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!!!