One last time...

Bonjour à tous!

My plane back to the United States leaves in just over 12 hours.  Just so we're clear, I'm absolutely not okay with this.  I would need about six more months here before I would be completely ready to come home.  France just hasn't annoyed me enough yet.  No offense to the four or five of you back home that read this.  I love you all, I'm looking forward to seeing you.  But really, I live a couple miles from the Mediterranean Sea and mere blocks away from hundreds of cafés ready to serve me wine and beer at all times of the day.  This just can't be matched by the good ol' USA.  

As I sit looking out the large square window of my small square communist regime apartment at the 18th century buildings across the street for what might be the very last time, I'm starting to wonder whether inspiring views of this nature have always existed in the US.  It's quite possible that I just haven't noticed them because they are very normal to me.  A French person certainly doesn't see anything special in a trip to the nearest café for a incredibly small coffee, just as an American doesn't see anything special about...wait...what is it that we do again?  Get wasted and occupy countries???  Oh yeah...that's the ticket.  Either way, I just checked my flight itinerary and it says "leaving paradise: 7:15 am, arriving in the Midwest 8:45 pm".  I do, however, return to the United States hopefully with a new vigor to see the country in which I was born.  This trip has made me realize that I have barely seen any of it, and I'm looking forward to pursuing a remedy for this.

On a more positive note, I think I did this semester as well as was humanly possible.  I think I hit seven countries and traveled all over France while still going to school enough to keep good grades.  And to be fair, most of the times that I didn't attend class weren't because I didn't want to go, but because there was an elaborate display of chairs, tables and various other pieces of debris blocking my entry.  At the same time, I didn't do too much.  I didn't set out at the beginning to see all of Europe in this one semester.  If I had done so, I would have no reason to come back.  I think I struck a good balance between setting down roots in Montpellier and exploring very different places in Europe.  I can't even been to describe how well I feel like I know France now, especially the southern part.  I think half of that is because of the amazingly functional transit system here.  Once you know how to work a train station, you can get anywhere fairly quickly and at a decent price.  Southern France is a particularly special place.  The vast majority of it was developed during the Roman Empire and then slowly transformed in to what it is today.  This is why there is such a mélange of cities and cultures here.  This is also the main reason why I'm glad I chose a program in the south rather than Paris.  It is unique beyond measure.  

Now for a list of the top ten moments from the semester!  (note: these are moments, not full trips)

10. Going to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

9. Stepping onto the Asian continent

8. Seeing the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum in London

7. Watching the awestruck look on my mother's face when her very first Monaco hit her lips.

6. Buying many scarves in the Spice Bazaar in Turkey

5. Every conversation I had with Veronique the Patisserie lady

4. Going to the Louvre with Andrew in Paris

3. Eating pastries on top of some random hill in Morocco while listening to the call to prayer with Colin and Irina

2. My first train ride from Montpellier to Paris

1.  The moment I reached the top of Pic Saint Loup (while I might have done cooler things, this was the singular moment where my new life bitch slapped me across the face). 

Really...I'm not sure if those were ranked correctly.  As I reflect more upon the trip, that list might change a lot.

Okay, my cab is coming to take me to the airport in one hour (it's 4 am right now).  So I'm going to have to wrap this up.  

Although leaving is very unfortunate, I'm taking comfort in the fact that I'm only 21 years old, and I have unspeakable amounts of time to seek out more experiences of equal or greater magnificence.  I will consider my return to the United States only as another stop, and I am going to start planning for the next adventure soon.  I refuse to live a stationary life.  In the words of my father, it is so important to just get out.  I advise you do the same.

Best,

Corey

Oh my god....How can I take your money????

Hello everyone.

I just read that last entry again after hastily writing it and then running for my train.  I apologize to everyone who took time to read it as I feel I am capable of more.  Never fear!  There's a lot to talk about this time around, so sit tight kids.

Immediately after posting my entry last Sunday, I ran out of my apartment towards the train station.  Let me just say, it is no easy task getting to a very early flight to Istanbul.  I might have already described this when I wrote about Morocco, but I will do it again anyway.  If one's flight takes off anytime before 9 am, there is only one option.  Sleep at the airport in Marseille.  You see, there are no trains to Marseille from Montpellier early enough in the morning to get you to the airport on time.  Furthermore, you can't get a shuttle from the Marseille train station to the Marseille airport (roughly a half hour drive...not worth the taxi cost) after midnight.  So the key is to get the very last shuttle to the airport possible, having timed it perfectly with the hour and a half train trip from Montpellier, as to spend the least amount of time in the incredibly uncomfortable airport.  Now, I've gotten very good at this over the course of my travels, but the point is that I had to spend another night in the Marseille airport to catch my 6:50 am flight (This is an obnoxious post already...feel free to stop paying attention at any time).

Ah, but this 6:50 am flight is not to Istanbul.  No no, it's to Munich.  I had a three hour layover in the Munich airport, which is equally uncomfortable but very efficient.  Well, it is Germany after all.

At roughly 2:30 pm, I got into Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul.  After obtaining a visa and fighting through an enormous, and remarkably annoying, crowd of elderly Italian people, I got through passport control and met my two friends Kiery and Lia. 

