Saintes, France

Well, I hope someone is enjoying these pictures, because here come more! After Paris, we drove down to Saintes, in the Bordeaux region, for our first festival. 

Jam session with Venezuela, Canary Islands, and Mexico

Amanda and I with Eva, from Venezuela. She was very friendly!

Amanda and I with Eva and the group from India. They had a guy doing some nifty magic tricks, which was fun! This first day at the festival was really great for visiting with the other countries. 

With my friends from Venezuela.

So we had a lot of down time at this festival... a lot! This day, rather than wander through the city, Amy and I decided to stay at the school where we ate lunch and just talk and read and nap. This was my view from the ground... quite lovely!

This is Amy and I resting. We had a really great conversation that afternoon, which was so awesome. That was one of the great things about this tour: really having time to get to know people and have more of those deeper conversations.

Jen G.'s awesome friend Amy came on tour for the first little while. She rocks! The three of us were roommates in Saintes and we had a fun time, especially with our self-made booby traps (aka laundry lines). Amy also rocked the bag-watching duty. After our show this night we paraded and she stayed behind to watch our stuff... and ended up having to rescue it twice from the sprinklers! Talk about dedication. 

Jenny and I with a friend from India. They performed some very fun dancing, more towards the Bhangra style, I think. Either way, they did a great job. I wish I could have seen more!

My fun friend from the Canary Islands!  We got to talk a lot in Spanish. He invited me to visit him in the Canary Islands, told me about his house on the beach there, his family, and we even talked a little bit of religion! Chrissy served a Spanish-speaking mission and had talked to him about the Church, and we continued some of that conversation as well. Mom, the minute he invited me to visit and stay with his family, I thought of you and I taking a vacation... :)

Venezuela! Some of these South American dancers have some far-out costumes and dances. In spite of the show-girl-esque costumes, this dance was fairly tame. 

I'm so bad, but I don't remember where this dancer is from. I want to say Taiwan, and I'm pretty sure that is correct.  I should whip out my journal and make sure, but I'm tired and lazy right now. Either way, she is beautiful!

Sometimes the food we got was pretty good. Sometimes we got a lot of mystery meat. This lunch was particularly unappetizing, though. Rice with corn, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and tuna. I didn't eat much. Food was on our agenda for the afternoon outing. 

We listened to our amazing band rehearse for a little while in the afternoon. Seriously, they know how to jam! They are all super skilled individually, and collectively they make great music. They make me want to join the band instead of dance!!

That lunch left us so hungry that crepes were number one on our post-band-rehearsal to-do list. (Sheesh, how many hyphens did I use there?) We couldn't wait to get some delicious food in us!

There were several things about Victor Hugo in the city. I need to research and see what his ties to this place are. 

Nikki and I meant to share a crepe. We asked for a second fork and he brought a second crepe. And then some crazy street performers came along and bothered us... molested Brianne's head, tried to take our crepes, crawled under the table (I thought he was trying to get my purse! Pretty sure I hit or kicked him a little) and other musical nonsense. 

Bananas and Nutella. DIVINE!

The river in Saintes and the old arches from the first century... like 70 AD I think?? Rad!

Old bridge with all the festival country flags flying.

Spiral staircase in the town church. We visited it just a few minutes after a wedding ended. It is very old and beautiful!

At this cool venue we got to get ready outside. And we got to do quick changes in the dark. Behind the stage. With the stinging nettles. But before all that we got to get ready here... until we got kicked off the tables and had to find somewhere else to go. 

So happy! Despite the craziness of moving here, there and everywhere and figuring out quick change, this was a pretty cool chateau to perform at!

We had a lot of spare time before dinner, so everyone did fun things with makeup. I helped Jenny with her bold colors (not the she really needed help though). And Amy did Erin's eye makeup!

We did finally eat, and the food was tasty! They kept close track of who could have how much of what, but in the end we all left dinner happy and full. Our crazy guide didn't help the peace of the situation, but at least we all got to eat!