Toulouse dayz

My last 24 hours has been spent absorbing all the awesomeness that Toulouse has to offer. It's a pretty cool town, and, as I've said earlier, it's SUPER easy to walk around.

Last night, I went out to dinner with 3 other assistants. On our way to the restaurant, we walked past Place du Capitole, and there was a crowd of people surrounding these ten-foot tall paper mâché people. There were about 12 of them, two lines of 6 facing each other, and each was dressed differently: there was

a priest, a farmer, etc. Apparently this bizarre display was for la Patrimoine, a festival celebrating Toulouse's heritage. As a result, each person represented a part of that heritage.

So, we walk up to see what is going on, and suddenly they start DANCING. Each "person" had a long skirt, and there were people standing under them, who could lift them up and make them move about. It was cool at first, but quickly became creepy when they started to walk out into the crowd.

After that, we went to a really cute restaurant called "La Mare aux Canards" (see picture above). It had exposed beams, cute things like a plane and a hot air balloon hanging from the ceiling, and an actual

hog's head on the wall. It was here where I had my first experience with the full, three-course french meal. Most restaurants have a fixed price menu, so you can get a full three-course meal for a relatively low price. Last night, I went all out with my first super french meal: Salade chèvre (goat cheese salad) for l'entrée, canard à l'orange for le plat, and, for dessert, a masterpiece called an "Ile Flottante." "Ile Flottante" translates into "floating island," and that's essentially what it is. It's a sort of egg white fluff in a sea of crème anglais. I have to include a picture of it since it is just so funny looking. It's not the actual one I had, but you get the idea. After dinner, I remembered what was so bad about France when you first get there- if you are not used to the richness of the food, you will feel sick after each meal until your body adjusts. It is not a fun feeling.

Today, I went with my friend to this crêpe place called "La Sherpa." It had all these cool pin-up type portraits on the wall, and, instead of lamps, they had bohemian-type scarves over the lightbulbs. After that, we ran into some people we knew from the hostel, and we followed them to this coffeeshop where another hostel resident was playing guitar. The place was the embodiment of French Bohemian culture. There were sculptures hanging from the ceiling, and big blow-up pictures of the buddha on the walls.

We had unknowingly arrived at a mini-concert. As we sat on the floor in odd donut-shaped beanbags, we watched one trio and two single artists play some awesome music in both french and english. The trio had a guitarist, a saxophone player, and something I can only describe as an impromptu drummer. Instead of a real drum set, he used brushes and sticks on a plastic box similar in density to a speak, a foot-peddled tambourine, and a drumset cymbal powered only by his hands. Incredibly awesome and incredibly french.

After the two single artists played, there was an interpretive dance. It was possibly the weirdest thing I have ever seen. She started off in silence, and, with a body posture similar to Gollum, she walked in a robotic motion and moved boxes from one part of the room to another. Suddenly, there was a large alarm, and she opened one of the boxes and put on a pair of shoes. She began to dance with the box, unti she got scared and had to remove the shoes. They were then used to attack the box, leaving it a mangled mess. It just got weirder from there, and all seemed to involve variations of her dancing with shoeboxes.

Tonight might feature a return to the crêpe place, since I need to save money and crêpes are relatively cheap (average 5 euros)

Anyway, I'm going to leave you guys on a cute note- here is an article about a ginger-haired, blue-eyed seal. Enjoy!