Immediately what hit me about Istanbul is that it's absolutely gigantic.  It's also impossible to describe it as just one thing.  The term "hot mess" comes to mind.  This all became very apparent just from taking the public transit system from the airport to Sultanahmet.  Sultanahmet is the neighborhood where one can find the very famous Blue Mosque and the slightly less famous, but way cooler, Aya Sophia.  It is also the home to the hostel in which we stayed.  It was really more of a hotel though, or maybe my standards have just gotten really low.  Either way, it's owned by this 22 year old Kurdish man named Matthid (sp?).  I have never in my life seen anyone so young work so hard, for Matthid not only owns/runs the hostel, but he also owns/runs the bar next door.  The man doesn't sleep, nor did he seem to need it.  The staff was made up of four or five really random people that just kind of sleep where there is an open cushion.  Matthid also had some sort of connection with the rug shop next door and the Australian travel agency on the other side.  I couldn't quite figure out how all these businesses were related, but the workers in all of them moved freely from one to the other.  

The rest of the trip was mostly based off of Matthid's suggestions.  We had decided early that four and a half days was probably not enough to do any extensive travel around Turkey as most of the spectacular things are at best ten hours away on a bus.  However, Istanbul was certainly big enough to fill that time period.  Like I said before, Istanbul is all sorts of things.  If you are walking around Sultanahmet, chances are you're a tourist.  Life in Sultanahmet basically runs off of the shop owners finding clever ways to try and strike up a conversation with you to get you in their shop/restaurant.  The most standard of these is, "HELLO!!! WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"  They then proceed to guess five or six completely not correct countries until they get to the United States.  If i had to hear our three voices say, "Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle" one more time, I was going to kill us, or I was going to start saying that I was from Turkey until they got confused.  Most of the time, you can manage to not enter the shop if you don't want to.  Sometimes you just go because you have nothing better to do.  That being said, I spent a lot of time trying to think of new ways to convince random Turkish men that I in fact don't have 400 euros on me to purchase a rug.  My favorite interaction was when I calculated exactly how many rugs were equal in monetary value to my student loan debt.  I then pointed to the largest stack of rugs in the store and said, "I'm in debt this many to the U.S. government and various banks."  He left me alone after that.

We didn't really spend too much time in Sultanahmet other than seeing the aforementioned landmarks, with the addition of the Topkapi palace on the last day.  On day two, we got on a ferry to head to Asian side of Turkey.  It's just across the Bosphorus and only takes about 10 minutes.  Nonetheless, it is a completely different vibe than the European side.  It became clear that there was much less money on this side of Istanbul and more stringent Islamic belief/practice in daily life.  This might be a brash assumption, though.  I probably didn't spend enough time there to really figure that out.  However, we went into a bar and the owner walked up to us and asked us what we wanted.  He spoke no English (there is a crap ton of English on the other side) and was very uncomfortable with the fact that there were two women in the bar.  At one point, my friends lower back showed ever the slightest bit from under her shirt.  The own came over and smacked me on the arm, and told me to cover her up.  Or at least that's what his gestures told me.  Now I'm not saying this is bad.  It's just different.  I noticed quickly after that that there were far fewer modern Turkish girls around.  The modern Turkish girl generally wears skinny jeans and a tight shirt with normal shoulder sleeves.  The head scarf seems to be optional based on how religious your family is.  In this part of Istanbul, there were many more women in head scarves and a considerable amount covered from head to toe.  I won't get into it right now, but this mélange of ideas and levels of fidelity is what makes Turkey one of the most interesting countries in the Middle East.  The head scarf is a topic of particular interest in Turkey.  Being a religious symbol, it is illegal for a Turkish girl to wear a head scarf in school (please correct me if I'm wrong.  I'm always hesitant to write things about the Middle East because I never feel like I know enough about it to make judgments).  At the same time, many Turkish families don't want their daughters to go to school without a head scarf.  Tis complicated eh?  

The pace at which we took this trip was absolutely perfect.  We never really woke up early, and we spent a couple hours every morning trying to figure out what to do while eating breakfast and drinking apple tea.  My favorite activity by far was just sitting on the rocks by the Bosphorus watching the water and reading a book.  Okay...so I'm kind of lazy.  But hey, this was my vacation from my very rigorous schooling.

My lonely planet Turkey book, which actually says "Turquie" because I bought it in France, says that if you can't afford to buy souvenirs in Turkey, it's okay.  All you need is to bring back a little bit of Turkish hospitality.  This couldn't be more true.  They are seemingly the most inviting and warm people I have met thus far.  Granted, half the time these were people trying to get money out of me.  Still, they did it in a very kind and very hassle free sort of way.  There's probably less anti-American sentiment in Turkey than there is in France, that's for certain.  This, of course, wasn't hurt by the fact that Obama made a trip to Istanbul just a week before I was there to try and fix declining Turkish/US relations started by the first Bush, not considerably improved by Clinton, and greatly damaged by the second Bush.  Basically, Turkey has always gone to bat for the U.S. during all of its uncalled for wars in the Middle East.  They give the U.S. military land and air space even though they don't necessarily agree with the war, always expecting economic help in return.  This, for all intents and purposes, never really arrived.  The U.S, until last week, also never openly supported Turkey's ascension to the EU because they didn't want to piss off France or England.  France's only real reason for not wanting Turkey in the EU is because Sarkozy is openly uncomfortable with Islamic countries.  Wake up dude, millions of Muslims live in your country.  Try supporting them abroad, at least symbolically, if you're not going to give them jobs and respect in your own country.  They might be less angry with you.  Even Turkey's economy is much stronger than some of the countries that they have recently allowed in.  Thank god we voted for a President that recognizes this country's importance.  Now having visited there, I can easily see how terrible the misconceptions your standard U.S. citizen has about Turkey.  Did I mention that Turkey allowed women in government way before the U.S. even allowed women to vote.  Gah! Sorry, the United States frustrates me a lot when it comes to the Middle East, if that wasn't already very apparent.

