First blood

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So here we are. The first time I have actually sat down to pen my thoughts in god knows how long and in all honesty, I'm pretty excited to see what will emerge! I was actually hoping I would get around to doing this a few days ago so I guess I'll make up for it by providing a quick executive summary of the past week.

I arrived in France on the 29th of May, ready to embark on a 2 month long immersion around the south in the beautiful Provencial town of Aix-En-Provence. However, no sooner than had I stepped off the plane at Marseille airport did I realize that my precious, priceless and all-important Green Card was nowhere to be found. That one insignificant little piece of plastic that was permanently nestled safe and sound behind my credit cards had disappeared and it really is the only thing in the world that lets me back into the US. Naturally, I shat my pants - only figuratively though because at that precise moment my Student Co-ordinator Karen Garibian showed up to pick me up and that wouldn't have made for a pleasant first meeting.

Fast forward several panicked hours, phone calls, emails and faxes to the US embassy in Marseille later that day, I discovered that while they couldn't actually replace my Green Card right away, they could write me a letter that would ask very kindly please Mr. Immigration Officer in JFK Airport please let Kabir Seth into the United States. Or something to that effect. We will just have to wait and see on that front - I don't even want to imagine what I'll do if I'm denied entry into the States when I return for university. Back to France for now.

As I said, I'm in Aix-En-Provence, situated about 20 minutes north of Marseille and have just begun a 2 month long intensive language program here at the Universite Paul Cezanne. Hopefully by the end of it I should be fluent enough to fool the 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys', the highly amusing term of endearment used by my good friend Alex back in the US. I'll skip the first four days and truly begin my first travel blog recounting my experiences yesterday of a guided tour of the absolutely gorgeous and awe-inspiring Luberon region.

It's 9 30 in the morning and I find myself with my roommate Taylor Roholt, waiting at Aix's Office de Tourisme for our guide and the bus to show up. Taylor is another student from the States doing the same program with me, although he's only here a month. Really nice fellow, my age, originally from New Mexico but is now a track runner at Williamette College in Oregon studying French. A bit quiet but I think he just needs a little time, and beer, to get out of his shell. We're both at a decently advanced French level which is really good because we just kind of talk to each other in French whenever we feel like and really, any practice I can get is welcome. But I digress. So after a few minutes Georges, a very amicable 50+ year old native of southern France shows up and leads Taylor, myself and about 30 other Swedish kids to our first stop; L'Isle sur le Sorgue - an utterly boring little tourist trap that help no excitement for me until I turned around once and found a foot long knife near my throat, only to realize that resting on the blade were several little piece of cheese that a decidedly over-zealous vendor was encouraging me to sample. Needless to say I bought 100g of a particularly strong form of Emmental that is sitting in my fridge right now, molding away.

By the time we returned to the bus, I was pretty disenchanted with the whole tour and was dreading spending the rest of the day visiting repetitive, septuagenarian infested towns. And then I saw, at the back of the bus, two pebbles of dark hair almost hidden under the sandy beach of platinum blonde Swedes that belonged to a pair of heads I knew were' not part of the 'grupp studerande'. Knowing that this was an opportunity to make the trip infinitesimally more interesting, as soon as we got off at our next stop, la Fontaine de la Vaucluse, I grabbed Taylor and said "Let's go practice our French". Two minutes later, I had introduced myself to Julia, a petite and very tanned German from Stuttgart and Anna, the slightly taller with cliched-olive-skin Spanish girl from Pamplona (the city famed for its annual 'Running of the Bulls'). and from then on, we four became our own group within the tour and seeing as French was the only common language between us, it all worked out rather perfectly for me. The final two stops were Rousillon, a 100 million year old sea bed that is now rich in iron oxides that allowed it to become the ochre capital of the world and La Gourde, a small but extremely beautiful town literally built into the mountain. If there was ever a truer definition of quaint, I have yet to see it.

Throughout the tour I found myself very attracted to Anna - she has a very svelte frame topped off by an extremely pretty face that I really could not stop looking at! All my attempts at 'se draguer' were met with very encouraging smiles but sadly, nothing did, and really could, emerge from our brief first encounter. As a consolation for my efforts, however, she did give me a her phone number in France and email address. She is also doing a language study program here, although her school is different to mine. Unfortunately she is to be in Brussels this weekend but by the next I'm hoping I'll be able to persuade her to make a trip down to Aix for a night out. Stay tuned.

And finally, that brings us to today, the 2nd of May, 2008 - the first day of classes at IEFEE for my two month stint. We had taken a placement exam over the weekend and I was pleased to discover that, along with Taylor, David (student from Georgia) and some other cool kids from the program that I had met), I had tested into the most advanced level. All in all, the first day was relatively uneventful - 'la professeur' managed to talk for about 4 hours straight, from which the only half interesting thing was a 15 minute oral presentation to be prepared for next Wednesday, which should be interesting.

Luckily, the day got more interesting after that as I got invited to travel to Nice and Monaco this weekend by David and his roommate Zach, also from Georgia. I had already been to the bars a few times with these guys and we get along really well, partly due to the fact that we're probably some of the only guys in the program itself! Either way, soon after class, Taylor and I went to buy bus tickets, which was an experience in itself! Thinking that our initial efforts in asking for a ticket were more than satisfactory, the lady behind the window did an extremely irritating, but commonly occurring thing, of replying to us in English. Not one to back down, I persisted in replying in French. Then, la vendeuse took it upon herself not only to issue my ticket, but also to correct my French and make me speak in complete sentences as opposed to simply saying 'Oui' ou 'Non'!

Finally, I decided to round off the day by joining one of my newly found best friends in France, Angela Princell, for a late-ish coffee at one of the many chic cafes situated smack in the middle of Le Cours Mirabeau. Angela is actually a returning student, having already completed a semester here at Aix in the fall of 2006. A quasi-professional horse rider, she's actually looking for an equestrian related job in France but in the meantime, is taking a refresher course in my school. She also happens to live down the hall from me, which is absolutely great because she knows a ton of people here, including Rashid-Nabil, a 28 year old Moroccan from Marrakesh who's been living in Aix for several years now. I immediately got along with Rashid, even though I can only talk in French to him. Rashid is basically the kind of friend I've been looking to make in Aix; a local who is patient enough and willing to take me under his wing while I continue to improve my French. More than that, he is a real character.

We had only met a few hours, and by this time Angela had already left, leaving me and Rashid to continue sipping our coffee. I was explaining to Rashid that I had found it difficult to approach the French ladies here, because I thought them to be especially cold with foreigners and was lamenting how it was the opposite story for American girls, who would attract the local skeezes in droves, knowing that their Franglish was enough to bed them. Eventually, I find out that Rashid is a self-proclaimed player, claiming to have reached a point where he would sleep with three different girls in a day. (I would later confirm this story with Angela) Since then, he says, he has toned down a bit and settled with a slightly older French woman by the name of Stephanie, claiming that physical looks are no longer important to him but more so 'les projets de Stephanie'. which include setting down with him in Marrakesh later.

Either way, he had one piece of parting advice in French that I found particularly memorable, which goes: "Kabir, tu dois etre Italic Textmalin avec les femmes", which is another way of saying that women are all simply puzzles, each with a unique solution. After a few more hilarious anecdotes from Rashid, all involving multiple girlfriends of some sort, we parted but not before he invited me to come play football with him and his friends tomorrow. I found out he's also an ex professional player so I'm a little worried I'm going to get my ass whooped on the field tomorrow but that remains to be seen still.

Anyways, Im about to step out to Le Sextius bar with Angela and some friends now. Much more to continue later. A bientot, Kabir

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