Narbonne sous la Neige

Back to good ol' Narbonne, where, if you'll remember, we (as in my friends) have a saying... "Narbonne: tout est possible!" We are in the middle (or end, if I can be hopeful) of winter here in Narbo, where our days are generally spent in bright sunshine with temperatures generally between 25°F and 45°F and we daily struggle with wind so hard that we have to practically run into it to achieve the same speed that would normally be considered walking. Which wind is it today? You never know. Is it the Cers? The Marin? The infamous Mistral? Or, my least favorite because it's the coldest, the Tramontane? I regularly hear wind noises so loud from my double-windowed 5th floor corner room that it sounds as if I am in a tornado (and we're not talking the calm "eye of the storm" part either, people). Occasionally so loud it wakes me up at night!

All that is to say that if you visit Narbonne in the winter, you are likely to be greeted by crisp (but not freezing) temperatures, plenty of sunshine, and wind strong enough to drive you crazy after a few months, let alone a lifetime.

You are NOT likely to run into any snow. It snows maybe once every five years, even more rarely actually sticking.

Which makes it all the stranger that, as I was riding the bus from downtown to les Hauts de Narbonne (the heights of Narbonne) to give private lessons on Wednesday the 16th, I watched as raindrops changed to big, fluffy snowflakes. This surprised not only me, but apparently the bus driver, who took a walkie-talkie call and suddenly veered off the beaten (read: planned) path and headed off on the autoroute. As in highway. In the direction of Carcassonne. Which, I might add, is NOT how you get to les Hauts de Narbonne. And we just kept going. For 10 minutes. Luckily after a brief stint of thinking I may or may not be headed on an unexpected field trip and a brief inquisitorial phone call from the mother of my tutor student), the conductrice de bus suddenly remember that she had a job to do, and that job was getting me to, well, my job. After arriving 15 minutes late, I proceeded to give private lessons to an eager student all the while gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window, framing in the foreground, the falling snow on the terrace, and in the background, the Mediterranean. (I know.) It stopped after a while, only to begin again once I was home.

our school/home (aka our "château de rêves" - castle of dreams)

courtyard

Turns out Narbonne on a snowy Wednesday night is somehow even calmer than Narbonne on a normal Wednesday night.

photo break on the way to dinner at the cantine

Chandavy (one of the two other girls that lives on my floor) and me, post-dinner photo break (notice the presence of the bébé baguette* in my hand in this and all subsequent photos)

Can you see the message I wrote out in the snow with my feet?!

me with Julie, who lives on the first floor in our part of the building - Julie and Chandavy are both BTS (there's no American equivalent, but let's just go with "it's kind of like community college") students who are maîtres au pair, which means they live on campus and occasionally supervise the high school students, kind of like RAs.

As I was jumping around in the snow, I hear Chandavy narrating, "Voilà Kate, 4 ans et demi, qui saute partout dans la neige. Saute pour une photo, Kate! Saute!" ("Here we have Kate, 4 and a half, jumping everywhere in the snow. Jump for a picture, Kate! Jump!") The result was this joyous shot filled with both action and bébé baquette.

Wardrobe change! We went inside, I got pajamas on and settled in, posted a picture of the snow on Facebook, and my neighbor Conchi saw, ran to the window, and realized for the first time that it was snowing outside in NARBONNE! Soooo it was back outside for us!

Chandavy & Conchi, who's a Spanish teacher and is the other girl who lives on our floor

me doing something ridiculous (throwing snow up into the air)

It should also be noted that these were the last photos my camera took before meeting The Final (maybe?) Death. After what happened in September in Salzburg, it's a wonder she lasted so long. But it is still tragic that she's called it a life. Thanks for the memories, sweet pink camera.

the next morning, view from my shower: There's still a little bit of snow on the rooftops, and you can see the snow on the Corbières (small rocky mountains) in the background.

Canal de la Robine with a touch of snow

photo cred: Violeta!

Les Halles, snow style

photo cred: Violeta!

Bonjour de Narbonne!

(Where tout est possible, even a snow day!)

photo cred: Violeta!

*leftover from dinner, I don't just carry baguettes everywhere. Though I could. Then I'd be full-on 100% française.