Other random things about Istanbul....

Tulips!  They have the most amazing Tulips I have ever seen in my entire life, and they're everywhere.  I'm posting pictures of them on facebook as we speak.  

Kebabs!  They're everywhere and they're delicious.

Ummm...Well there's a lot more.  But this is getting pretty long.  Ask if you would like to no more about my trip there.

Otherwise, I'm coming home three weeks from today.  There are mixed feelings about this to be sure.  I'm not quite ready to leave.  There are a lot of things that France really does right.  This outweighs the things that frustrate me by a considerable amount.  I really like what France has done to me, and it would be really interesting to see what I would be like after a year or so.   Additionally, every single thing you look at here seems to be life altering and awe inspiring.  I find much of the United States to be sans inspiration.  

At the same time, I'm excited to see how I will function in the United States with everything that I've learned here.  I feel like I'm coming back with a huge secret that I couldn't even explain to someone if I wanted to.  It should be really interesting to see exactly how I see things now.  I've also got a nice summer planned, where I will be subleasing a room in my friend Irina's house in Minneapolis.  I'll be spending most of the summer working and searching for an apartment for the fall with my future roommate Jessica.  Oh, and then there's that whole graduating college thing.  Woops, I should think about that for a bit.

Okay.  Until next time.

Best,

Corey

Traveling is better than school

So I have been reprimanded several times now for being a terrible blogger, at least with respect to the consistency with which I write.  I remind you, however, that blog is a filthy word.  Actually, it's not even really a word.  So think about that.  Nonetheless, I'll try better.

This entry will be incredibly short because I leave for Turkey in two hours, and I haven't started packing, nor am I showered.  Oh...yeah...I'm going to Turkey.  This trip came about out of nowhere.  I was originally planning on going to Corsica and Sardinia for the second week of break.  Things got complicated as far as logistics go with that trip.  I half jokingly told the people that I was planning the first trip with that we should just go to Turkey.  They said yes...

I absolutely can't wait.  It promises to be a really amazing trip, and yes, I will certainly blog the moment I get back.

Last week, as most of you know, my sister and my mother came out to France to visit me.  We started with a few days in Montpellier.  I basically showed them all the random places I read/eat.  I also introduced mother to a drink called a "monaco".  It's beer, limonade, and grenadine, really nothing too special.  She however died for it.  We spent the rest of the week basically searching out more monacos.  We then proceeded to Nice.  Nice is stellar.  I really highly recommend it if you haven't been.  The views are breathtaking and the food is delicious.  Finally, we spent the last couple days in Paris.  Both Annie and I had been to Paris before, but Mom hadn't.  We did our best with the 40 some odd hours we had.  However, if you've ever been to Paris before, you know that this simply isn't enough.  We showed her the Louvre, the Champs Élysées, the Eiffel Tower, and then we went to Versailles the second day to see the Palace.  It was all great fun, although we probably should have done Paris first when we still had energy.

Okay, I really must be off.  If I miss my train to Marseille (where I'm flying out of) the whole trip will get completely screwed.  Sorry for the brevity of this.  I will seriously write the crap out of Turkey, I promise.

Best,

Corey

Morocco and more

Bonjour à tous!

I seem to be lacking clever introductions this evening.  I'm going to blame this on the terrible state my stomach is in because of my recent trip to Morocco.  There we go, a nice lead-in.  So I went to Morocco this weekend.  WOW...that's all that's coming to me right now.  

We have to go back quite a ways to find the origins of this trip.  Specifically, we must jump back to last September, to a small (incredibly overheated) classroom in Folwell hall on the campus of the University of Minnesota.  This is where a certain French conversation class took place.  But to put it more precisely, this is where the most neurotic French class that has ever existed in the history of mankind/the French language was located.  Made up of about four or five normal people and then twelve to fifteen completely ridiculous caricatures of real humans.  The latter included a girl with a tendency to wink at random things, a 90 year old man with terrible breath and a knack for chemistry, and a man who's head never seemed to be in line with his spinal column.  Needless to say, the normal people clung to each other.  This is how I met Colin and Irina.  For some reason, we all hit off, and the insatiable need for alcohol after every French class brought us even closer.  I soon found out that I was also taking a foreign policy class with Colin, and that he's also slightly better than me at everything.  He quickly became someone to look up to and someone to send me countless links to interesting political satire bits...oh...and a great friend.

I think I've gone off task slightly.  Anyway, nearing the end of the semester, Colin and Irina decided they wanted to meet me somewhere over their spring break.  I would take the week off of school and travel with them (and like all things in my life that I really want to do, it didn't quite work out like this).  The chosen destination was Morocco.  

