Sunday, February 20, 2011

Time of my life

Hello everyone,
First of all I would like to thank my avid followers that keep up with my blog every week.  I started keeping a blog and updating entries every week as a means to bring you all with me in even a small part.  So that being said I hope you have enjoyed the journey thus far even half as much as I am.
This week wasn't as eventful as previous weeks, so sorry if this blog entry is lacking in a little sparkle and shine.
Well classes are still going well.  We're nearing the midterm mark in the semester, so most of my classes will have a midterm exam.  Our semester ends about a month before the spring semester will end in Bloomington so it's kind of bizarre to go to class for maybe 4 or 5 weeks and already have a midterm exam and a week long break, when at IU these precious little gifts wouldn't come for another 3 or 4 weeks.  I'm not entirely sure what has been going on in my class so this midterm period shall be interesting.  Luckily I am a foreign student so I get to use a dictionary with the test and maybe get some extra time.  (One plus to being an American.)  All my classes are 3 hours and the tests are administered during the regular class time so this while either be a good thing or a bad thing.  I have 3 hours to concentrate and do my best on the exam, but at the same time to fill a time span of 3 hours means this could be a long test.  Goin' back to the good ole days of ISTEP and SATS; taking tests that seem to never end...  O boy!
So we were supposed to travel to Marseille this week for our medical exams.  To live in France for longer than 3 months (that's all my visa I got from Chicago will allow me) I have to go to Marseille (why I couldn't have done this in the states I don't know) for a medical exam/check-up to make sure I am healthy and not bringing TB or Rabbis into France.  Well, France this is just a thought but if I really did have a deadly disease that I could spread to others in your country, I probably would have done so already given the fact that you have let me live here for almost 2 months without checking into these concerns.  Great thinking.  So like I said we were supposed to go to this medical exam, but because we are in France of course it was postponed.  And the reason why:  the electricity wasn't working at the medical facility.  Great I feel safe to go to this place in the future.  The best part about this whole process is for those students who have already bought their plane /train/bus tickets to other countries for the first break (which is in a week) they need this medical visit to have clearance to get back into the country.  Luckily if said students have brought their paper work they received from the French Consulate in Chicago they can present this information and be allowed back into the country upon their return.  Also, this part I love.  We all have to purchase a timbre fiscal, this little postage stamp that costs a whopping 55 euro that's $75, to present at the medical exam to pay for the visit.  But wait, where do you go to purchase said postage stamp?  A cigarette shop.  Nice France, real nice.  You want me to be healthy and check that I am not spreading diseases around the country, but yet I pay for this visit at a cigarette shop.
Speaking of cigarettes.  No I have not picked up the habit thank God.  My professor for methodology is a crazed chain smoker.  His name is Michel Santacroce, but here in Aix amongst the program kids we like to call him Santa cause he gives us little presents every couple of weeks in the form of dissertations and papers that he grades rather harshly, double the presents!  So this past week in class we had to attend both sessions of the class, so Thursday and Friday, because he had to cancel class last week due to being sick (hm, could that be from smoking?).  So let's get this straight it is most convenient for him to skip one week cause he's too sick to teach class, which means we have to attend both class sessions, since normally I only have to attend the Thursday session.  Sure Santa what ever is most convenient for you.  At IU if a professor cancels class, there is not extra class to make up the work.  It's the professor's fault/decision, in some respects, and that's that.  Nope not in France.  So for the Friday session it was nearing the end of the class time and since Santa is a avid chain smoker he couldn't make the last 15 minutes of class without lighting up.  He stands at the back of the class room cracks a window and stands there smoking.  Granted our classroom is on the 5th floor and those are a lot of steps for some who smokes a cigarette every 30 minutes to walk up and down, but come on seriously smoking in the classroom?  Clearly I take offense to this so my roommate and I wrote an anonymous letter to our program directors informing them of this problem and in hopes that something will be said/done so this does not happen again.  Yes, I want the cultural experience of a French classroom, but some how I don't think that is a part of it.
Thursday night I went with my roommate to this pretty cool light show in a museum in the heart of Aix.  My favorite exhibit was this long shallow pool of water and lights were projected into the water in shades of blue to look like the water was flowing in a creek or something.  At the far end of the pool was a mat that you jump on, which sends a light projected image of a person swimming to the other end of the pool.  There were other exhibits that used music and water to alter the images created by the light.  It was a pretty neat exhibit, and even better that it was free.  The best part of it all was that I got to see my favorite homeless man.  Yes already have a favorite homeless man, just like I already have a favorite bakery.  I'm not for certain that he is homeless, but every once in a while when I'm walking the streets of the older part of town where I live he'll be sitting in someone's stoop singing for money.  He has a really great voice and just seems to be so content with life even though he is clearly at a different standard of living from the rest of the residents of Aix.  His spirit and joy are just infectious.  He's approximately 30 and has long dark dreads and wears the same black hate with a white band around the brim.  I will try to sneak a picture at some point to post for everyone.  I'm sure his bonheure or joy for life could read through even a picture.
This week was valentine's day and in France they do celebrate the occasion but not like Americans.  There are very few card shops that advertise like the extreme that Hallmark goes to, and yes the candy shops specialize in valentine's candies, but that's about it.  It seems to be a much bigger holiday in the US than here, which I find interesting since France seems to strive off so much love and passion.  Hm.  Although the restaurants and cafes were pretty packed that night, so maybe it's more about the romancing than the price you paid for that card, flowers, candy, dinner, desert, drinks, limo... you get the point.
This past Saturday I went to an OM soccer game with some friends of mine that go to IU and are on my program.  We bought tickets for a pretty good price, and came to find out why they were so cheap.  We had perfectly fine seats and had a lot of fun.  The OM (Olympiques de Marseille) team is a regional teams that is stationed in Marseille (duh) and has won several championships.  Their colors are powder blue and white (and maybe orange but I couldn't tell, which team was wearing the orange).  Luckily I had purchased a 3 euro jersey at the Saturday markets in Aix.  No it's not an official jersey but it was long sleeved and cheap and worked perfectly.  We bought face paint in Marseille and put a blue and white stripe under each eye.  We were hoping this would be a trend with everyone, but when I got to the game I realized we were the only ones.  Opps, well we're American so that's why.  Right?  The atmosphere in the stadium was similar to the excitement at IU's football games, but it was neat to see a regional team play on their home turf in France's most popular sport.  Not that the US doesn't have the same concept of a regional sports team playing on their home turf in a nationally favorite sport, it was just cooler in France.  OM won the game, but of course this couldn't have happened without a little drama.  I think there were two occasion a stretcher had to be brought on the field with medical attention, multiple fights between players and the ref and a possible pile up of players the one lone ref had to break up.  There were OM fanatics sitting at both end zones of the field and they would yell chants back and forth and had all kinds of flags to wave and confetti and so much fun to be had.  At the stadium entrant everyone was handed a magazine that had all the stats of the teams and of course a ton of advertisements.  About 30 minutes left in the game we decided to make paper airplanes with said magazines to throw into the crowds.  There was a young boy sitting next to me, he was about 6.  He kept staring at me for a while, and I finally realized it was because I was a weird American girl sitting at an OM soccer game wearing face paint that I thought was cool but was clearly not a trend.  I offered to put some paint on his face and he gave me this look like he was way too cool for such things.  So then we offered him a  paper airplane to throw down into the crowd.  This start a 20 minute session of paper airplane folding per the demands of our new little french buddy.

