A fun but sick week

School yet again all week but Wednesday night was very fun. I went down to Marseilles to watch the Champions League Soccer game between the Olympique de Marseilles vs. London Arsenal. OM has a hugggeee fan base that get crazy so we couldn't speak english the whole time we were in their section.

We left Aix around 6 on a bus with 18 other foreign students in our group. The bus ride took longer than expected but it was very fun. I think the bus driver was punishing us for being so loud and rowdy because he turned the air conditioning off and everyone was dying of heat. Coordinating that many drunk people from a bus, to a metro, to a soccer stadium is much harder than you would think too.

The game was ridiculously fun, OM supporters chant and sing the whole time and are very loud and obnoxious. Unfortunately... we lost. And since it started raining on us at the end of the game, I am now sick as well.

So I have spent this weekend inside watching movies and drinking tea trying my hardest to get better so that I dont have to be stuck inside any longer. It is definitely cooling down too, it smells like winter. But I am excited for winter, just not the wind.

Trip to Monaco!!!

Bonjour tout le monde! I am writing after a very long and fun week. Aix is a party town, full of students and bars and I am absolutely getting my fill. There are lots of things to do and people to meet and I love every minute of it. On Sunday, I went to Monaco with a ton of other students from my school and other schools in Aix, mostly foreigners.

We got on the bus at 8:30 am and got to Monaco around 11:30. They dropped us off at the Musée d'Oceanography which I saw last time I was there with the Teece's. It was great to go back and remember seeing lots of the places and sites I had already seen.

The people in my group were 3 other Americans (friends from school), 2 Belgian guys from another school here and a Swedish girl. We stayed together all day. We walked up to the Cathedrale where Grace Kelly got married and then to the Palais where we randomly stumbled in on the changing of the guard. It is beautiful but doesn't have anything on Buckingham or Versailles, it mostly looks like it is made out of legos.... but it is extremely old (13th century I think) and has the most amazing view of Monaco, duh.

View of the harbor from the Palace

Our group for the day

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Anyone interested? Yes please

In case anyone didn't know, Monaco is a playground for the rich and famous. Not only do they have the world renowned Monte Carlo Casino and the Grand Prix, but their marina is stocked with the most beautiful yachts and sailboats I have ever seen, not to mention the Bentley's, Ferrari's, Porsche's, and Maserati's that accompany them. 

We walked down to the marina and spent at least and hour wandering around enviously figuring out the best way to make rich men fall in love with us. Our plan thus far; move to Georgetown in the Cayman Islands.  It must be all that offshore banking and Caribbean air but at least every other yacht was from there.

We eventually left the marina to walk up to the Monte Carlo along the road that has the racing stripes painted on the streets all year round for the Grand Prix, and the noise! I can only imagine what the little valley of Monaco sounds like during the race, we heard one car accelerating that sounded like a rocketship, it must be ridiculous to hear them all in the race. That will be something I will come back for when I have my sailboat so that I won't have to pay for parking ;) We ate lunch on a rooftop cafe and pondered how our lives would be if we were those people...

Enough of the jealousy drama, lunch was delicious. Only the girls had lunch because the boys wanted to gamble. They ditched us for the Casino and we met them an hour later, they were broke, but happy. I think they just wanted to say they dropped €100 in the Monte Carlo, silly boys.

On the drive back to Aix, we drove up the coast past towns that I would happily drop everything to live in. Ézé is my new dream.... We went through Nice as well and then back up to Aix. It was a quick but exciting day.



That is all for now because I have to go to class, but I am going to the final soccer match between the Marseilles Olympique and the British Arsenal (I think thats what they are called) tomorrow. I will do my research but it is the final and is going to be very very rowdy. Especially because it is France vs. England in the final, and because we are going with 17 people... I will let you know if I survive. Gros bisous!

Just a few reflections

I started carrying around a little pocket journal everywhere I go for things like phone numbers and addresses, but it has become something I don't leave the home without now. And what's funny is that almost all the exchange students I know do the same thing. It is just a little journal that I write things in that I don't want to forget at that moment. (I seem to be forgetting a lot of things lately, primarily how to speak English) So I will share with you some of the things I have picked up on since living in France. And I will add more as I figure them out.

In Paris...
-the sidewalk shakes when the metro goes underneath
-im not sure if taking leftovers home from a restaurant is acceptable

In Aix:
-woke up to a street performer outside my window, it was quite pleasant

-I eat a baguette a day, the way I see it, if I don't half of it will go bad by tomorrow

-phonetics class is pointless

-I feel dumb because I only know English, everyone else here knows at least two languages plus french

-french people insert "en fait" (in fact) into sentences all the time. It is similar to "like" and does not make much sense. I picked up on it when french people speaking english insert "in fact" into their english sentences. Even the teachers say it and it is very distracting.

