welcome to europe

so yesterday i went to get lunch at this sandwich place that i love, i go there all the time. this time i got a surprise with my meal. i ordered my sandwich and it was ready quite fast, and they gave me my sandwich, a napkin, and a wetnap packet...or what i thought was a wetnap packet. when i returned with it to the student lounge at the institute i heard someone say "see? she got a condom with her sandwich too!" upon examination i saw that i had received a complimentary condom with my sandwich. ohh it gets better. on the packet it says "on a toujours faim apres l'amour" which means "you're always hungry after love." leave it to france man, this country cracks me up!

my ultimate "crazy france story"

Travel blog 10-17

Ok, I officially have my crazy France story. I don’t think anything is gonna top this.

So this weekend elyse, liz, brian and i decided to climb Mt. Sainte Victoire, which is the famous mountain in Aix that Cezanne used to paint all the time. Its supposed to be a really easy hike, like families do it with their kids and stuff, and a bunch of our friends had done it already and said it was really pretty and a really easy hike. So we showed up to class on Friday in our hiking clothes, and right after class we grabbed lunch, went to Monoprix and bought some snacks to eat at the top, and caught the bus to the bottom of the mountain. We all had about 2 bottles of water each, plus the snacks we had bought, and we were all wearing long-sleeve shirts over tshirts, and pants (or in my case capris) over shorts, so we had layers in case it got cold but we could take them off if it got hot. Anyway we started our hike, and the supposed “blue trail” that everyone kept telling us to take was nowhere to be found. The trail we were on was pretty easy though and it seemed to be heading toward the mountain, so we continued on it. Every time we came to a crossroad though, there were no signs or markers anywhere, which was extremely annoying. So we pretty much guessed, and ended up circling the base of the mountain for like 4 hours, slowly going up but not really getting anywhere. It got to the point where we realized we had to get to the top and find a map so that we could get back down before sunset. We found a cool cave and contemplated what to do, but we couldn’t turn around and go back the way we came because we would have been climbing down in the dark. So we just started climbing up, hoping we’d get to the top quickly and find a map to get down the easy way before dark. We found a brown and a green trail that were leading pretty much directly to the top, but there were some REALLY steep inclines that we should NOT have been climbing, it was really dangerous and I was terrified. Ask the other people I was with, I was tooootally freaking out. We made it and we were all fine, but it took waaay longer than we thought and we got to the top a half hour before sunset. As we were climbing and realizing how long it was taking us, we started coming to the realization that we were going to have to sleep there. That’s when I really started freaking out. When we finally got to the top we called our host parents to tell them where we were. Elyse’s mom laughed at her, brian’s mom was excited for him and told him to have fun, but our mother was like “where are you I will come get you!” and we were like umm, we don’t know exactly…we’ll just spend the night here, see ya tomorrow. Not to mention in the middle of all this my mom called just to say hi and when I told her I couldn’t talk because I was climbing a mountain she could tell something was wrong and called me back once we had decided to sleep there, and basically was totally freaking out all night. We found a spot to sleep before it got totally dark, and i had texted mark in the midst of my breakdown and he called me back once we had gotten settled, so now I had both my parents AND my boyfriend not sleeping all night cuz they were worried about me. Sorry guys.
Anyway, it was officially dark out by this point and it started getting really cold, and we decided we needed to keep walking and find the shelter at the other side of the mountain cuz we would freeze if we stayed outside. We could see the giant cross at the other side of the mountain and we knew that’s where the shelter was, so we walked incredibly slowly, all holding hands to prevent anyone from spraining an ankle or something because it was really dark out. The moon was on the other side of the mountain so our only light was the stars and the lights from the city waay down below. The more we walked toward the cross the further away it seemed to get, and elyse of course made the comment that there was something incredibly symbolic about us walking toward the cross lol. We finally made it there around 11:30pm. Someone previously had made the joke “hey wouldn’t it suck if the cross wasn’t really where the shelter was?” guess what. The cross isn’t really where the shelter is. But there was this TINY little shack, that was basically just a lookout shelter with walls about 2-3 feet high, a concrete floor, a roof, and no windows. So it broke the wind a little bit, enough that it was worth it to sleep there instead of outside, but it was still FREEZING. Brian had brought a jacket and rest of us were just in long sleeves and pants (or capris in my case), so we had the jacket draped over all 4 of us, huddled on a concrete slab at the top of a windy mountain. It was about 40 degrees. It got so cold that we ended up sleeping all on top of each other like hamsters to keep warm. Let’s face it, there’s a bond that the four of us share right now that no one else has haha. We had enough snacks that we never got too hungry, we kept eating but we had to ration it a bit to have enough for the morning hike down the mountain, and we were definitely running low on water. We also had to pee in the bushes twice, thank God elyse had tissues with her for toilet paper. So yea none of us slept at all. At first we started playing never have I ever, and just laughing at ourselves for being in such an absolutely ridiculous situation. Then the colder it got the less funny it got and we all just basically tried to stay warm and watched the sky waiting for the sun to come up.

