When in France...

...eat like a fat ass.  This is the motto I live by here.  There's this dangerous patisserie right on my street that sells the most delicious everything.  The lady that runs the shop told me today, "Le deuxieme ventre que vous allez obtenir pendant ce semestre sera un souvenir de votre voyage!"  Translation...the second stomach you're gonna grow this semester will be like a souvenir!''  Thanks French lady... If you haven't already figured this out, food will be a recurring theme in this little thing I'm writing here.  I base my days around it (as do the French for the most part), so I see no way around this.

Okay, so I'm awful at keeping up on this. But I warned you all right from the very start that I was going to run out of time and brain power to be persistent about this.  But I'm reaffirming my commitment to this blog right now.  At least two per week...I promise...kinda.

Needless to say, I've been preoccupied with all sorts of epic things over the past week and a half or so.  Last weekend, I hiked Pic Saint Loup.  It's this decently sized mountain that one can see off in the distance from a very tall building in Montpellier.  Getting to Pic Saint Loup, however, is equally as difficult as climbing it is.  You have to take the Montpellier tram to the L'Occitanie stop.  Then you get on the number 108 bus, but you must ask them for a special stop that's not on the route.  This special stop gets you within four miles of the actual mountain.  You walk the rest of the way.  This takes about an hour or so.  Nonetheless, the hike was nothing short of life altering.  You can see the pictures on facebook, but honestly, they don't do it any justice whatsoever.  This is fine though.  These are my memories...not yours.  Get your own.

This weekend, myself and my friends Mandi, Stephanie, and Joan went to Nimes.  Nimes is an impossibly old city that used to be part of the Roman Empire.  As such, Roman architecture is abound, including a quite sizable coliseum type structure in which they used to stage some good ol' fashion gladiator battles.  For lunch, we found this little place called "la flambée" or something like that.  It was a small creperie with no one in it but us.  IT WAS BRILLIANT.  The food was incredible.  It was also the owner's birthday.  We thus sang to him...and then the women who ran the store decided to tell us that after we finished eating, we would all jump on the tables and dance.  I was all for this, but apparently they were joking because it never came to pass.  

Saturday, there was a group tour of Provence, a region close by to the northeast.  Like everything else in France, it's all very old.  We did four stops.  The first was at a very famous aqueduct in southern France called Pont du Garde.  It was built somewhere around 50 a.d.  It stands completely in tact today, which really makes you wonder how the good state of Minnesota can't build better bridges.  Shortly after, we went to this very small town called La Fontaine Vaucluse.  The main attraction here is this mysterious river source that seems to come from nowhere.  In truth...it comes from groundwater and a system of cavelike passages in the mountain side.  Apparently no one has found the exact source of the water though...Jacques Cousteau got pretty close this one time, but that's it.  The water was so clean and the town was so beautiful that I was kind enough to hold my increasingly full bladder until I found a suitable bathroom rather than turn nature into one.  Next, we drove into the mountains to this mountain with a medieval city on it, including huge castle ruins at the top.  My friend Ralitza and I ran to the top like the Crocodile Hunter (may he rest in peace) and his wife on their way to some crazy adventure.  We looked ridiculous no doubt, but they only gave us an hour for the whole thing.  We were the only ones to get all the way to the top though, and the view was, as mother would call it, transformational.  Pictures of this trip will be up on Facebook shortly.

Otherwise, I'm starting to feel like I should have looked for a more independent study abroad program.  Don't get me wrong, I love this program, and I'm having the time of my life.  That being said, certain things about it have felt very... inauthentic is probably a good word for it.  For instance, there were nearly 50 people on this trip to Provence.  How is one going to truly experience something like that with all those people around, especially all those loud American people.  A smaller program would have also forced me to speak more French, which is something I have to actively struggle for here.  At the same time, it's kind of nice that a lot of stuff is taken care of for me here.  That way I can focus on traveling and whatnot.  My feelings on this change daily...so I'll let you know of any updates. 

Pictures are going on Facebook from here on out, because the flickr page makes you pay if you want to put a lot of pictures on.  Screw that...facebook is free.  

Tchao everyone!

Corey

A French Breakfast

To start, I figured I'd give you all a little recipe for a classic French breakfast that I have enjoyed the last three days straight.  Here goes...

1. Get a spoon

2. Get a jar of nutella

3. Open said jar of nutella

4. Insert spoon into jar of nutella

5. Remove spoon with ample supply of nutella on it

6. Insert said spoon into mouth (be careful not to confuse it with any other spoons that may be in the vicinity of said spoon with nutella)

7. Repeat as desired

If you aren't familiar with nutella, you are a sore excuse for a person.  Get on that right quick.  

