Dans le Lubéron

Another week has come and gone! I can't believe how fast time is flying by here. It's almost November!

This past week, I had the horrific experience of taking my first French exam! It was truly horrible. The French system is graded on a 20-point scale, and I have been told that we should expect nothing more than a 14 or 15. Anything above a 10 is considered passing. This exam was in my Langues du Monde class - Langues of the World. Studying for this exam involved memorizing the countless African language phylums, and knowing the different characteristics of each family, including things like its order of terms (SVO, SOV, VSO), its "morphologie et phonologie" and just many many other things that I have had no experience with whatsoever in the past. It was an epic journey. There were about 12 questions on the exam, and there were many multi-part questions that were worth no more than 2 points. The first question - worth an overwhelming 3 points - translates to a mini-essay - something I did not realize until after the exam....All in all, I'm not sure I passed. But I find it all strangely amusing. After the exam, the professor went over the answers, but not without laughing and mocking some of the answers she said she read as people turned in their exams. We'll see how it went next Wednesday when we get them back....

Yesterday, our group took an excursion into the Lubéron region! A 1.5 hour drive north of Aix, we visited 3 cities in the region: Roussilon, Gordes, and Sénanques. These little countryside towns were small, quaint, and breath-taking. They were located up in the mountainous roads, so they often had a spectacular view of the fields down below. In Sénanque, we took a tour of the remote and isolated abbey, where fields of lavender once flourished. The season of lavender was back in June/July, so sadly we didn't get to see any! But I can imagine they were beautiful. And of course, since we were traveling with Madame Masson, she ordered an incredible automnal lunch for us at the classy and chic Le Bastide. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!

Roussillon 

Dessert at lunchtime 

View of Gordes 

L'Abbaye de Sénanque - lavender fields 

Oh and another French adventure this past week! - haircut and perm! You can sort of see it in the photos :) One girl in our group began the trend about a month ago, and my friend and I spontaneously decided to get it done on Thursday, so we went to the same salon. Friday, 5 other girls from our group also headed to the salon. Guess we're all going through a revolutionary hair phase? We all have very limited hair vocabulary, so we mostly just brought photos, and pointed to them, and said something like "Do this, please". But hooray for more French experiences!

4 more days until Madrid and Granada!

Baguette ≠ Baguette

Hello! Apologies for the late blogpost! All has been going well here in sunny Aix, though we are beginning to experience more automnal weather. It is still beautiful though!

Last week, the lovely boyfriend came to visit from the States! We had a wonderful time here in Aix-en-Provence, and even made it up to Paris for two days. Sadly, it was raining while we were in Paris, and the days we spent in Aix were the coldest we've yet seen. But no worries! We enjoyed delicious French pastries (macaroons!), yummy dinners, and even home-cooked meals. It was a delightful visit!

In other news, I have my first French exam coming up next week! It is in my linguistics class - Langues du Monde, and the exam will be on everything we've covered up until now. The exam will be worth 40% of our final grade. I recently killed a whole forest printing the powerpoint slides from class. Sadly, the french do not believe in double sided printing, which makes me sad. But that just means I should really make use of all the pages I printed!

Also - there are now less than 2 weeks until our Toussaint break! When I last posted, I was headed to Madrid and Marrakech, but alas! Our plans have changed. My friends and I were all excited and pumped up for our trip, when one day, Ryanair decides to drop some devastating news into our inboxes. They had changed the time of one of our flights, Madrid to Marseilles, and it was now 30 minutes earlier than before! This sadly meant that we would have only 30 minutes between our two connecting international flights: Marrakech to Madrid, and then Madrid to Marseilles. And that simply will not do. So with heavy hearts, we decided to cancel the Morocco leg of our trip, forgoing the money already . But in other news, we now have new travel plans!!! After spending two days in Madrid, my friend and I will be headed down south, to Granada! Here are some beautiful photos courtesy of Google. So our enthusiasm level has re-mounted, and we are now once again equally excited.

And now back to the title of this blog post....I learnt something very interesting today! After our translation class this morning, my friend so cleverly suggested we go pick up some sushi for lunch. Delighted, we head off to Sushi Shop, and make our orders for sushi. I ordered a 6-piece eel maki, and when she asked me if I'd like soy sauce, I said yes. Then, she asked if I'd like a baguette with my meal. Why of course I would!!! I was pretty excited. Baguette with my sushi?! That is a combination I have never tried before, but  I love baguette, and i love sushi, so I didn't see how that could go wrong. After waiting, we received our orders, and we check in the bag to make sure we got everything. But to my dismay, I saw no baguette. I went back inside, and kindly asked the lady that they had forgotten about my baguette. She smiled and said that they had not forgotten! The baguette was inside the bag. She reached in, and she pulled out not a loaf of delicious French bread, but a pair of chopsticks! BAGUETTE = CHOPSTICKS. There were explosions in my head. But I was glad to have learnt the word.

