A Confusingly Snowy Day

am I in Pittsburgh again?!

Well, it wasn't a nice morning, but it wasn't a bad morning. It was cold and snowy to start off with, which was ridiculous considering 1) it's the south of France and 2) it's actually warmer in Pittsburgh right now. Sigh. That snow up there is what I woke up to this morning. Then right before I left the house I realized that on Tuesday I start at 10:30, not 9. Thus, I was 1.5 hours early because I thought it was Monday. But I decided to head to school to work on my paper anyways. Which, it turns out was a good decision, because I walked the wrong way for the first 7 minutes. So then I turned around and headed to school the right way at last. When I got to school I went down to the cave--which is the basement/lounge with vending machines, huzah! They're cheaper than the stores and have Evian (!), Orangina (delicious), and Snickers (my savior). As well as a hot beverage vending machine, I'm so excited to try that out. It's the little things in life.

Today I had three classes. First advanced french conversation and composition or something. Essentially a writing, speaking, and some grammar class. The teacher seems very nice and hopefully it'll go well. I feel like my level of french is appropriate for the class but I felt bad for the kids who seemed a little lost. Luckily CMU prepared me well. (shout out to the french department!) Second was the French Honors Program seminar, a weekly one hour class to discuss our progress in french and how classes are going, things like that. We also finally signed our contract to speak only in french the entire semester! Which means french to all my teachers, administrative people, classmates, french family, people in town, etc. Except if there is a student who can't understand enough french to understand me, then I can speak in english. Thus, it's okay to write in english on here, because not all of you can understand french. :) Lastly, was my french literature class, where I discovered I will be reading 13 poems, 4 bits of fiction, and 3 bits of theater. To which I heave a sigh, because poetry is not my cup of tea. But I'm trying to keep an open mind because I want to do well in that class. It's funny, because that teacher is also the teacher of the phonetics class and he is very much into linguistics/ phonetics. He corrected our pronunciation mistakes and then taught us small intensive lessons about the difference between /s/ and /ss/ in french and whether they're voiced or voiceless consonants. It was pretty cool but a little intimidating. I'm just glad I understand french as much as I do. A few girls in my class looked like they were in way over their heads. Ooh, and for lunch today I went to the bio (organic food store) and got corn cakes (like rice cakes, only made of corn) and some cheese and called it lunch, so tasty. Oh and candy obviously.

Now on to notes for today. First comes my inability to keep changing languages. Recently, when I've been writing in english, I forget how to spell an english word and can only remember the french word. My grammar structure sometimes looks awkward because it's more like a french translation into english. Which is so weird for me, because english is my native language and should come more easily to me obviously! For example, I typed out 'dramatique' today and was confused for a few beats why spell check was trying to correct me. Then I realized it was french, not english. That's annoying. I'm trying to write a ten page paper in english for the J Term and my brain keeps getting confused.

And the weather. It's freezing cold. I severely underestimated how cold it would truly be. I had to close my outside window shutters, got an extra blanket, wore many many layers today, and am still cold. In fact, it's 30 degrees F colder than usual in AeP right now. It's supposed to be 50, it's about 30 right now. Tomorrow is staying around 30, but Friday drops to 20 and snow. Again. Gross. Take pity on me... speed FedEx me sweaters and woolen socks!

look at this nonsense!

Enfin, two little things about my host family life. Normally, I don't like olives.  In fact I kind of hate them. But I never told them this, because back home, olives don't show up much. However, they keep showing up in my food in inconvenient places, like sauce. It's hard and kind of rude to pick olives out of the tomato sauce, so I've just been eating them. And the more I eat them, the less they taste repulsive. I'm afraid that by the end of this I'm going to end up liking olives. Gulp. Ooh and today for part of dinner I had a cooked artichoke, typical of the Breton region. It was quite tasty. Because uncooked small purple artichokes are more typical of AeP. I do like those, but I prefer my cooked artichokes. And lastly, today I got home from school and what was in my room? A garbage can! Or rather, a wicker basket. That I'm assuming is a garbage can. Hmm. 

