Strasbourg and Turkey

A couple weeks ago, I went to Strasbourg with Abby and Alexa via overnight train. The ride there wasn't so bad; I think I got between 4-5 hours of sleep amid stopping, and lights flicking on and off, and noisy passengers getting on and off the train. We left Marseille at about 11 pm and got to Strasbourg at about 8:30 am.

The weather was perfect; apparently we were able to experience the warmest weather in Strasbourg so far this year: a clear 67-69 degrees. We spent our time walking around admiring the architecture, which was so quaintly German half-timber that you couldn't help but like it, and in the Office of Tourism getting directions to the various places we wanted to visit.

On the first day, we spent most of the day eating, walking around getting our bearings, and getting situated in the hotel. That evening, we went to a wine cellar in the basement of the hospital. We saw huge barrels of Reisling and Gewurztraminer wine that are aged in the cellar--pretty cool!

We ended up meeting up with Erika (a girl I know from IPFW) who is studying abroad in Strasbourg, and she showed us her school and the main university campus in Strasbourg. All I have to say is that those Strasbourgeois kids are lucky! It was a beautiful building that had marble columns and beautiful woodwork--and there was NO graffiti! Aix needs to get its act together because I feel like Strasbourg sets the standard way above Aix's schools.

Anyway! The rest of the weekend was spent exploring the city--it's absolutely beautiful. The city is built on the Rhine and various other tributaries, which give the city a natural feel; the rivers are a central part of Strasbourg, and each river bank is lined with grass and trees, neither of which we see very much in Aix.

Then this past weekend, I went with six of my friends to Istanbul, Turkey. We took a flight out of Marseille that left at 1:55 am and arrived at about 6 am Istanbul time, which is an hour ahead of Aix. So we got almost no sleep that night. I'm feeling pretty lazy at the moment, so I'm going to make the description of the city pretty short (and therefore inaccurate). We spent most of our time eating and getting lost. Istanbul happens to be a huge city (population: 13 million), and it is very spread out. We saw several mosques, which were cool, but I still definitely prefer my Catholic churches :) Food-wise, we ate a lot of kebabs, which are a very traditional Turkish food. They're basically gyros, but Turkish. I also got a lot of Turkish Delights, of Narnia fame. They're delicious, but you have to watch how many you eat because they can get to be a little rich.

I posted the pictures from both trips, so look at the links on the side. I'm leaving for Paris tomorrow, coming back Monday night, and then leaving for London again on Thursday. Busy schedule!

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.

There and Back Again

Whew! First of all, I'm very sorry for not having updated in the last month or so. At first, I was very busy, then not very busy and I felt like an update would have been a little boring, then I got too busy again! Now, I'm procrastinating. Which is always great for blog productivity!

A month ago, the program took a field trip to see Roman/Greek/Gallic ruins, which were very cool. I'll post pictures. Then we went to Arles, where van Gogh (which is pronounced by the French as "van goh-g") painted many of his masterpieces. Arles is also home to many other cool vestiges of Roman history--there is a Coliseum, a theatre, and other cool places to visit. Then we finished the day with another trip to the Pont du Gard, which is one of my favorite places we've visited; it has water, trails, nature, beauty, and it's quiet. You don't know how much I miss silence here sometimes.

Last week, I took a trip home to see my family, and it was a great time. Not much to report--most of it was personal time and therefore not very interesting to the public. My flights to and from the US went smoothly, despite hearing about a shooting in the Frankfort airport that had happened only a couple days before I got there.

I had a midterm yesterday, and it went okay. It was one of those tests that I felt like I had studied for, but then I realized how much I had missed about a half hour before class started, so I had to cram. Not the best feeling, but I've definitely done worse.

This weekend marks the beginning of a ca-razy semester for me. I suppose I should say that last weekend did because I was traveling, but it didn't feel like it counted because I went home. Traveling schedule for the semester (at least, what I have planned so far):

March 13: Skiing day in the Alps!
March 17-19: Dusseldorf, Germany
March 24-27: Strasbourg, France
April 6-10: Istanbul, Turkey
April 14-17: Paris
April 21-27: London and Oxford, England
then hopefully May 15-21: Corsica!
sometime in June: Rome with my parents!

Tomorrow starts the beginning of Lent, which will finish while I am in England, so we'll see how the Brits celebrate Easter!

(300) Days of Sunshine

Unlike you poor folk at home, the past couple of days here have been remarkably warm and beautiful. No snow, no rain, and hardly any clouds. The temperature has been in the fifties, and the sun has been dazzlingly bright. Ever since the drizzling, freezing rain we had last week, I feel like Provence has been making a serious effort to show us those supposed 300 days of sunshine we have here each year.

I just finished cleaning my apartment to an old-time jazzy swing mix with my windows thrown wide open. The current temperature here is a clear 60 degrees (Farenheit, of course--it's 15 degrees Celsius). Today is only Friday, but it feels like Saturday because I don't have school on Fridays--or Thursdays, for that matter.

