Little town... it's a quiet village!

Bonsoir! I just got back from the marvelous little village of Vaison la Romaine. It's history dates back to 125 BC and the Roman invasion of Gaulois property. A castle way up on the hillside overlooks the village below. Today that village is inhabited by wealthy vactioners, but while it is freshly renovated (with satellite dishes everywhere) it maintains its very-old fashioned charm. We visited the ruins of wealthy Roman homes. I'm not sure how I feel about fake ruins... but we saw many of those. Apparently, the city wanted to make the ruins look more authentic, so they faked extra ruins. I guess it's so we could visualize what the original structures look like, but really: doesn't imitation ruin the ruins? Nonetheless, the drive to Vaison la Romaine was beautiful and so were each of the 5 sun-spent hours. The "excursion" was part of my Art/Architecture/Archeaology course so our prof was our guide and he explained the organization of the bedrooms (based on the location of the sun at given seasons) as well as how we can tell how they spent their time through artifacts.

A note on the bathrooms: Yes, the Romans did do this in the open- almost a social affair, but me, I'm not too keen on the hole in the floor deal. It was definately worth the 2 euro to track down a "vraie toillette" as we say (and all of which accompanies that).

Look Down and see the beggars at your feet.

Maybe you get that reference ;)





They're partout (everywhere) in the middle of the city. Today I was out in search of chocolate with a friend (oh, the dark chocolate is so delicious here). We ran into a very "shee-shee" tourist shop and found some lovely gourmet chocolates. We pulled the lever gently to release one or two pieces for each of us... voila! maybe 40-50 olive-shaped chocolates landed in our bags. We could not put them back and were too intimidated by the "proprietaire" to leave so we bought the 10 euro's worth of chocolates. Trying to be good, we decided we needed to distribute the chocolates to our classmates toute-de-suite= right away so as to not devour them all in one sitting. But one of many homeless men passed our way and we decided to give him the very expensive bag of candies. He was delighted.





I went dancing on the Pont d'Avignon on Sunday. There's a small price but it was free this weekend due to les Jours de Patrimoine. I don't think anyone else was very into it, but as I said, the song says, we have to dance there! I'll post a picture, but here's the history behind the bridge which, yes Ceri, does not traverse the river.





Le Pont d'Avignon is officially known as le Pont St. Benezet (accent aigu's on the first two e's of course). In the 12th century he had some sort of dream or "divine inspiration" to build a bridge which would connect this part of town to Lyon on the opposite side of the Rhone river. The Rhone at the time posed a large blockade for travelers and merchants. The bridge was mocked, but Benezet eventually convinced the townsmen to help him out. The Pont had 22 arches at its completion, but years of continual flooding eroded a majority of them. Today, it has 4 and it's really just a tourist trap. Many a japonais y visite, l'apperail a la main (et la signe de la paix aussi, super-cool ya know). There's a little placard for St. Benezet on the lower part of the bridge- he was burried there at death although I'm not sure if his body has since been excavated. All in all, it's a lovely place to take a picture and feel le Mistral in you hair.

-the other famous bridge with the 2 sets of arches of which you may be familiar (pictures in pretty much every high school french room) is called the Pont du Gaurd and I'll be seeing it on Friday with the architecture class.

Une Semaine Apres

Salut!

I have been in France for 6 days now, and away from home for 7- but I feel that I have been here for at least a month! Ridiculous, I know. While I'm not homesick in the sick-to-my-stomach, lump-in-my-throat way yet, I do miss my friends and family.

BUT... life is definately pretty sunny here! I will try to figure out how to post some of my pictures directly on this blog. Francoise's apartment is, well, "lovely" might be the right word. Very French. Very cute. A little old-fashioned. My room is to marvelous: a balcony, soft bed, wardrobe. My room overlooks these essential traintracks. It's a very beautiful site; both types of trains go by throughout the day: cargo and passenger (and if you've lived with me for 3 years, you know I know my transportation/exportation vocab en Francais! and yes, I get to use the "fluvial" transport vocab too concerning le Rhone). Anyway, the trains are very "romantic" as I said to my dad, but I don't think many people could put up with their racket at night. The noise is excessive and my bed shook until wee pulled it away from the wall a bit. Francoise does have earplugs- I guess that is what she sleeps with, but I'm afraid I'll miss my alarm. I guess it wouldn't really matter since I seem to be getting up in the middle of the night anyway. Maybe if the lack of sleep continues.

