La Vie en France: Obernai & La Route des Vins

Hey friends and fam! Just an update on what I've been up to.. things at school are okay. The English teachers are really nice and the students seem pretty cool too. I am in two different high schools, I really love one of them and the other one is just so-so.

My apartment is working out really well. I get along really well with my roommate and our building is so nice! They're still working on getting everything working since we're the first to move in, but so far so good.

Since I've already been here over two weeks, I obviously have found time for a few excursions. My roommate and other friend, Gina, both have Wednesdays off like I do. So we've decided to start up "wednesday excursions" like I did last year. This past Wednesday we checked out a town near Strasbourg called Obernai. It's a smaller town, but very quaint and extremely similar-looking to that little town in "beauty and the beast.." as most towns here are. I don't know if I ever mentioned that first scene from the movie but every time I visit small towns in this region I start singing that song.

Anyway, Obernai was cool, we just hung out, drank some beer and ate some French food! There wasn't much to see there, so we just walked around, checked out some shops and bakeries and then headed back to Strasbourg.

This past weekend, I was invited by my "french fam" to do another bike ride on the wine route. Last year we did the same thing, and I seriously almost threw up by the end I was so tired from it. It's about 30 miles, and it's really hilly and difficult. However, it's a beautiful view of the wine route and the Fall is the best time to see it! So I invited my roommate Kristen and we headed out into the vineyards. We stopped at a few towns, all which I had already been to a few times, including Ribeauvillé and Riquewihr. We had a nice lunch in Riquewihr, looked in some of the Christmas stores which have already opened (we decided we needed to go back with the car another time to haul all the stuff we wanted to buy!) and unfortunately we didn't drink any wine, but it didn't seem like that great of an idea considering I was struggling biking whilst sober. I think my favorite part about the towns was looking at all of the huge geraniums hanging in all of the windows! That's something you definitely don't see very often in the States. So anyway we had perfect weather, it wasn't too hot, and we had a really nice time.

Tomorrow for our "wednesday excursion" we're off to a place called Europa Park in Germany. It's like Epcot at Disney World only with roller coasters! More to come..

Strasbourg! My new home :)