United States time!

So I realized recently that I never did a conclusion blog entry. Oh wait, I hate that word blog. I mean...journal entry. Sooo I got back to the States a-okay. As you probably guessed. I had a sweet seat on the plane, with like 8 feet of leg room. Literally. And then it was weird to be in the U.S. where everyone speaks English and is loud and stuff is really cheap. But I got over that fairly quickly and then spent my summer working like a dog to make back all the money that I spent abroad! And now I'm back at school, and it's fun and nice because I actually understand what's going on in classes and I can participate and be a real student! And senior year is scary.

Okayyy, so that is 3 months of my life in a nutshell. I'm good at summarizing when I have to! Sooo, bisous and a bientot! :)

France, take note:

A little gem we found in Baux de Provence. Maybe France should actually take it to heart...? 

Provence!

Well, you know the year is really coming to a close when Dickinson takes its end of the year trip! We went to the legendary Provence region! We stayed in Arles for 3 nights, and took day trips around the area. When we got there on Thursday, we walked around Arles a little, and then ate dinner as a group ate at the Café de la Nuit, which was immortalized in this Van Gogh painting. Thus, the food is overpriced and not that good. But the atmosphere was nice! Van Gogh stayed in Arles from 1888-1889, and at the hospital there is where he cut off his ear (photo above). Sweet. But he also did something not psycho, which was paint over 250 canvases while in Arles, which is a huge amount.

Friday, we went on a magnificent hike in the Apilles Mountains! The Apilles are like the smallest mountain range ever, but the scenery is absolutely breathtaking, and we were lucky enough to have a gorgeous day! I understand why Provence inspired so many artists to paint, because it really is amazingly beautiful. Our guide during the hike was the cutest ever, and he told us it was his dream to do a “guide exchange” with a hiking guide in the states, because he really wants to visit the US. I was in love. Another cool thing during our hike was that we saw lots of wild thyme, rosemary, and lavender. I sat in some thyme during our picnic. Then after our hike, we visited the Cathedral d’Images, which is an old quarry where they now do expositions of photography and art. We saw a Cezanne exposition, and how they do it is really cool: it’s pitch black inside, and then they project the images in JUMBO size on the walls on the mine, and they are constantly changing. And there is classical music playing, which really helps to create a really cool atmosphere inside. Definitely the coolest museum I’ve ever been to! Then we visited the Baux de Provence, which is a cute little town, but I wasn’t too impressed because there were approximately 8000 other people who were visiting at the same time as us. Too crowded. That night, we were all pretty pooped, so we went out to dinner and then crashed. But I did eat some pistou soup, which is a provincial specialty with veggies and beans and basil and garlic, and I was in love.

Saturday was super fun market day! We had so much fun wandering around in all the stalls and tasting delicious delicacies and buying souvenirs! We bought picnic stuff, and had a delicious lunch of fresh bread, cheese, pesto, tapinade, and strawberries! Then while we were eating in
this park, I got pooped on twice by pigeons while sitting under the same tree. It was gross. Surprisingly, it did not put me off the picnic, and I still enjoyed myself. Then in the afternoon we went to Salon de Provence, which was promised to be some sort of crazy soap capital of the world, and as Michael put it, he thought “they would just be throwing soap at us, because there would be that much.” Unfortunately, we were a little disappointed by a somewhat modern town (earthquake in 1909 destroyed the old part of town), and not a soap shop to be found. No soap shops make Dickinson kids a grumpy bunch. However, we did see pretty houses where former soap makers used to live…if that interests anyone. Saturday night led us to a delicious dinner at Le Criquet, the cutest restaurant maybe ever in the world. And then we went to a sketchy bar that had a bunch of overly excited teens/early 20s in it that jumped around a lot and played with our hair…? It was odd. But entertaining nonetheless.

(fountain in Salon de Provence that was all grown over with moss, but water still comes out of it like it's raining from underneath the little tree part!)