 





Observations: (these aren't necessarily observations about France just things that have hit me over the past week)
1.  No one here knows of Ellen Page.  Or if they do they don't think I look like her.  Finally a reprieve from the Ellen Page comments.
2.  I am the only Sarah on the program.  This is a big first for me.  I don't think I have been a part of a group or class of this size where there is not another Sara(h).
3.  Last week I posted an observation about the French walking where ever they want and stopping dead in the their tracks where ever and when ever they want.  Well what they want it what goes.  This seems to be the mantra that is attached to most everything here.  This is even more so when they realize you are foreign, especially American.
4.  France does not have the same mass amounts of commercialism as the US has.  It seems here that along the highways and within the cities there are minimal billboards and signs for advertisement, there as in the US this is a concept that is plastered everywhere.  I kind of miss it.  NOT!
5.  The French have a different perception of the seasons from a midwesterner.  I'm sure this is true for more than just the French, but I have been asking people when it will get warmer here.  More like spring weather.  Everyone's response is late March mid April.  These past couple of days have been gorgeous and to a midweasterner who is used to blankets of snow and the bitter cold all the way up to Easter, this weather is spring time to me.  This strikes me as interesting since the French continue to wear winter coats during a midwestern spring.  What on earth will they wear in summer?
My mother will be here to visit me for a whole week in 5 days!!!! I'm so excited for her to visit and share France with her.  It is her first trip across the pond so I hope I have prepared her well for the flight and the international airports and I have told her that once she gets off the plane to let me take care of everything, it'll just be easier that way.  I'm so excited that the past 2 months of planning are finally coming to fruition.  I will for sure post stories and photos from our trips around France, this is going to be hilarious.  I will try my best to have her ordering in cafes and asking strangers where the bathrooms are in French, I may be pushing my luck with the second one.  Travel itinerary: Day 1-3 she arrives and spending time in Aix.  Day 4-6 Paris/Versailles Palace.  Day 7-8 Nice and Monaco day 9/10 spending the last couple of days in Aix and she flies home.  So if anyone is looking for a travel agent or tour guide of France my services are available.  This all being said It may be a while before you get another posting.  I know this may come as sad news to some of you, but don't worry I promise the next one will be 10 times better than this one with fabulous stories, photos, and observations.
With much love,
Your little French girl Sarah

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Glanum, Arles, and Pont du Gard

I am writing to you this week a wiser and more enriched person.  Yes I have many life lessons to share with you all.
To begin in the area of classes, I had to write my first dissertation for a French class in France this week.  I have taken several French literature classes at IU and have spent the past 2 or 3 years improving my abilities at writing in French compared to the ease of writing in my native language.  We had to write a dissertation this week for our methodology class.  This class is structured to help is work on our writing skills and adjusting to the French academic system compared to the American academic system.  Boy is there a difference!  So a French dissertation consists of an introductory paragraph that lays the foundation for your paper and proposes your question you will answer by the end of the paper.  Then you have your these (not exactly a thesis like in English), this is where you tell your arguments for or against the subject of the paper.  For this paper the subject was questioning whether friendship is a force that isolates someone from humanity.  Next comes the antithese, which is where you present new arguments not necessarily against your ideas but just a new way of looking at the subject matter.  Finally you have the synthese which combines one or two of your main ideas from the these with one idea from your antithese, and then you conclude.  I have yet to figure out the difference between the synthese and the conclusion, and I may never know...  I am going into great detail over this paper to demonstrate to you that yes I am learning something while living in southern France.  I don't just travel and shop all the time, I am indeed getting an education.  Now whether I know what I'm talking about as far as this French dissertation style goes, I have no clue but once I get my grade back I'll let you know how this education thing is working out.
I had my first trip to the elementary school on the north side of town for volunteer this week.  That was a trip, literally!  Luckily I am assigned to this position with another girl(friend) on the program.  We were given a print out map on which the bus stop where we should get off was circled and the phone number and address of the school, that was all.  So we get on the right bus going in the right direction (I've learned from my previous mistakes about taking a bus in the wrong direction) and got off at the bus stop that was circled.  Nope the school wasn't there, so we walk up the street and then up a hill and down side streets and finally stumble upon a national forestry office and ask a very polite French woman for directions or some inclinations as to whether we are still in Aix or have wandered into the next city over.  She gave us rather vague directions to walk through a white gate and pick one of two doors to go into at some  random building.  Great...  So we followed what she said and ended up at a grade school, but no one was around.  We found some electrcian outside smoking and asked him for directions, which did not help either.  So we broke down and called the director of the school.  We finally found the school, 20 minutes late but at least we found it.  We helped this 14 year old girl with her english homework for about a half hour, and then left.  Pretty easy, I can do that each week!  Later that night I had another dinner with my exchange family.  Before dinner I spent about 30-45 minutes with each child working on English homework and finally at 8 pm it was dinner time.  I was starving and I was in luck because we had a huge meal!!!  Couscous with veggie soup, steak, sausage links, and chicken legs.  For dessert the mom had made a chocolate cake that reminded me of texas brownies but without the frosting and we had this amazing vanilla custard to go with the cake.  After dinner we all sat around and talked (in French) and watched the France vs. Brazil soccer game.  It was so pleasant to sit in an authentic French home sipping mint tea, chatting with my French exchange family watching the national soccer team play the national sport of France.  Pretty cool!
I took a trip to Carrefour this past Friday.  Carrefour is like the walmart of France.  Mega selection, cheap prices and it's HUGE!!!  We spent about 3 hours in there buying food and school supplies and didn't even see the whole store.  They have clothing stores and shoe stores and an eye glass place and banks and all kinds of different stores at the front end and then they have isles and isles of food and home supplies and school supplies and more clothing.  They have this neat contraption that you scan each item with this hand held scanner and it keeps a log of everything in your cart.  When you get to the check out lines you hook your scanner up to the register and it pulls up your full list of items, you pay and you're on your way.  Ingenious!! Of course we didn't figure this out until we were at the check out lines and had to wait in the long lines with other people that didn't use the cool hand held scanner thing.  I bought some pretty cool pens that all the students use and I even bought an erasable pen.  There's one pen you write with, then an eraser, and then another pen you use to write over it.  Pretty cool!
    