-driving is stupidly expensive

-faire la bise....
   - the kiss: everyone knows french people kiss cheeks as a greeting, but it is so much more complicated than that. The number changes, which cheek you start with changes, who you do it to changes, and when it is appropriate. They are teaching us what to do in school so we dont look so dumb. In the south, it is two kisses, starting with the left cheek, given every time you arrive at a party or among a group of friends. It is acceptable with older people but not teachers, ex: Ok with my landlady and her husband, but not with my neighbor... also, men give each other la bise in the south. It is rare in other parts of france but here, men give each other kisses if it is family or friends. I went to a house party the other night and there must have been 15 people, half girls. Whenever a new guy arrived, he kissed each girl twice, even if he didnt know them (me), kissed the guys he knew, and shook hands with the guys he didnt. It is very confusing...

- boys call each other "poulet" which means chicken. It is a friendly term like "mate", but usually given at the beginning or end of a conversation.

-it is rare to find a bathroom that has 1)a toilet seat and 2) toilet paper. If you find them both in one stall, you win... our school for example has one bathroom with 4 stalls, coed, and only 2 toilets have seats. They also only stock toilet paper on the weekends so by tuesday afternoon you are screwed. I had the great idea to use the door handle to help me squat instead of wasting energy actually holding myself up, only to realize that the door didnt lock either and opened inwards... next thing I knew I was halfway in the toilet with my pants around my knees with the door open inwards, the guy washing his hands was modest enough to just walk away....

- teachers dont care if they keep you late, you can be in class with one teacher for 3 hours and when it finally comes time to leave, they conveniently are unable to hear the many chimes of the massive clocktowers outside...

- the national symbol of France is the coq (rooster), im not sure why. But in france, roosters dont say "cock a doodle doo!", they say "co co ri co!" It is common to hear people chanting this at games because it symbolizes "vive la france!" also, dogs dont say "woof" they say "whoa  whoa whoa" (im serious Brooke)

First week of school done!

I have officially finished my first week of school in France!! I love it. It is very hard but very interesting and I am actually finding that I understand almost everything. I adore the people in my class as well. There is one boy in the whole class from Taiwan and everyone else is a girl, and there is only one other american. We went out for drinks they other day after class and it was 2 korean girls, a spaniard, a swede, a brazilian, a colombian, and a pole.

Laura from Colombia

The only picture I took Thursday night...

from left: nora (swede), laura(colombiana), and Magda(polish)

Everyone is sooo nice and we vary in age from 19 to 31. We speak a combination of poor french and english. I feel so dumb because I only speak English and they all speak at least 3 languages, with english and french being the common one. But it is good because it is great practice and fun.  I went out Thursday night with the American from my class and we went to the underground bar called Sunset. It was €6 to get in but once inside drinks are about €0.50. It was dangerous. I met a ton of foreigners including more Swedes, Brits, Irish, Americans, and more French. I even met a guy from Berkeley who knows the Teece's and has partied at their house before with Teddy. It was super random but so fun to once again be reminded just how small the world is. I also had a conversation completely in French for about 45 mins with a french guy named Nikolas from Aix. I didnt even realize it until we went outside for air and he congratulated me on my good french. Thank you alcohol, you win again....  The music they play at clubs is hilarious as well. It varied from Rihanna and JT to 80s hits to 60 rock jams to middle school love songs. The americans of the group had a good laugh about it. I also met an American guy from Arizona who was soo much fun. He is a ballroom dancer and asked me if I knew how to dance. I said not really but I can get the idea pretty fast. He took that to mean I could swing dance so he then twirled and spun me around the dance floor for 20 minutes. I made my way on the 5 minute walk home around 4 am and the streets were still packed. It was a great night.

On friday, none of us had class so we went out for coffee and shopping together. Then yesterday I went to Cassis with Nora (Swedish), Laura (Colombian) and Kiki (Japanese) as well as Romain (French) who drove us all. It was so beautiful even though we passed Cassis by about 30 minutes before realizing it. But it was great because we got to drive up the beautiful coast. We had lunch in Cassis and icecream after which was delicious. Then we went to another town called Bandol and then home.

La plage Cassis

It was so ridiculously windy!! Aix and the whole of the south of france have le mistral in the winter which blows in from the north fiercly and coldly. By the time we got to the coast it was the strongest wind I have ever felt! We had to hold on to our lunch so it wouldnt blow away. But it was so nice and warm that it didnt really bother us. I dont look forward to winter though when it is freezing cold and blowing like that...

the vieux port de cassis

It is so great that Aix now feels like home. It is so comforting to get back here to the already familiar small streets to my apartment. I have noticed a few funny things though that I want to note. Almost all french people say "en fait" (in fact) all the time. They just insert into sentences kind of like "like" or "um". It was very confusing at first because I thought it was part of the conversation that I was trying to understand. But then I realized that when they speak English, they insert the english words "in fact" into sentences in places they dont make sense. Even the teachers. I counted how many times my phonetics teacher said it in just the last 30 mins of class...16 times. It is very distracting.

Mt. Saint Victoire, the biggest reason Aix is famous

One of the pay stations

Driving, I will never drive in Europe because 1 I think I would crash in about 2 minutes and 2 because everything is sooo expensive!! They use diesel and it is by the litre, in Euros. It equals out to about $7 a gallon... and all the freeways cost money. The same way we pay a toll at certain bridges, they pay a toll on highways, and they are expensive! Some toll stations are less than 5 miles apart too! Which means they sometimes pay €2.10 for 5 miles then have to pay another €1.30 then 20 mins later you take a ticket that charges you by how far you travel. We probably spent over €25 today just on highway tolls...

Television and radio. I usually do not watch cartoons and despise advertisements, but in french, everything is so much funnier. I am watching the Simpsons right now dubbed over and they even attempt to give people redneck accents in french, it is tres comique. Family guy is also a good one and advertisements are hilarious. I would rather watch ads than actual TV. I watched Friends yesterday which just depressed me because it was so poorly done but hey, they try.

So there was a little bit of my week and my reflections on french life. Right now I am drinking a €3 bottle of Rose and eating a baguette that was warm when I bought it with goat cheese. Im going over to some of Romain's friend's houses tonight so if I want to be at all social, I better drink up :) Just kidding parents, my liver is plenty healthy. Je t'aime bien.



It is now the next day and I just quickly wanted to mention something about french house parties. I went with Romain and his little brother to his friend's house close to mine and it was such a fun night. Everyone was so welcoming and tried to speak slowly with me so that I could understand. Most spoke english so that was helpful but I spoke in french most of the night. It was pretty similar to an american house party except for the cigarettes (absolutely everyone smokes, inside and out). So all night they were smoking cigarette after cigarette, every single person, girls and guys, it was basically a smoking party. (Dont worry I still have not smoked, and am not planning on it) but I am getting more used to it. It doesnt really bother me anymore because it is so present everywhere. Another thing, house parties in the states consist primarily of beer, then some sort of hard liquor with a mixer, very rarely is there wine and drinks are always out of red cups. Last night, there was not a beer in sight, there was one bottle of cheap vodka with juice, and at least 20 bottles of wine. All rose and white wine, and all being drunk out of wine glasses. It was so funny to me, everyone brought wine for everyone else and just kept refilling them all night. I loved it. I would have taken a picture but I was trying to fit in and that would have been weird :)

Bienvenue á Aix :) Finally settled!!

Train ride down from Paris

 Bonjour toute la monde!!!!! I apologize right now for not being in contact for the last week. It has been one hell of a difficult time to get to where I am now. I just got internet last night so now I can catch you up!!!

I know it looks like central california, but just remember its the beautiful south of france

Excuse my french but holy shitballs this has been hard!! And beautiful, and complicated, and exhausting, and breathtaking, and fun, and STRESSFUL! My arrival was fine but of course I arrived with all my luggage all alone in a random town I have never been to in the heat. I figured out my way to the hotel and then to the school to find out my place to live and, like most things, you get what you pay for. CSA, the program I used, is the cheapest on the internet for studying abroad, for a reason. They promised us housing upon arrival and they didnt do anything. I have met lots of other students using CSA who where in the same awful predicament as me. There are thousands of students in Aix and all of them were looking for places to live so apartment searching was impossible. So here we are (WE being my new roommate, Gabriella, an American from Georgia who I met on the street and we decided to be roommates in about 2 minutes, she is also in CSA) 2 american girls who dont speak the language, searching for an apartment in a town we have never been to, with not enough money, no resources, no help, no phone, no internet, and no hope....

Gabriella

But! We prevailed! After 4 days of searching, we finally found an apartment, and it was worth the wait and the stress. If you picture an ideal provencal apartment, cute and quaint, this is it. It is tres jolie et parfait!!! It is one bedroom, we will share a room with 2 beds, but it is big, fully furnished in a way mum would approve of.

With plates, utensils, pans, beds, fridge, tv, dishwasher, laundry machine, great bathroom, in an old tall building down a narrow street with the most precious old french couple living downstairs. To stumble upon it after days of looking at totally overpriced dumps, we couldn't believe we actually found this perfect place.
 I swear it is worth the money mum and dad, and I promise I will pay you back :) Just think Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and my birthday combined for prezzies, now you dont have to get me anything!! :)

Ma chambre

So now you know the good and the bad you can also know the lucky. I arrived a week ago on monday and I picked that day randomly because it seemed like a good day to show up. I went to the office and they said the secretary wasn't there and that I should come back tomorrow at 10am, so I returned to the office the next day expecting to see a secretary and stumbled into my mandatory placement exam for french language... and then later just stumbled into my oral exam. Good thing I have dumb luck...

More luck came when I was in the tourism office and Gabriella approached me and asked if I wanted to be roommates, there on the spot. So I agreed and we went and had drinks. Then the housing search began which meant a french bank account, a rental office, and online adds (being difficult because we didnt have any internet) which by the way is very difficult because there is very very little free wifi in this town.  We finally found this place but now you know that story.

I also met a french boy named Romain in the store where I bought my phone who has become a good friend and has helped us out tons. He came with us to the rental agency and translated the fine print of the lease agreement. My brain literally shut down the first day trying to translate everything. In Paris, everyone speaks english, but here, it is a much smaller town so neither the rental agency nor the bank teller spoke english which will be good in the long run, but not when you are exhausted and frustrated and just want to tell them something simple... It was very difficult.

Since moving in however life has been great. On Sunday, Romain took me to a place in Marseilles called Les Calanques de Sugiton which is like a cove that was sooo beautiful!

We had to hike down to and then back up after but it was stunning. Beautiful turquoise water with people swimming and huge rocks to jump off of, and the water was incredibly warm! It was so incredible to actually be there.

Marseilles is a huge city that is not really that nice. It doesn't have the best reputation either, but it was worth a visit and Im sure I will be back again because it is only 20 mins away.

As for school, I started yesterday and had 7 and a half hours of french class..... Let me put it this way, in Oregon, I took 5 hours of french class a WEEK!!! For the next 4 months I will be taking 20 hours of french a week and then be surrounded by it all day.

Universite Paul Cezanna SciencPo

My school!!! l'IEFEE

I am somewhat bummed I couldn't find a french roommate but I am not complaining.... All of the teachers are extremely nice and my classes are interesting thus far. I am taking french language (duh), french short stories (mix between fairy tales and legends, super cool :) history of france through literature, theatre, and possibly french news and press which sounds awful but I might have to do. There are tons of asians here too. At least 70% of the foreign students are asians who only hang out with each other. But they are nice and friendly, albeit a bit hard to understand. I tested into exactly intermediate which is working out well so far.

Mine is the 3rd floor, looks bad from here but its great

As for Aix, the city is precious. My apartment is directly in the center of centre-ville which could not be a better location. Centre-ville is why people come to Aix, the rest of the city looks like a normal city but centre-ville is so adorable. It has really narrow streets and big tall buildings with massive green wooden doors. The cobblestone paths wind through the city in a very confusing pattern and motorbikes wizz by constantly. The shops are amazing, the boulangeries delicious, and the cafes smell incredible.  There are bars and patisseries everywhere to cater to the student population and it is a really fun place to live. It takes me 5 minutes to walk to class through the daily outdoor markets and antique sales.

Streets in centre ville

Place des Albertas, built in the 15th century

Literally every single day there is a market right outside my door all year long that sells fresh seasonal local produce, cheese, jam, honey, bread, seafood, meat, anything!!   

All year round market, 30 sec walk from my door

And you can taste everything. And everyone is so nice, offering me a bite of cheese or melon on my way to class at 8:30.

And fish

The Rotunde

Beautiful Cours Mirabeau

The Cours Mirabeau is the most famous street in Aix. It is lined with trees on either side and ends with the Rotunde fountain that is huge and gorgeous. The shady side of the streets has banks and shops while the sunny side is completely lined with cafe's like Les Deux Garcons, made famous by Paul Cezanne. Unfortunately I have been unable to enjoy these fine cafes due to lack of sufficient funds, but I am doing just fine as I sit here in my room eating a homemade salade de chevre chaud and a baguette baked an hour ago.... And as a side note, no wonder the french had a revolution over a bread riot, these people live off of it, you never see someone with just one baguette, its always multiple, and there are 15 different types of bread in each boulangerie, each with its own special name. It is served with every meal and then as a snack in between. I think I eat a baguette a day here, I might need to lay off soon...

And last night we went and had drinks with our landlady and her husband who live in the flat below us. They are the sweetest old french couple and their flat is beautiful. She is a lawyer and he is a doctor, policeman, and writer... Apparently he has written a ton of books and some have been made into movies. They are so nice and we actually had conversations in french. Im getting there....

I had to include these last two pictures...

So family, Im very sorry I have been out of touch, it wont happen again now that I have a link to the rest of the world. Friends I cant wait to talk to you! And I miss you all incredibly. I love you very much.