Oh Germany

What a strange feeling to be surrounded by a language I know nothing of. German, though slightly similar to English, is proving to be difficult for me. Yes I am taking a course, I live with a German speaker, the German border is a 2 minute walk away, and I go a few times a week across the border, but still I am floundering.
Example: Last night, at a bar in Saarbrucken I decided to overcome my fear of ordering in German. I went to the bar, ordered 2 beers for my friend and me and went back to the table to wait for my order, satisfied with myself and excited for my beer. A couple minutes later, what I had ACTUALLY ordered arrived: One beer and a croissant.... At least I got the one beer, unfortunately for my friend. :-/ I didn't even know bars had croissants!...welcome to Europe. Better work double hard on the German this week.

As for work, it is going well. I have started teaching, and my experiences are completely different every day, especially between the Collège and the Lycée. It has been fun playing games and talking about things like American recipes, music, and Halloween. I sometimes feel like a celebrity walking around town and hearing shouts of "Hello!" from people on the street who are my students. It really is a small town and I usually see them around semi often, however I have about 12 different classes so I don't know all the students yet.

I have found the forest, and I love it. It is beautiful this time of year, with the leaves changing colors and the early morning fog. The trails are perfect for hiking, biking, running. I have been running and going to the pool pretty often to cancel out the amount of bread and cheese I eat and just to get in shape again. Last weekend there was a 10k run in Sarreguemines. At the Collège we had a "team" of people who all participated and there was an all around good ambiance. I'm sure the good weather that day helped. :-)

Next week the school has a vacation in celebration of All Saints Day. We get a week and a half off, so I will be doing a little exploring and traveling!

As I woke up I looked out the window of the plane. Everything I could see was so flat in the early morning haze. However, in the middle of that haze, barley visible at first, stood a tiny triangular figure. And I realized that I awoke over Paris. The airport was less romantic, as they often are and the train station even less so. Nonetheless, I got to the city, found a hostel and called up some friends. I spent a few days in Paris before heading to what was to me my home for the next few months: Sarreguemines.

My first impression of Sarreguemines: It is adorable.

The main river near downtown

Here is a little bit of information about the town: Sarreguemines is a city in the North East of France in the Lorraine region. It is in between the cities of Strasbourg, Nancy and Metz but along the German border, north of all those towns. The nearest big town is Saarbrucken in Germany and Sarreguemines has gone back and forth between being a French and German city throughout history. There are about 25,000 people who live here.
It reminds me a lot of Chico in many ways: The small city feel, the fact that everyone is so nice, it has two rivers running through it (though the first day I crossed one of them and realized 20 minutes later that I was in Germany haha), there are great running and biking paths that at this moment are covered with colorful leaves that have fallen off the trees, and everyone knows each other.

Downtown on a Sunday, when everything is closed

I am here to be a language assistant, basically to speak English to Jr. High and High School students and make sure they understand what is being taught by the English professors. The first couple weeks I will only be observing, but after that I get to have my own groups of students and try to pretend that I speak no French.

The Jr High.

When I first got here, I was welcomed by one of the teachers at my school and he explained a lot about the city and hosted me for the night with his family. The next day I was reminded about French grocery stores and how much I love French cheese. :-) I also got to move into my apartment and meet my roommate, who is from Turkey / Austria and is the German language assistant. The apartment is amazing, with windows that let in plenty of natural light (unlike my dungeon in Aix) and it is spacious with a large living room and kitchen, great for dinner parties :-) It is also right on the Jr High campus so I have to walk a total of about 2 minutes to get to work, depending on which classroom I am in. That will come in handy in the rainy season, which is apparently all the time though right now we are in a very unusual sunny time.


Our living room

My room, well half of it.

It has been really nice outside, we have been very lucky.

A race with kayaks the weekend I got here

A really cute garden next to the river

The main river, The Saar.

Since we are so close to the German border, I decided to sign up for a German course at a local College. Sometimes I feel like I am not in France, by the amount of German that I hear around me. Most of the people here speak at least a little bit of German, though French is still spoken everywhere. I have not heard any English around town, which I am very happy about.

The differences between Sarreguemines and Aix-en-Provence are many, but I feel that this will be just as great of an experience though a completely different one.