Finally around 7am it got light enough to start walking down, even though it was still unbearably cold. Walking warmed us up, and we found the REAL shelter (which was like literally 5 minutes from where we were, but we couldn’t see it so we didn’t want to explore in the pitch black). We had enough food and water to get us down the mountain, and we found the infamous “blue trail” that we were supposed to take going up, and took it down. We finally got back to the bus stop at around 10:15am, and waited for the bus to come at 10:55. I called my parents and mark in the meantime to let them know I survived, and when I got home I slept for 6 hours straight. Then I got up and took the best shower I’ve ever taken in my life, and realized that every muscle in my body was screaming at me for hiking non-stop for 9 hours, sleeping on concrete, and then hiking for another 3 hours the next day. I also had a fieldtrip to go to on Saturday, but I obviously didn’t make it and I think I had a pretty good excuse. The professor was just glad I was ok.

So yea that’s my insane story of surviving a night on a cold mountain with no sleeping bag or fire or warm clothes, not to mention very little food and water. We survived on crackers, Pringles, pretzels, sour patch kids, caramel popcorn, and I think liz had strawberry twinkies and an orange. I can no longer say “never have I ever peed in the woods.” Although it wasn’t really the woods it was a mountain but close enough. I survived and it was an interesting experience, but I def wouldn’t do it again, not that way anyway. I am definitely done with dangerous adventures for a while.

yay for the weekend!

This weekend was AWESOME. Friday night we went to a wine and cheese party at our friends house and it was SO much fun. Probably the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. I thought it was gonna be like mellow, with a bunch of people sitting around chatting with wine and cheese, but apparently Pamela (the girl who invited us) has a housemate that is studying as part of a different program. So Pamela invited all her friends from IAU and her housemate invited all her friends from her program, and it ended up being huge. Met lots of people and became better friends with people I was sort of acquaintances with so it was pretty cool. Most of the people from the other program left on the early side and us IAU kids played drunk musical chairs which was probably the funniest thing ever. I won the second round! Haha it was great. So by the time we got home it was like 2:15 and we had to get up at 7:30 the next morning. Apparently I’m really bad at evaluating whether I’m sober enough to go to bed and actually get sleep, cuz if I’m still tipsy enough I’ll wake up a million times throughout the night and not get any sleep. I thought I could do it, but I didn’t sleep at alllll. So with about 2 hours total (not continuous) of sleep, I got up and got ready to go to Avignon, hangover and all.
We had a fantastic trip. We did some shopping (found an H&M in France!) and found an indoor market that was pretty cool and very French. Next we saw the “Palais des Papes” (the Popes’ palace) and even did the corny tourist thing with the audio tour haha cuz it was free, but it was pretty interesting. Elyse almost got kicked out a million times for taking pictures inside. That’s an exaggeration cuz no one actually yelled at her but she was making us nervous! Anyway, after that we found a place to eat lunch and had a really good ham & cheese pizza. We then went to the famous “Pont d’Avignon,” the big stone bridge in Avignon that extends across the Rhone river, except part of it was destroyed so it doesn’t actually go all the way across. Theres a famous song that got stuck in our heads allll day, that goes “sur le pont d’avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse; sur le pont d’avignon, l’on y danse tout en rond” which means “on the bridge of avignon, there we dance, there we dance, on the bridge of avignon, there we dance all in a circle.” It sounds cuter in french. So of course we had to “danser” on the pont d’avignon. Elyse took pictures. We were def the obnoxious tourists on that bridge, taking pics of us dipping each other and waltzing all over the place. We made up for it though by just sitting on the banks of the Rhone for about 2 hours, just talking and laughing and taking pictures and being French. Elyse gave us a photography lesson too. Her camera is way cooler than mine. So we definitely enjoyed “just being” for a little while.