I'm gonna call it the garbage

Sadly, as the day wore on the snow became rain slushy mess nonsense and hopefully it's not too icy when I attempt my walk to school tomorrow morning! Snowy Aix is yucky, but much prettier than rain and gross snow Aix!

rain and gross snow Aix

Good Morning!

IT'S SNOWING IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE!

I've Been Orientated

Today I was orientated, yay orientation! Honestly, as far as orientations go it wasn't that bad. I've had some pretty bad orientations in my young life, but this one was free of ice breakers (which I detest) and had lots of actually useful information. First we had talks from the teachers of each school and one from our lovely president of the university who also went with us on the J Term. It was nice to have met everybody before this and feel comfortable at IAU. Plus I wasn't jet lagged, huge bonus. (Some other students keep posting on the Facebook group that they're going out to bars and such, I'm impressed that they have such energy, I don't know how they do it!) Our president mentioned something in his talk that normally would sound cheesy to me, but for once I actually took a speech seriously and decided to think about it. He asked us all why were studying abroad, what made us decide to be there: whether it was french fashion, food, culture, a chance to take a break from school, or learn about a foreign culture, or maybe because a teacher told us to. And all of those (except french fashion, I don't really care about Chanel or whatnot) are kind of true for me. My reason I've been giving people has always been, "I'm a French major, so... it's the logical step." Which is true. But why did I come? Honestly, I'm not too sure. I guess it was something to do, cause life at CMU was kind of stagnant in terms of studies. Maybe Aix will tell me the secrets to life.

That was far too serious. It's time for more Cultural Observations. First off, it's a well distributed fact that the French don't smile in the street. They walk with their head down and keep to themselves and their group of friends, which I have found to be very true. However, I think it's very interesting that when you walk in the store, it's almost the complete opposite! You smile very nicely, say "Bonjour madame/monsieur", be very polite, smiles are acceptable (at least as far as I've experienced...?), and it's all a very nice experience. But it seems like polar opposites. Cold in the streets, cheery in the stores. Secondly, today during orientation someone told us a quote by a famous anthropologist that goes something along the lines of 'Americans are like peaches, but the French are like coconuts'. My first thought was 'Americans are easily bruised?' That wasn't it though. It's that Americans are very easily accessible at first, but very hard to get to the core of (but let's be real, that's a silly analogy to a peach, because it's very easy to get to the center of peach: you get to the pit and then you're done... it's not like you eat the pit). And French are very hard to get to know, but on the inside they're soft and nice. That is almost exactly what the teacher said-- inside French people are soft. I found that kind of funny.

Thirdly is a sad comment to Americans. Dear Americans studying abroad, please, please stop being so obnoxious. There are select students who choose to travel in large groups and speak in english very loudly in stores, restaurants, and in the streets. First off in the streets you might as well be putting a large sign on your head that says "I'M AMERICAN AND EASY TO ROB/THIEVE/ETC". In stores and restaurants you look rude and silly. If you walk in and it's loud and everyone is talking, then sure, do your thing. If it's quiet when you walk in, please, keep the noise level consistent. I went to the phone store to get my SIM card today and there was a large group of students speaking in english and they kind of made me sad for the American reputation. So I left and found the other phone store that was very uncrowded--how sneaky of me! (And I'm so proud of myself for speaking in french and her understand me and me understanding her and getting a SIM card and crédits and not feeling like a silly student.) No, but really. Tais-toi.

Finally, today as I was walking home practicing being French, keeping to myself, not smiling, etc, I passed a man peeing on the side of the road. Legitimately. Well... okay. But since I was pretending to be French, I had to ignore him and not make a large deal out of it, I was afraid if I did, he'd turn around and pee on me. Even weirder, it was the side of the high school. Why would you pee right there at 17h? It was very weird.