It is also completely different from Club Med, where I have been living and working for the past year. I have missed cooking dinner and having a glass of wine while preparing the meal. I missed being able to go to sleep early and get up early and have a cup of tea. I missed having the time to read at least 1 book per week. All of these will be done many times throughout this year I hope. I am looking forward to perfecting my French, learning a new language and culture by being so close to Germany, and progressing personally in many aspects.

Cooking Time

So its been a long time since I have "blogged" as the saying goes. I am still in Chico for the moment, planning on going to France in June. My boyfriend and I have been cooking a lot, which is the main reason for the revamping of the blog. So here we go with the foods...

Peppermint White Chocolate Chip Cookies


Chicken Pot Pie


Lamb Kebabs, Spanikopeta, Cucumber Salad


We've also been making a lot of bread. Stay tuned for more yummy photos.

Back to school in Chico

So for all of you who asked that I keep this up here you go....

School started for me in Chico at the end of August. I am taking plenty of classes: Photography, Sociology of Gender, Women in Contemporary Societies, French Culture and Civilization, French Linguistics, and Anthropology. I like most of them and I'm excited that I get to keep up my French by taking 2 classes. I am hoping to do some tutoring as well. I got a job at a portrait studio called The Picture People and have already done some sessions with a baby and a couple. It has been going pretty well and I am happy to be getting more photography experience. I also have an internship with Study Abroad so I get to promote it and tell everyone about how exciting my experience was :-D I am getting reacquainted with Chico and seeing some old friends. I am keeping busy and having fun!

Italie and more

Sorry for the delay. It has been 2 months since Italy, but I have been busy enjoying the rest of my time here. I have moved out of my appartment and am now traveling around before I come back to the states.

Italy
My friend Kristin and I went to Italy for spring break. The first city we went to was Genoa. It is a port city where Christopher Columbus was supposedly born and grew up. We only stayed there for a night. It took us forever to find a hotel and while we were looking we saw all these amazing pizza and gelato places. We finally got settled in a pretty cool hotel and then we headed out to check out the town. There was a cool little market that was exactly like the Christmas markets in Germany, complete with German food and everything. So unfortunately, our first night in Italy we ate German food for dinner, but it was still really good :-D

The next day we headed off to Venice. I loved Venice. It was so beautiful with its canals! However, it rained most of the time we were there. I actually felt really dumb when I first got there. I asked at the tourism office how to get to the San Marco Plaza and she asked if I would like to walk or take a boat. And I said a bus would be fine and she gave me a really weird look and said "There are no buses in Venice" haha. I felt dumb. So their "bus" system is really a system of boats but it does the same thing. It has schedules and different lines. It was pretty cool. Everything pretty much took place on the water. Even the garbage "trucks" were boats. The taxi's too. It was fun. The first night we met up with some friends and finally got some pizza :-D The next day Kristin and I took a boat over to a little island called Murano that is known for its glass blowing. It was really beautiful there and there were so many glass blown pieces. We then went back to Venice and hung out a little more. There really wasn't much to do in Venice because it is such a small city. We did meet up with some friends though and met a couple cool people.

Our next stop was Rome. The first 2 nights there we stayed with a couchsurfer a little outside Rome. He drove us around the Colosseum the first night and it was so beautiful!!! It unfortunately rained a lot in Rome too. :-( But we took advantage of some of the good weather to go to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum (where all of the ancient ruins are) It was really cool there! Its so old that its amazing. It kinda sucks that everything is so dilapidated though, but I guess that thats the cost for still having it there. We stayed in Rome for about 5 days. It was a pretty good amount of time. We got to see everything that we wanted to without feeling rushed. We spent a lot of time at Trevi Fountain people watching. :-D It is such a good place to people watch.

After we left Rome we decided to stop in Pisa on the way to Florence, because it is a must. We stopped for just a few hours, saw the leaning tower of Pisa, pushed the tower down, even tried to kick the tower down and drank some wine. There is not really much to do in Pisa besides see the leaning tower so we hopped back on the train and headed to Florence.