I celebrated the traditional French holiday of La Chandaleur on Wednesday night with some of my friends. Tradition states that we all make crepes together, everyone taking a turn flipping the crepe in the pan with their right hand while holding a coin in the other hand. If you flip the crepe successfully, you'll have a year of good luck! It seemed a lot harder than it actually was, but I didn't exactly get the crepe all the way flipped. It was more of a flop than a flip, but I'm not too worried about my luck for the next year anyway. Oops, I hope I didn't just jinx that.

After crepes, we all played Spoons together, which I then lost--but it's okay! I'm still undefeated in Euchre (in France), so I'm not completely disheartened when it comes to cards.

Sunday is the Superbowl, and I'm going to be watching that with my friends here, although I really don't know if I can root for either team. I'm surrounded by Wisconsinites, so of course they keep rubbing it in that Green Bay is finally in the Superbowl again, which doesn't exactly encourage my sympathies for their team, but I refuse to root for the Steelers. I think I might just cheer any time anything bad happens for either team. We'll see.

We've got a theater outing tonight with the program, so we'll all be getting snazzy for that, tomorrow I'm touring an absinthe factory with some of my friends, and next Saturday we have a day trip to Arles--I'm keeping busy, don't worry!

Escaping to the Alps

I decided early on that this semester would be full of traveling and seeing Europe. And now, here I am, having been back in France a full two weeks now, and I've already left Aix twice!

Last weekend, a few of my friends and I decided that we would be going skiing this past weekend (the 22nd and 23rd) and that to do so, we would need to be wearing appropriate winter clothing. Which none of us had. So off we went to Marseille to a thrift store that was selling full ski suits (that looked like they were from the 80s) for only 10€! In American money, that's like $12-13. So, it was a really good deal! I got boots, gloves, and a full (absolutely ridiculous-looking) snowsuit all for under 20€. You'll see the pictures and understand. If anyone in the pictures doesn't look like a marker box exploded on them, they were lucky enough to have their French families loan them ski clothes. Needless to say, we looked amazing.

Having completely outfitted ourselves in a vibrant array of colors, our little family proceeded to plan meals and buy groceries and necessities for the weekend. Having spent the majority of Thursday buying food, most of us spent Friday actually getting ourselves packed and ready to go for the weekend. Our bus left at about 6:30pm on Friday and was scheduled to arrive at the ski station at about 10.

We got to the ski station a little after 10, and by then we were all starving because we hadn't really had dinner yet. We had planned to have sausage and potatoes for dinner that night, so we got to work on that as soon as we could and scarfed that food down while we watched a movie in one of our cozy apartments. (There were 8 of us, so they split us up into two groups.)

The next morning when we all woke up at about 8, we ate breakfast and then headed over to the ski rental place to get our snowboards and skis. Only three of us had ever skied or snowboarded before, so the majority of us were beginners. We all headed over to the bunny hill to figure out how to handle ourselves. And I made it down without falling! So I hopped back on the ski lift (which was a sort of weird pole system with mini seats on the end that kind of looked like plungers. You put the pole between your legs and it pulled you to the top of the hill while you stood on your skis.) Anyway, halfway up the hill, I was enjoying the ease of the ski lift when all of a sudden, I was falling and I couldn't move my legs in the direction I wanted. My only focus was not losing my grip on the pole that was slipping out of my hand. Finally, after being dragged on my knees without any control, I decided that I should just let go and figure out what went wrong. So I let go of the pole--and promptly faceplanted. I rolled out of the way of my laughing friends who were coming up the lift behind me only to see that the reason I had fallen so suddenly was because one of my skis had popped off of my foot. So I didn't fall at all while I was going down the bunny slope--just up.

Anyway, most of us decided to move on to the next level hill once we'd gotten the gist of the bunny hill down, so we headed over to the other lift and hopped on. But what we thought was a little hill turned out to have a curve in it that you couldn't see from the bottom--the hill was at least twice as high as we had originally thought. But I did well on my first try; I only fell four times on that descent! By the end of the first day, I only managed to get down that hill once without falling, and the rest of the group hadn't had much luck either. We were all exhausted by the time the slopes closed at 4:30, so we went inside, took turns showering, and started cooking dinner.