Okay enough of that. La cuisine! It's excellent of course. This is France! I very much like my routine. Francoise is so cute; she bought me cereal for my mornings (which is very American and very unFrench) and SOYMILK! Le lait a soja. So I'm quite happy as far as breakfast is concerned. For lunch, I have access to a "kitchen" at school and I've been buying groceries and making my own lunches, partially to save money, mostly to save time, and it definately helps as far as the whole avoiding mayonaise front goes. Les baguettes are marvelous, fresh, and cheap! What could be better? And they do have wheat ones. This is definately not Belgium; vegetables are a big part of life. Francoise has made me: lentils, beets, stewed tomatoes, carrot salad, zuchini/potato/carrot "puree", and green beans. The emphasis of each dinner is the vegetables in fact, but there is always meat/fish to accompany and always a large salad before hand. And dessert! I'm definately not starving.

The sights: Gorgeous. The south of France has definately earned it's reputation for beauty in my book. It's quite hot here- my guess would be 90 degrees and above most days but there is a strong wind which has earned it's own name: le Mistral. It comes in from the North and becomes somewhat of a storm in this region before flowing down to the Mediterranean. This wind is so strong that it's sound echos against the city walls, knocks children off their feet, and carries light objects left outside with it. There's a lot of complaint about the wind from residents here, but I like it. It's nice and cool on a hot sunny day. People with allergies should be warned though. I understand it will not be as aggravating for allergie-sufferers (or asthmatics) come winter. It is officially "autumn" weather now according to Francoise.

The school: Well, I have not started classes at the French university yet although I am quite anxious for those to begin (anxious and nervous). I love the American University though! I have 6 classes there as of now but will probably drop one or two and replace them with University classes. I usually start class around 9 or 9:30; there are always big gaps in the middle of the day and I often end classes as late as 6pm (18:00). I love it actually because I'm in the middle of downtown! So if I don't have too much studying- I can go shopping! Of course, lecher vitrine (window-liking = window shopping) is better as everything is very expensive.

I also like my fellow classmates very much. We come from different states and I'm learning a lot about different parts of my own country here. I won't say more than this but, I'm quite happy about my background and the "diversity" that's been in my life.

No more boring details for now. Maybe I'll post some pictures. Tonight I will go the movies with some classmates (probably all of them: when you have 17 classmates, how can you be clique-y?) We're going to splurge and eat dinner at a normal time: 7pm maybe. Hurray.

Sending you Much Love and Appreciation,

Moi- whose name translates to French quite nicely unlike many other "American" names.

testing

Sorry, just testing to see if I know what I'm doing on this thing...

Bonjour Mes Amis!

Thank you for visiting my blog (which is a very cute word when read with a French accent). It came to my attention that I should have a "web-log" for my study-abroad when I saw that most all of my French classmates already have one and that their commentary is directed at their friends and families at home. However, the blog space provided by IAU (Institute of American Universities Abroad) is called, The Bloginator. I'm sorry to be stuck-up, but really, I'm trying to impress people with my I'm-a-worldy-student-of -literature- and-the-arts-French/American-Sophsticate air, and well, bloginator is just not helping me out. So I had to get this web address on a site called Blogger.com- which is only a half of a degree more acceptable than bloginator! You can reach me back here at http://myprovinciallife.blogspot.com/(that has two l's).

There are exactly 6 days until my departure- I know this because my cell phone has started beeping at midnight every night, one beep for each day of the countdown. Actually, I like the beeping because the more beeps, the more days I have 1) to get all my things done, and 2) to be in a familiar place with the people I love. Needless to say, I'm getting terribly nervous. I suppose this is normal. En francais we say, "c'est tout naturel" (which is usually used to indicate that things are not at all normal and that you're weird, but it's a good polite phrase anyway).

How to read my blog: for those of you who, like me, need a structured syllabus.
1) check for updates at your leisure- once is a week is sufficient
2) don't judge, I don't plan on being formal. The hamburger paragraph is over-rated.
3) forgive me if you don't understand me; I could be writing in French, or it could be an inside joke, or it could just be a lot of non-sense.

To do my part, I'll try to be religious about writing. I'm going for "what I did in school today" "what weird food I ate today" kind of entries and maybe I'll take a stab at the occasional cultural/political insight if I'm brave. I promise not to write like this is a diary because I don't believe in diaries. I won't try for too much comedy because I'm not a very funny person. I'll try to be honest (but let's face it, this is the internet so I'll keep in mind that anyone could read it). :pI miss everyone already. Oh, I think that you can respond to my entries on this page... you'll have to figure that out for yourselves. Bonne chance!

A la prochaine (Until next time)MOI