SPRING has SPRUNG! and it is lovely!!! The easter flowers are blooming in the city and the trees are beginning to get little leaves. The weather is in a constant range of 50s to 70s, but unfortunately the evenings can still be pretty cold. I try to keep the one apartment window open as much as possible to let the natural breeze come wafting through (of course there is always a tinge of cigarette smoke). This is my favorite part of the semester and possible the school year when I'm at IU, so to be missing it has really brought me down, but being in Southern France in this weather definitely helping me cope, not the same nor is it a substitute but it's something that will suffice. I have had a rather busy week so I will just jump right in here.
Monday was a boring day in comparison to the rest of my week so I'll just skip all that school and homework nonsense. Tuesday night I went to Marseille with the program directors and some other students on the program to see a play at a small theater in the middle of the city. I really like the city of Marseille. It is the second largest city in France to Paris (of course) and to me it's reality. When I am in Aix I feel like I'm in the beverly hills of France and everyone is a facade and everything just seems so fake and there's so much money in this city, that isn't reality to me. Marseille has every type of person and every ethnicity/nationality, tons of languages are spoken and there's so much more to do and see, and of course there's the ocean so who can beat that? The play production was covered in my program fees, so I figured I may as well go get my moneys worth and see what it's all about. HA! was I in for a surprise. So the theater production was actually three small plays squashed into one. It start out with an old man chasing a woman around in party outfits, she gets pregnant, next play. She gives birth to a child in a bunny suit. I don't know if the bunny suit is to illustrate the grow man playing the part of a child is supposed to be a young boy or if she really gave birth to a rabbit. The father makes child potties for a living and tries to sell them to the army. At one point in the play the father demonstrates to an army officer that they are unbreakable, but actually breaks two porcelain toilets on the stage. Next play. The child/rabbit is grown with his own son and wife (who at first I mistook to be his mother from the previous play but it ended up the two actresses looked a lot alike). The man's son and the son's mom had a weird Edipus Rex complex going on. The mother's costume was literally shear underwear and bra and a hat. I was able to follow most of the script, but I have no clue what actually happened in those 2-3 hours during the production. I think there was a lot of symbolism I just didn't pick up on, nor did I really want to think about this avant gard theater production that much. I'll just chalk that up to an experience I'll only do once. Never again... Moving on now.
Wednesday we all had our medical visit. We were originally scheduled to go at the end of March, but since the electricity was not working in the medical facility that week we had to reschedule to this past Wednesday. To live as a temporary resident in France for more than 3 months you need a special stamp called a carte sejour in your passport to give you clearance for up to a year. I will not be here that long, thank god. We met with a nurse who asked us what vaccines we have had in the past 5 years (god I don't know.) She asked if we are pregnant, uh negative, and then took our height and weight and sent us back to the waiting room. We then had to get a chest x-ray to make sure we don't have TB. Uh France if I had TB your whole country would have it know, bad luck there man. Second to this idea, is that TB should be the least of your concersn and you should worry more about the mass number of lung cancer patients you have in this country. I won't spread the epidemic your cigarettes will. The first couple of girls that got their xrays were asked to take off their shirts to get a complete xray. Luckily everyone refused and kept their shirts on. We were told the doctors at this facility can be a little perverted. The xray wasn't bad at all and took just a couple seconds. I got to keep my xray which is now hanging on my wall in my apartment. Makes a great halloween decoration, too bad easter is the next holiday. Then we had to meet with a doctor who asked us if we smoke, what kinds of physical activity we do and whether we like it in France. Uh, no, kind of, and yes were my answers.
After the medical exam I stayed in Marseille to get lunch and walk around the city with some friends. I ended up buying a pair of brown boots for 10 euro, that's about $13! I made it back to Aix before sunset because I have been told Marseille is not a city you want to hang out in once the sun goes down. The weirdos come out!
Thursday was another boring day of classes. I did have to go to the bank on this particular day to straighten out an atm error the bank made with my deposit money for rent and internet. I had run to the bank Wednesday before the medical visit to deposit my money in time to make my rent payment and pay my monthly internet bill. At this particular bank you don't have to make a deposit with a teller, in fact they don't even have tellers, just machines. You just stick your stack of bills in this little slot and the machine counts your money and you verify the amount. After about 3 minutes then 5 then 9 then 13ish minutes of waiting for my verification notice the atm spits out my bank card and tells me the machine has gone out of order and I need to see an attendant for assistance. No bills came out... So I report this to the attendant you has me fill out some paper work and tells me to come back tomorrow and they will be able to deposit the money in my account. So you want me to go home, not freak out that I have 400 euro sitting in some random atm machine, and just stroll back over here tomorrow like this isn't a big deal. Yup he said. This would not fly in the US. So I left the bank, what else could I do? So I went back on Thrusday and the same guy I talked to the day before was just messing around on his computer looking bored, great dude I have a job for you, straighten out your problem. They still hadn't fixed the deposit issue by 12:30 the next day. WHAT?! I was told to just keep checking my account online and come back the next day if it isn't fixed. I don't think you realize, dude, this is my rent money you have "lost" and when you try to transfer money to my landlord, there won't be anything in my account because it's lost somewhere in your machine, and I'm sure I will then get overdraft charges. Great, just great France, I'm lovin you more everyday. Luckily around 10:30 that night the amount was deposited in my account and everything worked out ok. I still don't forgive you France, the US would have handled this better.
Friday afternoon I went with Cathy and our friend Lyndsy to buy carte treize bus passes to go to Cassis for the day. Cassis is a small coastal town with these fabulous calanques, or cliffs that over look the ocean. We had to pay 5 euro to make the card and then each trip is a euro, ya a euro, I couldn't believe it either. I bought a new bathing suit for the beach, and finished up my day by writing a paper for my "beloved" methodology class on a Friday night. That's dedication. Good thing I had a bottle of red wine on hand.
Saturday we decided the only bus we actually take to get to Cassis left Aix at 12:25, much later in the day than we preferred, but when the trip is only a euro we figured we could go during the week sometime and leave earlier in the day. We all got there right at 12:25 and the bus was not there... so we decided to just go to Marseille instead and hike to the calanques there. Luckily we could use the passes we had bought the day before. I was a genius and wore sandals. This did not go over real well when hiking rock cliffs to get to the water. I manged and learned my lesson. The water and the cliffs were gorgeous! It was like a little slice of paradise in a crazy busy city. There were lots of people sun bathing and a few people snorkeling and rock jumping. We all packed a lunch and some beers for the span of the afternoon and our friend Lyndsy brought her ukulele and played a couple songs for us. She has a fabulous voice. Aubrey had given me a mini water color set, so I brought it with me and painted a picture of the cliffs and the water. Around 5:00 pm it started getting cold so we decided to head back to the bus stop. When we arrived back in Marseille center Josh, Cari, Cathy and I went to MacDo or McDonald's and bought ice cream and ate in on the old pier and watched the sunset. We then took the bus back home from a long and tiring day.
Today, Sunday, there was a carnival in Aix. It's Europe's version of Halloween as we know it in the states, but in the spring and more of like a Mardi Gras celebration. Everyone dresses up, we did not, and there is confetti thrown everywhere and all kinds of parade floats and carnival rides and cotten candy stands, which in french are called barbe a papa (papa's beard). I tried taking a photo of this cute little boy making confetti piles in the streets, but his mother chased me off yelling at me in spanish. I still got a picture, HA! 
I leave for Turkey this coming Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and will spend roughly 4 days there. We have been making a schedule of everything we want to do and see. I am so excited for this trip! So next time you hear from me I'll have new stories and adventures to share only this time from the continent of Asia!
