Our bodies have made it to France, but our minds are still lagging behind a little bit. We left Vancouver on Saturday night and arrived on Sunday night - there’s a nine-hour time difference, and I’m still vaguely disoriented and ready to fall asleep at weird times.

Thomas and Raphaël from the band Bruxelles met us at the airport and drove us to Clermont-Ferrand, their hometown and our home base for the next few days. Monday we explored the town, which is about four hours southeast of Paris. It’s near some inactive volcanoes and much of the town is built with volcanic rock, which gives their cathedral a beautiful dark gothic look. We climbed a seemingly infinite spiral staircase for a stunning view of the area. Lots of red rooftops and narrow winding streets finally made me realize that we’re not in Vancouver any more…

We’re starting to get the hang of the language a little bit - my high school French is coming back to me. A few of the band members have pretty good English and between all of us we seem to be able to figure things out pretty well.

Tuesday we tested our instruments, got the power conversion figured out so that we wouldn’t fry Marcus’s pedalboard, and rehearsed for a little while. Tomorrow we’ll be rehearsing with Bruxelles’ sound and light engineers in a town called Issoire, about 40 km away - but the first item of business is a newspaper interview at 8 AM. Which means I’m going to get some sleep right now, because my poor brain is so confused I don’t know if that’s early or late…