Florence was the last stop on our Italy trip. We stayed with some of Kristin’s friends who were studying there. We walked around the city a little the first day and kinda chilled out. The second day we decided to take a day trip to Siena. From there the trip just went downhill. The guy on the train was a jerk. We had bought tickets even though we had a railpass because the tickets were so cheap we didn’t want to waste a day. However, in Europe they have a system of validation where you have to validate any ticket before you get on a train. Well we were in such a hurry to the train because we got there just in time after having run, that we forgot to validate our tickets. The ticket taker informed us of our mistake and proceeded to tell us that we owed him 20 euros each….however, we had railpasses so we decided instead of paying 20 euros we can just use a day on our railpass. So we filled in a day and then he came back and said we couldn’t do that because it was too late, you have to fill in the date before you get on the train. So we had two options: we pay him 20 euros each or we go to the police station when we stop and deal with them…So we chose the police station figuring that the police would be able to get this guy off of our backs, since we knew he was just going to pocket the money. Nope. The police could do nothing against him, since apparently he was in the right. So we ended up paying 50 euros each for a meager day trip from Florence. I left out the gruesome details because it makes me mad to think about it but in short, we were angry the whole time in Siena and it was pouring rain and windy, so therefore not a good time….We headed back to Florence afterwards and stayed there another couple days before heading back to Aix for the last few days of our spring break. I spent them relaxing and not thinking of crazy Italians.



I have done a lot of stuff since then but seeing as I am almost home I am sure everyone will hear about everything soon enough. I have recently gone to Ireland, Amsterdam and London with Saqib and his brother. I had a lot of fun in each place with lots of crazy stories. I am in Strasbourg now, a little over a week left until I go back to the states and I am planning on spending that time in France :-D

Presque Printemps

Almost Spring...

As April begins I have come to the saddening realization that I have only two more months of school and about three more months in Europe. Now this may seem like a long time, but it is going to go by super fast for me. I have already gotten emails from the CSU director telling us how to close out accounts and electricity and things like that. Not happy...Ok but on to exciting and fun news :-D

As I write this I am sitting in our favorite burger place after having finished my burger and moved on to drinking pastis. For those of you that don't know pastis is a drink native to this region. It is a mixture of the alcohol pastis and water. At the moment my pastis also has grenadine in it. Its a wonderful thing. :-D Anyways, the last few weekends have been full of fun and friends. For the weekend of Easter break I had a friend come from Germany to rock climb with me. He came on thursday night, just in time for our "Fete du fromage et du vin" or Wine and Cheese Party at our house for our French Couchsurfer friends. They brought us lots of wine and cheese of different types and even a list of which wines are good with which cheeses

On Saturday Nils (the German friend), Raul (a friend from Nicaragua) and I went rock climbing up at Mont Sainte Victoire, a mountain great for hiking, climbing and camping that is about 20 minutes outside of Aix. It was great fun, I hadn't climbed with people that I liked and that spoke English in awhile so it was a nice change. We tried climbing again on Sunday and we brought some more people with us, but it was much too windy, we could barley even walk up the mountain, much less climb on it. It was fun getting out to Sainte Victoire again though. Monday we didn't even try, instead we stayed at my house and joined in the Easter Festivities (we had the day off of school), which included eating dyed easter eggs, eating chocolate, eating food from a potluck, pretty much just eating. :-P We played some games as well though. It was good fun.

This past weekend I took a day trip by myself. I needed to get out of Aix and have some time to myself. I paid the euro that it costs to get to Arles on a bus and headed out at 8 in the morning. I got to Arles and explored downtown for a little while. I went to the amphitheater, which is one of the oldest in France.

Then I took a bus about 10 minutes outside of Arles to an old Abby. I am so glad that I went out there. It was so beautiful, it was in the middle of fields and it was so old.


It had a crypt underneath that looked really cool as well. I got to go up in the tower and it was such an amazing view! Arles is the city far away in this picture:

After visiting the Abby and waiting around for the bus to come get me, I had a really nice lunch back in Arles. It was the second best meal that I have had in Europe I must say, the first being in Lubeck, Germany. It was roast beef sitting atop a bed of delicious noodles, followed by homemade caramel creme.

