Returning to Civilization

Well, it's been about a week since I got home and I thought I should do one more post, just to wrap everything up. My last few weeks of France were busy and bittersweet. I spent most of my time thinking, "This is the last time I'll go to this park. This is the last time I buy something from Monoprix. This is the last time I'll go to class." It makes one rather melancholy. Nevertheless, I was eager to get home. It's strange, as I expected going to Europe would give me the hunger to go and live in other countries. France is beautiful and lovely, but I'm not sure if I want to live there forever. And while I do have a faint desire to travel to foreign places, it's not the burning passion that I was expecting. At this point in time, all I wanted to do was go home. When I arrived in the airport in the US, there was a giant American flag hanging from the ceiling and tiny flags on every passport checkpoint. There was no question as to what country I was in. It's strange coming home. Everything is bigger and farther away. The people are bigger, louder and wear sweatpants. Sometimes, I don't understand what they are saying and my brain panics and tries to translate the noises they are making into French, rather than English. Despite all of that, I am happy to be home. It is wonderful to be back with my family, to see my friends again and (most importantly) stroke my kitties. So in conclusion, I am very glad that I studied abroad. True, some parts were less than comfortable, but all in all, it was really an excellent experience and I highly recommend it. People say that travel broadens the mind. I'm not sure if my mind is broader, but it certainly is more full. Thank you for reading!

Miscellaneous Adventures

So, it appears that I have been most cruelly neglecting my blog. As it would take a great deal of time to do individual posts of the interesting things that have happened to me, I think it would be better to do a condensed version of events. Let's see...
I discovered the delights of fromage blanc ("white cheese"), which is like yoghurt, but thicker, creamier and less tangy. Delicious, especially with strawberries.

I went to a Renaissance Fair.

This was really great, because the Renaissance actually happened here. It definitely lends credibility to all the people dressed as knights and royalty when they are in front of houses and streets that were genuinely lived in during the Middle Ages and later on.

There were craftspeople doing demonstrations, musicians, a witch telling stories, zillions of merchants and vendors and a good deal of sword fights, which I greatly enjoyed.

Also, there was a massive bull, who was about the same height as me, being quietly led around. He could have easily squashed a child, but it was no big deal apparently. People were just walking up, taking pictures and petting his nose.

My favorite part, however, we the people dressed up at plague bearers. Their costumes and makeup were fantastic and I actually saw one make a small child cry with fear. So you know they were effective.

There was a Carnival parade in Aix. I couldn't figure out what it was about, as there didn't seem to be any relationship between each of the floats.

Later, I found out that the theme was the stages of sleep and dreaming, which explained some of the weirder floats that I saw. Yes, that is a giant eyeball.

And a tree with one eye eating a person.

It was then spring break for two weeks and my parents came to visit. We stayed in a gite (a holiday cottage) in Cotignac for a week and saw some troglodyte dwellings, where people lived to escape from marauders back in the day. You could climb up the tiny path and rickety stairs to about halfway up the cliff, and so we did.

We also learned that my dad would not have been very comfortable in Medieval France.

We saw lots of the tiny charming villages in the area. One had really interesting fountains. My favorite was covered in moss, with the water dripping out of the edges. It sounded really pleasant and soothing, just like rain.

Our dinner was pizza from a van with an actual wood-burning fire inside. Do you see the chimney?

We went to Cassis, hiked the calanques, dipped our toes in the Med and had a lovely time.

This park in Entrecasteaux was apparently designed by André Le Nôtre, the fellow who did the gardens at Versailles.

I have learned that in the countryside and the small villages of France, everything is stupidly beautiful, just begging to be captured with your camera. And so you end up with a thousand pictures of doorways and streets and mailboxes and stray cats with amazing moustaches and flowers and you wonder what on Earth you are going to do with them. And then you remember your blog.

We went to the Gorge of Verdon, where the water really is that color. Apparently, it's something to do with the calcium levels.

We drove to the top and there we saw some escaped lunatics who were rockclimbing a bazillion meters up in the air. They must have been lunatics, as that is the only reason I can think of why they would so something so crazy!

At the end of the Gorge is the perched village of Rougon. See that ruined bit at the top of that lump of rock?

I climbed up there. The view was fantastic, but there were no fences or guard rails or anything. Not even any stairs. I had to scramble up a rock face to get there. Can you see the terror in my eyes?

This is starting to get long, so I will finish my adventures in a second post.

A Day at Cassis

One of the most striking things I have learned during my stay here is that the South of France is really beautiful. And I mean really beautiful-- jaw droppingly, earth shattering, enough to make you stop and think "I could spend the rest of my life here and be perfectly content" beautiful.

That probably sounded a bit gushing, but I just wanted to express my feelings about Cassis. Cassis is a small coastal town just past Marseille. It is known for its beaches, but mainly for its calanques. I'm not entirely sure how to translate "calanque," but it is an inlet in the coastline with little hidden beaches. I visited Cassis on Saturday. This is what I saw.