I love Toulouse. I feel like I start off with this a lot, but it’s just the honest truth. This weekend I got to go to the opera and a rugby game, both without leaving the city. This may be more indicative of city-living than Toulouse specifically, but Toulouse feels small enough that I know my way around, and yet big enough that there’s new stuff to do every week, if not every day.

Anyway—opera and rugby. I saw Manon on Thursday with the Dickinson Program. The seats were… uncomfortable, to say the least, but the view wasn’t bad. I’m pretty sure that opera is hard to understand even in your native tongue—at least, that’s what I’m telling myself and everyone else who asks why I didn’t understand very much. What I gleaned from the show, and then later from Wikipedia, is that it’s about this girl—Manon—who is about to be sent away to a convent, but falls in love with a handsome man, and they run away together. But Manon is seduced by the riches of another man, and when he offers to give her a life of luxury in exchange for leaving her handsome new beau, she gives in. Anyway, I won’t spoil the end for you, but I will tell you that it was kind of incredibly long. Very cool to see some amazing singers belt it out onstage, but it was hard to get into. Does that make me uncultured?

Then, I saw the rugby game on Friday! Very, very cool. Full disclosure: I played rugby in high school, so getting to see a professional game was amazing! It was the local Toulouse team (Stade Toulousian) against the Zebras, an Italian team from Parme. And, just saying, we kicked their butts—38 to 5. It was pretty great. The stadium wasn’t packed, but it was pretty full, and the atmosphere wasn’t lacking for it. A live band played, people rooting for Toulouse sang local rugby songs and yelled and cheered. There was beer and bolognaise flavored chips, and, of course, the entire stadium did the wave. What more could a girl want?