The French Word for Pony is Poney

I've had incredible strokes of luck since I've been on this side of the world. Like when the plane that was supposed to take me out of Morocco broke down and we ended up being trapped in the airport for the entirety of one day and part of the next, I made best friends with a guy named Brian.* Because of the massive delay he wasn't going to make his connecting flight to Delhi via Riyadh until three days later. So I invited him to stay with me and my little brother in Paris, and we ended up having the very best time in all the history of all the world.

Bonus: having a third wheel meant that Brother Sam and I could take a series of excellent jumping pictures in front of all of Paris' monuments. Like so:

This weekend was supposed to be terrible. For the first time in months, I was going to be stranded all by my lonesome in my cell in Digoin. Due to said trips to Morocco and Paris, I was too poor to take a weekend trip (I have 50E to my name until I get paid next week... eek). And my regular Saone-et-Loire homegirl Missy had plans to be in Paris for a Patti Smith concert. So I was looking at an entire weekend of horrible, poverty-induced loneliness in my 7 ft x 9 ft cage with nothing to do but laundry.

But! Lady Luck intervened and Missy decided to stick around S+L to save money, and she proposed a staycation in her exotic hometown of Charolles, pop: 3,500. We planned to watch episode after episode of How I Met Your Mother and play Backsies Backsies (a game I invented where you rub my back and I rub yours... maybe) and not much else.

But! Lady Luck intervened once more and Missy's Austrian roommate Sigrid invited us to go along with her to visit PONIES!

Let me say that again. POOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!

Sigrid's 5-year-old Leoni has been here a few times already to go riding. This time she got a pony-horse named Vagabond (pronounced va-ga-BOHN). He was brown and shaggy and so cute and small and perfect and Mom can I please have him PLEASE???

I couldn't ride Vagabond because I would probably make him dead, but nothing on this earth could stop me from jumping in front of this--France's most glorious monument to little girls' dreams everywhere.

This one's for you, Brian.*

 

*Brian's real name is Eric. But since he looks more like a Brian it's just too confusing to call him Eric.