In which I finally describe my life.

I don't have nearly as many pictures for this section, because there hasn't been a huge number of new things happening that I could take pictures of. I've been in classes at the university for four (I think?) weeks now...they make time pass so much faster! I can't believe it's already almost the end of October, and that I've been gone since the end of June! gosh.

First of all, I have to explain a little about the French university registration system. The classes being offered aren't published until about less than a week before classes start, and then they're posted inconsistently online and/or in front of department offices. Changes are made without consistent notice, so you have to keep verifying the room numbers and times of classes. The first week, you go to all the classes that sound interesting and write your name down on the list passed around by the professor. That means you are "in" the class. huh. The next week, you go back to the classes you liked, and email the professors of the classes you're not going to take to tell them you're dropping their class (if you're polite enough to do that...I get the feeling most of the French kids don't do it). There are three different kinds of registration at the university: 1) to be a student at the university, 2) to be in a given class, and 3) to take exams for certain classes. So, in theory, you can go to all the classes you want, but you just have to sign up for the exams for certain ones. This makes a little more sense given their academic system (students don't get to really pick their classes, they mostly just go where their curriculum says they have to go) but it's still really inefficient.

Anyway, I've ended up with the following classes :

Oral expression

Methodology

Education and Knowledge of Women in Farce and Comedy

Land Planning Policy in France

History of Theater

The first two are through UNC. Oral Expression, which is taught by our program director, is basically just an opportunity to learn lots of useful expressions and words. It's great because I never really learned that in my French classes in the US. The Methodology class is to teach us how to write for the French academic system, because they have extremely strict rules about the different kinds of written assignments. The next three are at the French university.... The Education and Knowledge of Women class is about Moliere and some of his plays (Les Précieuses Ridicules, Les Femmes Savantes, and L'école des femmes). The History of Theater class is, unfortunately, only for American students (more strike insurance), so there are no French people :(. It's interesting though - the teacher is an adorable French guy. Right now we're learning how to read and analyze plays, which is actually pretty interesting (it helps that he's a good teacher). The Land Planning Policy class is my favorite, I think. We're learning about the evolution and development of land planning policy in France which, as it turns out, means we have to learn about the decentralization of France government but also things that could be applied in the US, like different layouts of seaside towns. Looking at what I just wrote, it sounds incredibly boring, but I promise...I really do like it. I'm going to try to add an Urban Studies & Planning minor next spring at school, because I find that more interesting than International Studies (one of my current majors).

. . .

About a month ago, two of my friends and I decided to go to see the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris which came to one of the big opera houses here. Tickets were usually between 40 and 50 euros, but we got ours for 5 because of a 'culture pass' for students.

Me, Ali, and Kathleen. We went out to dinner before and got gelato afterward. It was so fun!

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The first weekend in October, Rosie came to visit me!! She's studying in Granada and she came up to Montpellier for a weekend. As much fun as it is hanging out with new friends from the program and in Montpellier, there's nothing like having a close friend who knows you really well. We went to a chocolate salon in a beach town nearby...we had to pay to get in but we got so many delicious samples! It was worth it. I bought some chocolate with dried ginger in it (DELICIOUS, if you love ginger), and she got some with dried figs (YUM). Some of my friends who live there cooked us lunch - a Moroccan tajine (potatoes, carrots, beef, ...with lots of spices) that was soo good. We spent the afternoon on the beach, which was wonderful.

On Sunday we had a delicious lunch (this was when we discovered the Carthage Milk restaurant with cheap, wonderful Tunisian sandwiches) :

and then went to Sète, which is another coastal town near Montpellier. [Georges Brassens was born there, if you know who he is.] We wandered around and ended up finding a beautiful, hidden beach at the foot of some cliffs:

Incredible!! She had leave Monday to go back, but I'm hoping I'll get to visit her in Granada!!

. . .

