To France under the exchange program. The first day.

Studying French for three years, our family joined the exchange program. For three seasons in a row, we hosted French families in our apartment. These are mostly elderly people. Youth is our country and language is not interesting, they prefer Bali, Mallorca, Cannes and other major places :-)
Finally, it was our turn to live in the hospitable families of Gascony - it so happened that all the French who visited us live in the Toulouse area. In addition, we were invited to visit the lyceum in the city of Maseb. We have collected a certain amount of money and began to wrestle with how to get to the south of France cheaply. (Accommodation and meals are meant at the expense of the host country) It is clear that France and the concept of "inexpensive" are incompatible, but still wanted to solve the issue with a little blood.
I began to stir up air ticket aggregators. However, it was all in vain - there are no direct flights to Toulouse. Scanners threw up various options with transfers throughout Europe. I don’t really like compound flights, so I started sorting out the nearest cities. The closest was Girona in Spain! Suddenly, I found a flight of lowcost "POBEDA" MSK - Girona for 10 thousand rubles round-trip. It was decided to get to Girona, and there, at the airport to rent a car.





The French side reacted phlegmatically to our choice. They sent us a program of stay, which indicated that on the day of arrival we were invited to dinner at the lyceum of Maseb, which would be held at 19 o'clock local time. The implication was that after arriving at 11 am local time, 6 hours on the road and preparing for dinner would be quite enough. However, as is always the case in reality, everything is a little different.

With the arrival of everything, thank God, today was fine. The car issued in the office Firefly pretty quickly. But while she was found, mastered, it took 1.5 hours.
Navigators gave two options: one - in a detour on toll roads lasting 3.5 hours and the second - directly for free 6.5 hours! Reluctantly, we choose paid and speed. And here we go the familiar route. Quickly reached the border. Flashed a pointer to Perpignan ...

The choice finally turned out to be correct - instead of three hours we drove four. There was a group accident near Toulouse and we had to knock about in a traffic jam. After Toulouse, the typical Gascon landscape stretched: hills, fields, undergrowth ...

Typical Gascon landscape


In Masseube, we arrived in the dark. It’s hard to imagine when we would get to our destination for free ... The meeting point was set up in this square:





We bought in the store with the name "Tabac" SIM card. To activate it, the seller needed to perform several tricky actions.





As if from under the ground appeared the head of the association. Following him, the owner of the cottage immediately appeared, where we have to spend the first day ...

I ran out of camera battery, so I took off the interior of the cottage on the phone. I'll post them later, if, of course, you are interested in the reader how the French live.

And we were taken somewhere in the dark outside the city. It should be noted that the rural hinterland of France lives economically, in complete darkness. Electric light barely makes its way out of the windows of shuttered houses. This is not Holland, where people live openly without curtains and shutters.

We were invited to the dining room of the Masseube lyceum. It looks like this:





As I understand, the lyceum holds dinners. Students under the supervision of teachers prepare food that you can try for a reasonable fee. That evening, students prepared sea bass fillets, served cheese...

a cake with apples ...