Spain? Italy? Nope, Caves!

You know on those long trips where the scenery all starts to blend together and you end up just blacking out and waking up to something totally different?  Morning excursions on a comfy bus are perfect for this...

Medieval Timepiece

Being where Montpellier is located, it is not unthinkable that one of these could take us to Spain or even Italy. Waking up to a body of water on one side and a whole new type of architecture on the other can be a real surprise.  Sadly, none of these excursions took us out o the country, but if I showed you pictures without saying otherwise you might be fooled (that is if I remembered to bring my camera, so instead here is a picture of more French architecture.)

Avignon

Above is the Town of Avignon, which housed the "Palace de Papes," the palace of the pope, back when a sect of Christians left the Vatican and the Catholic church to make their own division, Protestantism; which goes to show even people back then knew when some religion is just to extreme to deal with.  After this, we went once more to the sea, to a town on the Coast called Saint Marie de la Mer, a town which, despite the French name, could have fit right in with Spain.

The one final excursion took us through the river valleys to what looked like basically a whole in the wall- which it turned out to be, and much more.  A several thousand year old one, to be exact- La Grotte De Clamouse.  Now caves aren't particularly photogenic, especially with the whole "flash photography will destroy everything (but all the other unnatural human interaction somehow won't)" rule, but if the tour guide says that a certain rock formation looks like a word you recognize to be a sea creature, you should take a picture of it.

There's also what they call a "light opera" inside one of the bigger rooms, captured here by a certain mustache-adorned person in our group:


Just up the road from this was a small town. And by town I mean more like a village, one with just the perfect amount modernity of to cater to tourists- not that it needs that.  I've used the term "too beautiful to be real" before, but it couldn't fit here better.  The town looks straight out of Italy, and is mostly made up of one single road that winds up the side of the hill, with a path in the middle just wide enough for several people.  There is constantly water flowing down on the sides from springs where people can fill up their water bottles, or just to sit and look at.  Also in the town is a monastery and a church, a little square with restaurants, and pretty much little else.  But to be honest, it was pretty much good that way.

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!