Several months later, here I am in France getting ready to book these tickets to Morocco.  Unfortunately, what I've learned about French school is that it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.  The teachers spring random tests and assignments on you without ever having given you a syllabus to let you know that you would have to do it.  Plus, there's always the good ol' strike.  One of my teachers (in a course for foreign students that still meets, despite the ongoing strike) decided to place an exam on the Tuesday of the week in question.  Furthermore, due to the fact that my integrated classes aren't meeting, the program has decided to create these random, and remarkably pointless, seminars that we are required to attend despite their complete irrelevance.  They are merely there to say that I've spent some time in a classroom while I'm here.  And yes, these courses were to start this week, or the week that I was supposed to be in Morocco with Colin and Irina.

Long story short, I had to cut it down to a weekend.  This has become one of the largest regrets of my life.  I came back, and I took my test, and I went to these seminars.  All of this was bogus.  I honestly would have much rather faced the consequences of missing everything that I did this week and stayed in Africa.  Don't get me wrong.  I know it wouldn't have been the smartest idea, but it would have been a lot more fun.  Oh well, I suppose doing something you regret is what prevents you from doing other things you'll regret in the future.  By the way, don't give me any of the "No regrets" crap...I don't believe in it and neither should you.

Okay, backtracking now.  Morocco was incredible.  It goes right near the top of the list of best things I've ever done.  Getting there is surprisingly difficult from southern France.  You have to take a train to Marseille to fly out of their airport.  But, there is only one flight a day from anywhere in southern France (that's less than 300 euros) to Tangier, and it's at 7:30 in the morning.  The trains to Marseille don't run that early and neither to the busses from the Marseille train station to the airport.  This is how Corey ended up sleeping in a deserted corner of the Marseille airport last Thursday night.  Hilarious...

I got to Morocco Friday morning and waited for Colin and Irina.  When they got in we took a cab to the city center of Tangier and were immediately greeted (accosted) by a bunch of random locals trying to get money out of us.  They do this very cleverly by taking you to a hotel, and then once you've checked in, they wait for you to start looking around.  They don't leave you no matter what you say, and they take you to all these places until you feel rude trying to make them go away.  The trick is that they have deals with all these shopkeepers and they receive commission off of the purchases made by people they bring in.  The hotel this guy took us too was only 5 euros a night.  It was kind of gross, but did I mention it was only 5 euros a night.  Whatever, it seemed marginally clean and safe...so we went for it.  We all knew what this guy was trying to do, but we couldn't seem to shake him.  So he took us to a carpet shop where they took us to the roof and offered us tea (this sounds creepier than it actually was...I promise).  They then proceeded to badger us into buying things, not understanding that just because we were white (not you of course Colin) didn't mean we had any money.  We eventually paid this guy off to leave us alone, and our trip really began.

We spent the next two days wandering about Tangier.  The beach there is absolutely stunning, with a great view of the coast of spain right across the way.  We walked through the Medina (old city center), and La nouvelle ville (new city center) where I looked at everything in awe.  The interesting thing about Morocco is that there aren't really any landmarks to go see like there are in Europe.  One goes to Morocco for the cultural experience.  As such, Colin, Irina and I spent most of our time sitting in cafés drinking the most amazing tea ever.  I would try to describe it, but I promise I wouldn't do it any justice.

When I was leaving on Sunday, I was actually intolerably depressed.  It was half the fact that I was leaving such an incredible place and half the fact that I was leaving two really good friends, whom I actually like.  That's not to say that I don't like all of the friends that I've made in my program, because I certainly do.  It's just that you are mostly forced to make friends with all of these people.  The people I went to Morocco with were people from my life before who truly know me (however scary the notion of "knowing me" might be).  It was surprising how comforting it was to have that for a weekend.  

All in all, I've spent this past week being really angry at the fact that my situation got in the way of me staying in Morocco all week.  It even altered my perception of French life, merely because I was so bitter.  It's been a bad seven days as far as me interacting with French life goes.  The strike was really starting to get to me.  Normally, I'm able to brush it off my shoulder, understanding that this is just how French people show that they're pissed off.  But when the strike was voted to continue for another week, I had had enough.  It came to a boiling point on Thursday when transportation also went on a national strike for no good reason.  They really just wanted to show the government that they could strike if they wanted to.  As I watched the thousands upon thousands of demonstrators marching through the street, it seemed petty and unnecessary, whereas I used to be astonished by the unity.  I would rather be witnessing a march against the genocide in Sudan or a manifestation for immigrants rights.  I mean, these people are striking from their jobs.  This means that they have jobs in the first place, which in turn means that their lives could be worse.  Be a man, rub some dirt in it, and go back to work.  

All of a sudden, the slow pace of Montpellier that I had previously enjoyed became cumbersome and annoying.  I found myself rudely huffing to myself as I sped around someone who was talking his time in the grocery store.  I was even making less and less conversation with the nice ladies that run the patisserie on my street.  

But then, I went to Sète.  Sète is this beautiful port city about 20 minutes away from Montpellier by train.  It was here that I rediscovered what I like about France.  I hiked up to the top of Mont Saint Clair, and the view was intense.  The Mediterranean looked so amazingly vast, and I was so high up that as I looked along the coast I could see the shape of the land that would be drawn on a map (this is slightly abstract...sorry).  Then we sat outside along the river and drank beer at three in the afternoon.  This is what I call perfection, relaxing beyond comparison.  I was immediately no longer as angry as I was about having to leave Morocco, nor was I pissed at French life.  

