France: Our Secret Time Machine/Simplicity of Life

The longer I'm here, the more I realize just how lucky how I am. Sometimes I'll wake up in the morning, and I'll just think to myself, "You live in the South of France." I just can't get over how great this all is.

I don't know if I can even convey the extent of my happiness here. Every time I have finished a meal with my friends, we all have just agreed that "We're so happy." I happen to have quite a large collection of Miles Davis jazz, and we've taken to listening to it during our meals, which have also been candlelit (see left). We're still poor college students, so it's not like our meals are super fancy, but they've all been really delicious and relaxing, which I think sums up life in France in general. The picture on the left is at our neighbors' apartment, which is not as well-furnished as ours is, so they've taken to empty wine bottles for candle holders.

Yesterday afternoon, bunch of program students and I went out to find somewhere were we could play soccer. Our program office distributed a bunch of supplies that were left for us by previous students, and one of my friends got a soccer ball, but the only problem is that he ball is a little flat (or maybe really flat). But it was good enough for us to play with yesterday. We found a soccer court to play on yesterday--just like a basketball court, paved and everything, except with soccer goals instead of hoops. Not the best, but it did the job, and I remembered how much I love soccer. Which is a lot.

The French don't really have the concept of exercising like Americans do. Gyms are really hard to come by, and the only forms of exercise that we've seen so far have been walking (everywhere) and dancing.

Today, there is sort of community club fair on the Cours Mirabeau, which is the main street in Aix. Every club or student group or sports club is supposed to have a booth set up so that we can walk around and pick up leaflets at any place that interests us. I think the ratio of salsa dancing clubs to any other club is about 30:1. It's insane. The only other type of activity that was easy to find is martial arts. It was a little disappointing because a lot of us students had had our hearts set on playing sports with other students our age, and the only place I found that plays sports is a basketball league for girls. Anything involving a lot of hand-eye coordination is not really my thing, which basically leaves soccer in the mix. Which is too bad because we didn't find a single place that plays soccer.

In other news, I should be starting to have weekly dinners with a family either this week or next week, so I'll keep you all updated on that situation too.