A successful party and plans for a mini-vacation

Saturday night Meredith and I hosted our first real party here with about 35 of our best friends in France. People came from as far as six hours away (near Metz), as well as several assistants from Riom, Clermont-Ferrand, and Brioudes whom we had met at our training session back in October. All the Montlucon assistants were here of course, as well as Meredith's volleyball and basketball friends, a couple teachers, and a couple guys from Montlucon's pro rugby team. Kim and Julia tried peanut butter for the first time, and one of the funniest moments came when Emma realized that one of the basketball players was her student! If the disastrous condition of the apartment the next day was any indication, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves!

I will actually be seeing several of the Clermont friends again very soon since I have a doctor's appointment there Thursday to (finally) obtain my carte de sejour so I can live here legally after December. Meredith is going for his appointment tomorrow since neither of us work on Wednesdays we're planning to meet there Wednesday morning to hike the Puy-de-Dome.

This sounded like an excellent plan until it was announced yesterday that the SNCF (the French train system) would be on strike this week and therefore only a fraction of trains are running regularly. Given that Clermont-Ferrand and Montlucon are the first and second largest cities in Auvergne, one would think that there would be several regular trains running between the two but no. Meredith just informed me that the only way he can get to Clermont tomorrow is by bus at 6:00 am. I am afraid to check my own timetable.