I am sad to inform you that the sales are indeed in their final days.  This is sad news to me but great news for my bank account.  That is till I start planning trips.
Speaking of trips!  This past weekend I went to Glanum (a small area north of Aix that has a lot of ancient Roman/Greek ruins), Arles (I've actually visited Arles before when I was in France the summer of 2007), and the Pont du Gard (I've already visited this site as well, but still breath taking).  So the trip started at 9 am, way too early for a Saturday, but this was a weekend excursion that I had already paid for with my program fees so I went.  Glanum was really neat to see.  We were able to walk amongst the ruins of a city that existed I believe around if not a little after the time of Jesus Christ.  So this stuff was old!  Our tour guide did a job of comparing and demonstrating the structure of their cities to how our towns and cities are structured today to show that some things have changed but a lot has actually stayed the same.  See my photos below to get a perspective of Glanum.
          
Next we went to Arles, and as I said I have already visited Arles but it was kind of a weird out of body experience to revisit a European city that I have already been to.  It's hard to explain because it doesn't compare to making several trips to Chicago or another city I don't get to see often but I have seen on several occasions.  I was neat but weird to be in a European city I have already visited and recognize places and begin to know my way around the town (granted it is pretty small).  We first and for most ate lunch.  I tried to buy a sandwich from one man at the market but he sold his last baguette to the lady before me in line.  So I went to the next sandwich stand to be told the same thing.  So I went to a pizza stand, but found out I had to buy an entire pizza not just a slice... well gosh!  So the group I was with ended up sharing 2 rotisserie chickens and 3 baguettes and we feasted like the Romans and the Greeks of Glanum:  with our hands sitting on the ground in small city in Southern France.  As part of the trip we were given a pass to get into several museums as exhibits within the city, so we ended up visiting 2 arenas, a church, the rhone river (where Van Gogh painted A Starry Starry Night in Arles), the cafe where Van Gogh painted his famous cafe scene, and a garden where Van Gogh painted another of his famous scenes.
                    
After Arles we took an hour bus ride to le Pont du Gard.  My favorite stop of the day.  As I said before I have already visited the Pont du Gard (constructed by the Romans, by hand).  This is also the site of the oldest olive tree on earth.  I'm not sure if it was originally planted here, or originally planted in Spain and a part of the tree was planted in France, but regardless it's still pretty cool!
          