So what have I been up to you ask??? Okay...I will tell you.

A few days ago, I attended a stellar party at this fantastic bar called L'Oxymore.  There are pictures of this on my facebook if you want visuals.  Quite a bit of fun was had, although I still must complain about the price of drinks here.  Also, it's quite impossible for a guy to order a drink.  In fact, I had a nice conversation about it with a French guy who was trying to do the same thing.  I assured me that it was mostly just at L'Oxymore that this was the case.  We'll have to see if this is true.  Either way, we were both elated when a female bartender jumped back there and came directly to us.  Holla.

Upon leaving the bar, the first entirely European thing happened to me since I arrived.  A random Spanish guy ran across the street and smacked me on the back of the head.  He started pointing at his ear and yelling at me in Spanish.  I really have no idea at all why this happened.  He left rather quickly.  However, I do feel like I had more money on me that night than I was left with the next day.  It's quite possible that I was pick-pocketed very cleverly.  It's equally possible that this was just a very drunk Spanish man whose friends bet him he wouldn't run across the street and hit that American guy on the back of the head.  Nonetheless, I feel this has primed me for the rest of my stay. 

Two days ago, also known as Friday, a small group of my friends and I decided it would be a wonderful idea to walk to the Mediterranean Sea.  We were told it was a mere seven kilometers away, so we went for it.  After miles and miles of walking, we decided to ask some random Frenchman how to get there.  I do believe he mislead us, because we ended up walking another 5 kilometers in the opposite direction than my spidey senses were telling me.  Either way, we eventually found water of some sort.   We became aware shortly after that we were in some town named Lattes.  Upon successfully navigating the bus system here all the way back to Montpellier, I stopped in the study abroad office here and spoke with this French girl named Karima who works on the program.  When I told her that we walked to Lattes, the look on her face was absolutely priceless.  Apparently, walking great distances is not what they do in France.  It's unbecoming...or something.

Today, I went to the zoo.  Zoos here are as zoos should be.  Basically, it was a large forest with random animal enclosures spread about.  Not only did I feel less guilty about the trapped animals due to their suitable habitats, it was also just nice to look at.  I felt a little bit like I was entering Jurassic Park, but my fears abated when I couldn't find any dinosaurs.

I'm a little concerned so far with the lack of French I have been able to speak.  I am starting to think a host family might have been the way to go, but maybe I will just start putting a little more effort into finding native speakers.  I have made a small friend in the lady who runs the little briocherie (bread/pastry/awesome) down my block.  She taught me how to buy bread like the French do.  I also got a chance to discuss the snow that happened here the other day.  My favorite quote from her..."le neige ici, c'est la mort" (snow here is like death).

Other random thoughts....

There is dog shit everywhere.  Apparently it's not a law to clean up after your dog.  I'm not sure if the city does it either.  It's generally important to keep a weathered eye to the sidewalk though whenever you go somewhere.  When walking in groups, we have taking to assigning someone to shit watching duty, or as my friend Joan calls it, the shitstapo.  It doesn't help that there are dogs everywhere.  Apparently, dogs are protected under the law in some way here, so all the homeless people get one.  They thus can't be arrested for doing nothing because the dog would have nowhere to go.  It's kind of backwards...but completely true.  

Next Friday, I'm hiking out to Pic Saint Loup, which is a big mountain on the horizon.  It was supposed to be the plan for today, but it turns out it is impossible to get to on a Sunday because, like everything else, half the bus lines don't run, including the one that gets you near to the mountain.  Either way I'm very excited about this.  

The weekend after that, the program organized a day trip to Provence.  It's apparently "interdit" (forbidden) to visit southern France and not go to Provence.  A couple weekends after that there is a ski trip to the Alps.  I'm still wrestling with whether or not to go on this.  I don't ski, and it would cost me 190 Euro just to get frustrated for an entire weekend and then go sit in the lodge and sip coco.  Instead, I've found some people who are going to Blois in northern France to see some castles.  This will likely be what I do.  There is also one free planned excursion put together by the program this semester.  I've heard rumblings that it's Barcelona.  I'm on that like white on rice.

We have one week off of school in February.  At this time, I think there will be group of us heading to Amsterdam, London, Dublin, and or Prague.  I think we might try and do three of those four.  In the meantime, I need to get to Paris one of these weekends.  I've never actually stepped outside of the airport there, and I feel that's a shame.  I know everyone says it's just like New York, and that if you've been to one giant city, you've been to them all.  But really, it's the principle of the matter.  Paris must happen. 

