Malta, Mom and Dad, and not Rome

Part of the group at the airport in Marseille

Okay, well about three weeks has passed since I last wrote.  On Friday October 8th, a large group of kids from the program, myself included, left for a weekend trip to Malta.  One of the girls in the group had a birthday that Saturday and she organized the whole thing.  In total there were 21 of us.  It was pretty funny, because we were such a big group, and we all took the same bus to the airport and then the same plane and we all stayed at the same hostel.  We flew ryanair, which has really cheap flights within europe.  Karina, the girl who had the birthday, admitted later that she went on ryanair's website, looked up cities that ryanair flew to from Marseille, and randomly picked Malta.  This became a running joke as we all realized none of us knew anything about Malta.  At one point someone said to the group, "Raise your hand if you booked your ticket to malta, and then google searched it?"  Everyone raised their hand.  What I was able to figure out on my search is that Malta is an island just south of Sicily and since it was ruled by the British from 1800 until about the 1960's the official languages of Malta are English and Maltese, which we think is some crazy mixture of Italian and Arabic.  Anyways, the weekend mainly consisted of late nights at the clubs, napping during the days, staying out of the rain, jumping in the storming ocean, and we squeezed in a double decker bus tour.  By the end of the trip everyone was exhausted and couldn't be happier to be going back to Aix.  I had managed to catch a pretty terrible cold and lost my voice, but it was a crazy and fun weekend.  Everyone had a blast and we all became much closer and I hadn't laughed about so many silly things in a long time.

Inside Hotel Europa where we stayed

Inside the old capital Mdina

On the bus tour!

Out to dinner, all 21 of us.  We watched about 3 groups of people leave
the room we were in because we were so loud.. woops

Tricia on the 'beach' right in front of where we stayed

On top of Pont de Gard

The following Thursday Mom and Dad came to visit me!  And they couldn't have come at a more perfect time.  I was exhausted from Malta, and they came pretty much at exactly the half way point of my stay in Europe!  We spent the weekend seeing the sights in Avignon, Nimes and Arles, and eating fabulous dinners and drinking great wine.  It was so nice to just let them be in charge for the weekend.  Being on my own for so long in a foreign country is really pretty exhausting, it was nice to just sit back and let them decide what we were going to do and how we were going to get there.  Avignon and Nimes and Arles all have some spectacular Roman ruins that were really cool to see.  Arles is also the place where Van Gogh spent 2 years painting and creating some of his most famous works.  After we came back to Aix for the week, I would go to class, and meet them in the afternoon for lunch or in the evening for dinner.  It was so nice to have them here, and I miss them already!

Pont de Gard

Salmon.. yummmm

Nimes

Dad and me in nimes

Roman amphitheater in Nimes

Arles

Roman ruins in Arles

Sight of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night

This past weekend I was planning on spending with Jake in Rome!  However after a terrible turn of events, I never made it there.  I had bought my airline tickets through easyjet, a british airline that flies really cheaply in Europe.  However, the closest city I could fly out of was Nice.  So I was going to have to buy a bus ticket to Nice and then fly out of Nice to Rome.  Easy enough right?  Well I was fortunate enough to ask my friend Tanya about how to go about this, because she had done the same thing a few weeks before to visit her boyfriend in Rome.  She was kind enough to go with me to the bus station and show me exactly where to go and what to ask for.  We went up to the window and when we asked if I could please get a ticket to Nice today, the guy looked at us and told us that all the buses were full today.  This was due to none of the trains running because of the strike.  He suggested that I try to get on the 2:30 bus and see if they end up having any extra seats available.  Well my luck pulled through and they ended up having 3 extra seats.  I hopped on and safely made the 2 hour ride to Nice, arriving just about 5 hours before my flight was to take off at 9:30.  I settled in, and listened to This American Life podcasts and read Albert Camus' entire "The Outsider" and was finally extremely dismayed to find out that my flight had been delayed for a whopping 3 more hours.  Crap.  Well Jake was already there so I managed to pay 2 euros for 15 minutes of internet and let him know I was going to be late and e-mail the hostel to let him into the room because it was under my name and they weren't letting him in because I wasn't there yet.  Well after waiting around, eventually at 12:30 they informed us that the flight was cancelled.  Even bigger crap.  During this time I had found a group of American girls who were studying in Nice trying to get to Rome on the same flight.  As you can imagine, we along with many italians and French people, were all pretty upset.  One of the American girls, who I happened to have met in the States at the French Consulate in LA when we were trying to get our visas, eloquently expressed her anger at the situation by exclaiming "I could literally shit on someone's face right now."  While I wasn't really looking to take things that far, I was still trying to figure out if there was a way I could still make it to Rome by Friday morning.  Well I soon found out that there were no more flights with easyjet to Rome until Sunday.  Well I eventually admitted defeat and received my voucher for the free hotel room and information on how to get my flight refunded.  By the time I actually got to sleep it was around 3 am. I woke up at about 7:30 the next day and decided that I might as well try and get back to Aix as soon as possible.  The silver lining on this whole ordeal was that easyjet paid for breakfast at the hotel, which turned out to be fantastic!  Scrambled eggs, sausage, and potatoes?  It's unheard of in Europe!  (Jenna, Jake and Whit I know you understand)  I had a field day.  It also had about 5 different kinds of cereal, fruit, yogurt, pastries, 4 different kinds of fruit juice, coffee and tea.  After I had my fill I took the free shuttle to the airport at around 8:30 and bought a bus ticket back to Aix that left at 10:15, and so I arrived in Aix at about 12:30 and trudged back to the apartment and slept for the rest of the afternoon.  Poor Jake had to spend his weekend in Rome alone!  What an ordeal.  Hopefully I can still make it to Italy while I'm here!