So, it’s about 1 in the morning and I should be sleeping peacefully in my bed. But I just can’t. Maybe I’m just over-tired. The last two nights I’ve only had 6 hours of restless sleep, bolstered by short and uncomfortable naps on the bus. I think adrenaline has taken over to keep me running. Or maybe it’s all the excitement. We’re all still riding this wave of childish enthusiasm, for absolutely everything. Returning to our single rooms seemed so sad to all of us, we left our doors open and stood in the hallway, chatting. We went out to dinner together, visited each others’ rooms, and met in the basement. After so much time together, sitting alone seems depressing. After so much fun, doing homework and turning in early seems impossible.
I’ve just showered, so I’m clean and warm. The window’s open so I can hear the light traffic whizzing by, and feel the cool breeze, welcome after a weekend with highs in the 80′s. And I figure, if I’m awake, I may as well try and explain the weekend that produced over 300 pictures. Yes. Three hundred.
Saturday morning we were all grouchy and tired, except for Stephanie U, an unfailing morning person. Francheska was in a crisis over her inability to fit all of her things into her bag. The rest of us were turning circles in our rooms trying to decide what we’d forgotten, or getting coffee from the machine in the lobby. It took a while to get us all together, Madame Spina counting and recounting several times before allowing the bus driver to pull away from the dorms.
We met our tour guide, another tired looking French woman speaking poor English. And then, despite good intentions to see the countryside, we all promptly fell asleep.
We arrived ahead of schedule at 9 AM in Chartre. We used our extra time to explore the town a bit and find a post-breakfast pre-lunch snack. Then we met yet another tour guide, a young local woman, who would show us the ancient cathedral and the “old town” surrounding it.
The cathedral was a place for pilgrimage, very old and very beautiful, but also very dark. Parts of it had been burned and rebuilt, and the tour guide explained to us the strange mix of architecture. The windows and certain parts of the facade dated back to the 11th century, and it was considered a sort of miracle that so many of the stained glass panels had survived. The veil of Mary, the relic bequeathed to the church by the King of France and the source of Chartre’srevenue in the old days, had also been preserved for years. We listened to the tour guide through strange ear phones witha chunky part that we didn’t quite know what to do with. I put it on top of my head for a while and everyone laughed at me.
Another interesting feature of the church I forgot to mention. In the 18th century, someone decided to poke a little hole in one of the windows, and put a nail in the floor. Every year on June 21st at a certain time, the sun comes through the hole and lights the nail. It’s supposed to help set the clocks, and a bunch of people were in Chartre to see it. Although we WERE there on June 21st, we weren’t able to see the nail light up.
The old town was beautiful too, full of remarkably old buildings with a fairy tale feel. We saw the International Stained Glass Museum, although we didn’t go in. We also saw the outside of the old bishop’s house, and a market place that marked where the old duke’s castle used to be. There was another place where an ancient gate to the city used to stand. A ruined wall is all that’s left, from the Second World War when German soldiers bombed it. Everyone was charmed by the town, but soon it was time to go.
And speaking of time to go, I’m tired now. The breeze and my music is easing all that adrenaline right out of me. I’ll write more tomorrow, although it’s going to get tricky to keep up now, withit being my last week of classes/being with my friends. I can’t decide if I’m more excited to see everyone back home, or if I’m more upset about having to leave. It’s so beautiful here, there’s nothing like it in America. And I’ll miss my friends so much. It’ll never be exactly the same as it is now, all of us brought together by this unique experience, seeing something exciting together everyday, united by our common language and our common struggles. Oh well. Life’s gotta keep on moving.