In March, I'm taking some extra time off to meet up with my friends Colin and Irina in Morocco.  My friend Nida is also studying abroad there, so this could be really good shit.  I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to work this with school. It was particularly stated that taking a lot of time off of classes is not a good idea.  But really, there is only one class per week in France, so I can't imagine that this is really true.  It's probably just the program encouraging studiousness.  Fuck that...I'm going to Morocco.

Spring Break happens in April.  I'm just a little bit too excited for the family to come see me.  I'm thinking we'll do a little traveling, but not an intense amount.  Mother wants to go to Italy, so we'll have to plan on that.  I'm sure they also want to see a bit of Montpellier.  This will only be for one of those weeks however.  The other week is up for grabs as to where I want to go.  I know some people here want to go to Turkey or Greece.  Both of these sound lovely.

In general, this semester promises to destroy any that came before and all that will come after. However, I'm slightly nervous about my overall complacent nature getting in the way.  That "go get 'em" attitude is sometimes hard to keep up.  In any case, I don't ever want to find myself being okay with not speaking French on a given day. Additionally, I don't ever want to see myself staying in Montpellier for a long weekend when there are plenty of other places to see.  But what can I say...sometimes the road less traveled can be a bitch.  We'll see how I manage.

DON'T FORGET TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES.  

www.flickr.com/photos/francepants/

I'm adding descriptions tonight.

Cheers everyone!

Corey

flickr

www.flickr.com/photos/francepants/

This is where all my photos will go.

How to make southern France freak out...

Snow...that's apparently all it takes.  It snowed today in Montpellier, which I quickly learned practically NEVER happens.  I walked into the U.S. office that they have set up for our program today, and one of the staff looked at me and said, "il neige...il ne neige JAMAIS ici."  This means, "it's snowing, it NEVER snows here."  He seemed a little bitter about this.  Meanwhile, everyone from the University of Minnesota was ready to put on their shorts and eat at an outdoor café.  When I was on campus today, I watched two Frenchmen fight with a bag of sidewalk salt to melt the non-existent ice.  They yelled at each other for a bit and then just started digging into the bag with their hands and throwing it about.  I wanted to go tell them that it wouldn't even be cold enough for that to be necessary, but it was too fun watching them argue.  The rest of the city seemed totally unprepared for this as well.  Apparently in the past, they have closed everything down at the slightest sign of snow.

Okay, so here's a rundown of my life.  I started classes on Monday.  I'm taking five, four of which will likely be very easy.  Mondays I have "Civilisation du sud", or "southern civilization".  This is a class about the south of France basically.  Should be pretty fun.  We have to do projects about cities in the south of France, but they can't be researched.  You have to actually go do something.  My group is currently deciding between Nice and Marseilles.  Oh good god no!!!! Don't make me spend a week in Marseilles!!!!  That's cruel and unusual punishment.  Wait you're saying you are going to give me course credit for spending a weekend there?  How dare you?!?!?!?!?!  Hah...I love my life.

Tuesdays, I have two classes. In the morning I have a class strictly on conversation.  This is a joke.  I just finished a conversation class back home which was MUCH more difficult than this.  Which brings me to my next topic...the level of French spoken here by the majority of the program is DEPLORABLE at best.  It's frustrating.  I literally had one girl tell me that she didn't want to speak French.  My response (silently to myself), GET OUT OF FRANCE YOU DIPSHIT.  I don't mind if you suck at it, but if you are going to come to France and not try and speak the language, just leave.  Go to Cabo or something with the rest of your sorority.  

Phew, now that that's out of the way, Tuesday nights I have a pretty intense literature class with M. Picot.  It's called "Le mythe du vampire", or "the myth of the vampire" (I know that one was probably difficult to figure out).  It's basically about the use of vampires in literature.  Pretty cool topic, though I'm not sure how this is applicable to anything.  Once the prof found out about the Americans in the class, he spent a good 15 minutes making fun of us.  He rattled off something about his favorite author and none of us had heard of him before.  He managed to squeak out, "I hate you" in English.  Later on we realized he was saying Joseph Conrad, but it sounded nothing like that at all with his accent.

Wednesdays I have a large lecture connected with the vampire class called "Les avants gardes de vigntieme siecle".  This prof is stellar and is very easy to understand.  Later on that day, I have Advanced Phonetics.  I already took this class at the U of M pretty much, but they make us take it again here.  This will be impossibly easy.  The teacher loves me though because I already know the international phonetic alphabet.