Anyway, that's all for now!



p.s. This was almost going to be a photo-less post, but then I decided it wouldn't be as exciting. So here is a photo that has nothing to do with the blog post, but is one of my favorite places in Aix!

Place Albertas - look at the difference in the renovated and un-renovated parts!

Fête de la Vendange!

Vendange in French means grape-harvesting, and that's exactly what we did today! After a nice restful sleep to recuperate from yesterday's hike, we headed out to the house of two of our dear program-mates. We had to take a bus there, but within 15 minutes we had arrived at the château. The house was beautiful! Behind the house was a giant stretch of vineyard, and we all headed out there to gather bags and bags of grapes! Delicious! The afternoon was then spent lounging by the pool, tanning in the beautiful 80 degree Aixoise weather, admiring the beautiful view of St. Victoire in the distance, and soaking in the beautiful life in the south of France.
Our dear hostesses then treated us to freshly squeezed grape juice, crepes with Vermont maple syrup, nutella, and apricot confiture.

Walking in fields of grapes

All photo credit goes to the ever so wonderful Becky Reeve.


While sitting there by the pool in the sun today, I was just thinking about how lucky we are to be here! And how blessed we are to have this opportunity and enjoy all these wonderful things :) What a ful-filled weekend!


Bisous, xoxo

On top of the World

Today we spent the day climbing Mt. Saint Victoire!

Before I talk about our adventures on Saint Victoire, a recap of the week: This week was spent calmly going regularly to classes, eating delicious French pastries as per usual, and enjoying the South of France. But something exciting!! - I bought tickets for our October Toussaint break! I will be headed to Madrid and Marrakech with Becky, Emma, and Evan! I have never been to Spain before, so I'm very excited for Madrid. As for Marrakech - I never thought I would be going back to Morocco so soon! You can read about my summer in Morocco here.  Though I never made it to Marrakech this summer, so I'm excited to go there, this time with my friends. Should be a wonderful experience!

So. Saint Victoire. My day began at 6:30am, because we had to meet at the gare routière at 8am for the bus. On the way to the station, we stopped by Paul's to buy sandwiches for lunch. We arrive at the station nice and early - 7:40am, and no one else was there. We didn't think anything of it until 7:55am - still no one....turns out the station is NOT the same thing as the gare routière!! The gare routière was another 5-7 minutes away! Luckily, the group waited for us.
The bus took our whole group, and a few other passengers and we set off for Saint Victoire. The bus ride was only 10 minutes. We arrive at this desolate bus stop, in the middle of no where, no mountain in sight, and we get off. Driver and passengers alike gave us the strangest look, one that said "This is definitely not where you want to get off for Saint Victoire". But we stuck by the instructions given to us by our guide, M. Baury, and we get off and wait. But after 10 minutes of standing there, we began to worry. We considered hiking by ourselves, walking 45 minutes back to Aix, staying there stranded, and many other terrible ideas. We were just minutes away from reenacting scenes from Lord of the Flies - Wellesley edition, when M. Baury finally shows up!
So begins our hike! The route up the mountain was full of small pebbly rocks and sliding stones. A dangerous hike! The worst was when we thought M. Baury told us there would be a place to refill our water bottles at the top of the mountain. Everyone started chugging down their water, believing we'd soon be replenished. One person even began to "water the plants on the ground." But upon arrival at the Prieuré, there was no such thing....we're still not sure if M. Baury had been joking, or if all 15 of us misunderstood his French. If he was joking, we have learnt that humor does not translate across languages.
Anyway, it took us almost 3 hours to get to the top of the mountain - Le Prieuré - where we sat down for a nice picnic lunch. And the view sure was breath-taking! The descent was equally challenging. The rocks kept gliding, and more than one of us slid on the rocks - even on flat land. But we made it down around 4pm! A long, but rewarding day! The weather was perfect today, and the water was an unimaginable turquoise.

Mt. Saint Victoire

It's hard to believe that we climbed all the way to the top! 

Tonight we celebrate 4 of our dear program-mates' birthdays! And tomorrow we head out to the vineyards to gather grapes and olives. A lovely weekend, and a wonderful week to come! :)


Sending love, xoxo