Now a note on my host family. First off, they're still lovely. I had an avocado, then buckwheat crepes with cheese and tomato and an egg, then fruit salad for dessert today and I am quite a happy camper. I also had a crepe for lunch today with chevre and gruyere and it was delicious too. Oh the crepes! But continuing. At orientation they were telling us today to wait for the mom to eat first, to serve herself then you, to help with dinner, help with cleaning, eat together, and not take seconds. And I was momentarily frightened because I have broken all those rules. So tonight at dinner I took note. And I realized for sure that every family is different. The dad makes the food and he serves me first and they both tell me to eat while it is hot. Then the mom is served, she eats, and then the dad eats because he made it last. And he's told me before that he doesn't mind, he likes to cook for people. Anytime I wait, they encourage me to eat. They give me seconds and always ask if I'm hungry. I'm also not allowed in the kitchen to help and when I've offered to help they tell me to leave it there, they'll get it, not to worry... So I'm gonna keep on my toes just in case they decide that I'm no longer guest-like and can help clean up. But the mom nor the daughter clean up, so I'm thinking that it's just different. In addition,  we were told not to touch the washing machines, that they should do it for us. But she told me that I could do it whenever I needed to. I asked her if she was sure, for sure, positive, and she said yes. Thus, all families are different. Voila.

AND THE BEST NEWS OF ALL?
I GOT MY BAG!! CLEAN CLOTHES!! La vie est bonne maintenant.

Bienvenue!

Thus starts the travels and musings of my semester abroad in France. To kick it off, let's have my astute Observations of France thus far:

-Where are the garbage cans? There are no garbage cans in my room or in the bathroom.
-The TV is on most of the day. Now I'm much better at understanding TV french!
-Top half nudity on TV, like a news report about plastic surgery, is totally normal. I knew that already, but it was surprising to see.
-They actually don’t shower everyday.
-Talking with food in your mouth is a culturally accepted thing, contrary to the US.
-We drink tea/coffee/chocolat in the morning… out of a bowl. A cereal bowl.
-There's a huge lack of lighting. Related to the energy saving bit.
-Where is the shower curtain? I have no shower curtain.
-Bagged tea is so much better here than in the US. Superior.
-They love yogurt. It's eaten after meals quite frequently.
-They also don’t drink a lot of water. I normally drink a few glasses per meal. Here we drink tiny glasses of Coca. Good thing I have my water bottle to keep me from dying.

Today was the open house at IAU and it was huge crowd of students--which I detest. But I had my friends from the J Term and their one housemate and so we went and tackled the crowd together. We found our male friend from the J Term who was hanging out with the guys. So I met this one guy who happens to live in the house behind me! Par hasard, en fait. So that was nice to meet some people, I met two new people essentially. Tomorrow I suppose I'll meet more. Orientation tomorrow is at 9 AM and apparently lasts all day. So I'll walk with my new friend and be oriented all day or whatever. Then classes FINALLY start on Tuesday. Then this weekend we're going to the Côte, hopefully it'll be warmer.

In other news, I've been without my big luggage for another day. I changed host families--and my new host family is wonderful--but my bag is still at my old house. What has she done with it?! She won't answer calls or emails, so fingers crossed it still exists in this universe. Thus, I've been wearing the same clothes without having a laundry machine for four weeks now. Sigh. Hopefully I get it back tomorrow, but I'm not really expecting it at this point.

As for Aix itself, it's very nice here. 45 is cold and the locals are cold and miserable. I laugh at them, try 10 and below and snow and rain. They're sad when it's cloudy. It was finally sunny today and I think this will be very good for my happiness level, since sun is so much happier than clouds. It's a beautiful and historic city and I'm finally learning my way around. There's a macaron store which is DELICIOUS, markets every morning, and little cafés everywhere. Even a gluten free one! But it's cher. And there's a little Bio where I can get GF goods too.

Almost done now. I watched the NRJ Music Awards last night--essentially the MTV Music Awards--and heard the popular French artists which was cool. I'm enjoying these two songs, even though I can't understand most of the words:
http://youtu.be/NiHWwKC8WjU 'Elle Me Dit' : Mika
http://youtu.be/UqQ9NWzIiM4 'À Nos Actes Manqués' : M. Pokora

Finally, Bag-less Days: 4