my brother, and his girlfriend. They were all super lucky and got to experience 10th century Nogent actually being 10th century with the Percheval Festival- a medieval festival put on by the town with the whole town going crazy. Everyone was dressed up in medieval clothes, the castle grounds became a medieval village complete with sword-fighting, horse back riding, and medieval cooking. It was really interesting and quite the spectacle. I head over to Italy this weekend to meet up with my brother and girlfriend there. Luckily, it's a 3day weekend so I'll get to spend more time there.

In other news, I've started giving evaluations in my classes for the kids going to middle school. Good news, they learned something- bad news, they immediately forget it when they have a one-on-one interview with me. Oh well...good luck to them.