I decided a while ago that I wanted to take some kind of dance class while here, so I looked around. The cheapest ones tend to be at what are essentially community centers, so my choices were automatically narrowed down for me. I tried a capoeira class (description of what that is here) and it was THE hardest dance class - physically - I have ever taken. My shirt, like everyone else's, was completely soaked through by the end. I loved the challenge, but I ended up not signing up for it because they wouldn't allow us to drink water during the class! I'm sorry, but if I'm exercising - especially to that extent - I want to drink water! So, the next week I tried the modern dance class, and it was so great. I've been dancing since I went to college, but I haven't really had any technique classes and I miss them! I love having this class. It's interesting to see what's different (also to figure things out in French), and what's similar (a lot). I was going to get involved in a nature group at the science university here, but they're more about just enjoying nature than saving it, and I was hoping to get more involved with the latter than the former. I haven't done anything with them (yet), because their schedules don't match up well with mine and I couldn't go on the outing I was looking forward to most...a weekend trip into the mountains to hike and harvest mushrooms (French people are really into harvesting and cooking with fresh mushrooms, which I get...they're delicious). SO I'm hoping to find some other group to get involved in. We'll see.

. . .

Also on Thursday nights (that's when I have dance), I go over to the building next door to speak English for an hour with some adorable French teenagers. It's not really lessons...they just want to practice speaking and hearing English. We took some pictures yesterday with my computer, because I was showing them my pictures.

Here they are looking normal:

It was so cute - they were so interested and excited to see my pictures! They loved hearing about what Thanksgiving is and why we have it, how we make gingerbread houses, how we decorate Christmas trees... I think in a couple weeks we're going to bake cookies! (Cookies are still a somewhat novel concept to many French people, and they most certainly do not bake them at home.)

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I have to go because I'm going to Nimes today with some of my friends - I'll update soon (when I can, given my internet) and post about Barcelona (and Nimes)...and French babysitting!

Welcome to France, where the national motto is Pourqoui La Vie Devrait-Elle Etre Facile? *

* Why Should Life Be Easy?
(I'm not complaining, I'm just saying... )

. . .

Today for lunch I bought a bag of day-old viennoiseries (= pains au chocolat, croissants, brioches) from my favorite boulangerie and some fruit at a market near my house. That would never happen at home! Usually I have a much healthier lunch than that, don't worry - my favorite new discovery is the "sandwich tunisien" which is inexpensive and includes bellpeppers, tomatoes, tuna, pureed carrots, potatoes, half a hard-boiled egg, one pitted olive (?!), olive oil, and a spicy sauce called harissa (finally something spicy!!). It's SO GOOD. My goal is to become friends with the old guy who always takes my order at the restaurant...which is, for some reason, named "Carthage Milk."

. . .

So! Finally! An update on my life since it's gotten interesting! The first two weeks were fine, but it got even better with vacation and classes at the university starting.

First, vacation. I went to visit my friend Stéphane in La Rochelle. He's 30 something and his boyfriend Jacques (who I LOVE) is wealthy enough that he, Stéphane, doesn't have to work. He just goes to the beach every day. When I was there, he cooked me all kinds of delicious food - mussels, crêpes, chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, pasta, egg rolls... He loves to cook but doesn't eat much sweet stuff, so it was mostly up to me to each all the desserts! For those of you that don't know, I love good food (je suis gourmande, as the French would say). As you can imagine, I was in heaven. In the mornings, I walked around the city with either Stéphane or Jacques.

Look, a Classic Mediterrenean Port/Canal Picture! (St Martin, a little village on Ile de Ré)

The two towers of La Rochelle. I'm going to resist making an LOTR joke here.

The third tower. We climbed up this one...it was used as a prison at one point!

These are raw mini conch things....in talking with the guy selling them, I mentioned I'd never had one. He took one, pulled out the thing inside with the pointy end of the sign and held it out to me and said HERE! Taste it!! so I did. I glanced at it and decided it was one of those things you can't look closely at if you actually want to eat it (let alone enjoy it). It was surprisingly good.

