Another weekend has passed here in Montpellier and the group continues to explore our surroundings. This past weekend, the city of Montpellier hosted a parade for homosexuality, or other words known as the “Gay Pride Parade”. It took me a while to think about whether or not I wanted to attend this event, but in the end I chose to go watch this fiasco. I had no idea what to expect going into it because there is no such thing as a “Gay Pride Parade” in Texas. I quite possibly believe there may never be one with all of the conservative beliefs in Texas. But, either way, I attended this parade at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday June the 5th. Some of the girls and I decided to buy some flags that were rainbow printed (symbolic for homosexuality) right before the parade started.

It began as just a walk up a hill to the beginning of the parade, but after letting the techno seep into our souls, we joined the walk of Gay Pride. Many people got to join the festivities such as, Lady Gaga, Snow White and Liza Minelli. These were not the actual people of course, but rather transvestites.

This is picture taken at the beginning of the Parade. As you can see, four of us girls from the group are hanging out with some men that are dressed up as Clowns or mimes or something (I don’t know what they are). After a while of walking in the parade, it just seemed as though this event was really just an opportunity for everyone to drink in public for the afternoon. As I said before, it was complete utter chaos. Kids were dancing on top of cars, people were throwing up in the streets, and there were thousands of people everywhere acting like heathens. It made me wonder, was this really a Parade about being homosexual? I mean, does being gay involve men dressing up as women and women dressing up as men? I don’t think that this style of expression is something that really motivates me to believe that someone is gay, but rather a bit gender confused. Either way, it is what it is. I enjoyed my experience at this celebration, but can directly say that I will probably never attend a “Gay Pride Parade” again.

On Sunday, June the 6th, the entire group attended the Fabre Museum, which also had a display of the Houdon collection. Throughout this four story art museum, we got to see the famous impressionism artwork that Fabre is known for. We stayed there for about an hour and a half, but there was an overall impression that everyone was lacking energy and needed some caffeine. So after departing from the Fabre Museum, we made our way to an ice cream parlor where everyone enjoyed an ice cold treat of their choice. It was a perfect way to finish the weekend and before everyone headed back to their host homes to cram the last part of their Sunday night with homework that we have all procrastinated to finish.

-Lindsey