Last few hours in Aix

In a few hours, I'll be walking my suitcases to the bus station, hopping a bus to Marseille Airport, and checking in for my flight to Dublin (with a quick pit stop in Amsterdam).

This is goodbye, Aix, and goodbye to my French life. I think what I'll miss the most is living with multiple languages.

Sure, it's tough sometimes. I turned in a literature final the other day in which I described the main character's struggle with "length" (longueur) instead of "lethargy" (langueur). I ordered the wrong thing for dinner a few nights ago because I got sick of asking the waiter to repeat himself and instead just responded "Yes" to everything he asked. It was still delicious.

But I can understand practical French in most day to day settings now (also discovered recently that I can still understand basic Mandarin as well, but that's a different story). And I can get my point across coherently, even if not necessarily grammatically correct. Plus, I'm a fabulous eavesdropper.

I watch Netflix with French subtitles and laugh when I find French phrases like "It's not your onions!" instead of the English "None of your beeswax!" even though both make very little sense when read literally.

I'm still continuing Harry Potter in French, which is fun because I usually end up playing a game of "Is that a French word or is that a made up magical word?" and 50% of the time I'm wrong. I salute whoever translated the books, though - in order to keep up the ruse of Tom Riddle using an anagram to form "I am Voldemort" or in this case, "Je suis Voldemort," they had to make his middle name Elvis.

 

 Jokes aside, I'll still be looking for more ways to keep up my French.

I'll definitely miss the weather here. It's not quite the heat of Sevilla, but a far cry from the frigid cold of Boston. 

Still, it's been tough to get into the holiday spirit when it's 60 degrees out. In the morning when it's colder I listen to Christmas songs and by the time the temperature creeps up past 50 it just doesn't feel right anymore. 

So, I guess I'm just Dreaming of a White Christmas....

(But after Christmas, I'd like to go right back to 60 degree days, please and thank you.)

Rome, Lyon, and Avignon - oh my!

My last three weekends were spent in Rome, then Avignon, then Lyon.

First, the weekend after Thanksgiving the London Crew and I hopped on a plane to Rome at sunset.

We got in around seven, promptly went out for pizza and fried mozzarella. On our way, we spotted this sign:

I've heard of park and ride, but this was a new one.

In the morning we got up bright and early and made our first stop the coliseum. Pro tip (which we read online): go early. Like, go when it opens. When we arrived first thing the line was pretty short - by the time we were finished an hour to an hour and a half later, it was at least 10 times as long.

Now, I don't know about you, but my knowledge of most of Europe comes exclusively from things I've seen in movies. For the Coliseum, that means the film Jumper, where Hayden Christensen teleports his way into the lower level (which is unfortunately off limits to mere mortals) just to impress Rachel Bilson. Afterward, they promptly get arrested. 

Our visit was a little less eventful than theirs, but still nice. I discreetly followed a french tour group around the second floor and got to hear a little bit about the history beyond gladiator fights to the death.

Afterward, we took an adventure on the metro into the city to see some of the sights (another pro-tip: buying metro tickets sucks in Rome. Bring plenty of coins to make exact change!).

We made it to the Trevi fountain, where we did our best Lizzie McGuire impression and threw coins into the fountain while making outrageous wishes. Between this and that magical French well I drank from a few weeks ago, 2017 should be my luckiest year yet!

We saw the sights, we saw the city, we ate more pizza (hey, when in Rome...).

 

It was a short but amazing weekend.

The first weekend in December we went on an organized day trip to Avignon, where we started out at the 3rd most visited site in France, the Pont du Gard.

Our plan of action after that was to visit the infamous Christmas market in Avignon. We got to the city, walked over the ramparts and past the famous Palace of the Popes - which was home to the heads of the Catholic church for 70-odd years in the 14th century - and promptly discovered that there was no Christmas market to be found.

Due to the state of emergency in France and the threats that terrorist organizations have made, especially surrounding events celebrating Christmas, Avignon made the call to forego their Christmas market for the first time this year

Fortunately for us, there was still plenty to see and do. There was a telethon happening in the main square which included musical performances (shout out to the older men's choir and their saucy choreography), service dogs doing tricks and receiving many pats, and an amazing food truck.


The big event this past weekend was our day trip to see the Fête des Lumières in Lyon. 

I posted a video advertising the Fête at the bottom of my last post if you want to see some better examples, but here are my pictures from that day of the beautiful but smog-covered city:

The streets were packed. Hardly any of us had cell service so we had to use the buddy system and just hope that we would find each other in the end, which we did! We got to try hot wine and Aligot, a French specialty of cheese mixed with mashed potatos which somehow comes to an almost glue-like texture. Below you can see them lifting a big hunk of Aligot from the pot.

Even though the city streets were packed to the brim, the light shows were well organized and there was a lot of staff on hand to deal with the crowds. While shuffling through crowds of tourists, I did think a few times of the threat of terrorism looming over France and most of the continent (and the world), and how easy it would be to target an event like this where you have a huge group of people all stuffed into a small space together.

Luckily, Lyon made it through the weekend unscathed, but the same can't be said for Cairo or Istanbul, or Aleppo, whose struggle continues, and I'm sure for a lot of other cities in the world which haven't made major news. While I enjoy my last few days in Aix and head home for the holidays, they'll be on my mind.

In the Classroom

It's easy to forget, with all the traveling that I've been doing, that I actually came here to study. Monday through Thursday (no classes on Friday!) for the past few months you would have found me sitting in a classroom in the foreign student building at the Aix-Marseille University campus just south of Aix city-center.

Unfortunately, we have now gotten Finals. In fact, we're in the middle of two weeks of testing. Last week I had two finals, next week I have one more and my language test.

The language test is made up of two parts - on Monday I'll sit for a three hour exam which will include listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing comprehension. On Thursday I'll be given a topic at random, ten minutes to prepare a presentation, and then 10 minutes to present on the topic to a professor of the school in order to show that I can actually speak French (though the jury is still out on this).

French grading is very different than American grading. For starters, they grade on a scale of 1-20 rather than 1-100. Fortunately, any grade over a 14 is typically considered an 'A' in the US. This is good news, because it's incredibly rare to receive anything higher than a 12-14 out of 20.

The reasoning for this is simple; it's a language course meant to challenge you. If you're getting near perfect scores, that means you're not being challenged and you should have been placed in a higher level to begin with.

Really, we're all just striving to be 'average,' which would never be tolerated in the US.

When I took my language placement test back in the first week in September, I placed into a higher level based on my grammar and my writing skills. However, since I hadn't spoken French in 2 years and rarely ever with a native French speaker, my speaking skills were rusty, so I got bumped down to where I am now. As a result, in some areas I feel confident and in others (hello upcoming presentation on an unknown topic) I'm feeling a little apprehensive.

Either way, I'm confident I'll pass (knock on wood) and by this time next week I'll be packing up to leave, then making a pit stop in Dublin, and finally heading home to Pennsylvania.

Before any of that, though, I'm taking a break from studying to head to Lyon tomorrow to see the annual light show that started last night. If you aren't familiar with it, watch the video below and prepare be amazed.