Jacques used to own a company that researched the patrimoine (hard to translate, but basically cultural heritage) of the region, so he has a pass that gets him (and me!) free into all the historical places and he knows so incredibly much about the history of the city (it was under seige in the 17th c.! I didn't know seiges were still happening then), the architecture, the people... It was great. Then, in the afternoons, we went to the beach. There are all kinds of gorgeous beaches in the area, but we usually went to one called La Pointe Espagnole, which was a bit of a drive but beautiful and quiet.


This is the beach I went to with Stéphane on Ile de Ré... you kind of stumble upon it after walking through dense woods for 10 minutes.

One afternoon before we went to the beach, we went to an exhibition in a town nearby where they're building a reproduction of Lafayette's boat to America!

La Hermione.

Stéphane and I. His face is ridiculous...his excuse was that he is incapable of smiling (a lie)

Jacques and I!! He's so adorable.

After a few days in La Rochelle, I took the train to Paris. Stéphane gave me the rest of the chocolate cake to take with me for the road:

YES.

I am, I'm pretty sure, the luckiest girl, because (in addition to everything else!) one of the owners of the store I work for in Chapel Hill (Toots and Magoo) let me stay in her beautiful apartment in Paris!! It's on the Ile St Louis (the island in the Seine right next to the island where Notre Dame is)... in short, when I told Jacques and Stéphane where I was going to stay in Paris, their jaws dropped. Here are some pictures, but Cheryle's website has better ones, obviously. If you ever want to stay in Paris, I highly recommend it. :)



!!!!

There was also two more bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a fully equipped kitchen. Truly incredible! This was my view when I walked out onto the bridge next to the apartment building:

o hai Notre Dame.

I arrived in Paris on Saturday afternoon, and went almost immediately to the Musée d'Orsay. I love the impressionists!!

View of Sacré Coeur from inside the Musée d'Orsay.

After that, I met up with my friend Shonalie who was also in Paris, and we had dinner at a little restaurant in the quartier St Germain, which is (as far as I can tell) very literature- and (especially) art-oriented. Ever heard of Les Deux Magots? Well, our cafe was down the block, right across from the actual St Germain cathedrale.

Yum!!

That night we couldn't figure out where in Paris people go out, so we stayed home and baked a chocolate cake and drank red wine. Terrific! On Sunday, I went to Versailles...such a pain, honestly, but incredible to finally see it. I didn't take many pictures (I prefer to experience things with my eyes, not my view finder/digital display) except of things that were really striking:

Hall of Mirrors!! truly impressive.

This is only half of it... Louis XIV was so into himself.

My favorite part of it all was the Queen's hamlet, which is where she "played peasant"...sounds fun to me, but it was not very popular with the actual peasants.

Pretty roses on my walk back from Trianon.

After I got back from Versailles, I met up with Shonalie and we went to the garden of the Musée Rodin, which was free and had lots to look at.

Look who it is!

That evening, we found a little restaurant near the apartment and ate there. Such a good choice! We had a really good tart as an appetizer and then I had this magnificent duck confit with potatoes. Equally as delicious was the bread we had with our food - I have never had such incredible bread. The French know what's up.


Ile St Louis is known for its ice cream (?!, I know), so after dinner Shonalie and I got some...so delicious!! Mine was coconut and dark chocolate.

On Monday, I walked down part of the Champs Elysées, past the Place de la Concorde, through the Tuileries Garden (NOT an actual garden-with-grass, I was very disappointed), and past the Louvre (I couldn't handle more tourists). On my way through the Tuileries Garden, I went to the Musée d'Orangerie, which is a smallish museum that houses Monet's waterlilies pieces. I think it was probably my favorite museum, because it felt really manageable. There was a variety of art - Picasso, Degas, Monet, and lots of others. That afternoon, I went to Sacré Coeur, which is so incredible. Watch out, though, if you ever take the metro and get off at the stop nearby....the metro stops approximately in the inner core of the earth, and then it's up to you to get back to the inhabited surface. And then you have to climb up the hill to get to the actual church. Just a heads up.