Observations of the week:
1.  Baking cookies in France is hard!  If you know me at all you know I LOVE to cook and bake, and if you are an avid follower you'll see I don't have a problem cooking.  It's the baking part.  I am currently in the process of baking chocolate chip cookies as I type this entry.  Luckily I brought chocolate chips with me because you will not find those here.  They do have all the other ingredients required.  Now the hard part is baking 4 cookies at a time in my microwave/oven.  Yes, we have a microwave that can get up to about 400degrees Celsius (I may be making that figure up, but it gets hot).  So for the past 4 hours I have been baking one batch of chocolate chip cookies, 4 at a time, without Pam... it's hard!
2.  If you think you see a seashell in the dirt, double check yourself before you just pick it up.  When we were in Arles at one of the arenas I was with a friend of mine on the program who is collecting dirt and rocks from each place she visits (kinda cool!) so I was helping her look for good dirt and rocks and at first sight I thought I saw this pretty shiny seashell buried in the dirt.  It even had a pretty white swirl coming for the middle and was just small enough to add to her collection.  It was pigeon poop.  I didn't realize this until after I had tried to pinch and pick up the "sea shell".  Yes, that is right I picked up pigeon poop.  As soon as I realized what I was picking up and it was too late to recoil I found the closest wall and tried to wipe my hands of the poo.  Luckily I had hand sanitizer and used about half the bottle to sanitize myself.  Lesson learned!  Although you would think I would have learned from an experience earlier in the day in which I managed to pick up some random homeless person's headband thinking one of the girls in my group had dropped it.  I didn't realize that said headband did not come from my friend due to the fact that is was covered in dirt and hair and dust, and probably rabbis.  Learn from me and when exploring in new cities, keep your hands to yourself!!!
3.  There is no good way to predict the weather when you live in a coastal-ish city by the Mediterranean ocean. So I have come up with a system that if the current day is sunny and warm weather and perfect, the next day it will rain and be cold and dreary.  There is no good way to predict good weather (just whenever it happens, it's like a little gift from the heavens), but you can predict bad weather when you're having a sun shiny day.
4.  I think I used the phrase "pretty cool"one too many times in this blog...

I miss you all dearly, but I hear warm weather is coming your way soon (at least I hope).

Sunday, February 6, 2011

A date with the Green Fairy

Hello again my dear loved ones state side (and abroad),
Well, it's official.  I have been living in France for at least a month now.  No I am not homesick and yes mom and dad I still don't want to come home, désolé (sorry)!  
So far I have visited Marseille, Mont St. Victoire.  That's all at this point, but the big travel season is coming up quickly!  This next weekend I will be taking a trip to Arles, Pont du Gard, and Glanum.  The weekend after I will be taking a day trip to Montpellier, I have tickets for a Marseille soccer game the next day, and pending trip to Nice for Carnival (it's Europe's equivalent of Mardi Gras).  And then!!!! there is the first week long break and my mother is coming to visit me for a whole week!!!  We are going to hang out in Aix for a couple days, spend 3 days in Paris being typical tourists, and then soaking up the sun on the beach in Nice and gambling the rest of our travel money away in the casino's in Monaco.  I have been slaving away at the plans for this trip to book train tickets and hotels, but the arrangements are done and now all I need is for her to get here!  I have also purchased a ticket to Turkey to travel around Istanbul for 4-5 days with some friends on my program.  There is a tour guide associated with my program who gives guided tours of different cities in the south of France each weekend for only 25 euro, so my roommate and I are taking advantage of these offers and already planning many trips with him.  So I have decided that since the sales are ending my money will now be saved up for travel instead of clothing and food, I mean clothing.
Since being in France some friends of mine on the program and I have been taking turns to host a "family dinner" each week.  Each week's dinner is themed, so one week it was Mexican food and the next it was breakfast for dinner.  It's nice to know that I have a close group of friends that can be like a pseudo family while I am away from my biological family.  I think this week might be burgers and fries, yes we're all beginning to miss the US even just a little.
So I have signed up to do some volunteer work while living in France, and I received my assignment this past week.  I will be working with a friend of mine who is in my program.  The volunteer work is at an elementary school, tutoring young students between the ages of 10 and 14 with their English homework for about and hour or 2 each Wednesday afternoon.  I already have some experience from my semester volunteering with a program based out of Bloomington called Alef Ba (that's A B in English) in which I would teach young children the fundamentals and basics of the Arabic modern standard language through games and song.  I'll keep you updated on how that goes.
I have also been assigned an exchange family that lives in Aix.  I go once a week on Wednesday nights to their house for dinner and in exchange I give each of the family's 3 children a 30 minute English lesson or help them with their English homework.  The parents of the family migrated to France from Algeria so I was able to speak just a little to the mom in Arabic and she said if I want she and her husband can help me keep current with my Arabic studies while I'm abroad.  The family has 3 children, twins that are 14, a boy and a girl, and then a 10 year old girl.  I had spoken to the mother of the family on the phone to get directions to their house for the first dinner this past week.  Typically the exchange family will pick up the student and drive them to the family's house, but I had to take the bus.  So I left my house in plenty of time to figure out the bus system on the fly and got off at what I thought was the correct bus stop.  Ha! nope.  I was lost and when I called my host mom she had no clue where I was.  The best surrounding details of the area I could give her were a house, an intersection, and some road construction.  That didn't get very far.  I luckily had the bus map with me and after much confusion and almost tears out of frustration I figured out that I had misheard what she said was the correct bus stop and realized I was on the exact opposite end of town from where I need to be.  Great.  So I waited another 30 minutes for the bus to come back around, got back and I found the correct bus stop.  Luckily I had bought some flowers earlier in the day to give to my host mom as a gift so when I got off the bus she greeted me in the typical french way with kisses on both cheeks and was very grateful for the flowers.  Thank god I saved my ass on that one.  After climbing to the 5th floor (yes they live on the 5th floor) I met her three children and we sat and talked for a while in French.  In the middle of the conversation the phone rang and it was the father of the family.  He wasn't at home that night because he was in Paris giving a conference at a university.  So each member of the family passed the phone around to say hello, and then it was my turn.  I was not ready for that.  Kind of awkward but cute because he tried to speak to me in English, very broken English.   I spent the next 30 minutes or so speaking with the children in English while the mother made dinner.  For dinner we had a first course of tomato and olive salad, green salad, bread, and a sausage and olive salad.  For the main course she served a piece of sausage a piece of steak and a steamed potato and carrot dish.  Since she was born and raised in Algeria I could definitely tell a strong north African flavor in her cooking.  For desert she served a fruit mix of oranges and apples, a small piece of flan, and a small tart aux fraises (it's a strawberry tart or pastry).  The dinner was wonderful!! I ate so much food but it was so good.  Apparently it is custom in France to say "Bon appetit" before beginning to eat, where in the US or at least with my family we say a prayer of thanks for the meal before eating.  I brought up the culture difference over dinner and found out that since they are all raised Muslim they don't have a traditional prayer to say before eating so they use the default "Bon appetite" but they do have some family friends that are religious and say their own version of the Our Father.  Also I found out the hard way that it can be typical for the mother of the family to serve everyone and it is upon you when she has served you enough of a particular food.  Well I just sat there in awe of the mass amount of food she was putting on my plate and finally caught on that I need to let her know when enough is enough.  Oops!  I'll know for next time!  I plan to meet with them again this coming Wednesday for yet another tasty meal and little French lesson.
This past Friday I went with the rest of the students on my program to a gorgeous theater in Aix to see a play of some work by Musset.  I was really hoping this would be a good test to see how my French comprehension is coming along, and I have never been to a play in French, opera yes, play no.  Boy was I wrong.  I was so boring I almost fell asleep and if the actors hadn't been so theatrical I would not have been able to follow half of what went on.  It was reassuring to find out after the play that my other friends, even the ones that have already been here for a semester, had no clue what was said either.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing...
The highlight of my week was going to the Absinthe factory just outside of Aix this past Saturday.  The outing wasn't set up by the program (I don't think they would be gungho about this little side trip), but instead it was set up by a couple students that are here for the year long program.  We all met up in the afternoon to catch a bus to the factory and when we got off the bus the little house in front of the factory was so typically French (yes I will post photos).  We first watched a movie about the history of Absinthe and then took a tour of the factory where the Absinthe is made.  We had one tour guide who was French and the other tour guide was from the US and would explain some things in English that were difficult words for us to understand in French.  It was interesting to see first hand how long of a process it is to preserve and strain the elements of the drink out of the plants from beginning to end.  Also the mass amounts of alcohol a bundle of the plants can produce.  When we went back inside the main house of the factory the two tour guides (the man, Pascal, is the owner) let all of us taste test a type of wine and two types of liqueur and then two types of Absinthe.  The first type was a more yellow color and was the original form of Absinthe from back in the day.  The second type was more of a white milky color and is a newer type of Absinthe with a little different taste.  So to properly make an absinthe drink you pour a small amount of the yellowish green liquor into a glass.  A proper Absinthe glass will have a small rounded base so you know how much absinthe to pour into the glass to fill up the bottom rounded portion.  You then use a special slotted spoon to hold a small cube of sugar over the glass.  The spoon rests on the top edges of the glass.  You then turn on a dripping stream of water to melt the sugar cube into the Absinthe mixture, and once melted turn the water on to a full stream to fill up the remaining portion of the glass, and voila!  C'est tres facile! (It's very easy!)  I was not a big fan of the drink because it tasted too much like licorice to me, black licorice at that, but it was definitely a cultural experience I'm glad I got to do.  Absinthe has always been a staple in French culture for centuries and could be said to be the inspiration for many artists of the 18th and 19th centuries (ie. the green fairy).  So I bought a bottle.  A small bottle. And the decorative spoon and a small shot glass.  Why not right? I mean how many times is one going to go to an absinthe factory and meet Monsieur Absinthe.  Yes that's is right I met Mister Absinthe himself.  So the owner of the factory, Pascal, the man wearing the green sweater in the pictures, is the man to reverse the law forbidding the sale of Absinthe in France for many many years.  He is the one how convinced the French government and departments of the government who made this drink illegal to reinstate it was a legal beverage in France.  Pretty cool!  We also got to try some of the factory's absinthe perfume.  So once each person got a small spray of the perfume it smelled the same on everyone, but after 10 minutes based on our personal chemical makeup the scent would change to a personal perfume of our own scent.  They gave us a test of this perfume on a ribbon and after showering my ribbon still smells like my personalized perfume.
                