After lunch I explored some of the cafes and areas where VanGogh had painted. Apparently Arles was one of his favorite subjects. Before I caught the bus back to Aix, I had to check out one more thing, Les Alychamps, an old cemetary. It had old tombs and trees lining the walkway to a chapel


And it was in general really cool. No one is buried there anymore, but it was the perfect time of day for the light to jump off of the stained glass windows in the chapel and to notice the silence that still held the area in its grasp.
I grabbed the bus back to Aix in the late afternoon, but not before grabbing some banana gelato. :-D

The last couple days have been filled with laziness and a lot of reading because of the rain. I have begun to read a lot again, especially with the sale that just happened at the English bookstore. I got 5 books for 7 Euros. Amazing. I have also started to swim again. I finally found a good pool and I am going to start going there as often as possible, I had forgotten how much I missed and loved swimming. However, the pools here are a lot different than in the states. Yes they look the same, but its the people that make it so strange. As some may know, France is not big on exercise. Yes there are the giant rugby and futball teams that are super fit, but in general exercise is not a big thing. So the picine (pool) is mainly for socializing and "leisure swimming." Groups of two or three will get in the public side of the pool (which is about 30 feet wide) and will just swim leasurely along, talking about their day, about their new boots, and probably about that strange American girl who is trying to swim laps peacefully but has to keep trying to dodge the chatty French faux-swimmers. *whew* can you tell that it frustrates me? Just a little? Its just very strange having to dodge people while swimming laps. But it is good exercise and is a lot of fun.

So my friend sent me an email this week and he asked me what daily life here was like. And I realized that a lot of you guys back in the states are probably interested in that and I have just been lazy and been writing alot about my travels and not alot about my life here in Aix. So now is the time for that I think.
I know that I have written some about the cafe's here and that is one of the main things of daily life. There are plazas that are just surrounded with little cafe's and there are also little cafe's down random streets, something that is totally foreign to the states. A lot of people can be seen at cafe's throughout the day but the main times are in the morning (when they "prend un cafe" take a coffee and read the newspaper) and in the late afternoon (when they take a beer or coffee between lunch (2pm) and dinner (9pm). Now when I say "coffee" and when you order a "cafe" at a cafe here they bring you the American equivalent of a shot of espresso. If you want an American Coffee you have to order a "cafe au lait" or a coffee with milk. And as much as I hate to admit it, I have begun to like them. Before I came here I hated coffee. But sometimes I just have a craving to get a cafe au lait while I sit and read my book or write.
The marche or market is also a big thing here. I might have said this before but there is a fresh food market every day, not just one or two days a week like in Chico and Fullerton. This everyday market has stuff like fruits, vegetables, cheese, meat, honey, fish, breads, and some other specialties. There is also a bigger market that is held in certain places around the town on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. In addition to the normal market goods, the big markets have organic foods, flowers, clothing, spices, books, trinkets, soaps, and much more. Whenever I need to buy fruits or vegies or other essentials I usually wake up early and go to the market, since there is one about a minutes walk from my house.
My daily life here also obviously consists of school. I go to classes 4 times a week, I don't have class on wednesdays. I live about a block from my school which is nice, I can roll out of bed and still make it to class on time.
Boulangeries (Bakeries) are also scattered around the city. They have all sorts of wonderful bread. For dinner or breakfast we just go to the bakery and get a baguette (70 centimes) to eat with our food. The bakeries also have tartes. The strawberry tartes are my favorite. They are amazing. I will definitely miss bakeries when I go back to the states.
Hmm besides that I suppose that life here isn't that much different, besides the obvious French element. I go to school, make food or go to a restaurant, hang out with friends etc. I think that the things I mentioned, the cafes, market, and bakeries, are some of the main things that I will miss just because they aren't the same in the US.

Well I guess that is all for now. Hopefully everyone is doin well. Leave some comments dangit.

