Aix in the Fall

Aix is so beautiful right now!!!  Well actually it's raining at the moment, but I don't mind, it's nice to be inside and feel cozy, and I think I may go watch a movie with Aimee on her bed after I post this.  Our fall break has started and I'm spending the weekend in Aix and leaving for Istanbul, Turkey late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and I couldn't be more excited!  It's nice to be in Aix for the weekend though.  Aimee and I walked around town this morning to check out the weekly Saturday market and I found a beautiful scarf, a hand bag and a few other things, all on sale!  It was quite a success, and then we stumbled upon a bagel shop!  It made me miss Bagel Cafe and Bruggers Bagels so much, and we just had to go inside.  We split a plain bagel with beurre de cacahuette, or in English, peanut butter!  So simple but man do we miss peanut butter!  It was delicious.  Most of the kids in the program took off for their fall break destinations either yesterday or today so there is only a small group of us in town for the weekend.  My friend Ryan's host mom offered to rent a big van and drive us all to Avignon on Sunday for the day so that should be fun!  Even though I was just there with Mom and Dad, we didn't stay for very long and I am interested to see what Ryan's host mom takes us to do!  I cannot believe tomorrow is Halloween!  Though the French do celebrate it, they definitely do not celebrate with as much enthusiasm as we do in the states.  I miss all the pumpkins and witches and ghosts and fake cob-webs... all of that just must be far too tacky for the Axois.  I have seen the occasional decoration here and there, and I've seen some people heading to costume parties but nothing can beat an IV halloween!  I hope everyone in IV is having their best one yet, and know I'm there in spirit.  I can't believe I've passed the half-way mark of my stay here and I have a feeling these last weeks are just going to fly by.  I keep reminding myself of how lucky I am to be here and I'm trying to just soak it all up and store it away in my memory forever.  Here are some pictures to try and give you a feel of how colorful and beautiful Aix is right now!

Painting in the landscape

Mount Saint Victoire

The colors!

View from my terrace

Cours Mirabeau

Halloween decorations inside the bagel shop!

mmm peanut butter :)

We came across a jazz band in the street!

A little taste of home :)  Aimee's mom brought these for me
on her visit here!

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!

Aix-en-Provence (9/4-present)

They have a farmer's market every day, and on Saturday
and Sunday they have a huge market selling everything
from jewelry and antique silverware to honey and goat cheese

WELL, now I'm going on week 5 living here in Aix... and I absolutely love it.  The minute I stepped out of baggage claim at the airport in Marseille, two women from the institute were waiting for me with a sign.  I was quickly shuffled onto a shuttle that took me to Aix, which is only about 30 km away.  I took in the beautiful countryside and I felt positively giddy.  My host mom's daughter Clemence (pronounced clay-monce) found me at the bus station and her and her boyfriend drove me to her and her mom's apartment.  I live on the north side of the city center, in a very nice apartment on the 4th floor.  Well in America we would call it the 5th, because in Europe the ground floor is zero.  My housemate Aimee arrived a few hours before I did and so she got first pick of the rooms.  She picked Clemence's old room, which is very roomy with a nice big bed.  I got the other room, which is much smaller, but it is still very nice.  I have a desk and lots of shelves and a nice little terrace with an amazing view of rooftops and the cathedral in the distance, and I have witnessed some spectacular sunsets.  And besides, living in a small space is something I've grown quite accustomed to while living at UCSB, but this time I have it all to myself!  My host mom, Christiane (not sure of the spelling, but she always signs her notes with Chris) is great.  She is very nice and speaks english really well.  Which has been really nice, although I wish we spoke more french in the apartment, because I think that would help me a lot.  I really should just tell her that I want to speak more french, but it's just so much easier for everyone when we can speak English.

Aix is known as the city of a thousand fountains, this is the biggest one
at the Rotund in front of the Office de la Tourisme

Thew view from the terrace in my room... always such a beautiful sunset

Amanda helping to prepare for class!

