Bonjour mes amies,

How are you all doing ? It is so odd, sitting here in my room Nantes, writing to so many of you back at WU. It just doesn’t feel the same starting this school year without donning my polyester pants and my 1970’s prom tux shirt. While, it is easy to get nostalgic here I am having a great time. I made it! After near 3 months of traveling and living out of a ruck sack (ie my back pack) I have reached final destination, Nantes France. It is really amazing the simple pleasures that you find. For me it was a drawer. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to be able to take all my clothes out of my suit case and to put it inside a drawer. I am indeed sorry for the lame communication. My internet access has been up and down, but I now have quite regular access. Indeed, it is easy to forget at times whether I have already written an email or not. Sometimes I have started an email and then forget to finish it. Indeed, I sometimes worry that if I start to write I won’t be able to stop. Well, while I miss all of you dearly I have been keeping myself quite busy. After leaving Italy I finally made it to a country where I could speak the language. Little good did it do me, since, for about 3 weeks I turned into a hermit, speaking only to the heavens and my journal. That is a little overdramatic though, since I had a wonderful time with my family in Avignon and I met some real great Aussies over in Nice. I don’t even know how to tell the story of my journey without writing a novel. I’ll highlight it! My grand excuse for being over in Europe so early in the first place was so that I could research the great monasteries in the south of france and research how the theologies informed the architecture. While I had a wonderful, distracting sejour in italy it was time to buckle down and do some work. Unfortunately, I was far from qualified to fully complete what I endeavored, I did have a great time taking pictures. After giving a pound of flesh to a taxi driver to make it to a monastery in a small mountain town in the pyranee’s I spent my bastille day, watching the sun set over the mountains. It was the best fire work show I could ask for. I made my way eventually to the catholic pilgammage site in Lourdes and then across the country to the land of Burgandy. There I stayed at an International Interdenomination Christian community called Taize. There were over 3000 people there, 500 of whom were from Romania. That was a tremendous experience. We had prayer 3 times a day and I swear that nearly everyone was singing. There were catholics, protestants, Anglicans and orthodcs Christians there. On my first day I met two guys from England who were studying theology. Oh the conversations that we had. It was the finest banterings and philosophysing I have ever participated in. It was here that I learned what lines in Europe really are. At first I thought it was just a mob of people, pushing there way to the food, but I quickly realized it was just organized in a matter so complex it was beyond my comprehension. They somehow manage to feed all those people in 20 minutes. The entire complex is run by participants/volunteers. After making a stop to test the wines of burgundy at a marche du vin, I finally made my way to my family in paris. It felt good to know my solo travels were coming to an end. I met up with my parents, brother, sisters, cousins and uncle and after doing all the typical paris things (montemarte, Eiffel tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, catacombs….) we made our way to Vire for our family reunion. Vire is the town where my Grandfather and his 10 other siblings grew up. You can imagine that with 10 brothers and sisters he has quite a few nephews and nieces. Furthermore, most of them are between the age of me and my dad right now, so our family is single handily taking care of the declining population of Europe. There were near 187 people at this family reunion, and indeed, not everyone was there. What a time though. Basically all French functions are centered around food and drink. We started eating at 10 in the morning, and drinking as well. We stopped eating oh around 4 or 5. and then we started eating and drinking again at 7. Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is hard to remember a time at that reunion where I wasn’t eating and drinking something. We stayed up till 1 in the morning singing old French songs. Then I was up till 3 or 4 in the morning convincing one of my cousins to not smoke. All in French too. That is a feat that I am proud of. Speaking near comprehensible French at 3 in the morning. I have now received some 15 to 20 invitiations to go visit family this year throughout france. After this fun but brief weekend I made my way past mont st michel with my family on to a small beach side town called piriac. Here, resting for near three weeks on the beach I also saw the megalithic prehistoric stone monuments and went water skiing on the atlantic ocean. Who knew you could go water skiing on an ocean? In Oregon we can barely swim in them. It was real great spending all this time with my family. Although I am quite the active do everything guy at school, I am still pretty much the home boy with his family in his heart. At Piriac we sat around on the beach, played yahtzee in the house and did a whole lot of relaxing. It was tough saying goodbye to the fam. Alas, I never made it to Greece as I had planned, but it wasn’t so bad. I decided to spend the next week with my Grandfather before he went back and had a whole new set of experiences. I definetley ate oysters raw for the first time in my life, and I learned every different type of aperitif and digestif at the dinner table. We traveled on back to Vire to see my great Grandmother (97 yrs old!) and then on to Paris. I have now just gotten back from a week in Southern france at my cousins house in Bordeaux. While we did cool things like visiting one of the local chateaus and going to the largest dune in Europe and swimming in the ocean, I happily spent a lot of my time speaking French, reading books (in French), watching movies (never watch the dubbed version of gangs of new york, it is awful) and playing cards. I can honestly say that I am relaxed and ready to start school. I have now somehow managed to squeeze in one month into a page and half. So sorry for this long undecipherable message, but have no fear. I am starting a blog at www.mikeintranslation.blogspot.com With pictures and the rest. I am starting school this coming week and will be quite busy, but please send me an email and let me know what you’ve been up too and how you are doing.

Your buddy,
Mike

36 rue de la Baronnière
44700 ORVAULT
cell : 06 66 13 63 42
tel 02 40 94 87 46