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!
