This weekend I actually stayed in Montpellier for a change and didn’t go on an excursion. I was really excited to stay here with my host mom, Akila, and see what she was up to on the weekends.

She woke me up and asked if I’d like to go to an art exhibit with her in a town called Lodeve which is only about thirty minutes from Montpellier. My friend Steph came with me and Akila’s friend Isabele who I had already met also came. We drove over to Lodeve and got to see a sculpture there that was made for soldiers who had perished.

It was really interesting and Akila told me that it was really revolutionary because there were women in the sculpture. There was one woman who represented each social class. I thought the statue was really amazing, and we climbed over the wall to get a better look. Don’t tell anyone! People had come to the statue and put flowers around it, and I took a picture of the statement that was made about the lost soldiers.

We went to eat lunch after that where I ate an omelet and some French fries. I really think that French fries are French. I eat them with everything here. Anyway, we went to the museum after that and the visiting exhibit was one on Berthe Morisot who is a famous impressionist painter. I found her paintings to be really amazingly beautiful. She had some paintings that were scenery, but her paintings of young girls were very delicate and detailed. The part of the exhibit that was my favorite was the part displaying letters between Morisot and some other famous painters. There were letters there from Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Cassat to name a few. I couldn’t believe that all of those painters knew each other and followed each other’s work so closely. I think that is really amazing.

We came back from Lodeve, and Akila had some friends come over. Her friend Francoise has a daughter who just left for the United States named Eva. She is only sixteen, but she is doing an exchange program for two weeks through her school. Akila made all of us dinner and we just sat around and talked for a while, and I even had Eva practice a bit of English with me, just telling me her name and how old she was and general questions that her host family might ask her. She was a lot better than she let on, but she kept insisting that she couldn’t speak well. I laughed and told her that it’s fine because I can’t speak French very well, but I try everyday. Then I realized that that was the first English I had spoken all day long. Do you believe it? I find that it’s less of a task for me to speak French, even with my friends from the States. I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made so far.