Here's a lovely picture of me doing an awkward pose on the Pont du Gard:
This is a picture from the Marseille-Lyon soccer game...
Here's a picture of my rainy visit to Marseille...
Here's one of me and my Polish friend Dominka having a good time at IPN, a local "discothèque"
One more really random thing, at physical therapy this morning, there was a guy wearing a baseball-type T-shirt with "Greenwich" (a.k.a. my hometown) written across it... très bizarre.
So even though it feels like we just got back from our February break, my spring break starts this Thursday night!!! And we don't start class again until April 19th!!!! LOVE IT. Anyway, my friends and I had a giant list of places we wanted to see but we were eventually able to narrow it down... First, we're taking an overnight bus to Barcelona (~8 hours) Thursday night and staying there til Monday afternoon (and taking the bus back). Then we leave Tuesday afternoon to go to Taghazout, Morocco for 4 days at a surf house. Unfortunately, since the act of surfing emulates the exact same motion of how I injured my knee, and considering I've never surfed before, I won't be able to try it out. But lying on a beach doesn't seem too bad to me. From there, we head to Prague, where maybe I'll run into Seth! Then the last stop on my journey is Malmo, Sweden to visit my nanny from when I was younger and hopefully get see Sanna (a swedish friend from high school) too! When I go to Sweden, the rest of my friends are continuing on to Berlin and then Amsterdam after that. It's gonna be A TON of traveling but I know we're gonna have a great time!
I am a teeny, tiny bit sad I won't be staying in Aix en Provence though because it's just starting to get really beautiful here. With the exception of some on and off rain, the weather's been in the low 60's and beautiful blue skies! And I finally got the chance to go to giant open air market in the center of town on Saturday (usually I'm on an excursion... or just sleeping in from staying out the night before...)! It was AMAZING. I can't believe I've taken this long to go! There are vendors for anything and everything you can imagine... there's a section for all types of clothes, shoes, bags and then there's a wide open area for a free-for-all section. There were books, linen's, wicker baskets, jewelry, CDs, DVDs, sunglasses, paintings, sculptures, knives (?!?), etc. And then the whole other side of the square is dedicated to food; fruits & vegetables of course but also... spices, chocolates, pastries, dried fruits, meat, fish, rotisserie chicken, cheese, couscous, olive oil (a specialty of the region)... I could go on and on! I got there a little late because I had to go get a new french credit card from the bank since my old one was one of the many stolen items and that took a bit longer than I thought. But I should have known better, the French are never in a rush...
So after dinner, my host family usually sits together for a while and watches TV or a movie. The other night they watched Inglorious Bastards, but I had an exam to study for so I didn't watch it with them. I've never seen it before and I just don't think I'd understand it enough to really appreciate it. Plus, I don't think Brad Pitt's marvelous accent can really be translated into French... But anyway, the reason I brought it up was because my host mom had me look through their version of TV Guide to see if there was anything I'd wanna watch. What I found was quite intriguing... I don't know who decides what American films they bring over and which ones they don't but it doesn't make sense to me... Most of the movies are from the 80's or 90's and I've never even heard of them before! And the TV shows... they have "Friends" and "CSI" which is understandable but they have shows like "Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye"?!? Have you ever heard of that before?!? AND they have Degrassi!!!! I'm still shocked...
I've also been reading Harry Potter en français! My host mom loves the books (just like me) and she let me borrow them. I just got done with the first one and can't wait to start the next. I definitely didn't understand every single word but since I already knew the story, I didn't have to struggle too much.
And I hate to say this but... When I got here, I thought I would die from lack of sports, but I actually have been doing just fine without it. I do miss Kevin Borseth and watching the Women's team play, especially since they're in the FINAL FOUR OF THE WNIT TOURNAMENT (WOOOHOO!!!!) but other than that... I looked at the bracket for the NCAA's but I had no idea what teams were good and I haven't heard much more about it since then. In fact, it was quite a culture shock when my family came to visit and right after they said hi, the next words out of their mouths were about basketball. People just don't talk much about sports here, unless its soccer of course. Sara, this just makes one more reason that you would not like it here.
I think that's about it for now... talk to ya after break!!!
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