in france, the 4th of july is just another sunday.

Noemi and I have been exploring.

We visited a little jardin japonais (Japanese garden) on Saturday, after which we took a little ride on a touristy train and discovered that Toulouse is actually...beautiful.
Saturday night we got invited to go watch the Spain v. Paraguay World Cup match at a pub with Pierre, Pierre's girlfriend Laura, and their friend Rudolpho. It was really fun. Also, it was really cool, because none of us were from the same country. Noemi's from Spain, Pierre's from France, Laura's from England, Ruldolpho's from Peru, and I'm from America. And yet we were all there, hanging out, miles and miles away from home, chatting in English, French, and Spanish. It felt like we actually have friends here.

We are starting to actually like Toulouse.

And today we went to the Toulouse Concorde ward, met the stake relief society president, introduced ourselves to the bishop, chatted with the missionaries that I had waved ecstatically to when we saw them driving in their car (they recognized us, "Hey, did you guys wave at us a couple days ago...?"). It was really nice. I like singing hymns in French. Except it makes me think extra hard and so I either a) sing the wrong alto note or b) sing the wrong vowel sound. Maybe eventually I'll be able to get them both right.

We may or may not be planning on going to see "Eclipse" ("Hésitation" in French) on Tuesday. Don't mock. It's a...cultural...experience. And movie tickets are way cheap for students here (3.90 euro= less than 7 bucks).

A mix of photos from the Japanese garden and random pieces of downtown: