The Adventures of Marley and Me, Episode 1

We went to Avignon today! We woke up, decided to book it to the train station, and originally had the intent of going to Arles. The layover in Marseille was too long, so we just asked for her to check the price and time to get to Avignon. It was cheaper, and faster, so we took it! We hopped on the train (luckily after I bought some rainboots because it rained all day), and made it to our connection in Marseille. Of course, the train had a different name than on our ticket, and we couldn't understand the guy at the counter, so we were running to catch it. We found it and were hopping on until we realized that we had been assigned a car number, 18, and that we were in car 1. The trains don't connect all the way down, so we had to run to the other end of the longest passenger train I have ever seen haha before the train left. But we made it! We got to Avignon, took the bus to the city center, and spent the day wandering around and shopping. There is decenct shopping in Avignon, and one store that we found especially amazing.

We took a tour of the Palais du Papes, which used to be what Rome is today. We saw the Avignon Bridge, which is for some reason famous. We ate gelato at a really amazing little Italian place that also had 28 flavors of hot chocolate, and then before we caught our train back we had a beer at an Irish pub where we met a few really interesting guys who are in the French Foreign Legion.

The train back was easy, and it was definitely a good day trip. Yes, it rained the whole time, but c'est la vie! Totally worth it!

Weird, France

Ok, I think I might dedicate a fair number of these blogs to weird things that French people do/wear. Like this lady on her bicycle. For some reason, hair that is literally red was a good idea?

I also believe that I will be putting a fair number of pictures up here of people's dogs. The dogs here are extrememly we behaved- I have yet to see any dog bark or get in a fight or run away where it's not supposed to. The French also have a tendency of dressing their dogs, often in really really nice clothes too. Most of them are walking around outside with little jackets and hooded coats on, which is super cute, if not a little weird. But yesterday I saw a dog that was wearing a Burberry jacket! These animals are some of the most spoiled in the world! No, they don't carry them in their purses, but they buy them designer dog clothes and when the dog gets too cold they will carry them inside their jackets.

Children are also extremely well dressed here. I cannot tell you how many little fur coats I have seen running around. It's adorable, but incredibly expensive. Guess the dogs and the kids are the best treated people (if dogs are people) in this country!

C'est la vie

We wandered around town and ran errands today, and I ate frites for lunch from this little stand at the Cours Mirabeau. Family dinner is at our house tonight, and we’re making Mexican! Then afterwards, The Woohoo is throwing an “Erasmus Welcomes Americans” party that we’ll go to for a while. They’re having a happy hour just for international students.
We went to market this morning and then Monoprix (it’s kind of our Kroger here). We got a phone and a splitter for the outlet so that we can have internet and a land line phone that we can call to the US on for free (well, just the cost of our plan). Then we walked to the top of the theater here that gives you a really great view of the whole city of Aix and you can even see Ste Victoire in the distance. I love how much there is to discover in this city.
I’m starting homework this afternoon. I have to read the play Hernani by Victor Hugo for a class on Thursday. Obviously I’m procrastinating by writing this blog instead haha. Maybe I should start working on that…

Mt. Saint Victoire

We climbed Mt. Saint Victoire yesterday! More accurately, we tried to. We couldn’t read the bus schedule right, and so we missed the 10:15am bus and then came back for a bus that doesn’t run on Sundays, and then had to come back for a final bus two hours later. Once on the bus, it careened through these little twisty roads driving straight at oncoming traffic, but somehow we made it there alive!

The man at the desk at the bottom of the mountain was incredibly French and very unhelpful. He wouldn’t give us a map or explain a good way to get up the mountain, and kind of just pointed us in a general direction and ended up selling us a map for 5 euros. We started hiking and got lost on a trail that turned out to be for super advanced climbers fully equipped with rappelling and climbing gear. We only figured that out when the next green arrow pointed straight at a cliff wall and indicated up. Yea, right. So we ate lunch on a nice dangerous cliff haha but it was beautiful scenery.

The paths were marked with the smallest little dashes “strategically” placed on rocks, which basically guaranteed that you would not see them (and the trail we were taking was the green trail, so seeing those little green dashes on random rocks mixed in with all the brushes was pretty difficult). We got lost again, and eventually found the path that we had intended on being on, and that did not require any gear. Unfortunately, by the time we were in a place that could actually lead to the top of the mountain, about 4 hours had passed and we had to turn back in order to make it off the mountain before the sun set and we would be lost on the mountain for the night. We still made it pretty high up, and it was really beautiful. We got to pick rosemary on the mountainside that was growing wild everywhere.

There were people that were doing “paraplone” off the top. You jump off the mountain with a parachute on and pretty much hang-glide all the way down the mountain. We had already been looking into doing this, but now that we know they offer it at Mt. Saint Victoire so close to us, we’ll definitely be going back for it!

Of course, the bus that would take us back decided that since it’s Sunday they just were going to skip a stop, so we sat at the bus stop for an hour, and eventually called the bus depot who explained that the man had “forgotten” to come back out there. The next bus wasn’t coming for over two hours.

The man that works the desk offered to drive us to the nearest town where we could catch a bus that would come more frequently, and we gratefully accepted. Once he dropped us in this little town in the middle of nowhere, it turned out that there were no busses running to that town today (just because it was Sunday). We had to call a cab which took twenty minutes to come out to us, and charged us for driving out there. He brought us all the way back to our street in Aix, 25 euros later.

All in all, the mountain was a great time. I’m really glad that we went and we’ll definitely go back again and make it to the top. We now know where to catch the bus and to allow more time for climbing! As far as getting to the mountain, I would hope that the next time we go is a weekday and there will be a regular bus schedule haha. But, I’m going to bed happy and exhausted! Definitely a successful day.

Market Day

It's market day! The biggest markets are on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, so today is a big one. There is a flower market in the square just around the corner from my apartment, and then a fruit, vegetable, and other foods market in the square just before that one. Then down the street and to the left you run into the big market that spills out of the square and into the streets. You can buy everything here. I bought a pair of nice boots today (20 euros!) that I'm really excited about.

The soldes are getting really good too. All of the stores are down to about 70% off and so it's just a steal everywhere you go. I bought two bags yesterday, one to carry goods from market, and one is a side purse that's good for travelling. Total, they were supposed to cost 70 euros, and I paid 19. Gotta love the soldes!

Our internet has been installed, but for some reason they say it won't work for 48 hours. Oh France, come on. But that means that tomorrow evening we will hopefully have internet in our house! That would be great, and so much easier. We will also have a phone from which we can call the US for free! Well, it's part of our plan so I guess it's not really free, but it won't cost anything extra from the cost of our plan, so that's great.

We're off for a little more "soldes-ing" and then out for the night!

So, these are the posters that are plastered all over our school haha. It's a little strange to walk down the halls with all these posters saying to vanquish capitalism. But, no one cares that we're American and a capitalist country, so I guess that's ok!

We bought 12-25 train passes today. They're called the douze-vingt cinq card and they cut the price of train tickets in half, so that's awesome because otherwise they are really expensive. We're about to book a train to Paris for Valentine's Day, and then we also need one to Paris in March when we're going to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day.

Last night we went to trivia night at a bar here called Woohoo. It was actually really fun and apparently the APA kids from last year went there all the time, so the people pretty much knew who we were and there was even an IU flag hanging from the rafters! That was fun, and they play beer pong there on Monday nights. It's really quite the little American hangout. There were a bunch of girls from Welsley that are doing the study abroad program in Aix as well as another group of Americans. It was probably 30% American in there last night! Yay! hahah

Malta!

Just booked a flight to Malta! And the best part is that it was 50 euros haha gotta love the cheap flights within Europe! So we will be in Malta for the first weekend in February. This is a picture of the city where we will be staying: St. Julien's. It's famous for it's beaches and obviously it's still winter and the off season, so obviously it's a lot cheaper to go there, but it should still be decently warm there! Malta is an island south of Sicily, and it's own country, which I did not know until I found a cheap flight going there haha.

We had two more classes today, both successful. Unfortunately very long, but it will be worth it when we don't have any classes on Mondays or Tuesdays! Yay! So come visit me in Europe! lol

First day of classes

This is the bakery where we stop to get breakfast and bread and sometimes a snack. We're here it seems almost every day haha.

We started our classes today and we had our first one at 8am. We hiked all the way out to the university (it's about a thirty five minute walk from our house) just to find out that this class doesn't exist. It's held on a different day at a totally different building. Unfortunatley for us, our advisor told us the wrong place, day, and time, so we all came all the way out there just to find that out.

So, we spent the morning at market and walking around town and running little errands, and then went all the way back to the school for our afternoon French history class. It was very difficult to understand the professor, and during the semester she is having us give a 20 minute oral presentation (on Napoleon, of course!), write an 8-10 page single spaced paper, a midterm exam and a final. Um, no thanks! A lot of the classes here have virtually no work during the semester and then just a final. Obviously, your whole grade rides on that one test, but I would prefer that to having so much intensive French history work!

Hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow becuase we are probably going to drop this history class which would mean that we don't have any Monday or Tuesday classes. It just makes me a bit nervous that our first day went so badly! Ah! We'll have to see tomorrow!

And the travels begin!

We bought flowers at the flower market today! It’s amazing how much you can get and it’s all so cheap haha.

We’re trying to figure out travel plans for the semester and details on what we want to do for the next couple of weekends. My mom bought me these Top 10 of Provence, Barcelona, and Paris books and I was just looking through the Provence one and it is great. I’m so excited to see all this! Next weekend we’re going to Monaco (it’s a trip paid for by the abroad program). It’s just a day trip like Marseille was yesterday, but I’m really excited to see it. When we get back we’re going to climb the Mt. Saint Victoire which is close to us here in Aix. It’s the mountain that inspired a lot of Cezanne’s paintings, and it supposedly has some really great views of Aix. The kids that did this program last year said we should definitely do it. So that’s next weekend, pretty much all set to go.

The weekend after that, I think we might go to Valencia, Spain. We were looking around on ryanair and I clicked on Valencia just for curiosity sake (and Allie said that it is a really nice beach town) and the flight is TEN EUROS each direction!!! So yea, we’re definitely going there haha maybe a few times. It’s quite a bit farther south than where we are here, so it should be pretty warm. Honestly, in Marseille yesterday it was warm enough to be in a swimsuit on the beach. It was certainly seventy something degrees in the sun, and it was just the breeze that was keeping it cool. Out of the wind in those coves was just amazing. So we’re thinking that we’ll have some good weather in Spain and it will at least be as warm as here.
The next weekend is Valentine’s Day and all of us girls are thinking of spending the weekend in Paris! Where better to be on Valentine’s Day?! Especially with everyone’s boyfriends far off in the states, we might as well be doing something romantic here!
Well these are the travel plans for the next couple weeks, hopefully it works out! And if it doesn’t, there is so much exploring to do here in Aix.

P.S. We scheduled our classes so that we have nothing on Mondays and can travel longer (and hopefully a little cheaper). I got lucky and don’t have classes Friday either, but other girls do, so I’ll probably just take my Fridays and explore around Aix and the markets!

Marseille!

We had a trip with the program today and we went to Marseille. It was actually a way better trip than I thought it would be. In the morning we took a ferry to an island (where I guess they used to quarantine people before they could come to mainland France?) and it was incredibly beautiful. The water is so blue and it was so incredibly warm. We were wearing tshirts and were afraid of being sunburnt by the end of the day! And it's January! haha and I heard that it snowed six inches in Bloomington today so I definitely didn't mind being here!

We had lunch at a cafe overlooking the harbor, and had the traditionally terrible French service. It took us an hour and a half to get our food haha at least the weather was nice! We visited a museum for a little bit and then we saw the sun set at the Cathedral Notre Dame de la Gare. Incredibly beautiful all day and the views were amazing! I'm trying to put picures up here to show you how great everything was! Hope you love it!

Ohhh France

Alright, France, you need to learn how to drive. I never ever want to drive a car here! haha but I have come to appreciate certain methods of parking, like this smart car. Seriously, cars do this all the time here! They just back into the spot because it's too small for them to fit normally and park up on the sidewalk! Luckily this is a smart car and it hardly makes a difference haha but regualar cars do it too! It's so weird and hilarious at the same time. I would love to see someone in the act of parking like this. I can't imagine how these little smart cars manage to hop the curb.

Since our apartment doesn't have internet we are using the internet cafe around the corner. The guy is really nice and lets us have the first hour free since we are with the study abroad program. But let me tell you, this is an interesting place. Not only are there a bunch of (really old) computers, but there is a full drum set, music stands, keyboards, guitars, and all kinds of instruments. Apparently the guy loves music and really wants people to just come in and play! Like right now, there are a bunch of American guys singing away. I really don't mind, it's just a pretty funny situation if you were walking past right now. The band is jamming, we're here on our laptops on skype, and there is a bar behind me where the guy is serving drinks to a bunch of the locals that seem to hang out here every day. Another thing, they let dogs in the stores here, so there are three dogs here right now, one of which is laying in my lap haha. I don't know this dog or who it belongs to but it is really nice! Gotta love the free internet cafe haha.

I picked out my classes today! We'll have to see how it goes on Monday because we don't actually register. We just show up. So there is a good chance that a professor might say there are too many foreign (unregistered) kids in his class and that we all have to leave. They can do that! So we'll have to see if or how many classes I get kicked out of!!

And we're in!

Offically moved in! We went to get internet installed today and they are coming a week from now! So, that's actually super fast for France haha. I took a bunch of pictures, so you can see my room, our living room, our kitchen, and the courtyard that is ours too! Can't wait for really warm weather when we can really open up the house!
Ok, so I know this is a lot of picures, but I hope this load (yea, that's important) and that you get a decent idea of what the place looks like! We actually had to have a plumber come today because we didn't have any hot water (everyone took cold showers last night....) and it turned out to be a really stupid mistake. The property owner had shown us the breaker box and had turned a few of them on and off to show us how it works. Turns out she had accidentally left one of them off (the hot water, imagine that). The plumber came today and looked at it and was like, why did you do this? Haha o well, problem fixed in ten minutes!

We actually live in Aix now!

We are now legitimate renters in Aix! We found an apartment today and it is absolutely unreal. The owner lives in South Africa right now, and is having someone in France show the apartment for him. The price was really high and no one wanted to rent it, so the owner brought the price down a tonnnn. He had been paying all the fees and stuff out of his pocket, so he was really just eager to rent the place. We got so lucky. It has three full bedrooms with desks, closets, and chair space. A real bathroom (with little chandeliers in it!) with an American shower! A full kithen with an oven and even a wash machine! A full living room, dining room, and an entire courtyard! The whole thing is ours haha it's so unreal.

Anyhow, we are now actually living in Aix. We get to move in tomorrow, and we are done with the hotel.

Today is Cathy's 21st birthday!! We're going out for a little celebration (and I know Allie and Ashley and I will be celebrating our apartment too) which we're very excited about. I can't wait for family dinner at our apartment next weekend! haha Yes, we decided to do family dinners here just like we did in Bloomington this summer.

Ok, well I will have pictures of the apartment up hopefully tomorrow! Yayyy!

Universite de Provence

Bonjour! Today was the first day of our Cours Intensif. It a one week class just for us Americans to just get a big shock of French before we launch into real French classes with a professor that is not so nice haha. French classes meet (for the most part) once a week for like three or four hours at a time, which is super super long but at least you only have to meet once a week. We'll have to see how the classes are once they finally start. I know I am going to be so nervous!!

This is a picture of our university! It's not a beautiful castle or anything (like many of us imagined when we pictured a French university). It's actually kind of ghetto haha but that's how they are here. Everything is pretty old and paint peeling and thin doors so you can hear what's going on in the other rooms. It's pretty weird and it will be distracting when we're taking a test or something. We had to take a placement exam and someone in the next room played a Train song THREE times in a row. We could hear the whole thing and everyone was laughing at how ridiculous the situation was.

COUNTDOWN TO SOLDES: 2 days!!! yay!!!

Lazy Sundays

Still in the hotel. We were told that everything shuts down on Sundays here, which is mostly true. But it turns out that Sunday does have its markets, but they are more like antique sales or flea markets.

The Soldes start on Wednesday! They are huge sales that go on all throughout the city and we're told that you can get some real steals there. Great French fashions at amazing prices, and I am very excited to see that.

The picture above is the Cours Mirabeau- the main road in Aix and right now it's decorated with tons of really beautiful christmas lights, but unfortunately they are taking down the lights in ten days. But for now, I love walking on this street at night. The lights are amazing, and since it doesn't get very cold here, they keep the fountains running all year round. Aix is famous for its fountains, and the city is also located above a natural hot springs, so some of the fountains even spurt warm water, which is really cool. When it's cold you can see the warm fountains steaming as the water comes to the top. I'm still amazed every day that this city is a real place and people really live here. It's so surreal!

We're learning our way around quickly and finally are not getting lost as often. Getting lost can be the best thing though, becuase you make so many connections to things and find new streets and new shops. We have a bakery that is open 24 hours a day (even Sunday!) and many pizza places that don't close until 4:30am. It's a city that is completely shut down in the middle of the day, but stays busy until late in the night, which is kind of nice for the lifestyle of a college student.

A Demain!

This little piggy went to market...

Today we went to our first Aix market! It turned out to be huge; winding through all the little streets of the town. You can buy food, clothes, bedding, jewelry,and all kinds of regional goods (anything lavender related). It's so much cheaper than buying things in the regular stores, and I cannot wait until we have an apartment so I can buy fruits and vegetables there for our kitchen.

Yes, the apartment hunt continues today. We found one nice apartment yesterday, but we flipped a coin for it and Marley and Olivia won, so Allie and I are still looking for a place this afternoon with Mme Feral.

I'm not sure what we're going to do tomorrow... All French stores and most of the restaurants will be closed, there will not be any market, so hopefully we can find an apartment so that we can be moving tomorrow. I'm not sure what it is that French people do on Sundays haha there is literally nothing open!

The Americans Are Here!

We have arrived in Aix and have started the endless paperwork and opening various accounts that will allow us to stay in Aix. Having dual citizenship with the EU is proving to be hugely helpful because I have a lot less paperwork and also fewer fees. I even get to skip the mandatory medical exam that the group has to go to Marseille for.

We've been here three days now and sampled the wine, bought luikse waffles, Leffe, crepes with nutella from street vendors, and today for lunch we had jambon cru paninis. The lady even put frites directly into the sandwich haha.

All has gone well and with no problems, but we are still looking for an apartment. Hopefully we can find one today!

We have been wandering the city and are slowly learning our way around. Marley, one of my roommates in the hotel, was fortunate enough to have a bird poop on her head the first day... quite traumatic haha. But, we have heard that it is good luck. And there are certainly enough birds here- it's really a legitimate concern.

This will be our first weekend in Aix and hopefully we'll get a little taste of the nightlife. So far, we have just seen that it is expensive, but that's to be expected. There is a street of bars (with a shocking number of Irish pubs in this town) that have a lot to offer, especially for futbol fans, so I think we're all going to start watching.

So far, a great start! Can't wait to be fully settled and in an apartment!