Sunday we took a tour of Arles, which has a lot of roman history, including an arena where they have bull fights! Then we hung around in the intense heat while we waited for the train. Seriously, Provence was HOT. It’s not even summer yet, and we were probably pushing 90 all weekend. And then we got to the train, expecting relief from the heat, but then it turned out to be the hottest train ever known to man. It was an incredibly unbearable 3 hour return to Toulouse. It was gross.

So besides incredible heat (which was not actually a bad thing!) the end of the year trip to Provence was a great success, and a great way to spend some of my last days in France! But if one more bird poops on me…game over France.

The year is almost over...?

Last party of the year chez Kat! Oh, we had some great times over there. And Shana come through Toulouse on her way home from Cameroon to celebrate with us, yay! Here's her and Dan enjoying the guacamole and looking adorable. ;)

In other news, it's becoming frighteningly real that the year is quickly coming to a close. I'll be closing my bank account next Wednesday, then the end of the year trip to Provence, and then my oral defense for my internship on June 1st! Then just 5 little days until home sweet home. :) 

Morocco!

Wheeeee, Annie, Christine, and I went to Agadir, Morocco for spring break! We wanted to go somewhere to enjoy some nice hot beach weather, work on our tans (yeah right), and just relax! We got this really great deal through a student travel agency, sooo we packed up our bags and flew to Morocco (how cool is it that we can travel so easily to a different continent? Especially a crazy continent like Africa!)

We stayed for one week in Agadir. In 1960, Agadir was completely destroyed by an earthquake that killed 18,000 people. So, needless to say, the city itself is rather modern looking, and there isn’t really any nice architecture to look at. And it’s a very popular French tourist destination, so the city is very “tourist friendly”. The first day, Saturday, we enjoyed some great beach weather. To avoid a lot of harassing on the public beach, we opted to rent these comfy beach chairs and umbrellas on a private beach. It was awesome! For 20 dirham (about $2) we could sit in peace and be super comfortable while enjoying the beach! Then Sunday, the weather was kind of bad (go figure, like the only rain all year comes when we are there!) so we went horseback riding! We went through some brushy, deserty areas and some woods, and then we got out to the beach and ran along the beach! It was just like a movie. Especially when it started pouring rain (and hailing!) and it turned into a wet t-shirt contest on horseback. Neat. But still an awesome time!

Monday, it was rainy again, so we went to the Medina d’Agadir. A medina is traditionally the old part of an Arab city, but since Agadir was destroyed in 1960, this is a replica of what a traditional medina would be like. It was still pretty cool, despite the fakeness of it all, because they did a really good job with making it seem real! And you could watch artisans work at making sandals, tunics, jewelry, etc.

Monday evening we went to a “soirée berber”, which was organized through our tour company. We drove about an hour to this old Kasbah, where we would have a delicious traditional Berber (tribe in Morocco) dinner and enjoy some entertainment! The dinner was great; we ate everything with our hands and used this homemade flat bread as silver wear/plates/napkins! The French people were not into that, and looked at us three Americans like we were crazy as we dug in! Then after our first course and second courses (flat bread dipped in butter and honey followed by a tagine with fish in a delicious sauce!) we were called out to “watch” the entertainment, which actually mean participating, which we didn’t realize. So we get grabbed into this dancing circle, and at first we were all kind of like “umm…we look stupid! Bah!” but then we were like “oh, who cares!” and really got into it! And since most of the other people there were families or couples, we three young American girls got a lot of attention! We kept getting pulled into the circle to dance with the men, even when no one else was! Needless to say, it was a hilarious and fun experience. And the food was DELICIOUS! After the first round of dancing, we went back in to enjoy our third course (another tagine, of chicken this time) before we were called out to dance again! Crazy Berbers. And we met this one “native” guy who had worked at Colonial Williamsburg for a long time. (Funny story, we saw him the next day when we were driving around in a cab in Agadir!) Then we had dessert of couscous with cinnamon and sugar, and oranges.