I feel this is as good a time as any to discuss some of the things that have changed about me since coming here.  First off, I have without doubt caught the travel bug.  I feel I will be doing a lot of this over the next 10 years or so.  They won't get mad if I just decided not to pay back my student loans right?  Didn't think so.

Additionally...laundry.  Those of you who know me very well know that I normally wear something and then wash it (I'd maybe wear pants twice).  This is no longer the case.  It is absolutely impossible to do this in France.  Laundromats cost way too much to use them very often, so I wash everything that I can by hand.  Thus, I have no problem wearing something to the point that I can't even exist in the same room with it because it smells so bad.  I can't decide whether this is a good development or not.  

Showering: Completely optional.  I usually shower everyday, but use of soap has become an every other day thing.  Sorry...is this gross?  I don't know.  I'll probably go back to normal when I get back to the states.  I believe there is a slight water/energy crisis in France, so hot water doesn't last very long.  Most of my friends have to pay for their water, so they shower far less.  Mine is included in my rent, a rarity in France to be sure.  The stereotype of French people smelling badly isn't really true.  The vast majority smell just fine, but there are those who can be smelled from miles away.  I only strive to not be one of these people.

The pace at which I exist has not only slowed down, it has pretty much come to a complete halt by comparison to how I used to live.  I'm very content just going somewhere and sitting there, doing absolutely nothing.  Most of the time, wandering around the streets of Montpellier for an entire day is all it takes to fulfill me.  Of course, as I mentioned above, there are certain days where this drives me crazy, but most of the time it doesn't.  I still find streets here that I've never ventured down.  The streets are so complicated that they usually end up leading you back to the Place de la Comédie (the main city center) even though you didn't want to go there, so finding no routes is not easy.

At the same time, my sense of adventure has been kicked into gear.  I go hiking quite a bit, which is something I normally don't seek out in the states.  This might be simply because there are mountains here.  Coming from Illinois and living in Minnesota doesn't give you much opportunity for mountain climbing.  In fact, the highest elevation in Minneapolis is the witch's hat tower...it takes maybe a minute to walk up the hill on which it is situated.  Keep in mind, all of this hiking doesn't mean that I have lost any weight...quite the contrary.

Okay, so this took me about four days to write.  I have the attention span of a golden retriever puppy these days.  I'll write more soon.

Corey

I think therefore I greve

I have a theory that this is actually what Descartes said, and the French just changed it up to make it sound profound.  Greve is the French word for strike.   France is known worldwide for its strikes, and let me tell you, this is one stereotype that is incredibly true. The above picture is where I'm supposed to have class tonight....

Practically since the moment I got here, my university has been on some level of strike or another.  More recently, it has intensified significantly, which is what prompted me to write about it.  Originally, the professors went on strike, saying that they were unhappy with several new measures the government wants to take in education reform.  I won't bore you with the details of these reforms as I have been drilled on them far too often myself.  I assure you though, to an average American, they seem like nothing to get your knickers all bunched up about.  Anyway, for the past month, I have been going to class never actually sure if it was going to take place.  Most of the time, however, it did.

This previous Tuesday, I had a "dissertation" (this doesn't have the same sense as in English, it's what we would call a paper or an essay) due in my literature class.  As per usual, I put off writing it until the night before and merely decided to pull an all-nighter.  I finished my paper around 1 in the afternoon the following day (with a break for a different class in between).  At approximately 1:15 I got the word that the university had been blocked.  This basically means that the students decided to join the strike efforts of their professors and in doing so, blocked off all the doors to all of the buildings with piles of chairs, tables, and various other pieces of junk.  A little dramatic, don't you think?

Needless to say, ca me fait chier (the French for "I'm pissed off"...literally it translates to "that makes me shit...HAH).  To begin with, I'm all for socialized education being that I'm currently more than 50,000 dollars in debt to various banks and government organizations.  I love the fact that all these French student pay a minimal 300 euros or so for a year of college.  This doesn't change the fact that I have to pay out my ass to go here, and if I'm going to do that, I at least want to receive some semblance of an education.  Additionally, if my courses continue to not meet, the University of Minnesota program department here makes us write papers to make up for the missed classes.  I would prefer not to do this.  Lastly, I was slightly chagrinned about having stayed up all night to write the paper that I was physically prevented from turning in by a pile of furniture.  

My first inclination has been to scream at the top of my lungs, "STOP WHINING AND GO TO SCHOOL YOU LAZY TWITS!"  Instead, I'm just trying really hard to understand.  I'm coming to realize that it is incredibly difficult for Americans to fully comprehend the greve.  I got a laugh out of a teacher when I said that "La grêve est la manière dont les français exprime leur mécontentement."  Or, the strike is quite simply how the French express their malcontent.  It replaces what we call "writing an angry letter" or "making a slightly miffed phone call."  The French instead head directly to the streets.  I had a professor last semester that said, "Real change only comes when you take to the streets."  Granted, this man confessed to having only voted for the socialist workers party in every election he's ever voted in.  Their candidate for president in 2008, Roger Calero, got a rousing 356 votes in the state of Minnesota, and I'm pretty sure that was one of his better showings.  So really, I'm not sure how smart this professor of mine was.  

