The Alps and Allemagne

I'm writing this during my spare time between studying for exams, taking exams, packing, and in general stressing out. However, last week was probably one of my favorites since coming to France, so it sort of balances the craziness of this week.

On Sunday, I went skiing in the Alps for the second time, and it was just as fun as the first time. It took some getting used to because the ski resort was set up completely different than the first place we had gone, but I liked the setup by the end of the day. We all ended up with mild bruising around our calves from the ski boots, but I was definitely in the best shape on the ride home. Unfortunately, I have no proof of this because all three of us forgot our cameras!

It rained most of the week from Monday-Wednesday. It looked like the skies were clearing up Wednesday afternoon, so I went to play football with Josh, his sister, and his friend Nate (they were visiting for Spring Break), and as soon as we got to the field, it started pouring again. We decided to stick it out and play mud football instead, which must have looked like an interesting sight to all the Frenchies who saw us playing. And let me tell you, by the time we were done, we were all soaked and covered in mud. It was in my hair, and all over my clothes. Luckily, I had taken my shoes off to keep them from getting completely gross. But that meant my feet were also covered in mud. Needless to say, it was fun.

Thursday morning, I woke up and caught a flight to Dusseldorf at 9 am with Josh, Abby, and Josh's visitors. We got to the airport and stepped off the plane into the middle of nowhere. And it smelled like manure. We then found out that the city of Dusseldorf is actually an hour away from the airport, so we hopped on a bus and then a train to get to the city, then hopped on a tram, got lost, got Starbucks, asked for multilingual directions, guessed a little, and finally found our hostel. Which turned out to be really nice (for a hostel)! We explored the city a little bit once we had all gotten settled in, but spent most of our time waiting for our food, or shopping.

The next day, we slept in because we were all exhausted, went to the market in the Altstadt (the old city), and ate lunch there. We left the main part of Dusseldorf and took a train into a suburb with an old ruined castle in it. We may or may not have hopped a fence (a very short one!) in order to see the ruins like we wanted to. We weren't sure why the gate wasn't open because there weren't any hours posted for the ruins, so we spent about 15 minutes exploring what was left of the fortress. The ruins were situated on a river (the Rhine), so we walked along that for a bit before we ran down to the bank and skipped rocks on it for an hour or so. There are lots of pictures. You'll see.

Then we headed back to the train station to get back in to Dusseldorf and walked straight through what looked like the field from Pride & Prejudice. I kid you not! Abby took a pictures as proof.

Then cold, tired, hungry, and wet, we made our way back in to the city to eat dinner at a very typical German-looking restaurant. If it hadn't been Friday, I would have enjoyed a nice big hearty meal full of steak and sausage, but I had to stick with their seared salmon with a side of boiled potatoes. It takes like salmon patties. Which I do not like.

Anyway. We hung out at the hostel that night for a while, tried to go out for one last German beer but ended up having a misadventure, and then came back to the hostel to get some shut eye before we had to get up at 3am to catch our 6am flight.

We made it back safely (after a 140 Euro taxi ride to the airport!) and immediately proceeded to climb the mountain just outside of Aix. It was the second time for me, but the first time for Josh (and obviously) his visitors. By the time we got up and down again, we were all completely worn out and in need of naps.

Now, I need to get back to studying for my exam tomorrow, and then tomorrow night, I'm leaving for Strasbourg with Alexa and Abby! I'll be back Monday morning! In the meantime, check out my new pictures from Germany and climbing the mountain.

Mountains and Monaco

Again--I've been busy! I feel like I sort of bumble my way through the week without updating here, and then I remember all of the good stories all at once on the weekends. So prepare yourselves. This is going to take a while.

I went to classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at the university (or the fac, short for faculté), and everything went pretty normally. On Wednesday morning, I went to hang out with my French friend at her apartment. I got there and was a little lost because there were four different apartments that were marked with the exact same number as hers. So I called her to find out which one was the right one, and it turned out that none of them were hers. Plus, she'd forgotten that we'd made plans for Wednesday instead of Thursday. We got it all sorted out, and she ended up driving us to McDonald's because we were running out of time to eat before our classes started that day. I know--shame! I don't even like McDonald's in the US!