Tuesday was finally another good beach day! We went to the public beach in the morning, and it wasn’t that bad! We had people coming up asking us to buy crap, but we weren’t bothered that much, which made us happy. Then in the afternoon, we headed to the souk! The souk of Agadir has 2500 sellers and is like a little city! Some sections were really cool, which lots of handmade leather good, spices, clothing, etc, but then other sections looked like rip-off land in China or something, with lots of fakes and stuff. So I ended up buying these handmade leather sandals and a white embroidered tunic! The prices were crazy good too. I like Morocco.



Wednesday, we did beach again. Yay! Then in the afternoon, we were going to try to go to a hammam, which is a Moroccan bath/sauna type thing, and we had read about a “good” one in Lonely Planet, but apparently LP hadn’t been there recently, because the place looked like sketch land. So we went back to our hotel and made appointments for massages and sauna-ing at our tourist-friendly hotel hammam! What an experience! So turns out that a hammam is actually a very wet version of a sauna. So we’re sitting in there just getting hot, trying to avoid getting our underwear wet (it was rather puddle-y in there) and wondering if anything else would happen when this large Moroccan woman comes in and proceeds to throw buckets of water on us! So much for trying to keep dry! And then we got all this mud/clay/apparently good for your skin stuff all over us, and then we got massages, manicures, and henna!

We did discover that pretty much every man in Morocco was interested in either: a) selling us something, b) killing us (for not buying their stuff and/or not stopping to talk to them…?), or c) giving us 5 million camels. We definitely got some interesting offers (and yes, the 5 million camel offer was really said), and everyone called us “les gazelles”, which at first we thought was a kind of cat-call thing, which it definitely was in some cases, but nice guys who worked at our hotel called us it too! So I guess it’s just a Moroccan guy thing.

So yay for spring break in Morocco!

Birthday Craziness in Nice!

Well, this update is a week late, but oh well. I figured everyone would still want to hear about my birthday celebrations in Nice, France! I have a friend, Christine, who is studying in Nice for the semester, and we just so happen to have the same birthday! Soooo, it was planned long long ago that we would get together for our birthdays and have a beach party! Well, it happened! Annie and I took the train to Nice Friday afternoon, and got all settled into Christine’s apartment. And we also were incredibly jealous of her sweet apartment and location in the city and conspicuous lack of a host family. So Friday night, we all just caught up and drank delicious red wine and rang in our birthdays tranquillement. At midnight, I opened 2 cards from each of my grandmas, and diamond earrings from my parents! And an adorable necklace from Christine! Yay!

The next day (ie. Official birthday craziness day), we walked around Nice and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We went to a market in the old part of Nice, and Annie bought marzipan while Christine and I enjoyed cookies from another stand! We went in a bunch of little shops, and Annie and I were in heaven with the sunshine, because it hadn’t been that nice in Toulouse lately. Then, Christine went to the train station to pick up her friend from school, Sherry, and Sherry’s friend from her study abroad program in London, Jordan. While that was happening, Annie and I took a bus to the Matisse museum, which is in this neighborhood kind of overlooking the city of Nice with beautiful villas and mansions. I would definitely live there. The Matisse museum was in a cute park and a cute building, but the museum itself was kind of odd and not very well laid-out. Then we met back up with Christine, Sherry, and Jordan and went to an “early bird special” dinner, at 5pm-ish, which definitely doesn’t happen ever in France. But they gave us food, so we couldn’t complain. And also, Christine and I got “presents” from the bartenders. We saw these straws with butterfly cut-outs on them, and we really wanted some with which to enjoy the festivities later on. So Annie asked the bartender if we could have 2 straws for our birthdays, and he said yes, of course. Soooo we were overly excited about that for a while. Then we went back to the apartment, I took a little siesta, talked with my parents, and then the party started! We got endless amusement from “the bucket”, which was one of those drink mixes that comes in a bucket with a name like “Blue Hawaii”. Christine’s mom had sent it for a birthday present. In the directions on the back, there was the normal way to make it, where you freeze it for 8 hours or something, and then there was the “PARTY EMERGENCY” version of the recipe. We used the party emergency version and were endlessly amused by that. So we mixed up our bucket, along with some other drinks, and headed down to the beach for a beach party bash! ^ (enjoying the birthday bucket with the straws!)

