Now it's real

I went to Washington D.C. this weekend and visited Vanessa, who is finishing up her State Department internship. Today, I went to the French embassy and got my visa de long sejour. It's still over a month before I head over to France to be an English teaching assistant, but I figured visa day would be a better day than most to start up this blog. Until I leave, I'll post occaisionally about the past and present of the Alpilles region of Provence where I'll be living. To start, the image bars at the top and bottom of the blog are details of a painting which Vincent Van Gogh painted while staying at the insane asylum in the monastary of Saint Paul de Mausole right outside the town I'll be living in: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The monastary operates an asylum on its grounds to this very day.