Monday Recap:
Class was pretty good yesterday. There is a new group of students here now for the second half of the program. They’re from Russia (funny thing, I was reading on my New York Times app today that 11 Russians in the US were arrested for supposed espionage? Except that’s not what they’re calling it yet, weird.). And then there’s one new one from Spain in our class and another new one in our class from Venezuela. We had Bruno for class but the tangents he went off on were of interest to me. Someone gave their article presentation about the new retirement laws and that led into a comparison of taxes and business practices between here and the US, it was very interesting for me and although I felt a little bad for over 50% of the class who just didn’t care, I really enjoyed it.
After class Anna and I went back and we each made something to eat before meeting the group for canyoning. We had to take a bus about a half hour away and I got motion sick (but didn’t throw up), I can’t wait to not have to go through twisty mountainous roads every time I need to go somewhere. Feeling sick almost every time I’m in a moving vehicle is getting really old. We finally arrived and me, Anna, Lisa, and Jeremiah were told the ugly shoes we bought a Carrefour weren’t going to cut it. Luckily the guy had a few extra pairs of shoes in each of our sizes! The instructor guy (or whatever you’d call him), Pierre, handed out these sock type things and wet suits for everyone to put on….What a struggle! And I hate feet so wearing “socks” that someone else has worn, and that were still wet, was just a little bit of a stretch for me. We finally got our suits on and then we received harnesses, helmets, and jackets for our wetsuits. He drove us a little way to the start of the river, we finished putting on our gear, and then we had to hop in the river.
It started off with us just walking down the river, trying not to fall or twist and ankle due to the large rocky bottom. We came to a drop in the river and he showed us out to sit on the rocks and slide down like it was a water slide. That was fun! A couple more things like that and we reached the beginning, but by that point I felt like we had already began. Canyoning was the most terrifying and potentially disastrous thing that I have ever done, but it was awesome and I’m so glad I did it! From the beginning we just kept moving down the river but when we’d come to an obstacle we either had to jump, slide, or rapell down, depending on what the instructors told us. Our first jump was TERRIFYING. It was 8 meters up, that’s 25 feet! And we just had to jump inbetween these two giant rock walls into water that who knows how deep it was. I had a bit of an issue….we were supposed to pencil dive in but once my feet left the edge my body didn’t know what to do any more. I landed in the water in a sitting position. It hurt, a lot. The wind got knocked out of me for a second but lucky for me our wet suits were also designed to act like a life vest so you just float no matter what. I recovered while the rest of the group jumped. We all did it! Even Chelsea, who is terrified of heights, did it. We moved along and came to a few more tough spots. One passage/slide thing was so narrow that I looked at it and thought that there is no way I wouldn’t get stuck…but I didn’t so that was good. At one point we crawled behind a waterfall and then jumped back into the river.
Top two most terrifying parts: at one point we had to just step off a ledge. There wasn’t even 10 feet in between the rock walls so if we jumped we would smack into the wall across from us. It wasn’t as high up as 8 meters but still it was quite the drop and we just had to walk off. I stood at the top, terrified of making a wrong move. I think that was the scariest part, it was safe in theory, if you did everything right, but one wrong move and you smack into a rock wall, the edge of a canyon! The other most terrifying part was toward the end. WE had to jump out pretty far to avoid hitting rocks on our way down. If we didn’t think we could do it the instructor told us we could take a very uncomfortable looking slide down instead. I made up my mind that I wanted to jump and not take the easy way out. Chelsea went before me and hesitated but I told her she could do it and was just encouraging her, she did it! But then I stood at the edge for a couple minutes, petrified, what if I didn’t jump out enough? Guillaume told me I could just slide but I didn’t want to so I finally just said a prayer and jumped out, and landed in the water. It felt good to just do it. I’m not a huge risk taker and everything we did yesterday was a risk, a big one.
After what felt like forever we finally finished. It was 2-3 hours of just walking, jumping, sliding, and rappelling down the river. We took the bus back and were ready to feast, it took a lot out of us. After dinner we all just hung out and then at 10 we all decided to run. Actually a couple decided and the rest of us were peer pressured. It was amazing! We ran to a track that is .75 miles from our apartments and then we just ran around it at our own paces. The sun wasn’t quite down yet and while running I could see the outline of the mountains, it was absolutely gorgeous. And it felt so good to run for longer than 10-15 minutes! I put on one of my playlists from last summer when I was training for the half marathon and every song reminded me of something from those months, another time I did something I never thought I would do.
After soaking up the beautiful summer night we came back and talked to some others from the group who were outside and then it was time for a MUCH needed shower and MUCH needed sleep :-)
Today was pretty good too. We had a new professor for class. She started off by asking us our initial impressions of France/the French. After a girl said something about how the guys here can be very forward our professor told us, “le flirt est un sport national.” It was funny. The rest of class was pretty good today; it was nice to switch it up. After class we ate lunch in the cafeteria and then left for paragliding at 1:30!
We rode to the site and the guy told us only three could go at a time so three of our guys volunteered to go first. We stayed at the base and watched, it was sweet and I was so excited to do it! Me, Anna, and Hope were the next group of three. We climbed in the van and began the ride to the top of the mountain. It was about 25 minutes of twisting roads through the mountain, and I was happy to be on solid ground when we finally got to the top! Not even a minute after we got out it thundered. We waited at the top with the “pilots” and a couple locals, talked and joked, they were all very sarcastic people, it was funny. When the realized it wasn’t going to pass any time too soon we got back in the van and rode back down the mountain. Domage! We’ll go on Thursday now, and I’m SO excited. Michael said it was great and it doesn’t look too scary at all. Just floating through the air like a bird…
When we got back Anna, Hope, and I stopped at the grocery store for a couple things and I’ve just been relaxing since then. I think we’re going to try to find something exciting to do tonight, we’ll see!
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