Déjà-John

So John loved the baguettes and cheese so much he came back for some more last week. Only towards the very end did he start to miss Budweiser, cars that are bigger than 4-wheelers, and non-unionized workers. So, lets give him a hand.

Yay John!

We had a more relaxed visit than the first time he came – meaning we stayed in Toulouse a lot more, and as the weather was in the 50’s the whole week, we spent almost every evening (read: happy hour) sitting by the river, which suited us just fine. We did go skiing (in T-shirts) one day, at the same mountain we went to in December, and while there were more trails open, and markedly more people (not saying much as last time we saw less than a dozen the whole day – including the staff), there was arguably less snow. We ended up cruising around, enjoying the rays and the sights and messing around with John’s sweet new GoPro camera, rather than hitting the slopes that hard, as they say. But we looked good doing it: 

T-Shirt, I told you.

                                    

                                               Sweet GoPro shots

Wednesday we took a tour of Airbus, the European equivalent to Boeing that is based in Toulouse. I was at a language exchange a few weeks ago and met a kid who was an Airbus engineer who told me about these tours you can take of the campus, the Concorde and the A380 (huge double-decker passenger plane), and I said to myself, John would like that. So we got it together and went (luckily they had a tour in English). It was a super cool and informative, unfortunately we couldn’t take any photos inside but we saw the huge warehouse where they assemble the parts of the A380 that come in from Germany, Spain and England. We also saw tarmac where the assembled ones are held before being test flown, and taken to Hamburg to get furbished and decorated on the inside, and got to go inside a mock-up. If you happen to have $370,000,000 I can say first hand they look pretty nice.

Most photographed spot of the week - La Garonne

Assistants hangin by the river

John's visit was hinged on the contingent that I find somewhere for him to watch the Superbowl on Sunday. To be honest, I wasn't hopeful, but didn't share that. To his delight and my relief we found a rugby/sports bar that screened the whole thing, staying open till 5am. And, get this, there was even an association of ex-pats who catered the whole thing with nachos, chili, and wings. Chicken wings. In France. Now I've seen everything. Naturally I acted like I knew about all this and picked the bar expressly, otherwise I would've had no pull getting him to come to produce markets or care about what red wine we drank.  

Sunday market photo by John (I think he might have enjoyed it)

He ate again with the Mangesters, funnily enough at Ana’s apartment where we ate last time he was here. She’s convinced he came back for her cooking. We worked on my cruiser who was in need of some love, and after much tinkering, ended up changing the brake pads and cables, realigning the wheels, fixing my light and bell (the latter being my biggest concern of the whole process), and thoroughly, greasing her down. She looked great by the end, which makes me slightly nervous; I can’t be getting to flashy lest someone get any ideas to hawk her on the black market of St. Sernin (yes, where I bought her in the first place, but to my credit I didn’t know where the bikes came from at the time!). Case in point: Tonight I was headed out to a free swing class that I found out about at the Electro-Swing-Cabaret dance soirée I went to 2 weeks ago, and when I pulled up to the post by the metro where I was going to leave her, I saw a lonely bike lock dangling limply off the post. At that exact moment, a girl walked up, started at the post, then at me and said sadly, “J’ai plus de vélo” – I don’t have a bike any more. I just stared at her then quickly apologized, she wished me a good evening, and walked off. Needless to say I wasn’t feeling good about abandoning my ride at that particular moment but I didn’t have time to bring it home and walk back to the metro. I assured myself that lightening doesn’t strike the same place twice, and, thankfully, was right as after my class she was still waiting for me. Phew.

It was great to have him back here, as Gisele said, he didn't come for another visit, but was dropping back by. I'm pretty sure both my roommates think he'll be back next month. Since we planned less than the first time, we were able to have spontaneous, lazy afternoon lunches like this one:  

Carrot-pumpkin soup, mâche salad, and of course bread. 

The weather was so nice we even were able to eat outside

John left on Thursday morning and that day after class I headed off to Lyon for the weekend to stay with an English prof’s daughter who studies there. It was AWESOME and I promise a post about it a très bientôt.

Bisous.

Linz