More pics (don't forget to click on them to enlarge)

looking over Moustiers.

Les Gorges du Verdon, aka the Grand Canyon of France.

These are my friends Rachel, Steven, and Seth.

Here they are again in a less normal pose.

More normal again (not wearing clothes and swimming in a canyon).

Pics from the weekend

some building in Marseille. Sorry--were you expecting me to know something about it?

Steven contemplates the existence of Smurfs.

Port in Marseille with a view of Notre Dame de la Garde.

Celina, Laura, and I looking over Moustiers.

The chapel in Moustiers. It's quite a hike to get there. I have no idea how they built it.

Class! (contd.)

So this marks the end of my first week of classes. I went to a total of one (out of three) that I will continue to take in the future.

Originally, I was worried that I'd be taking way too many hours, and then I decided that I needed to do everything in my power to avoid taking classes on Fridays. So now I can add up ten credit hours of classes that I actually want to take ( a cog psy class, a linguistics class, a class about jazz, history of music from the middle ages, and the psychology of music). That's right--I just named five classes and they only add up to ten credit hours. Aw nuts. I'm thinking about begging my program director to give me credit for doing research in a lab. I'm going to be in a lab regardless, so I might as well get the credit for it. (I didn't want credit for it originally because I already fulfilled my research credits, but now that I need two more hours. . . ) I'm sure you're finding all of this absolutely fascinating.

Oh yeah, about the labs. I talked the director of research at the university ( who is American coincidentally), and she gave me the email addresses of some fMRI research labs in Marseille, who I promptly contacted. The bad news is that nobody really wants to train a newbie there. The good news is that the director of research here in Aix told me that I could definitely help out at her lab, which does psycholinguistic research with ERP. Apparently it would be helpful for her to have a native English speaker around because a lot of the subjects in her experiments are native English speakers. It would also be good for me to learn about ERP (although I think I would still prefer to do an honor's thesis next year using fMRI techniques because it's pretty kick ass that IU has an fMRI research facility and that undergrads are allowed to use this six million dollar machine). In a couple weeks I'm going to contact one of the labs in Marseille again, and I will get to visit it and learn about what kind of research they do there. Very interesting stuff, especially to me, since it mostly involves studies about correlations between second language acquisition and ability to learn music and vice versa. Blah blah blah, but I find it fascinating.

Ok, I know I've been bad about uploading pictures, but here are a couple of descriptions that you could easily imagine. . .

Everyone dresses very fashionably here. It's a little intimidating and, at the same time, a little stupid. Sometimes it's hard to tell the women apart--they're all stick skinny and clad in black from head to toe. Sometimes it's hard for me to tell them from Aix's architecture. Example: yesterday I was walking home from class when I noticed something peculiar in centreville (downtown for places not big enough to have a downtown). I saw this tall black lightpost emitting a puff of smoke. I thought, that's odd, even the lightposts smoke here. And then when I neared it, I noticed that there was actually a woman standing next to it smoking. The women here are so skinny and wear so much black that I can not tell the difference between them and lightposts. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will probably not adopt any time soon.

And another funny sight: yesterday, I saw another woman with a tattoo on her bicep. From far away, it looked like a colored rendition of the tradition skull and crossbones, but upon closer inspection, I saw that it was actually a tattoo of a tomato and two carrots that was laid out in the same position as your traditional skull and crossbones. (Don't worry parents--I didn't get any ideas from that.)

And that's my news for the moment. This weekend I've got to get out of Aix. It is absolutely charming, but I need to be taking advantage of my location. I'm at least going to Marseille on Saturday, perhaps someplace else, and on Sunday I plan to scale Mt. St. Victoire. Cézanne liked it, maybe I will too.

French word of the day:
ordinateur (or dee nat er) = computer

Je ne pouvais pas trouver un bot mot pour le mot du jour; alors, j'ai regardé la salle qui m'entoure qui est pleine d'ordinateurs et puis j'ai choisi ce mot très banal.

Class!

This is the Place de Vendôme where I had that picnic in a previous entry. 

Yeah, sorry about that drought in blog posts. I was actually feeling a little homesick and didn't really feel like admitting that. But I'm fine now. Don't miss anyone. Just kidding. It's just that I really like Neil's tailgates. (You guys need to do red and white kebabs with cherry tomatoes, red peppers, and pearl onions. and meat. Get on that.) 

Also, the whole school system here is a little--ok, VERY--disorganized. It's very tricky trying to look up where all my classes are and when they start. You kind of just have to try out different classes for a couple weeks and then decide if you want to enroll in them or not. So far, I've taken two classes that I'm definitely not enrolling in, haha. The first was a four hour long medieval lit class. ewww. The second was a modern French lit class that I think I would actually thoroughly enjoy. A lot of people think 20th century when they think of modern. I know I do. But modern lit in France apparently means anything post 17th century because the language hasn't really changed much since then, thanks to a fairly tight bureaucratic hold on its evolution. American lit doesn't hardly have anything from the 17th century. Funny.