This week's observations:
1.  I have now figured out the reason I miss grass so much, because here in Aix when dogs go for a walk there is  poop in the streets and we step in it.  When there is grass a dog poops in the grass and not the sidewalk.  I was lucky enough to experience the craptisim (crap+baptisim) of stepping in a steaming pile of poo just before getting on the bus to go hike Mont St. Victoire.  Lovely...

2.  French children are automatically cuter than any American child.  Hands down it's a fact, and I may be stealing one to bring home at the end of the semester.  I just have to make sure I pick the best one.
3.  Europeans don't give a care where they walk and who is in their path, not whether they are in your path.  This is one thing I'm having a hard time getting used to.  Dodging the pissed off French women in heals.  They will just dart around where ever they need to go even if you might be in their way, and if they are in need of a cigarette or to answer their phone, be ready if you are walking behind because they will just stop and take of their business and not even give a care to where you are in relation to them.  The other day I was walking down the street and this man in front of me just stops right in the middle of the road to light his cigarette and thank god I was watching where I was going otherwise he might have a burn mark where his nose should be.
4.  French baguettes turn into giant croutons after 3 days.  Sorry but I don't eat bread that fast.  And I guess a regular slice of bread to make a sandwich with is a very American thing to do.  I bought a loaf of bread at the grocery store the other day and they were all labeled as American sliced bread.  Hum? Really? Just Americans?
5.  Eat french fries on your sandwich!  I don't know if I have mentioned this yet, but if I have I it's totally worth mentioning again.  So in the US we have fast food restaurants, and in Aix there is a MacDo (McDonalds) and other fast food joints, like Burgers in Chicken (I would only recommend it in times of desperation, seriously).  Instead there are street vendors that sell sandwiches and crepes and at most all of these vendor stands the sandwiches can come with french fries toasted or grilled in to the other ingredients of the sandwich.  This is a super easy thing to try at home or even the next time your at Subway.  Just put french fries on your sub and toast is and voila you are trying out some french cuisine that is super popular here.  I used to put potato chips on my bologna sandwiches but this is on a whole other level.

I hope you are all surviving the winter storms that are taking over the midwest.  I would send you some of my 50 and 60 degree weather with lots of sun but it would have to travel all the way around the world to get to you  and who knows what would happen to it once it arrived at your front door.  O ya it turns into snow, sorry!
Stay young and beautiful as always and do know I miss you dearly, but I'm loving France a little more right now.

P.s.  If you have not been keeping in the loop of world news please take 10 minutes out of your day and inform yourself of the revolutions and protests and the potential crisis that Tunisia started, Egypt has adopted, and Jordan is contemplating.  Yes these locals are far from the US but they do affect our lives in some way as American citizens, and I trully hope you all will stay informed and keep these people in your thoughts and prayers.  Millions of people's lives are being radically altered and lives are being lost as you read this.  This is history happening right now.  Also keep yourself informed on the trials for the two remaining American citizens that are being put on trial very soon if not now for crossing the Iraq-Iran border.  This has been a long process for these two American citizens and if faith and justice is on their side they can be returned home to their families and loved ones.
Ok off my soap box.  Bisous!