Week Ten: Warm Weather in Provence?!

Hello Readers,

Even though we are in the south of France, this week was the first week of actual nice weather in Aix.   We spent this week in class and exploring the many parks in and around Aix. We found two that we really liked: Parc Jordan and Pavillon de Vendôme.

This weekend, Katherine's roommate from home was visiting! Friday night, we went out and had fondu for dinner. It was delicious! Saturday, we went with them to Cassis where we spent the day at the beach. It was windy and a bit cool but beautiful. Carly and Jeff went in the water but the others did not want to. After a nice day at the beach we went back to Aix and got dinner together. Easter Sunday was spent relaxing, doing homework and preparing for our next adventure.

Link to Pictures from This Week: http://imgur.com/a/4kTEQ

That's all for now!

Carly and Jeff

Week Nine: Barcelona, Sunshine and Poor Planning

Hola Amigos,

This week wasn't very exciting and you don't want to hear about post-midterm classes do you? Well we will tell you a little just in case. We had a project due in our Environmental Politics class and we rocked it. We knew the answers to all the questions people asked and even had a nice back and forth conversation with the class at the end of our presentation. 

This weekend we took a group trip planned by a local travel company in Aix. It was very affordable and it included a bus to and from Barcelona, housing while in Barcelona and a bus tour of Barcelona. We would later come to find out why this was so affordable.

On Friday, we awoke early to catch a 6:00 AM but to Barcelona. The bus ride was long and uneventful. We stopped at a small bus station to get a snack and continued on our way; all the while wondering what the accommodations were to be and what was included in the cost of our trip. We arrived in Barcelona around 1:00 PM still with no clue as to where we would be staying. We got off the bus and walked with our group of about 50 people to a small youth hostel. We were given keys to our room and we were told to meet tomorrow at 10 AM for a bus tour of the city. We got to our room and met our three roommates Alex, Lan and Sandra. We were eager to explore Barcelona and immediately took off. We left the hostel into beautiful sunshine. We saw an ice cream stand and, of course, got some. Jeff suggested that we go to the beach so we began in that direction. It took about twenty minutes to get there and when we arrived we couldn't have been happier. We sat for about an hour at the beach until our hunger overtook our joy of the sun. We got some lunch at a restaurant near the beach; the food was delicious! After our meal, we headed back to the hostel where we met up with our roommates. After chatting with them in the room for a while, we discovered that they were all students studying abroad in Aix too! Alex was from Italy, Sandra from Montreal and Lan from the Netherlands. They were very nice and we quickly became friends. Lan then told us that she had a friend from home who was studying in Barcelona for the seamster and she invited us to go meet up with him and tour Barcelona a little more. We wandered around a little bit with them and afterwards, got pizza for dinner.

The next day we awoke in time to get our breakfast which, in the end, left a lot to be desired. Our breakfast turned out to be two pieces of hard-as-a-rock bread, with some jam. After we forced down our breakfast we headed towards the bus. We boarded the bus five minutes before 10, like we were told. However, the second-in-command, Thomas, was no where to be found and we "could not leave without him". So, we waited for about 30 minutes before he finally showed up and our bus tour could commence. On our bus tour, we saw Plaza de España, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, La Font, the Olympic Stadium and La Sagrada Família. We were also supposed to see Gaudi's houses and Parc Güell but the bus driver could not figure out how to get there and so the tour guide decided that we didn't need to see those and ended the tour there. So, our group of five went back to the hostel to relax for a while. After, we went to the fountain again to see the fountain show. We stayed for a couple hours and decided it was time for dinner. We went back to the main street where we sat outside and ate our dinner. Carly had a chicken paella and Jeff had pizza. Once we finished dinner, we found out that Sandra and Carly had never had churros before. Jeff thought that to be unacceptable since we were in Barcelona so we set out in search of good churros...and we found them! We walked into the small restaurant and ordered churros for all five of us. They were delicious!! They had just been cut and cooked and the chocolate that we had with them was so good. After our delicious meal and dessert, we headed back to the hostel to go to sleep.

Sunday, we awoke early with Sandra to go to Parc Güell since we didn't get to see it on our bus tour. We took the metro and arrived at the Parc. We enjoyed the beginning of our day there wandering around and admiring the architecture. When we had seen all we could at the parc, we decided it was time to leave. We found out that Sandra had never been to the beach in Barcelona before so we spent the rest of our day relaxing in the sand and sun. Around 4:00 PM we went back to the hostel, got our bags and boarded the bus to go back to Aix.