It's worth it though:

Wow!! I went inside, but you're not allowed to take pictures. It's gorgeous on the inside too, unspurprisingly.

I returned home that evening, and spent the last two days of my vacation just relaxing. My UNC classes started that Thursday, and then my classes at the university started the next Monday!

I'm going to do a separate post on my classes, etc, because this post is already long, and I'll probably have to go eat dinner soon!

Are you mange-ing here ce soir?

(I really did ask someone that...unintentionally in Franglais.)

. . .

I finally have a second to post...our first month and a half here has been absolutely packed. We had pretty much non-stop classes and meetings during the week and planned excursions on the weekends. I got here without a problem (such a nice comparison to my arrival in France), and my host family is great. My host mom, Roselyn, is smaller than me and full of energy (she bikes almost everywhere). She has two kids, Mathilde and Guillaume. Mathilde is 22 and still lives at home. She works at a delicious smoothie/wrap/salad place in the centre ville and is very sweet. Guillaume is 25 and is studying to be a nurse. He lived at home while he did an internship nearby, but he just left to go back to school this week. The apartment is the last two floors of a pink building just outside the centre ville, about halfway between the two different places where we're going to have classes. (They don't let us take all our classes at the university because there are strikes almost every semester and people sometimes don't go to class for 6 weeks.)

View of the apartment from the street.

This is my bedroom...it was just repainted, so there's not much on the walls right now, but I think there will be at some point.

Looking through the kitchen, dining room, and out onto the lower balcony.

Dining room.

Jardin de Plantes...the oldest in France. It was created to grow medicinal herbs and be a teaching garden for the university of medicine in the late 16th century.

Arc de Triomphe built by Louis XIV.

La Place de la Comedie, right near where some of my classes are.

An incredible sunset seen from one of the highest points of Montpellier (it's on a hill). This picture doesn't do it justice.

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We went on several excursions with our private language school the first few weekends we were here: St Guilhem le Desert, Arles, Aigues Mortes, and Marseilles. They were great opportunities to explore this region, and our guide was so knowledgeable (and enthusiastic about Occitan culture)! I'm only including a few pictures from each excursion, if any, but you can find lots more in my Facebook album.

This is a broad view of St Guilhem le Desert.

This is an unfortunately blurry picture of my delicious salad that I sometimes make to take with me for lunch. It's usually either rice or pasta with olives, sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, peas, carrots, little bits of ham, and (this time!) green beans. Delicious!!

This is a view from a tower in Aigues Mortes (a medieval city) of the ramparts and the water that is pink from all the shrimp. That's why the flamingoes (yes!) are pink.

This is the inside of the basilica in Marseilles, which is also called le Cathedrale de la Major...it's incredibly beautiful: the entire ceiling is a mosaic with real gold leaf.

View of Marseilles and the islands where we went, seen from the basilica. The small one in the middle is the location of Chateau d'If, where the Count of Monte Cristo is set.

Our swimming location - La Calanque - on one of the islands. I borrowed my host sister's snorkel mask and went snorkeling for the first time! It was great. I did, however, experience what it's like to step on a sea urchin...I wouldn't recommend it.

. . .

This is fairly unrelated, but interesting nonetheless. I gave blood shortly after I arrived, which was a great experience. The nurses seemed to get a real kick out of the fact that I'm American and willing and able to give blood here. They couldn't find my vein for a while, so one of the nurses tried to distract me by speaking in English. I love it when French people speak in English with the only goal being to prove that they can, and not to say anything in particular. After giving blood, there were snacks waiting for me, like in the US....however, instead of Lil Debbie snacks and soda, there was apple juice, baguettes, and cheese. I love the food culture here.

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My computer is about to die and I'm going to be kicked out of the language school soon, so I'm going to stop here, but I'll post again soon about my vacation in La Rochelle and Paris and life since starting school!