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Published: October 25th 2011
Note: All the events mentioned in this entry occurred from January to May 2007. For more updated entries and trip, please refer back to this blog at a later date. An updated trip or entry will NOT include a note like this. Thanks and enjoy!
For those of you, dear readers, who have just started reading this blog, the reason why I was in Europe between August 25, 2006 to May 20, 3007 was because I was studying abroad in France. I spent the first semester in a program called CIEF in Dijon, located in the Burgundy region from August 25, 2006 to January 18, 2007 (for more information, please refer to the blog entries entitled "The Arrival," "Cathedrals, Dukes and Monestaries," "First Taste of Wine," "A Day in My Life," and "The Holidays in France-The Basics," as well as "The Move to Aix-en-Provence.") As you will see from this entry in comparison to my previous ones on Dijon, my life in Aix was very different, mainly because I was beginning to change as a person, however socially I was having more luck, so much so that I still keep in contact with several individuals that I met during this
time period, including my host-mother, Camille. However, I also want to give y'all an idea of what it was like living in Aix-en-Provence and attending my program.
At Centre d'Aix with IAU, I was taking 12 credit hours, which for me is an unusually light schedule because back home I was normaly taking 17+ per semester. My classes were as follows: Advanced French Grammar, Advanced French Conversation, Geopolitics in the Mediterranean, European History since 1918, and Meet the Press, which was a journalism class taught completely in French, as were my two language classes. What was nice about this schedule was that I normally had one class a day, sometimes two but I normally had the afternoons to myself as well as a three-day weekend. In comparison to my classes in Dijon, which strictly focused on language and the professors did not have regulations regarding tardiness and grades, these were the exact opposite. I remember having to write a research paper for my Geopolitics class in fact. When I was not in class, I would often spend time in the computer room, the student lounge or in one of the local cafes either for lunch and/or a beverage. I
know I would often eat in the cafes surrounding the Hotel du Ville-there was one that had a great plat du jour deal and also vin du jour, that would normally be around 12 euros! There was also a cute little pasta joint up the street from l'institute Science Politique to where you could get your choice of pasta, sauce, drink and dessert for 7 euros I think! It was a restaurant strictly designed for take out, but the food was good and the staff very friendly. They also had a fidelity card that could be stamped in order to eventually get a free meal, but also allowed me to get a 10% discount! There was also an Italian restaurant that I used to go to along the Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence's primary boulevard, which served really nice, huge salads that I would often eat for lunch. There was also a really nice Vietnamese restaurant I used to go to near school, as well as a Turkish style kebab place and Chinese takeout. There was also a Paul's I would go to from time to time for salads and sandwiches, but there was also a smaller bakery I would go to
for local cookies and desserts. There was also a nice coffee shop that I used to go to near the Boar Plaza, I hope it's still there because the coffee was really good.
My host-mother, Camille, and I would often go over to friend's houses for dinner parties, and she even held one herself. The first one we went to was held at the house of a couple we knew, who served one of the best French meals I ever had! For our first course, we were served a green salad with balsamic vinaigrette and stuffed sweet peppers with goat cheese! For our main course, Mediterranean sea bass, whole and bought that morning from Marseille's Vieux Port district with French style shepard's pie. We ended the meal with a coffee, and wine was served with every course, and also we started the meal with an aperitif, which is normally an alcoholic spirit or sweet wine. The second was held by Camille and myself, in which fois gras was served as the first course with a baguette and braised whole rabbit in red wine for our main. Like most meals served at dinner parties in France, wine was served with
each course and before the meal we each had an aperitif to drink and nice little "bar" snacks to go with it: cheese puffs, potato chips, nuts, tomatoes, olives and herb-ed goat cheese. The third dinner party was held at Arlette's house, who was one of Camille's friends and also a fellow host-mother for the IAU program. For our dinner, she served us the Swiss dish of Raclette. It's like fondu, however you melt the cheese in your individual pan (you use Raclette cheese for this) and then put it on top of vegetables and meat. She had for example boiled potatoes, cured ham, salami, bresciola, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots that we could put our melted cheese on top. Wine was served with the meal, however as usual we had an aperitif to drink (I'm starting to think I need to write an entry on French cuisine, or maybe even several for the near future).
