Everyday is Weekend

After about a week our rights to our own private campus started to dissapear as students from other programs started theirs, as well as regular students to the school and dorms started appearing. Another exchange student, this one from Germany, came to be one of one of our friends.

In many places that aren't the United States, the legal drinking age is 18 (not that anybody checks id's here in France anyways) so basically anyone going to college can drink.  Basically, our Germany boy- let's cal him Fabbie- knew his way around the clubbing scene for a while, whereas some people in our group couldn't even legally drink in their home country.  To top it off, Fabbie comes from a country that, every October, holds a party that lasts half the month and focuses on nothing but drinking.  There is even a Germany word- Bierleichen (meaning beer corpse)- which is used to describe people you see lying around after consuming too many steins of their favorite non-water liquid.

It's still mostly summer for most people here who don't really have to wake up at 8 in the morning to go to class, but even if they do it doesn't really stop them from doing it anyways.  European clubs, even during the week, just start warming up right about the time American clubs would shut down for the night.  Fabbie was all about this.  I don't know what classes he had, if there even were any, or what time he would have to wake up, but it didn't seem to matter to him.  His response in his funny "English is my second language but I still speak it better than most Americans" way:

'Monday is still weekend."

Which makes sense I guess, some people may not have hard class at the beginning of the week, until you ask  him about the other days of the week:

"Tuesday is weekend." "Wednesday is weekend." "Thursday is weekend." "Friday is weekend."

So what do the German people have to teach us about the days of the week?  Every.  Day.  Is. Weekend.

The above picture shows the best time of the "Weekend."  Estival.  Every Friday during summer, Montpellier, various shops, and the various wine makers of the region (Langedoc-Roussin) come together to make one of the biggest open air fesitval/markets.  5 Euros gets you a glass and three tickets to get a glass of wine of your choosing that you can savor while looking at the various stalls, listening to the bands, and smelling the foods that come from all over the world.

La Region

Excursion to wine city complete with degustation (wine tasting).

Nîmes et le Pont du Gard

More pictures!

Colosseum

The Church

Inside

The Forum

The Pont du Gard

The Gard (River)

People and Places

Bonjour again from France-- no, I didn't die from bad McDonalds, get ran over by a train, or get lost so bad that I couldn't even find the internet.  I'm sure had a great idea for a post a while ago, but like most of my great idea that practically write themselves in my sleep, standing in the shower, or sitting on the tram, they depart as fast as they arrive.

After staying in a nice hotel our first night in Montpellier, we went to the airport to get picked up by our program guides, where we met with various people from our program, English speakers from all over the states (as well as one from Australia) who had come to learn French, but for the time being had come to relieve us from having to be alone and speak nothing but French for three weeks.

In between meeting new people, catching up on sleep, and getting shuffled around between dorms-cafeteria-campus at way-too-early hours of the morning, we were able to go on a few excursions around the "way too pretty to be real" south of France.  I hardly remember any of the names of the places we visited, but the pictures speak for themselves (captions help too.)

Nimes

Colosseum in Nimes,  People used to kill each other here.

Le Pont du Gard.  There is a river underneath that we swam in.

One of the best pizzas I have ever had.

Other things we did besides stare at massive buildings built by nothing but manpower and eat delicious food include; going to the beach and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, riding the tram to far ends of Montpellier to go shopping at stores the size of Rhode Island (Ikea), as well as enjoying (probably too much) the night life here...




(If you haven't guessed yet, "..." means stay tuned for my next post!)

Viva La France, Viva Moi

So it's been a little over a week since I arrived here in France, and between missed flights, language barriers, strange bedfellows, tons (non-metric) of baggage, and unknown rendez-vous, I have not had time to post anything until now.

Everything from the beginning is now pretty much a blur for me, so until I reach more current events, this will be a stream of consciousness.

Leaving San Francisco, the plane was delayed by an hour due to a mysterious "Is-there-doctor-on-board?" illness.  The remainder of the 10 hour plane flight consisted of sleeping uncomfortably and intermittently with the small airplane pillow propped in various positions.  Getting off in Frankfort, Germany, my connecting flight to Marseille, France was just closing it's doors, so I ended up having to take another flight at 9 P.M. Euro time, which brought me to France at nearly midnight.  Funny little language thing- Frankfort is spelled Francfort in French, which would have severely confused me at the baggage carousel if it was not late night and mine was the only arriving flight.

After a long (and expensive) cab ride that made me wonder if he was purposely ripping off the fresh-off-the-plane tourist by driving around randomly (don't worry, he wasn't), I arrived at the hostel in old-port Marseille, where I found out that I had actually booked a mixed room- and ended up with 3 girls as roommates for the night.  After finding out I had little to no contact with anybody, including the people from Humboldt I was supposed to meet there, I resigned myself to laying down on the lumpy pillow and waiting for morning.

The next morning I was glad to hear a knock at my door and see familiar faces behind it. Christine and Julie and myself then made our way to the station, and after figuring out the difference le train and le métro and how to buy a train ticket, we sat down for our first real meal in France...

Not so big.

Ancestors/Ancêtres

Oh, Europe?

I had relatives who used to live over there.

It was a couple hundred years ago, then these new colonies called “America” became all the rage...



Ah, L'Europe?

J'avais du famille qui y vivait.

Il y a environ deux cent ans, puis ces nouvelles colonies ont fait fureur...

Omlette Du Fromage

You guys know you remember this episode...
One week before I leave!

Vous savez que vous vous souvenez de cette emission...
Seulement une semaine avant de partir!

Bays, Bridges, and Buildings

The title of this blog translates to "good travels, well traveled."  In my lifetime, however, I would hardly like to say that my travels have been anything particular exciting, nor am I well traveled.  But it's slowly going that way.

This past weekend, I got up at 4 am in the morning to take the three hour drive down to San Fransisco California to stop at the French Consulate in order to obtain my visa. 

I know people who are familiar with big cities who would say that San Fransisco is fairly small.  However, being from a town where only one building has an actual escalator, it was something big to me.

At the consulate, I met a girl who had to come all the way from Alaska to get her visa in order to go to Paris to study.  Another couple was there from Washington- the San Fransisco Consulate is the only one available for people living to the north and north east of California, which is a bummer for people living out in the hills of Montana or something.  Then there's my Study Abroad buddy (hi Christine!) who lives like less than an hour away.  Luck of the draw.

Talking to the girl with the thick accent behind the glass was unnerving to say the least, which wasn't helped by the presence of a broken microphone, but it made me realize it was going to be along road ahead if I was having trouble trying to understand the French accent, especially if it was only in my native language...