The next day was much better. I figured out how to get down the intermediate hill without falling, so I decided to step it up a notch and went up the mountain on the real ski lift with Alexa, Kevin, and Josh (the three snowboarders). It turns out that I should never assume I know how tall a slope is just because I can only see so far up. The mountain was, well, a mountain. I was terrified. I had a camera in my pocket, but I was too scared to let go of the ski lift to take pictures. We made it up to the first stop on the mountain trails and got off. Quick side note: French people are all ridiculously good at skiing. What seemed terrifying and dangerous to me was only a beginner level for them. Anyway, we all made it up the mountain and off the ski lift without incident, and then we started our descent. If I had thought the second hill was scary, that was nothing compared to the mountain. There were so many times when I would be approaching a hill/curve with only a cliff on the other side that I would just fall in order to stop myself instead of risking getting killed. The very last hill on the mountain was actually probably steeper than the others, but it was also less scary because I knew that once I got to the bottom of it, I was done. To give you an idea of how steep it was, I couldn't see the bottom from where I was at the top of it. The only way I knew where to go was by watching where the person's head in front of me had disappeared. So I started down the hill, braking the entire way to avoid hurting myself, but I couldn't keep it up forever, so I just tucked into the speed skiing pose--and it was awesome! I was flying down that hill!! The only scary part was that the snow wasn't very powdery, and I was going so fast that any time there was a slight bump, I was worried I would lose control and go crashing into the packed snow. But we all made it down the mountain safely--and I've decided I love skiing. Basically, winter and I should spend some more time together because we get along really well.

On the way home from the trip, the sun started setting on the mountains, and we made it to this beautiful area with a really big lake. It was probably the most beautiful area I have ever seen in my life. You'll have to see the pictures I took from the bus. They should be uploaded soon.



Edit: Pictures are FINALLY available!

Back in France!

Hello, everyone! I'm back in France after having spent probably one of the loveliest Christmas breaks ever at home. My cousin got married--and I got to be there as a bridesmaid (!!!), I got my haircut for the first time in a year, and now I'm back in my beloved France speaking French and making travel plans. (I'll get to that in a bit.)

My two exams were last week, and they went fairly well. I'm not sure when I'll actually find out how I did, but I feel fairly confident I won't fail them. Not only have exams finished, but new classes already started, too. I'm already done with my first week because I only have class Monday-Wednesday, so I'm hoping my schedule will facilitate weekend traveling.

I'm really excited for this semester because I really like all of my classes so far. Last semester, all of my classes followed the exact same format: three-hour lectures once a week. And when I say "lecture", I mean lecture. It was all dictation of our notes without pausing for questions. However! This semester, I have three classes that seem like they will be more interactive. I learn best in an interactive environment, so I'm excited to actually get to speak up in the classroom. (I know, I sound like a nerd. Get used to it.)

Anyway! This weekend, I'm going skiing in the Alps! I'm going with seven of my friends from the program to a little village called Pelvoux that has a population of about 454. I'm so excited! We're leaving tomorrow (Friday) night and coming back Sunday night, so we should have about two days to spend in the snow! I'm not even sure how much I want to go skiing--I've never done it before, so I have a feeling I'll just end up sledding to avoid getting hurt and embarrassed, but my friends and I all have plans to build forts and make snow angels and have a snowball fight. It's going to be great!!

Christmastime in France

Aix is getting to be pretty beautiful. My roommate and I have been busy decorating our apartment whilst listening to our favorite Christmas songs. After a day-long field trip to our local IKEA and Carrefour (France's Walmart), we found a small fiber-optic Christmas tree and a strand of lights. We set that up in our apartment, and after adding some red and gold ornaments to the tree, our apartment is feeling pretty Christmasey.

To get to the stores, we have to take a half-hour bus trip to small town outside of Aix called Vitrolles. The bus to and from Vitrolles only runs every so often, so as I was getting off of the bus, I asked our bus driver if he had a copy of the schedule so we would know when we could get back to Aix after going to IKEA. After getting off the bus, the driver immediately called me back and told me to call my friends back as well. He told us he had a 20-minute break between dropping us off and needing to leave again, so he decided to take us to IKEA--for free! We chatted with him on the way there, and he joked and told us how he loves to laugh, unlike those Parisians. They're much too serious.

Anyway! I'm also getting ready to head home in two days. Actually, my flight is leaving in exactly 48 hours. I can't wait! In between now and then, I have one class this morning and a final exam tomorrow morning, so I'll be keeping busy trying to get all of my packing and Christmas shopping finished by then.

This past Saturday, I was actually able to take a last-minute field trip to Les Baux-de-Provence, which is this beautiful little castle village that sits in the Alpilles (the little Alps). The castle is now only ruins, but the village has a really rich history, and it's got some great views. While there, we were able to visit this amazing photo gallery that's not exactly a photo gallery. It's called La Cathédrale d'Images, and it's basically this huge underground cavern that has images and videos projected on to all of its walls. But there are more than four walls--it's enormous, and I don't think you could really understand until you see the videos.

Actually, I had been looking for this place for a long time. I had seen pictures of it, and I knew it was in Provence somewhere, but I had no idea where, and I didn't know what it was called, so I didn't really have a way of finding out. Luckily for me, I happened to be dragged to it by the people who drove us! It was everything I had hoped it would be. I'm uploading the pictures I took right now, so I'll get the link posted on the right as soon as I can. I'm also working on a video compilation of the streets of Aix, but I'm having issues with that, so that might not be posted until I get home. I may spend my time flying home working on that project. I'm flying Marseille > Paris > Atlanta > home!

Well, to everyone at home, à bientôt!

Edit: The pictures are now available!