La Maroc

La Maroc

Alex and I took a trip to Morocco for my February break. We went to a number of cities and it was pretty cool. I suppose I will begin my blog with some highlights of the trip because I talk a lot about these things throughout the blog. :-P

Highlights:
Mint tea: The most amazing drink in the world. We drank it about 5 times a day, and that’s not even an exaggeration. With every meal we got it, we got it at random times in the day when we were bored in cafés, and sometimes when people were trying to get us to buy stuff in stores they sat down with us and offered us mint tea and just sat and talked to us before discussing business. That is one really cool thing that I liked. Example: when Alex and I were in the store looking at hookas to buy, the guy called his friend over who brought us mint tea from a café next door. They just give it to you like you are family, it is really cool. We talked for awhile about our lives and then finally got down to business. ie. haggling
Haggling: For those that don’t know, haggling is talking down the price of something that you want to buy. Definitely big in Morocco. Everyone does it, and I apparently am not very good at it at all. I was a lot better at the end of the trip then in the beginning, but even then I wasn’t very good at it. I know I definitely could have gotten better deals on things. But such is life, I’ll do better next time. :-P
Speaking French: It was really cool to get to speak so much French. A lot of the time a lot of the taxi drivers or store owners spoke better French than English so I got to talk to them. Alex unfortunately just had to stand around and look confused. It was funny though because I got so used to speaking to people in French that even if they would talk to me in English I would answer in French. Alex thought I was insane. :-P
Traveling on Trains, Buses, and Taxis: We spent a lot of our time in Morocco traveling from city to city, which wasn’t really cool. The train rides we took were about 8 hours each, and it was super boring. The trains were pretty nice though. They were all cabines and not seats. The bus that we took from Chefchaouen to Fez was really nice. We got to see a lot of the countryside and we met a guy who graduated from Humboldt State in CA who was traveling the world for a year. He stayed with us in Fez and we randomly saw him again in Marrakesh. Taxis around the cities were generally really cool. The drivers were really really nice and they were super cheap. For a normal ride no matter how far we usually went it was about 10 durhams which is about a euro. It was awesome. However, the grand taxis, the ones that go from city to city, were a little weirder. They overcharged and I just didn’t like them.
Food: There was the same food pretty much every city we went to. The main things were tajines (dishes cooked over a flame that can be chicken, beef, or vegetarian. They are really good), couscous (a dish with couscous and either chicken, beef, vegetarian etc), soup (Moroccan soup or vegetable soup), kebabs (pieces of meat/vegetables on a stick), and mint tea (an essential to every meal). But seriously there were the same things in every restaurant so we got to eat a lot of good stuff. I loved all the food. I got an amazing vegetarian couscous in Fez but I was so full from the soup that I had had as an appetizer that I couldn’t finish it. :-(
People: I met a lot of people in Morocco. Natives and tourists. I had both good experiences and bad. In general, the people that I went up to and initiated conversation with and the taxi drivers were always really nice and helpful. However, the people who were just trying to get money or trying to sell you something were really bothersome and annoying for me. I talked with a lot of people and learned a lot while I was there too.
Durhams: The currency. It is 11 durhams to the euro and 7 durhams to the dollar so it was really cheap. :-D It rocked. Food was usually around 25 durhams and hotels were usually around 80 or 90 per person.
Faux Guides: People who try and get you to give them money for leading you around the city. They come up to you and won’t leave you alone. It is illegal for them to hassle you but they do it anyway. There are also “official guides” which I guess are legal, but they do the same thing and its still annoying.
Shopping: There are so many shops and so many things to buy in all the cities. They mostly have the same types of things: Purses, shoes, tajines, shirts, hookas, lanterns, tea sets, pottery, drums, leather, scarves, lots of things. I bought stuff that I probably didn’t need and some stuff that I really did need and that I really like.

