Ok so it’s been a while since my last post – things have been a little hectic around here and I do like to sleep a lot. In the past few weeks I have been all over southern France, or at least the area immediately surrounding Aix (within about 2 hours) and the coast.
The most recent trip I went on was to Arles, a great place to see Roman and a few pre-Roman remains. This was a class trip for my archeology course. We started at Glanum, a fairly well preserved city that dates back to Roman times. It was abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire and buried so no one built over it. We also went to Arles and saw a good archeology museum, the old roman amphitheater (think the Coliseum but slightly smaller) and the old theater.
The weekends before that there were two school trips: one to the Luberon region and one to the Cote D’Azur including Nice, Cannes and Monaco. Both were a lot of fun and very beautiful places in their own ways. The Mediterranean is amazing and Nice is a very cool city. In the Luberon we went to three small towns, all of which had 12th century monuments and buildings to check out. In Roussillon we visited the old Ocre quary. The dirt in that area is very red, much like the American southwest.
In the next few weeks I am going to be doing a lot of traveling outside of France and then to Paris.
Both the photos are from Roussillon, in the Louberon region, the first is the village, and the second is me in the quarry.
I heard a lot before I came about how the French people, including in the stores and cafes, rarely smile or talk to you until you become a regular. So far, this hasn’t proved true for me. For the most part, as long as you walk into a store and café and say bonjour, the person serving you smiles and says bonjour back to you. However, people are not overly friendly and only the North African and Turkish people will readily start a conversation with you while they take your order or help you out.
On another note, the school took us to Cassis on Sunday. It turned out to be a great day, with only a mild wind and lots of sunshine. The day before it had been cold and very windy in Aix, as le Mistral blew for the first time since I arrived. The beach was great, although it had rocks and pebbles rather than sand. The water was clear and blue, but very cold. I think that it was colder than Santa Cruz beaches normally are in the summer. I didn’t go in all the way, but many of the other students forced themselves in. They also managed to become the entertainment of the beach because they would start as far from the ocean as possibly and then sprint into the water, falling in when it got deep.
This weekend we are going to Nice and Cannes which should be another good trip. It is included in our tuition which means we don't have to spend any additional money on transportation or room and board. We have a few more outings planned from October and two of my classes also have trips planned.
My trip across the Atlantic, as one IAU staff referred to it, started early in the morning and ended almost 24 hours later in Marseille. For the most part the flights were uneventful and the Denver to Munich flight only served to prove my inability to sleep on airplanes.
However, the Munich to Marseille flight had a few issues. We did take off and then got an excellent low altitude view of Munich and the surrounding countryside. Of course that didn’t make up for having to land due to wing flap problems. Lufthansa did give us 10 euros to find our own lunch while we waited.
When we finally landed in Marseille, we were all ready to get on the bus and head off to meet our hosts. Of course there was another hour of waiting involved with this process but it was nice to be in air conditioning and be able to relax.
I arrived before my housemate did so I got the first few hours to myself. Once we arrived at her house, Madame Magnan, left me to unpack, shower and relax while she and her parents chatted in her living room.
Madame Magnan has an apartment in le centre ville or the center of Aix-en-Provence. The way she has it set up it has 3 bedrooms, a dinning room/living room/bedroom, one bathroom and a kitchen. I have a much bigger room than my housemate but my room is on the noisy side of the building while hers is on the quiet side.
Living in le centre ville means we are close to everything, although nothing is far away in Aix. School is close, just up the hill from where we live. It takes only about 5 minutes to get there. In addition there are bars, restaurants and cafes everywhere as well as shopping and others.
Madame invited us to go to the beach on Sunday, our first full day with her as she refused to leave us alone on our first day at the program. We ate lunch with our host’s extended family including her parents, siblings, son and grandchildren and her cousins and friends. All the food was excellent.
The rest of this week has been a blur of classes, explorations of the city and good food. So far, I love it here!
This blog is dedicated to my semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence. I will be posting pictures and thoughts about living and going to school in France and about my travels in France and Europe.