At the end of the day, I've decided I merely lack sympathy for professors that refuse to teach over marginally trivial matters of state.  These are people who have supposedly dedicated their lives towards the pursuit of education and passing what they know down to the next generation.  Strikes quite simply interrupt the academic process.  In this way, they don't add any sort of validity, which I believe is the point of the greve in the first place.  

To quote Monty Python...and now for something completely different.

I'm having an impossibly lazy day in Montpellier right now.  To be honest, I haven't left my bed yet except for the necessities.  I've been reading this terrible book called "A Year in the Merde" about an incredibly pompous and self-involved British man who lived in Paris for a year.  Some of his commentary on French life is very true.  Such as, yes there is dog shit everywhere.  Yes, they do use suppositories (I know right???).  And yes, they eat cheese here that smells like something out of my high school locker room.  A friend came over last night who has actually been living in France for quite some time now.  We bought a wheel of cheese to have with dinner which she promised only had a "slight smell" to it.  This was utter bullshit.  Before I knew it, my entire apartment was overpowered by a face wrinkling stench.  I had to pull out every single experience I've ever had on stage as to not seem uncultured.  But that's neither here nor there.  I think this lazy day was inspired by a recent realization that it is absolutely impossible to always be moving, even if you're only in Europe for 5 months.  I have a tendency of feeling guilty every minute I'm not up doing something adventurous.  Quite frankly, I don't have that kind of money or energy anymore.  I don't know what it is, but I feel markedly older than most of the other people on this program.  This is probably because I only have the capacity to get drunk once or twice a week.  

However, next weekend I'm going to Morocco with what energy I have left.  There I am meeting my friends Colin and Irina from school.  The original plan was for me to go for the entire week, skipping a week of school.  But unfortunately, with the strike likely to be over by then, if school happens, I absolutely must go.  I also have a test in one of my courses that is specifically for foreign students, which meets greve or not.  So I was thus forced to turn it only into a weekend getaway.  I'm pretty sure Colin and Irina are mad about this.  Otherwise, I feel like I'm running out of time to get everywhere that I want to before the end of the semester.  I haven't found anyone to travel with after the semester is over yet, and I'm not even sure if I'll have the money/energy to do it.  So time is of the essence.  I still want to get to Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Prague, and Greece.  Hmph....somehow I feel like that won't happen.  

Overall, here's what I've learned about French people since moving here.  The French have turned merely existing in daily life into an art form.  There's a specific and complicated skill to everything here.  Buying bread at the patisserie requires more than just knowing the words for different kinds of bread.  One must purchase it like the French do, or risk being outed as tourist.  Certain breads are only purchased at certain times of day.  Others are baked merely for immediate consumption.  These are things you can't possibly know until you've lived here for a bit.  Getting service in a restaurant...forget about it.  This requires a coach and many practice sessions per week.  Just getting people to warm up to you is difficult.  In the states, I usually make some sarcastic, yet not insulting, joke to break the ice.  The French don't understand sarcasm though, and jokes of any nature simply won't suffice.  It's become kind of a game for me trying to get shopkeepers to smile.  I doubt I'll ever win though.  

Alright...enough now.

Best,

Corey

How to most efficiently get attacked by a prostitute in Amsterdam

The title is catchy ain't it?  Well unfortunately, you're going to have to wait to find out until much later on, for my recount of my winter vacation in Europe will go chronologically.  Starting.......now.

As some of you might already know, the French are all about doing as little work as is humanly possible.  This is why they give their students not only a two week spring break in April, but also a week off in the middle of February to go skiing and whatnot.  Being that I attend a French university, I am entitled to both these vacations, and given that the school is practically always on strike, I'm not really a student for all intents and purposes.  Thus, for the past 10 days, I have been traveling around northern Europe with a small group of friends.  We decided northern Europe is a better idea because the weather sucks pretty much everywhere in Europe right now.  So it's best to save southern Europe for when it will be really nice there and only "meh" in the north.  The following locations were chosen; London, Dublin, and Amsterdam.

On February 13th, I and four others hopped on a train in Montpellier on our way to Marseille, a much larger city on the Mediterranean.  We had a couple of hours to kill before we had to make our way to the airport, so we walked along the seaport and found a place to eat on the water.  If you've never been in southern France when it's 60 degrees and sunny right next to the sea, you really need to get your head in the game and haul your ass over here.  It's breathtaking to say the least.  Good thing I live on the Mediterranean or I would have been much more sad having to leave so quickly.  

We then bussed to the airport in Marseille to have our first Ryanair experience.  For those of you who have not experienced this wonderful little detail of European travel yet, Ryanair is a really friggin cheap airline that flies all over the place.   All in all, it's not a bad deal.  You learn real quickly how they can afford to keep their prices so low when the minute you climb on board they're making advertising announcements for Hertz or shoving scratch and win tickets in your face.  Note to the future Ryanair user: Put on your IPOD and ignore all of this.  You are not obliged to buy shit from them, and I'm pretty sure the staff thinks that those who do are stupid.  All in all, it's not a bad deal.  Baggage restrictions are a little tight, but you shouldn't be traveling around Europe with more than you can fit on your back anyway.