As for the program, it has gone above and beyond what I had imagined it would be.  My classes are great.  I'm taking Art History: French Impressionism of the 19th Century.  It's taught by one of the art teachers and in November, we are taking a 4 day class trip to Paris to spend all day in the museums, including Musee de Louvre, Musee de l'Orangerie, Musee d'Orsay, and more.  I cannot wait!  It will be so cool to analyze the works with someone who has studied and lived in France for years.  I am also taking French 200, in a class of only 6 people, and my professor is wonderfully patient and I'm learning a lot.  Along with that, I'm taking a class called Living in France: A Conversation.  This class is taught only in French, and the professor is fantastic.  Her name is Margaux, and she rides a vespa to class, loves the electric guitar, Radiohead and Neil Young, and Americans.  She is such a free spirit, and she basically teaches us about the French culture.  Today I learned how to say "bouge ton cul" which is slang for "move your ass"  Last week she taught us the ins and outs of wine tasting.  She brought wine, grapes, bread and sausage to class and we all tasted the wine and talked about the different flavors and smells and all that jazz.  My other class is Global Environmental Politics, which is turning out to be pretty good.  I was a little skeptical at first because it's the first time the professor has taught the class, and he doesn't have a background in environmental studies, but it's turning out to be pretty interesting.  I have to give a 30 presentation on the environmental and political and cultural effects of the meat industry on Tuesday.  My favorite class hands down is my art class.  It's Beginning Drawing and Painting and I absolutely love it.  I have to walk about 30 minutes outside the city center, go off the road onto a trail that leads into the woods and that is where the little studio is that we have our class at.  I have the class twice a week for 3 hours.  The first class, we jumped right in and sketched a nude model!  It was fantastic.  I was totally nervous, but after a while it's easy to just get lost in the sketching.  I am by no means a master, but I have to admit I was happy with how I did!  By now we've moved on to painting and I love it.  We have the whole deal, oil paints, poppyseed oil, brushes, a palatte, turpentine, easel, and a really beat up old backpack to carry everything.  Right now we are copying landscapes done by masters.  I picked one by Van Gogh.  And I think starting next week we are going to get picked up by a bus and driven out into the country to start painting real landscapes!  I cannot believe how lucky I am.  And I am so thankful Aunt Gail told me I was being stupid not to take this class!  I get to paint in Provence, in the same places that Cezanne and countless other masters have painted before!  Sometimes I have moments of "wowwww this is just so amazing, I am so lucky to be here!"  My friends Becca and Tricia and I love to share those moments, where we just stop and say "wait... guys... we're in FRANCE right now!"

The Marchutz school of art

Taking a dip in the Mediterranean in Nice!

Well, as wonderful as Aix is, we have gone on some really awesome excursions to other cities in Provence.  The first weekend we went to Nice, Cannes and Monaco with everyone in the program.  It was a blast!  Nice was beautiful!  We hiked to the top of this hill and had breathtaking views of the city and the ocean.  Monte Carlo was ridiculous!  What an experience that was.  We went to the Grande Casino, paid ten euro to get in.  I am not a gambler, but I knew that I would be kicking myself later if I didn't at least do something!  I mean I was at Monte Carlo for crying out loud, there were lambourginis outside, we weren't allowed to bring cameras inside.. when was I ever going to be there again?  So I bought two 5 euro chips and played three riveting games of roulette.  First... I lost one of my 5 euro chips.  Then.. I won it back.  So I was even.  I took a break and went and watched some people play black jack.  Then.. being the risk taker that I am.. I played one more game of roulette... and I won!  I was  5 euros richer baby!  So I celebrated and bought a 14 euro martini.  By the way, I had never had a martini before.. and so I ordered a dry martini, because I thought that sounded pretty bad ass.  Well man was I shocked as I took a sip of what tasted like pure vodka.  Which I think it basically was.  Needless to say it took me about an hour to finish it.  But you know what, I looked classy.  The next day we went to Cannes which was pretty cool, more beautiful views of the ocean and beaches, and yachts galore!

Nice

In front of the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo

Cannes

Saint Tropez

The next weekend we went on a day trip to Saint Tropez.  It was also a beautiful beach town.  It was raining but I think that it made for some pretty cool pictures.  And because it was raining we opted for "plan b" and instead of laying on the beach we drove into the mountains and got to see this awesome abbey built in 1098!  It was beautiful.  The following weekend we went on another day trip to Cassis.  Which was yet another beautiful beach town.  We had to get to these coastal towns while the weather is still good!  We went on a really cool boat tour of the little inlets.  They were also having a little white wine festival, where you could buy a glass for 4 euros and then go sample as many wines as you wanted.  It was really fun, and all the wine was from Cassis.  It was a lovely day.

Saint Bernard Abbey

Wine tasting in Cassis

Boat tour in Cassis

Tricia, Becca and I in Cassis

At the top of Mount St Victoire!

Finally, this past weekend Becca, Tricia and I hiked up Mount Saint Victoire, which is a famous mountain in Aix, and Cezanne painted it 89 times!  It was quite the hike, it didn't take us too long (about an hour and 15 minutes to the top) but it was a steep incline the whole way.  I was reallll sweaty (Whit, I was wishing you were there to sweat along with me!)  Tricia was a backpacking guide all summer in Colorado... it's safe to say that Becca and I were breathing a liiittle heavier than her.. but she was great and set a good pace for us.  And when we made it to the top, we had a spectacular 360 degree view of the countryside.  We took a bunch of pictures and ate a lunch of goat cheese, olive bread, almonds, and apples that we had bought at the market on the way to the bus that morning.  We were very proud of ourselves.  Then on Sunday we went on a day trip to Le Luberon region and we went to 3 very beautiful and picturesque villages, Lourmarin, Bonnieux, and Roussillon.

Saint Victoire

Lourmarin

Gordes

Gordes

The ochre quarry in Roussillon.  They used to use the red, orange and yellow
color from the ochre as pigments for paint.  It was incredibly beautiful.

Roussillon