Link to pictures from Barcelona: http://imgur.com/a/Iv4Yo

Adios,

Carly and Jeff

Week Eight: Green Birds and Roller-Coasters

Hello Readers,

The beginning of this week was quite the roller-coaster. Jeff switched host families because his original host family wasn't really interested in being a family. We think that she was just doing it for the money. She had no interest in spending anytime getting to know Jeff and would shun him when he attempted to communicate with her. That and her son would have friends over and party in the house until six in the morning and the host mother would just leave and come back in the morning. Jeff talked to the housing director Margaux and she said that she could definitly move Jeff and put him in a family with people who will want to be a family to him and really spend time getting to know him. So far it has been a much better experience. They have been incredibly kind and welcoming. Jeff already feels more at home with these people. There is a host mother (Santa), a host long term boyfriend (Frederic), a host sister (Marie), and a host dog (Victor). Marie is 17 and a very hard working student. She is nice and quiet and likes reading. Frederic works in antiterrorism and went to college for a major very similar to political science. He likes motorcycles, current events, cars and he collects and writes magazine articles about knives. Santa is a teacher who likes talking and travel. Victor is a small brown dog that is a little scraggly but is a nice little fellow. This house is a good fit for Jeff.

We had our hardest midterms this week and one of the midterms was for our Economic Globalization class. This class has been the least organized mess of a class either of us have ever taken. We started the class with a teacher who was unfamiliar with teaching english students and was from Eastern Europe and had a very thick accent that was difficult to understand. This teacher would always start the class with a plan for the class. Telling us her plan would take half the class and then we wouldn't have time to cover all of the material she had outlined so we were consistently behind. This teacher was replaced a quarter of the way of the semester and the new teacher came into the class thinking we had covered all the information we were supposed to when we had really covered about half of it. Everyone in the class was very stressed about the midterm because none of us had learned the information we were supposed to. The second teacher is the polar opposite of the first. She goes way too quickly and doesn't really go into enough depth for anyone to get a real feel for the information. We would really just like a happy medium. The positive of all of this is we have good professors for our other classes and we will probably never have to take another class with these teachers. 

On top of our scary midterm, this Wednesday Carly's phone was stolen. Which just added a whole lot more stress to an already poop of a day. Carly and I spent the day teaching ourselves the information and doing our best to understand it. We took the midterm that night and we both felt okay about it. We still haven't received the midterms back so we do not know yet, but that is very indicative of how this course has been run.

Friday: After a tough week, we hoped to be able to relax when the weekend arrived and we were not disappointed. We took a slow train to Toulouse. It took us about 4 hours to get there and on the way we saw many great things. During the ride we past a cool castle in the town Beiezers, we watched two episodes from the most recent season of Top-Gear, and we passed Narbonne and Carcassonne (a cool, old, fortified city). We arrived at the station and walked from there to our hotel. We were both starving so we went in search of food. We found a local thai food place and we decided that is what we wanted. The owner was very unfriendly and slightly unkind but the food was phenomenal. We were very happy to finally have some good thai food in France. After food we were full and tired so it was time for bed.

Saturday: We woke up and ate free hotel breakfast. The food was not nearly as good as the free breakfast we had had previously but hey, it was free. It was raining so we donned our raincoats and umbrellas and headed out to explore. We saw a few very cool sights that you can view in the pictures (we did better picture labels this time). We had local pizza hand made in front of us. It was delicious. We took a rainy day nap and watched one more Top-Gear before heading out and seeing a play at the Toulouse National Theater. We stopped before getting to the theater and had a quick meal at an American restaurant. The food again was really good. We got to the theater and got our tickets and some coffee and headed into the play. The play was L'Oiseau Vert. It was captivating. It was completely in French which was a little tough but we both understood most of it. It was a great experience and the play was really well done. After the play we headed back to the hotel and went to bed. 

Sunday: We woke up and ate hotel breakfast again. We went and saw more sights and we walked along and across the river. Everything was closed on this day (because Europe closes Sunday and Monday). We walked around a little more then we went to the only open place we could find Haagen Dazs where we ordered a chocolate fondue. This came with a bunch of balls of ice cream, some fruit, some cookies and brownies and toppings for all of this. It was super yummy and terrible for us. We had a great time eating it and after we headed to the train station and headed home. On the train we finished the third season of Sherlock. 

It was a wonderful trip and we both really needed a reset after the week we had. 

Pictures from Toulouse:  http://imgur.com/a/okZ46

Until next time,

Carly Ward & Jeff Popek