At that point we had seen all the major touristy things of Avignon, so we decided to just walk around a little bit, looking in cute shops and stuff. I had read somewhere that it’s typical of southern France to have small shrines to Mary above store windows or carved into the walls of buildings up high, and I definitely noticed it in Avignon. Anyone who knows about my Mary obsession knows I found that pretty cool haha. We walked around til we just got exhausted and decided to save some money on dinner by hitting up the French McDonalds. Kind of disappointing cuz my nuggets were on the gross side, but now I can say I ate at McDonalds in France. Anyways, after McDonalds it was time to go catch the shuttle to the TGV station and take the train home. We were really early and it was a good thing cuz we got totally lost trying to find our train, but we eventually found it and we must have been practically the only ones going back in that direction cuz there was no one else on the platform but us, it was kind of creepy. We were sitting against a glass wall and elyse made a comment about how she kept feeling like someone was going to sneak up behind her on the glass or something, and just as she said it this loud noise came on the loudspeaker and scared the CRAP out of all 3 of us. At that time we were at the point that we were cracking up laughing at EVERYTHING, so we were just laying on the cement laughing so hard that we were crying. I guess you had to be there but it was sooo funny. We were exhausted by the time we got home and all 3 of us climbed into bed and went right to sleep. We were going to climb Mt. St. Victoire the next day but we discovered that the buses don’t run on Sundays, and we don’t even know if any buses go there anyway. So we’ll have to plan that one out a little better and do it another day. Well right now I’m going to go meet Elyse at a café and write some postcards. KIT everyone!
<3Cristin

My first month

So I haven’t posted on this in like weeks. Well I’ve officially been here for a month. On one hand it’s like ugh I still have a month and a half to go, that’s a long time til I get to come home, and on the other hand it’s like wow I only have a month and half to enjoy all this while I can! I’m trying to make the most of it, been doing something/going somewhere every weekend and not just sitting around. Last weekend my dad came to visit, so that was fun. I showed him around town, had lunch with elyse in a café and then had a beer with him at another café (yes I had a beer with my dad…it was kinda surreal lol). He got lost getting here and ended up on tiny little streets packed with people who tend not to care that they’re in your way haha, but I got him to a parking garage via cell phone and my map of aix. That night he took me, elyse, and liz out to a really nice dinner that our French professor had recommended, and we all had duck which was really good. But first, my host mother insisted that he come over for “un aperitif” (a pre-dinner drink) before he took us out. We had champagne and my host mother went all out lighting candles and making little hors d’oeurves. It was interesting attempting to translate, even though my host mother speaks pretty good English and was able to communicate with my dad pretty well. Once in a while she wouldn’t understand what my dad was saying and I’d have to translate, or sometimes she would like forget and start speaking French and I’d have to translate for my dad. It was pretty funny. So after drinks we had our dinner, and the four of us made plans to go to Cassis the next day. We had my dad’s rental car, a map of Provence, and ME navigating…..i know, scary. But maps are the one thing i CAN do, so we actually made it there without too much trouble…the exit to cassis was closed so we had to find our own way after that, but my dad handled that. Anyway, cassis is gorgeous, it’s this little fishing village with a really pretty harbor and they’re famous for their seafood and nice beaches. So we found a little tiny beach in a cove-type thing and took our first official swim in the Mediterranean. It was cold. The beaches here are hardly ever sand, they’re mostly rocks, as was this one, so our feet took a beating. My dad of course swam down to the bottom of the ocean to get a huge rock for his “collection,” which he then conveniently left in my backpack and it’s now sitting in my bedroom. Anyway, after we swam and took a whole bunch of pictures, we walked to the other side of town to where the harbor and main city-life was. The port was really cool and we had lunch right next to the water. My dad and I each got a huge pot of “moules frites” (muscles and French fries). They were goooood. My dad had heard of this place where the Mediterranean runs through the mountains, kinda like a fjord or something, and it’s supposed to be really pretty, so we went to the tourism office and got a map and figured out how to get there. We drove up the mountain and had to follow a hiking trail to get to it, but it was sooo pretty. Elyse was being her usual shutterbug self and was climbing on the edge of cliffs trying to get good pictures, making me incredibly nervous. The hike was fun and the view was awesome, and we were exhausted by the end. We drove back to aix and my dad said goodbye and went home. Fun day.