Morocco was a very interesting experience for me. Alex and I flew into Fez at about 9 in the morning. My friend had told me that we would have people coming up to us telling us to stay at the “brothers hotel” or eat at their “cousins restaurant” and it was very true. We were followed for a little while and we decided to just chill out in a little café. The guy there was really nice and gave us really good soup and mint tea for 8 durhams each, which is about 80 euro cents. We then grabbed a taxi. The taxi driver was really nice and when I told him that it was our first time in Morocco he started to explain everything that we were driving by. It was really cool. We got to our hotel finally, and it was really nice. We had such a sweet room with a roof terrace and a roof café. However, from our hotel that first day just went downhill. The guy that gave us our room introduced himself as an “official guide” and as much as we said no, we ended up with a guide taking us around the city. And while it was good to get to see all of the things with a native, it was annoying because he kept taking us into shops and trying to get us to buy things. Alex and I were both really frustrated, and by the end we just wanted to get out! We did get to see a bunch of cool things though like a bunch of artisan shops. We got to see the tanneries, which are big in Fez and was also really cool to see. We ate lunch at a nice restaurant which was waaaay too much food but I got to try my first Moroccan tajine :-P It was pretty good. We visited a spice shop, a rug shop, a wool blanket shop, hand carved plate shop, a clothing shop, and a few more. By the end we were just so sick of saying, “no we can’t afford that” that we just wanted to leave. But finally it was over and he let us go off on our own. We took a walk up to a hill that overlooked the city and it was really nice. We heard the first call to prayer from there. It was really cool because we were so high up so we could hear how it started out in one mosque (all the way to our left) and then got carried on and repeated to the right until they were all doing the call. So we could hear it almost surrounding us. It was weird though because we didn’t see anyone stop what they were doing to pray, which I though would happen. That night Alex and I hung out at our hostel and just chilled out from the stressful first day.

The next day we woke up early and got on a train to Tangier. Tangier was the whole reason why Alex came to Europe. He wanted to see the place where the beat writers that he had read wrote their books. The cool thing was that we found the hotel where it is thought that William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, which is one of the books that Alex read before coming. :-P So it was pretty cool. We had a view of the beach and everything. And that was the most expensive hotel we stayed in and it was 10 euros per person, so it was amazing! We walked around Tangier for a little while, shopped a little, walked along the beach, got followed by another guy that wanted money for showing us around. Tangier is I think one of the touristy cities too. It is a port city so a lot of day trippers come over from Spain. It is a pretty interesting city. There are a lot of night clubs along the beach and there is even a catholic church. That night we went over to someone’s house and he made us dinner and we just talked for awhile, it was pretty nice. :-D

We decided that Tangier was not really what we were expecting so we decided to cut our time there short. We took a taxi up to the north/westernmost point of Africa, which is called Cape Spartel. We were in between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. We then headed to the Grottos of Hercules, where legend has it that he split Africa from Europe. There is a cave that has rocks shaped like an upside down Africa. It was really commercialized, but it was cool to see. After that, the taxi driver took us to another city called Chefchaouen. It is in the Rif mountains and it is a little backpacker city that is just becoming popular. The streets are all blue and it is really pretty. Everyone that we met was really nice there and I bought some cool things. I had a really good shrimp tajine too. :-D It was so different from Fez and Tangier and I felt like I could finally relax and not have people always bothering me to come into their stores or give them money. It was a good break. :-D I really liked Chefchaouen, I want to go back and do a 5 day hike around the Rif Mountains. We wanted to hike around a little but it was raining most of the time, so we just hung out and talked with people and shopped. We left on a bus the next day unfortunately.

We took the bus back to Fez and met up with my roommate and some other friends. The second time that I went to Fez was a lot better. I felt more comfortable because I knew exactly where I was going and didn’t feel like a lost tourist who is in a super foreign country for the first time. We stayed there just for the night and woke up early and took the train to Marrakesh. Marrakesh and Chefchaouen are tied for my favorite cities that I visited in Morocco. When we got there it was pretty warm (such a change from all the rain) and we got ice cream! It was amazing. There were a lot more tourists than any other city and there was a lot more to see. That night we just wandered around until it was dinnertime. At dusk they start setting up food stands in the giant square. When they open and you walk in you are bombarded with people telling you to come to their stands. It’s actually kind of fun. So we ate at one of the stands and had so much food! Good food too. It’s cooked right in front of you and is all fresh. :-D wonderful. They have all the food set up just waiting to be ordered and then they grab it and cook it. :-D We then went to a nice bar that was really touristy but we didn’t have a lot of money so we just got the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu. :-P The next day we took a horse buggy tour around the city. We got to see a lot of things that we went back to the next day. We saw the royal palace and some mosques and all of the rich touristy hotels, because Marrakesh is one of the really touristy cities in Morocco. There is even a Club Med right next to the Square. We met up with some people that we had met in Fez the day before and hung out with them for a little while until it started raining again. :-( We went to dinner in the square again and this time we tried snail soup. The thought of it was more frightening than the soup itself. It actually wasn’t bad. It was really really salty, but not bad. We had soup too for super cheap. I spent less than 10 durhams on dinner: which is less than a euro. Pretty sweet. The next day we did a lot of shopping and I got to take a bath in a Hammam. A hammam is a traditional bath in Morocco. I went to an all women’s one and it was really cool because people would just come with their whole family (grandma, mother, daughter) and bathe together. I got bathed and scrubbed down; I was really dirty from not showering for awhile. It was a cool experience to be in there out of my comfort zone. We took a night train from Marrakesh to Fez and caught a 9 am flight from Fez back to Marseille. We were so afraid we were going to miss the flight and we were so ready to go home. We did not sleep that last night and I passed out on the flight. Our train got in to Fez at 2 in the morning and the bus from the train station to the airport was not until 6:30, so we stayed up in a little café playing games and watching tv. No one in the café spoke English or French so it was really kind of boring. But finally we got on the plane, got back to France, and felt back at home. :-D