We met a lot of cool people from Christine’s program, waded into the sea (it was cold), and had a great time! What a cool way to say you spent your birthday—on the French Riviera!

The next day, Sunday, we recovered until 3 pm, and then we took a walk up to the “Parc du Chateau” that overlooks the city. There was a huge waterfall with seagulls sitting on top, and lots of kids playing and running around, and a beautiful view of the harbor and of the beaches. There were huge boats in the harbor, and we saw a huge cruise ship leaving! And also, I saw Elton John’s house up on a hill. It didn’t look very nice from super far away. What’s up with that, Elton? For dinner, Annie and I (read: Annie, while I watched) cooked dinner for Christine and her roomies as a thank you for hosting us! We made a delicious sauce for the pasta. I would like to replicate it sometime. Then the next day, we got up to catch our train and said goodbye to Christine and Nice! Overall, a SUPER fun birthday celebration, plus a gorgeous city to celebrate it in!

Les Corbieres!

This weekend, we took a Dickinson excursion to Les Corbières region of France! Located about 2 hours southeast of Toulouse, Les Corbières is a well-known wine region that produces 80% red wine, and the other 20% rosé and white wines. Our trip was a ton of fun, with sooo much beautiful scenery, it was pretty landscape overload!

We left early Saturday morning, and went straight to the Abbey of Fontfroide, which is no longer an abbey but it used to be, obviously. The abbey was started in 1093! It was an abbey that grew its own wine and was basically a little self-sufficient farm. Then the monks had to stop being peaceful, wine growers and go into battle during the Crusades against the Cathares. Then they got to go back to growing wine and other products and it became one of the richest abbeys in their order! Now you can walk around and see the beautiful cloisters and chapels, and scenery!

Next we headed to Gruissan and the beach! Gruissan was a cute, if somewhat abandoned, Mediterranean fishing village! The only reason it looked abandoned was due to the off season, not actual abandonment. We took off our shoes and played on the beach and ran around and acted like 5 year olds! And we also saw a lot of little beach houses on stilts, which was apparently supposed to be a special thing, but I thought it looked like a trailer park, just a little higher off the ground. Oh well. Then we went to lunch in the village of Gruissan, and the restaurant was cute and had an enormous dog walking around. Unfortunately, the food was not that good. I had chosen “meat” for my main dish, before we had left for the trip. The other choices were “fish” or “vegetarian pizza”. I found it odd that they didn’t specify what kind of meat or fish would be served, but then I found out it was because they decided to put EVERY kind of meat/fish on the plate. I got a plate full of grilled lamb, sausage, steak, and chicken. And I’m not talking small portions. My steak was practically a whole cow. And there wasn’t any sort of decoration, or sauce or anything. Just meat. We all had a good laugh about that. And the fish plate had a big old fish in the middle, with other smaller sea life stationed around it, all with heads, legs, etc. I made fun of Thierry (Dickinson Center assistant Laura’s husband) because his fish was looking at me with a dead fish look.

After lunch, we headed to Narbonne, where we were scheduled to spend the night at this weirdo hostel type hotel for big groups where they didn’t give you towels (luckily, we knew beforehand and brought our own!) Oh well, it was a fine hotel, if a little strange. We went on a tour of Narbonne with the cutest tour guide ever, and we saw a roman market from 1 B.C.! It was all underground, and since I enjoy caves and tunnels, I was into this old roman market. The rest of Narbonne was okay; we had a hard time finding a restaurant for dinner! The whole town was asleep at 8 pm, I guess! But we ended up finding a good French/Italian place called “Le Joker”, which was worth it just for the silly name!