Thursday was a little bit more interesting. One of my American friends here just got coffee sent to her from the US. We have all been missing our usual non-espresso cups of coffee, so we decided to get up and make ourselves a real American-style breakfast: scrambled eggs with peppers, potatoes, and zucchini, with Old Crown coffee. It was amazing--and probably the best breakfast I've had since I've been in France. After we ate, we spent most of our morning just exploring Aix. I thought I'd pretty much gotten to know the city by now, but it turns out it's a lot bigger than I thought it was. So it was fun visiting places I'd never been before!

Thursday night we went to our theatre class, and a bunch of us went out to eat together to celebrate the birthday of one of the American girls here. We ended up going back to her apartment for chocolate cake with sprinkles! It was delicious.

Friday was a little slower, which was really nice. I had dinner with my French family again, and that was really fun! It was only me, the mom, and the two boys, but the three of them ended up spending a long time trying to say the word "rollerblading", which is really hard for the French, apparently. The family gave me two French DVDs for me to watch this week. I'm really comfortable being around them because their family dynamic is really similar to what I'm used to. It makes it really easy to get along with them. I came back to the apartment and ended up spending the night alone in my apartment--and it was wonderful.

Saturday, I went with a few of the girls from our program to climb what is known as Cezanne's mountain: Sainte-Victoire. I have wanted to climb it since I first saw it a month ago, and I finally got the opportunity, so I didn't want to miss it. We left from downtown Aix at about 11:15 and actually started climbing just after noon. We reached the summit at about 4:00 after we stopped and ate lunch. It was absolutely amazing. I've climbed mountains before with my high school youth group in West Virginia, but that was nothing compared to this. We were so high yesterday. It was absolutely incredible.



When we were at the top, the wind was whipping around us. I wasn't sure if it was because we were so high up or because of the Mistral, but there wasn't any wind in Aix, so I'm assuming it was because of our altitude. Awesome! (Actually, it was a little scary because we kept seeing people's hats getting ripped off their heads, so we knew the wind was pretty strong, and there wasn't really that much room to stand at the very top.)

We made it back to Aix at about 6:30 after waiting for the bus to pick us up for about 45 minutes. While we waited, we made friends with a French family that had just climbed the mountain too. Saturday night I was exhausted and a little sunburned, so I went to bed semi-early before our big day today.

Today we went to Monaco and Nice! We met at the bus at about 8:30 and finally got on the road at about 9. The group was actually so big that we took two buses, but I wasn't aware of that fact until we were nearly back tonight. We got to Monaco at about 11, unloaded, and got to the Palace just in time to see the changing of the guard! It was actually pretty anticlimactic, especially because it was hard to see, but it's also not very exciting. Oh, well. At least now I can say that I've seen it! After that, I went with one of my friends to find the casino because I'd been practicing how to play craps online just so that I could play it once in Monte Carlo. It was really disappointing to find out that there is a 10€ cover charge to get in to the table room. So instead Bri and I played the slot machines--which are incredibly difficult to understand for how popular they are. Basically, our gambling was more like us putting our money in the machine and slapping random buttons until we ran out of money. And apparently this was a common experience among the Americans.

One thing that stood out while we were in Monaco was how clean everything was. It was really funny because my friend and I agreed that if it wasn't an independent state from France, it would be the stereotypical French city. And then we realized that it really is the stereotypical French city anyway because it claims to be independent but it relies on others to protect it. Funny, huh?

Another thing that really affected our day was the wind. Oh my goodness! The wind was insane! At one point, we ended up making a video about the near-hurricane conditions. Fortunately for us, the rain didn't actually start until we were on the bus on our way home.

On the way back, we ended up making an hour-long pit stop in Nice at a parfumerie, or in English, a perfume factory called Fragonard. It smelled really, really good! We got a tour of the factory, and then we got to sample their best-selling scents. Their candles smelled soooo good, and I'm a sucker for candles. I didn't have enough cash on me at the time to buy anything, though. Which was probably a good thing.

Wednesday, we have to go to Marseille to get a medical examination for our carte de séjour, and I'm very excited because there is a Starbucks in Marseille, which (hopefully) means that I'll be able to have my Pumpkin Spice Latte soon!!! You really have no idea what that would mean to me. It's bad enough that there aren't any pumpkins here for decorations and pies, but no Pumpkin Spice Lattes would be absolutely unbearable.