The "final" countdown!

Alright! I'm in the home stretch. The exams at the French language institute went well, I'd say, and freedom is just around the corner! Except for those two beastly exams coming up, that is. (hence yet another slightly bad pun in the title). I have one on Wednesday and one Thursday, which wouldn't be so bad normally. After all, if I do nothing but study, I'd be pretty much guaranteed to get by without a problem - but is doing nothing but studying really how I want to spend some of my last few weeks here?

So, I'm trying to strike a balance. Squeezing studying in between errands, laundry, cooking, and so on. As previously stated, I'm constantly conscious of time running out despite my best attempts to slow it down, so I've been keeping pretty busy in spite of my desk space looking something like this!

Clockwise, from top left: geologic time chart, schema of lymphoid organs, physiology notebook, physiology packet, and geology notes underneath it all.

But that's slightly boring, so here's ore interesting stuff! This week has been a pretty fun one - on Monday, we had our last salsa/merengue course of the the semester (*sniff*), and I got a little sad when our instructor (and friend) talked about getting back together next year. A few of the girls I've met in this group have become such wonderful friends, and it definitely momentarily dampened my mood to think about there not being a next year for me- at least not here, anyway. But we danced, chatted, and here is most of us (with a few missing minus exams, and a couple camera-shy dudes =P):

Fiesta!

Of course, this isn't the last time we have/will see each other. On Wednesday, to celebrate the last of my French exams, I went out with Cécile to a salsa party/course, in which I had a partner who was about as coordinated as a rock but otherwise had lots of fun and ran into other friends that I hadn't seen since vacations, even though I had to wake up the next morning for...

hiking! Yahoo! A fellow exchange student from Alabama asked me if I had any information about hiking the Pic St Loup, the mountain just to the north of Montpellier. Given that I had recently finished that geology field day all over them there hills, I am actually surprisingly well informed on the geography and many of the small towns in the area - even better, I had a map! After asking if they'd mind one more person on their expedition (they didn't!), I went to the office of tourism to confirm my findings. As it turned out, the guy I talked to was an avid hiker and informed me of a place not too far off that he likes even better. It's the Ravin des Arcs (translated like it sounds, the Ravine of the Arches), a hike of equal distance, difficulty, and just as pictoresque as the Pic St Loup - with the added benefit of being pretty much deserted as so few people know about it, AND home to caves and natural swimming holes!!

Massive natural stone arch! Also right below, swimming hole filled with tons of little fishies :)

 The hike in total, minus our time spent frolicking and eating our lunches, was around 3 1/2 hours (I had a bizarre mix of scraps from my kitchen, making a tuna-mozzarella-tomato-cucumber-lettuce sammich, with a carrot and a peach on the side - not half bad!), and definitely was not a hike for the faint of heart...or small children. When they're talking ravine, they mean ravine! So to get to the point you saw above, you have to go up to the top of the ravine, then descend (steep!) to get down to the riverbed, then of course when you're done, continue back on up the other side. Half hike, half climb, all awesome! As it turns out this hike is part of one of France's many Grand Randonnées - great hikes - number 60, in fact! We were all careful, of course, wanting to get down to our happy little baignade in one piece. We had to remind ourselves to stop and look around every so often when we realized we'd been doing a lot of looking at our feet. Thankfully, though the trail could be treacherous, it was helpfully marked with what I called Mr. Rouge Blanche - a.k.a., our trail markers!

Bottom right - Yes! Top left! NO. It was like a nonstop game of Where's Waldo!

Something I also found kinda cool, when we hadn't seen our helpful red and white markers in a bit, I noticed a conspicuous pile of rocks on the ground with another, smaller pile to one side and got quite excited. Nerdy as it may be, I learned about cairns as trail markers from...yes, a computer game. Nobody else really knew what it was, and though we proceeded to start in the wrong direction (before quickly correcting ourselvses) beyond it, I was still quite excited to have some of that random knowledge I possess be applicable.

Not my picture, but that's an example!

Eventually we ran into a small group of hikers having lunch in the river - well, where it once was, anyway. Massive riverbed, completely dried out. It was quite incredible and a little bizarre to see, standing in the bottom of a river where if, there were water at that very moment, you'd have a severely reduced life expectancy.

Give you the idea. Note the black water line on the right side of the photo!

I believe that annual heavy rains (perhaps in fall) can fill it back up again, but we had fun crawling around, while noting that we felt like we should be in Jurassic Park or see a neanderthal around a corner. I got a little worried that there would be nothing left for us to swim in, as the other hikers told us something about there being nearly no water left...mildly apprehensive that I'd led our exposition to a swimless day, we continued on - and, though the first picture spoils it, hit paydirt!

Getting used to the chilly water before taking the plunge in the deeper water behind :)

Yes, found them ^^ Nestled at the bottom of the ravines, steep rock faces all around, with the sun hitting at just the right spot to make the cold water worth plunging into, with dozens of little fishies nibbling our toes (that was how, in the world of Marisa logic, we decided that the water was safe to swim in. Abundant aquatic life = passable!). Passed one heck of a fun afternoon, then dried off like lizards on the rocks above and took a short nap before continuing our hike and heading back into the little and terribly adorable town of St. Martin de Londres, where we hopped a regional bus home, pooped and pleased.

St. Martin's public water fountain

And wouldn't you know it, I was already booked to go out that night with the ladies for one of their birthday celebrations (couldn't miss that!), so I grabbed some munchies, water, and cleaned up for a night of fun. This time we went just a bit out of Montpellier to the town of Lattes (in the direction of the beach), where a lot of the BIG clubs are located. Coconuts is a reggaeton/zouk/hip hop ish club, and tafter being here more than once it hit me that I don't really know how to dance to American rap music anymore (did I ever?). Going home will be a bit deflating, I imagine.

Ok, well that's all for now! To continue with the outdoorsy theme, guess what I'm doing this weekend? A two-day canoe/camping trip!! I can't wait! Until next time, get out there and enjoy whatever weather you're having!