London is baller....enough said.  Okay, maybe that's not quite enough.  But really, it's baller.  Hostels, on the other hand, not so much on the baller scale.  The one we stayed at was pretty filthy, cramped, and smelly.  However, you could drink in the lobby until all hours of the night if you wanted to.  We only took advantage of this once, however.  The rest of the time we spent rolling through London being all stellar and shit.  Of course I saw all the normal things to see in London; Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the like.  Two highlights, however, were the British Museum and the London Eye.  The British Museum is entirely made of artifacts.  There aren't really any paintings whatsoever.  While there, one can see the ACTUAL Rosetta Stone.  Believe it or not, it's not just some random name for the rip-off program that "teaches" you foreign languages.  The London Eye is that gigantic ferris wheel that you've probably seen in some movies before.  It's an amazing view of London, and is definitely something not to miss (this is starting to read like a travel guide...sorry).  Also, the tube is great fun...as long as you mind the gap.

Monday night, it was on to Dublin, the land of Guinness and Jameson.  Believe it or not, the Irish do really seem to play these two things up as the most important aspects of Dublin.  Our hostel here was much better, although the bedroom did smell worse than the bathroom.  I'm still not quite sure how that works...

Immediately upon getting in, I met my friend (and future roommate) Jessica, who is studying abroad in Dublin and interning with the Irish Parliament (SWEET).  We went out to a bar and drank...that's right, you got it....Guinness.  The next morning we went to....oh wait, what was it???? OHHH YEAHHHH The Guinness Factory.  Guinness was abound, needless to say.  

Wednesday, we all decided to take this tour of the countryside in southern Ireland.  Now generally, I despise tours with every fiber of my being.  Most of them are inauthentic, and you spend half the time listening to information about a place when you could be taking it in for yourself.  So obviously, I was skeptical going into this.  I realized it was going to be a killer tour the moment I saw the tour guide and the automobile we would be taking.  Usually, when one thinks of a tour, the words coach bus and charismatic asshole with a microphone come to mind.  This however, was a very old Irishman named Ed and a van.  Ed reminded me of the father from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only Irish.  As the father in the movie could prove that every word in the dictionary comes from Greek roots, Ed could basically prove that everyone in the world was Irish in some way, shape or form.  Besides bringing us to some sweeping Irish landscapes, he also gave us tea and cookies with a view of both Bono's and Enya's houses.  Believe it or not, Enya's was way bigger.  It was also castle style.  Way to go Enya.  However, I imagine Bono has one or 17 more houses around the world. (see pictures on facebook of this tour...totally worth it).

And now for the part we've all been waiting for.  How to most efficiently get attacked by a prostitute in Amsterdam.  It's quite simple really.  Merely, take a picture of her (or him...you never can tell).  No no no, this did not happen to me.  However, it did happen to one of the girls I was traveling with.  Despite having talked about not taking pictures in the red light district earlier that day, she decided that she could snap one photo of a red light and no harm would come.  Well upon snapping this one photo, a very large, possibly spanish prostitute came dashing out of her window onto the cobblestone street in nothing but an ill fitting bra and some stilettos.  She moved pretty quick for someone of her size.  It was really quite surprising.  I was about thirty feet ahead when I heard her yelling "OY OY (random babbling in some language)".  I whipped around and saw my tiny friend Joan wrapped in the clutches of this woman's arm fat struggling to get her camera back.  She fought all the way into the brothel (something I'm not sure the hooker was expecting).  This all happened too quickly for anyone to realize what was happening, let alone do anything about it.  The rest of us stayed right at the window to make sure they didn't do anything to her.  The two hookers inside were really just looking through her pictures with angry ho scowls on their faces. Anyway, they let her go with her camera shortly after.  Joan took it like a champ.  To be honest, I would have just let them take the camera.

We didn't go back to the red light district, and with good reason. The rest of Amsterdam is really quite beautiful.  The Van Gogh Museum is life-altering and tragic all at the same time.  Starry Night was there on loan from the MOMA.  I'm not going to lie...it was way better in person than it is on all those bad prints you see around the world.  Also, if you go to Amsterdam, never pay for public transportation.  They have no mechanism to check, and it seemed like hardly anyone was paying.  Don't blame me if you get caught, but we rode it a lot and no one ever seemed to care.

We got back home today.  This was easier typed than done.  We woke up at 7:00 am in Amsterdam and got on a tram (free of course).  This we took to the Amsterdam Centraal (that's how they spell it in Dutch...pointless extra A if you ask me) train station.  From their, we got on a train to Eindhoven.  In Eindhoven, we took a bus to the airport.  We got on a 12:55 pm flight to Marseille.  From the Marseille airport, we took a bus to the Marseille train station across town.  Then, we got on a train back to Montpellier, arriving at 6:15.  And what did you do today, might I ask?

Really, there are too many details to write down.  So please don't hesitate to ask if you want more.  

Cheers!

(PS...I typed this up in a hurry.  Please ignore grammar/spelling/awkward wording mistakes...in fact this goes for every entry in this blog....please and thank you)

Yet again...