Nice

Last weekend we went to Nice for the last weekend of Carnival. Nice is a city in the south of France so it wasn’t that far. A group of 6 of us went and it was so much fun! We got into the city at about 5 on Saturday and watched the parade Saturday night. We got in so many silly string fights and we pretty much participated in the parade. :-P It was not at all like parades in the states. We could walk up with people and take pics with them and walk along the route. It was awesome! I even got thrown up in one of those circle blanket things, where people hold on to the edges and you get in and you get thrown in the air. It was amazing! At the end of the night we all had so much silly string and confetti on us and no one had batteries left in their cameras. :-P We woke up the next morning and hung out in Nice. It was perfect weather! Sunny, warm, lay on the beach with no shirt weather! Finally! I missed that weather. Anyway, Nice was beautiful! We got amazing pizza at a restaurant that Saqib had found the weekend earlier when he was there and we watched the parade during the day. It was pretty much the same parade with a few differences. Definitely not as fun as the night before. We lounged on the beach for a little while too. It was amazing. Then we got back on the TGV and headed back to Aix! It was the perfect amount of time, even though it made me miss the beach and sunny weather so much! I can’t wait until summer!!!!



Everything here in Aix has been going really well. As I write this I am sitting in a café not far from my house and people watching and drinking a thé au lait which is a tea with milk. I love going to café’s. Its just so cool to sit and talk for awhile and people watch. Its so much more laid back here. Nothing is rushed like it is in the states. At restaurants in the states you sit in a restaurant and they bring your check as soon as you’re done and they pretty much push you out. Here you pretty much have to flag them down for the check even after 2 hours of sitting in the café. Its great. I finally got my grades back from the first semester of school and they are A’s and B’s. I wanted all A’s but such is life. I am getting more involved, doing more stuff here. Today I went to the big Saturday market with my roommates and we just walked around tasting cheeses, meats, spreads. It was so great. I don’t know why I don’t go there more often. I am hanging out with more French people and I am trying to meet a lot more. I am listening to a lot of French music too. A couple weeks ago a few of us went to a French concert. We rented a car and drove to it. :-D It was a singer named Pauline Croze and she was pretty good. I am going to go to a Renan Luce concert too! I am so excited, he is awesome. One of my favorite French singers. Today was a beautiful day. It has been really cold recently in Aix, but today the sun came out and everyone was out and about and it was just a general good happy feeling. I got my hair cut as well. Super short. And dyed it. I look like a totally different person. :-P

my new hair


Girl's night. So much fun :-D

I am trying to plan the rest of my trips while I am here. I am planning on going to Italy for spring break and traveling around France in summer after school. I want to stay as long as I can. I really want to stay another year too. Really bad. But I also want to go back to Chico. Maybe that’s just because I long for In-n-Out and Burritos……:-P It sucks because I feel like I am just getting more acquainted with the city and going to try new restaurants and finding new friends and learning more every day and I am going to be ripped away from it all in 4 months…but I don’t like thinking about that…Hope everyone is doing as well as I am! PS: I’m always excited to get emails and letters….hint hint. :-P