The week following wasn’t terribly exciting. Liz and I went to the market on the main street again, or we intended to anyway, cuz we found a great little store on the way there and ended up spending all our time there instead. I got 3 tops for 10euro and she got a great pair of jeans, so we were pretty satisfied with our shopping. Our host sister, who we were convinced didn’t like us, invited us into the kitchen for some tea and the three of us talked for over an hour. It was a HUGE breakthrough haha it was really cool. She even said that we could go skiing with her and her mother possibly in December. Friday night my host mother’s granddaughter spent the night. She is 6 years old and is sooo cute! She was telling me all the words she knows in English, and the words she’s learning how to spell in French. Liz and I were practicing our French on her and she was telling us what certain things in the house were called in French. I taught her how to play Snood and solitaire on my computer! She was fascinated haha, and I really practiced my French attempting to explain the rules to her. it was really fun, and now guess what babe? I not only want a baby, I want a French baby. Going out friday night was annoying cuz we went out to the bar, then decided to go to another bar, and as I’m halfway through my beer everyone decides to go home. I was like umm what was the point of me buying this if I’m going to enjoy my buzz sitting on my bed watching Friends DVDs?? (which by the way has become my sobering up method lol: a bottle of water, a snack of some kind, and Friends on my laptop). So anyway that was disappointing.
We made plans to go into Marseilles Saturday because there was some sort of big international fair going on, like a huge market with stuff from all over the world. It cost 8euro to get in but our friends had gotten free tickets from their host mother, so we got in for free which was cool. We took the bus to Marseilles and took the incredibly sketchy (and crowded) metro to where the fair was. It was really fun walking around looking at all the different clothing and jewelry from different countries. Elyse and I are contemplating being Egyptian princesses for Halloween lol cuz their costumes are soooo cool. So we spent most of the day touring the fair, eating Italian gelato and French bread and looking at other cool stuff. We came back and had dinner at this crepe place that had the most ridiculously huge crepes I had ever seen. I got this big salad thing with ham and chevre (goat cheese…surprisingly really good) and something called lardons which we think are bacon bits but we’re not sure. Anyway the place specializes in having a crepe for dinner and then another crepe for dessert, but I was so full from my dinner crepe that I got a milkshake instead. It was apricot flavored and it was amaaaaazing, totally worth the 6.60euro I paid for it…yea I’m spending way too much money here. Anyway elyse and liz each got this chocolate covered something that they both really enjoyed.
After that liz and I went to a club with her language partner, Mako. It was SO much fun! The first one we went to was called “Cuba Libre” and it was PACKED. We each got a beer and then hit the dance floor, where everyone was going nuts and singing along, and the DJ was getting everyone involved which was awesome. I love just being in places like that even though I knew hardly any of the music. People were dancing up on the speakers and the tables and everything, it was wild. We thought it was pretty funny that some really popular American songs here are “everybody dance now” and that prince song, you don’t have to be rich to be my girl. The YMCA came on too lol and everybody did the motions. But aside from that it was all French/Spanish music, it was great. Then we went to a different club, where they played a lot of American music and Mako laughed at me cuz of course I knew all the words and was singing along. Some guy tried to dance with me but I grabbed liz’s arm and she saved me haha. that’s why us girls stay together on the dance floor! We had sooo much fun and we didn’t get home til about 2:30. we smelled so strongly of smoke though that even our eyes were burning from it, cuz you’re allowed to smoke in clubs here. Actually you’re pretty much allowed to smoke wherever the hell you want here, whether it’s in someone else’s face or not. A guy was smoking on the dance floor and was drunk and half-dancing half-stumbling around with some girl and he almost burned me with his cigarette like 20 times. I was having so much fun tho the smoke was worth it. So overall a pretty cool weekend. Mark took his LSATs Saturday morning so I was worrying about him all day Saturday haha but he says he thinks he did well. He’s coming to visit me in London for 4 days the last week in October!! Cant wait babe!!
So I’m rapidly wondering where the hell my money is going, but I’m still having so much fun here. It took a few weeks, but I think abroad is def shaping up to be a really good experience. That’s all for now, gotta meet Elyse at the chapel and attempt to follow mass in French!
Miss you all!
<3Cristin