I manage to break my promise of writing in this twice a week.  I'm sure this has left all four of you that actually read this all curled up in a corner rocking back and forth, just waiting for more.  Well the methadone has arrived my friends.  Here we go...

First, and definitely foremost, I finally went to Paris this weekend.  The fact that I lived in France for more than a month before hitting the Paris streets makes me a little sick to my stomach.  I'm just glad I've remedied this fact now.  Either way, I spent the weekend living in Versailles with my old buddy Andrew Organ from high school.  I hadn't actually seen him for two years before Friday, but we seemed to pick up as if that time in between had never happened.  Andrew has been living in Versailles (which is about a half hour out of Paris) for the entire year on an architecture program from the University of Illinois.

I got to Paris, Gare de Lyon, at around 2:00 on Friday.  I then figured out the metro/RER lines, or what have you, and made my way out to Versailles.  I met Andrew there a little bit later on.  He showed me around his school which is ridiculously nicer than the one I go to.  I've described my school as "Bratislavaesque".  I'd give his school at least "Warsawesque".  Either way, it seemed like a really great program consisting of a close knit group of kids.  None of them spoke French for all intents and purposes before moving, which is BRAVE AS HELL if you ask me.  

Afterwards, Andrew went off to a meet his "gypsy band" (I'll explain later), while I made friends with his roommate Daniel, who was to be my babysitter for the night.  We had dinner and hung out for a bit, and then we hit the train system to get back into Paris to see Andrew's band perform that night...

The metro...hilarious.  It's exactly as absurd as everyone told me it was.  In one three day stay in Paris, I managed to witness someone throwing up, someone receiving sexual favors, and two guys straight up smoking crack.  Now I've never even seen crack (you can breathe mom!), let alone seen it smoked, let alone on public transportation.  So I apologize if this seems naive to the crack experienced out there, but this was shocking to me.

We got to this dive bar somewhere in Paris shortly after to see Andrew's gypsy band.  Okay, so gypsy band.  What the fuck is this you ask???  Good question...I'll tell you.  It's an all brass band filled with all French people and then Andrew and his other roommate.  They basically get smashed, put on ridiculous outfits, and play such classics as "Hot Stuff" and various ABBA.  Needless to say, while jumping into that frigid cold pool everyday sophomore year for swim practice with Andrew, I never once thought that I would see him doing this.  Despite the slight awkwardness that came with not actually knowing anyone there except Andrew, it seemed like a pretty authentic experience.  

Saturday, we slept in late, as I was exhausted and Andrew's drunk ass definitely needed a few extra hours of sleep if they were available.  We got into Paris later that afternoon where Andrew took me to see all things that one must do on their first time to Paris, no matter how cliché they are.  We went to the Eiffel Tower, walked down the Champs Elysées, and saw l'arch de triomphe.  After that, we took the metro out to the Centre Pompidou (the crazy building that's tubes and pipes are all exposed), and then to Notre Dame.  Finally, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see the light show at 8:00.  Stellar, enough said.  

Andrew and I went out to his friend's house that night where we played some drinking games like some good ol' Americans.  There were a couple really random French people there, but I got to talking to one of them about what the hell I was doing there.  He eventually told me that of all the study abroad students he has ever met, I speak by far the best French....This is possibly the best compliment that an American can receive in France, no joke.  I was giddy about this for quite a bit. 

Today, I went to the Louvre.  Baller is the expression that comes to mind here.  That and "Asian Tourist".  They're everywhere.  I had to fight through like 50 of them just to get a look at the Mona Lisa, and same went for the Venus de Milo.  Other than that, it was one of the greatest things I've ever done.  The Rubens room is breathtaking.  Andrew and I played a game where he sat in the middle of the room and made witty commentary about what he thought was going on in the paintings (all of which were bigger than my apartment times 2) and then I went up and read what was actually going on.  Which brings me to what I really admired about the Louvre.  I loved that they didn't put a billion different translations next to each painting.  They just have one in French.  I felt like too many of those little plaques would detract from the displays.  Granted, I read French...so I imagine opinions vary based on language competence. 

I trained back home to Montpellier at 3:30 this afternoon.  I was actually quite sad to be leaving.  I don't know whether it was because I was leaving a friggin awesome city or the comfort of a familiar face (probably a little of both), but either way I need to go back soon.  On the way home, I started thinking about how I'm going to remember this trip.  I was looking at some of France's breathtaking country landscapes and thinking...how the hell am I going to remember I saw this exact place at this exact time.  Of course I'll always remember going to the Louvre, but will I remember the funny banter I had or the delicious chicken caesar wrap Andrew and I split?  A lot of times, it's these little things that make the bigger things seem even greater, and I would hate to lose them in the dank pit that is my brain.  Photos will help, and so will this blog and my personal journal.  But I can't hit apple+s on everything I see, and I can't write down everything that happens.  Even if I could, I don't think my writing skills are good enough to really express everything that happens in a given moment in order to bring me back to it at a later time, and the pictures I've taken thus far haven't done one single bit of justice.  This might just have to be something I get over, I'm not sure.  Maybe I'll attach a video camera to the top of my had and run it 24/7.  Genius...

Okay...pictures are forthcoming...I promise.  Though my camera did die in the middle of Paris, so I only have the beginning and the end of that.  But Andrew is sending me the rest.  

A bientot!!!! 

Corey