Anywho, despite the fact that I really enjoyed the two professors teaching that second class, I don't think I'm going to wind up taking it because at the end of the class, one of the professors announced what we needed to read for Thursday. I didn't know it had another meeting on Thursday, and unfortunately it conflicts with my "Psychologie de la Musique" class (if anyone needs a translation for that, maybe you should be warned against vacationing in France), which I'm really looking forward to taking.

In total, I'm going to try out about nine or ten classes this week and/or next week. In addition to those previously mentioned, I'll be taking "Jazz, esthetics and sociology," "Cognitive Psychology," "Domains of the Sciences of Language," "History of Music of the Middle Ages," "Ethnomusicology," "Sociology of Music," and "History of the Contemporary Novel."

I started dance classes! I'm taking "rock 'n' roll" which is pretty much a mix between swing and jive. The people there seem very friendly, and there are a lot of excellent leaders, which is all a follow could ever ask for. I was going to take it with a friend, but she backed out on me, which is inconvenient because I don't really enjoy walking there alone. But after class last night, some really nice people asked me if I wanted a ride home, which was much appreciated.

Last weekend, the director of our program was out of town, and my friend Steven was watching her apartment and dog. She has a nice apartment and dog. We took advantage of them. Steven made a really good dinner. Again. You're going to hear a lot about the food he makes because it's really good, and he's probably going to be a chef after spending too much on tuition to get a "real" diploma. We had gnocchi with homemade pesto and a salad with heirloom tomatoes and other yummies, and I made a peach tart. He made the pesto with walnuts instead of pine nuts because, apparently, Italians put pine nuts in their pesto, and Frenchies put walnuts in theirs. I think I prefer the walnuts (he toasted them before putting it in the pesto). Southern France has excellent tomatoes, hence all the ratatouille and tomatoes provencales etc. They can get this saturated red color that makes an Indiana tomato look like. . . I don't know. . . an unappetizing tomato? And the heirloom tomatoes have this plum color to them that looks quite pretty with some fresh greens. Have I gone on about the food enough yet? No? Good. Because my new favorite lunch just might be a sizeable portion of a toasted baguette smothered in either goat cheese or boursin with fresh tomatoes and basil. I haven't been eating a lot of meat here. It's expensive! I'll have to take advantage of my previous host family's butcher shop soon.

Well, that's about all I've got for now. I'll let you know how my classes go as the week progresses.

French word of the day:

faillir (fie year) = to almost? Really, it's a verb that means to almost do something.

Aujourd'hui, j'étais failli convainqu d'acheter un gilet qui couté beaucoup plus que nécessaire, mais heureusement, je n'avais pas assez d'euros avec moi.

I'lll have to add a couple pics later, but this weekend was fairly tame and relaxing. On friday night, we had a little soirée chez nous. Saturday, we picnicked at the Place de Vendome, which has a lovely little mansion surrounded by manicured gardens. I helped Steven prepare the picnic which consisted of sandwiches on baguettes with goat cheese, basil, and tomatoes, the following French potato salad, and a handful of madelaines.

Steven's French potato salad:

Boil cubed fingerling and red potatoes. Chop up one fennel bulb. Emulsify olive oil, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and salt and pepper. Strain potatoes and put in large bowl. Add fennel. Pour dressing over potatoes and fennel and toss in fresh tarragon. Salt and pepper to taste.

It's easy! And you need to try it!

Today there was a huge presentation of all the organizations in and around Aix. I found several places where I could take swing dancing lessons, or something close to it. I also found a schedule of several upcoming concerts. The next couple days I will be selecting classes, and on Tuesday I have a meeting with the director of psychology research at the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille. She's going to match me up with an fMRI neuroimaging lab where I can volunteer in Marseille. Yay!

French word of the day:
pomme de terre (pom de tare) = potato

Il faut que tu essaies la recette de Steven pour la salade aux pommes de terre.

Salut tout le monde! Yesterday, we (the whole group of 30-some students I'm with) went to Marseille for a tour. We spent the morning in the bus riding around town. Marseille is gorgeous. I absolutely love it. Some of my friends and I are going back next Saturday to enjoy it some more. After our morning tour, we had some free time which I used to get in a little bit of shopping (don't worry, Mom, I only came away with a handbag that was on sale) and a little bit of sun at a small beach called the Plage des Catalans. Seth, Rachel, Steven, and I opted to stay a little longer than the rest of the group that went back on the buss at 6pm. We caught another bus back, which was only 4.60euros and completely justifies subsequent visits to the city.

Today, Rachel, Seth, and I took advantage of the sun some more for our first real piquenique. There's a park very close to our apartment full of long expanses of grass, local aixois, and hungry ants. After savoring my carefully constructed sandwich (I've said it before and I'll say it again--there's nothing like a good sandwich), I fell asleep with my book in hand, and I woke up to the sound of local French chatter in little groups around the park and a duet of acoustic guitars. C'est belle, la vie.

Marseille, a view from the basilica Notre Dame de la Garde

Seth and Rachel

Notre Dame de la Garde

interior, it's full of boats because whenever Mary would save a sailor, they donate either a painting or some representation of a boat to the church

Definitely picnicking here in the future

French word of the day:

piquenique (peek neek) = picnic

On a bien mangé à la piquenique aujourd'hui.