Photos de l'appartement

salle de séjour = living room

entryway into kitchen and stairs up to loft bedroom

cuisine = kitchen, or whatever of it fits in the picture

terrasse = terrace (see. . . French isn't so different)

The apartment seems to be made up of a million little corners, so it's hard to get shots of much of it at the same time. And I was going to take pictures around Aix today and upload those as well, but I didn't because everything is closed on Sundays. Pictures of where the market usually is would not be very exciting.

Class tomorrow :(

I'm a little worried that these beginning intensive courses will be too easy for me. How's that for being arrogant? One annoying thing about the program is that we are allowed to speak English, unlike the program I did in high school. The benefits of that are that I can write this darn blog and having deep intellectual conversations is much more accessible than merely talking about the weather or whatever other conversations arise when using banal vocabulary everyone knows. The drawback of this is that even our program directors speak English often to make sure everyone understands. I guess that's nice when addressing issues like our safety and how to avoid "exhibitionists" in the park late at night, but I think it only encourages English with all of the students. For the most part, I have been speaking French, but every once in a while the temptation to engage in a fast-paced conversation where your friends know exactly what you mean to say is all too great. It's only the first week still, there will be much more French to be spoken.

Also, didn't wind up going to the beaches in Cassis today because I just wanted to sleep in after a day of moving. I don't think anyone else went either because there was a large group from our program who went out on the town late late last night. I feel like kind of a square for not joining them, but I was sleepy, and sometimes that comes first. The realization that I can actually buy alcohol here is just not that big of a deal for the time being. I felt like the best way to celebrate moving into the new apartment was to spend a restful night in the new apartment.

The neighbors I've met so far are very nice. They're mostly French students, so it's good to hear from people approximately my age who are French because despite the fact that this is a French town, this place is crawling with mostly American and British tourists.

Also, there are two hotels less than a block away from my apartment if those of you who are planning on visiting me don't want to sleep on the "couch."

French word of the day:

farine = flour

Aujourd'hui quand je suis allée au supermarché je voulais bien acheter des provisions pour faire une tarte de pêches--la farine, le sucre, etc., mais toutes les pêches étaient déjà vendues.

On est là!!!

Okie doke. I'm a bit sleepy, so this will be short. And probably fraught with grammatical errors because I'm in that transition stage when neither my French nor my English is very good.

I'm doing quite well. . . not at all a rocky start. Miraculously, everything went well with the plane rides. All of my luggage arrived.

Yesterday, I was thinking about switching to live in the dorms for the whole years because more people than I thought were doing it, and it would be less expensive.

But then I moved in. The dorms are gross. I kinda have a phobia of dirty bathrooms. . . I just wanted to cry when I was how disgusting they were.

I'm happy to say that my friend Seth and I are moving into an apartment tomorrow. It's quite the catch. Get this, it's not very expensive, especially considering that all of the utilities are included, we have a nice kitchen equipped with oven, stove, plates, etc., there's a terrace outside where we can eat, a view of a nice courtyard, dishwasher (hell yes!), and even a small washing machine (ok, so basically I don't know if I can fit more than one pair of jeans in at a time, but still!). I'll upload photos soon--we just got access to the internet a few hours ago. The program has given us a year's subscription to the internet café here, so I'll probably come once a day to check up on everything and make sure the internet is still working.

On Monday, our classes start. We took a test today for the placement (this is an intensive French language class just for the people in our program that is 3-4 hours every day for three weeks.

So I know this post wasn't entirely entertaining. I try to be funny when I can. . . but I can't right now. Sleepy. Jetlag. Brain just not functioning. But at least you know I'm alive.

French word of the day:

le décalage = jetlag

À cause du décalage, ma cervelle ne fonctionne pas.

p.s. I LOVE AIX. Cassis and beach Sunday.

Packing break. . .

Hello everyone,

Thanks for stopping by my new blog. At this point I don't really have anything exciting going on. I'm packing. Yeah. Fun.

So this blog is basically going to be a PG-rated chronicle of my studies and travels abroad. I'll make it a hearty mixture between text and photos so you won't have too many boring words to read. Rejected titles include:

An American in Aix

Christin's Aix-cellent Adventure

and

The Year in Aix: A Novel of Terror

This year will be a blast. If I seem any bit un-enthused, it's because, holy cow, I should have packed last week. If any of you are interested in Skyping, my user name is christinmneary.

Here's a picture of a nice boat from St. Malo. I'm still figuring out how to nicely integrate text and photos. The pic from above is from Mt. Saint Michel.

I'll be back in a few days with a much more exciting post! Happy Monday!

French vocabulary word of the day:

packing: faire les valises

Ce soir, je faisais la valise quand une jupe m'a attaqué avec sa zipper.