Goodbye Bourges

Hello world, Alexa here! Winslow is obviously here too but he’s looking out the window, and writing this post makes a nice bubble around me in the car, which I need right now. We are in a Blablacar on our way to Bordeaux, about a 5-hour drive. This morning was a little hectic. The landlord came early, as he told us he would, but we were not quite ready to go and had to rush to do last-minute clean-up and shove all our stuff into the hallway. The door was closed and locked before I got to take a last breath in there.  Then I had to say goodbye to Spencer, who has a flight out of good ol’ Charles de Gaulle tonight. What is the right length for a goodbye? I feel like I’ve been saying goodbye for a week now. And what if goodbye lasts the whole rest of the month too? Spencer told me really late last night (were were out late, obviously saying goodbye to some people) that I better enjoy the next month and not spend every minute wondering if I should have gone home with him. Because then what would be the point of this last hoorah if it’s everything short of a hoorah? I have this problem where I have a hard time enjoying the present because I’m too concerned about what comes next. 

And everything just changed all at once. That doesn’t help.  Winslow hopes to be able to continue blogging throughout this last trip, and I will return to Bourges for a couple days before my flight home, but nevertheless this is a goodbye post. The past week or so has been full of them, and the closer and closer I got to today the more and more I realized how much I will miss Bourges. Life there was kind of a pain, challenging, mentally draining, but it has charm and I got to live there and get through it all with the person I love. It turns out that you end up making a home out of wherever you are put. It’s in our nature. With that, I want to just share some last photos of my home.  

Every April is the Printemps de Bourges (Spring in Bourges), the first music festival of the year in France. We came back from Greece to a city full of life, and it was amazing to see Bourges like this. Restaurants were packed, people were out until all hours of the morning. Bars had live music, huge French artists held free as well as paid concerts, young people were hanging out in the streets that were blocked off for cars. A percussion « marching band » played from one end of town to the other, and techno music pressed on indefinitely in some places. There were food trucks and craft stands and plastic souvenir beer cups. There was some kind of music or entertainment everywhere you looked. 

Goodbye Lucas and Noah! We made pancakes for our last time together. 

Our travel wall in our bedroom. There were also pins on the map marking where we travelled to. 

I was close to finishing the Frank’s Red Hot that I bought off Amazon in October. In fact I filled a water bottle with it to travel...

Cheering Spencer and David on at their last football match! They did not win and don’t play so well together as a team despite having some great players. It was entertaining to watch!

Goodbye Héloïse and Maelynn! You’re both the most loveable little troublemakers. 

With one of my ce1 classes on my last day! I also got plenty of little cards with drawings of me on them. Thank you and goodbye École Louis Dezelot!

At Place Gordaine last night with some people I love at our go-to bar, Murrayfield. Not pictured: Bruno the best bartender. 

Saying goodbye this morning to 7 avenue Marx Dormoy. You can see the goodbye in our faces (maybe not so much in Winslow’s). 

Voila, that’s it. Both Winslow and I send our love (and some of my tears). Goodbye!

Alexa & Winslow