Thursdays all I have is advanced grammar in the morning.  Then I'm done.  There was a class I really should have taken on Fridays because it would have counted for absolutely everything back at the U of M.  I, however, compromised my academic integrity and decided not to take any class on Friday.  I will thus be peacing this place most weekends right after class on Thursday to travel.  I mostly won't even have to come back until Monday mornings because my class on Monday doesn't start until 3:15.  Brilliant eh?

So my sleep schedule is obviously very screwy.  I accidentally fell asleep when I got home today at around 8:00pm.  I slept til midnight, which is why I'm wide awake at 3:30 in the morning.  I have to wake up for class at around 8:00 too, so we'll see how this goes.  I will be making a website with flickr.com or something to post my pictures, so watch for that in my next post.  Leave comments if there is something in particular you want to hear about.  

A plus!

Corey

Hey Everyone!!!

To begin with, let's just be honest...how fly is this picture of me?  I mean really...BADASS. I'm not even sure of the name of the place that I'm at in this photo, but seriously...this is why I'm hot.   Now that that's out of the way, I've been here for three days now and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  The pictures here are just a small taste of what's been up, but I think I'm going to set up a flickr.com page on which to post all of my pictures.  I will let you know when that's up.

This city is absolutely stellar.  One walks up and down the streets and immediately feels like a part of a movie.  The architecture in Montpellier is actually quite a bit newer than the buildings in the rest of the large cities of France, meaning that most of it dates back only to the 16th century...practically new right??? Nonetheless, the University that I'm attending dates all the way back to the 13th.  I've figured this much out, the centre ville (city center...or where shit happens more or less) is basically one incredibly large outdoor mall.  Clothing boutiques are abound, along with small cafés and other random shops.  There are also two McDonald's and two Subways. Yes Alex, that means you could work here if you wanted.

My French seems to hold up pretty well.  Certain people have asked me random things while I was ordering something from a restaurant that I didn't understand at all.  I've figured out that when this happens, the proper response is always "oui, merci".  But most of the time this isn't necessary.  I learned very quickly that the French don't understand American sarcasm.  I made a sarcastic joke to one of the program assistants here and all the Americans around me laughed, but he looked visibly puzzled.  Note to self: Completely change my sense of humor. 

I moved into my apartment today.  It is possibly the smallest inhabitable space in the world.  But I'm beginning to think that it's pretty standard for a French student that doesn't live at home.  I will show you pictures of it soon, but in the meantime, imagine a small white box.  Then put a bed and a desk in it.  That's about it.  I have a kitchenette and a bathroom as well, but the fact that I could actively cook and shower at the same is not a good sign.  There are 4 other people from my program in this building, so we've bonded a little over out interesting living situations.  Good news is that it comes with free internet which the vast majority of the students in the program don't have access to.  

Last night, I went out to my first France bar.  All I have to say about this is that they played Mambo #5 by Lou Bega, and it wasn't as a joke.  Oh and a rum and coke is 8 euro.  

There's a crap load more to write, but class starts tomorrow and I must sleep.  I leave you with the French version of a movie theatre (please compare this to AMC 30 in South Barrington or your local suburban movie theatre).

  Sweet right???  And here's a view of part of the city from up higher.

Cheers!!!

Corey

Francing the shit out of France

So....how are you???

Well, I made it...which is a bonus to be sure.  I can't really complain about the flights.  Nothing went terribly wrong, except I ended up having to go the security like 39 times because I'm a dipshit and kept on going the wrong way on the public transportation to the next terminal. This was more funny than it was stupid.  

The flight from Newark to Paris was acceptable in most ways.  It sounds ridiculous but I was amazed that I plane that big is able to lift itself off the ground.  There was only myself and one other man (possibly the smallest man I have ever seen) in my row, which was nice.  Having the middle seat open allowed me enough room to spread out so that I didn't murder the aforementioned very small man and stow his body in the overhead compartment, or under the seat in front of me.

The group that was traveling together was made up of like 18 girls and then me.  Barney Stinson would be very proud of the position I managed to work out for myself.  But really, they all seem very nice, and I've begun searching out future traveling partners.

We arrived in Montpellier at around 1:30 pm France time on the 2nd.  We had the rest of the day off, so I wandered around the city...which is BADASS.  It's like out of a movie.  I generally feel like everyone I talk to is silently judging me when I speak French.  This is something I'm going to have to get over right quick...or I'll never eat really because I won't order in restaurants. 

Okay....I'm falling asleep in all sorts of ways right now.  I'll post again tomorrow maybe.  Pictures will be coming shortly.  

Ciao,

Corey