In the morning, we woke up not way too bright and early and went to Talairan to enjoy a day of hiking, wine, and sunshine! Quelle vie! It was excellent. We went to a vineyard called “La Rune”, which is owned by friends of our literature professor from last semester at Dickinson! The man and his wife who owned it could not have been cuter and more outdoorsy and lovable. First, we took a hike with the wife in “la garrigue” which translates to “scrubland”. I guess it’s a typical landscape found in the Mediterranean area, and it’s really good for growing wine! We found wild asparagus, and walked all around in the vines and the sunshine was so bright, it was heaven. We later made omelets over an open fire with the asparagus that we found on our hike! (Okay, clarification: I ate an omelet that had been cooked over the open fire by the winery man with asparagus that other people had found. I was not a good asparagus-finder.) When we got back, we learned about how wine is made, and then we tasted! I liked the rosé and the white, but not really the red. Maybe it was just that bottle, or type, or something. Then we had lunch! I am amazed that this little winery was able and/or willing to host more than 40 people for a tasting and lunch, and a hike! That is definitely not a normal day at a wine tasting, and I was really thankful that they agreed to host us for the day! So we all got some color in our faces and arms while eating delicious food off the grill, drinking delicious wine, and having great conversations with friends.

On the way back to Toulouse, we stopped in Lagrasse, which is an adorable little village with an abbey that dates from the 8^th century! Since it was Sunday, the village was fairly quiet, but Annie and I had a fun time exploring the little streets and taking a little walk in the countryside! We wanted to go to the abbey, but you had to pay to get in, so we just looked at it from outside, and then continued up this road that went to who-knows-where. But it was such beautiful weather and scenery that we walked for a good 30 minutes! We saw vineyards, olive trees, horses, and priests/monks (the abbey is actually still an abbey!)

Overall, what a great weekend! Now I don’t look like a pale monster from winter land (just a freckly/red one!) and I got to see a gorgeous region of France! A bientôt!

BIG NEWS

The big news of the week is that I (finally) switched host families! Yaaaaaaaaay! For those of you who I didn’t endlessly complain to, things were NOT going well with my old family. It all started with my room being too cold, and me wanting to change that, and it ended in shouting matches and incredibly bad blood between me and the Marfaings. My host mom just became a huge heinous bitch, out of nowhere, and was very immature, and insulted my friends, my boyfriend, and me. So I decided enough was enough, and I started the process to find a new host family! My new family couldn’t have me until today (Monday), but things got so bad with the ‘Faings that I couldn’t stay there a minute longer, so Gersende (Dickinson Center assistant) found me a “transition family” from Thursday through today. My transition family was amazing, and they really helped remind me what French family life should be like, not like the hell I had been living in for the past 3 months. We had conversations, and made jokes, and everything was great! I realized that I didn’t really ever talk at dinner with the Marfaings, and they never seemed to care about me at all, and it was totally different over the weekend! Even though I was only staying with them for a few days, transition family (they had a crazy last name that I can’t even begin to remember) showed so much interest in me and my welfare that it was completely refreshing! So I left there today with many good feelings and memories from my couple of days with them, and I headed to my new family! My new “family” is actually just an older woman named Francoise, who lives on a gorgeous “allée” (i.e. long tree lined avenue type thing) that is in the same neighborhood as the Marfaings. But I’m happy, because it’s a great neighborhood, close to everything that I need to be close to, and it’s a beautiful and huge apartment in a gorgeous old building! My room is all in pink! And I have a desk, a closet, a nightstand, and a bureau! I never thought I would take those things for granted, but after the “shed” at the ‘Faings, I am ecstatic! Francoise is so nice, she is just like a little host grandma who wants me to be at home and wants us to be in love. And it’s funny, because there are 2 British friends of hers living in the apartment too! But they are taking classes with Alliance Française (an exchange type program where Francoise works), so we only speak in French! But I like that at dinner, I am actually involved in the conversation, and I’m also not the only one that doesn’t speak French perfectly! I AM SO HAPPY!

So that’s the big news. Wish me luck with the new fam! Bisous!