Apart from Camille, there are three other people that I still communicate with from time to time that were classmates of mine at Centre d'Aix. The first was Arlette's student, whom I met during my first day in Aix. At the time she was a
Plaza
This is one of the plazas where I would often go to eat or have a drink at one of the cafes, and there was also a fun candy shop here!student at Tufts University studying international relations and also the daughter of an Armenian working for the UN in NYC. My second and most valuable friend was a young lady born and raised in NYC of Polish/Jewish heritage who was a gifted artist studying at Johns Hopkins University. She was the one that I was hoping to travel with to Oslo (refer to my first entry regarding Oslo entitled "Karl Johan's Gate) however unfortunately these plans fell apart. However, that did not halt our friendship one bit. In fact, we had a weekly ritual in which around 2-5 PM GMT we would meet at a local Irish pub on Friday; we were the only ones in there, yet we'd meet and drink several pints and just talk about everything and anything. Before the semester ended, we exchanged our information and have since kept in contact-in fact I got to reunite with her this past March when I visited NYC (upcoming blog entry in near future on this so keep an eye out for it!) My third friend was a classmate of mine in my Geopolitics in the Mediterranean Basin class, and we recently reunited and got back in contact with
another this summer because we were both colleagues at the same internship.
I was also active in a special group that allowed IAU students to interact with local French college students by meeting up for a beer and conversation. I did this several times and met some really nice people, but unfortunately lost all contact with them. On a different note, of course, I also enjoyed doing lots of book shopping; I had several favorites like the English book store, and there were three others that had a really nice selection of academic books. I still continued to buy Yves Rocher products and I would also shop in Monoprix quite a bit. Before I left Aix-en-Provence to return back to the US, a new shopping center opened which included a Zara, Sephora and so many other stores. I ended up spending a lot of time here shopping and looking around.
I was also continuously sending my souvenirs and items back home to FL because I was getting ready to return. I almost didn't get to complete this because 5 times during my stint in Aix-en-Provence the French Post office decides to go on "greve" or on strike. I
remember wandering aimlessly one time around town, two weeks before my flight back home with another young lady who had a time sensitive item to send as well, but in her case it was for her university studies. Thankfully though for me the post office opened a few days later, however my poor companion missed out on sending her letter because it had to be sent out that day or else.
Camille and I spent a lot of time together watching television. Her favorite shows included: Nouvelle Star, Starsky and Hutch, Sous la Solei, Melrose Place, Friends, Young and the Restless, Uno, Dos, Tres and just the list goes on. I will admit, I do miss watching Sous la Solei, which was a soap opera centered around three female friends living in St. Tropez and their love lives. Each episode was told through each woman's current experiences and the stories were always laced with intrigue and tragedy, some of it predictable for a soap opera but in other cases much deeper because they didn't attempt to rehash the same old story lines over and over again it seemed. I also miss Uno, Dos, Tres which was a show from
Spain similar to the American TV show Fame, which takes place in an art school. Everyone danced and sang really well, and lots of drama happened. It was a fun show I thought and I do miss not seeing it. I actually had not watched Friends much before coming to France, so it was interesting to see a very popular television show from my own country for the first time in French?!?! I know, but it was refreshing to see something of home like that on TV, even though sometimes the jokes just didn't get a response from me necessarily because they were in French, but I came to really enjoy the comedy.
Another interesting thing about being in Aix-en-Provence in 2007 was that I was there to witness the presidential elections. I know there was a lot of talk, especially in my journalism class over who would win it. My professor banked on Nicholas Sarkozy because he was well established and promised security, however I know my host mother and myself included saw him as "The French Bush." I personally was hoping for Madame. Royale to get into the Elysee (that's the name of the President's mansion in
France) because she was a woman promising to bring jobs, promote immigrant and equal rights and put in other social programs to help French people. During my entire sojourn in France, I had French people complain to me that President Chirac had been a horrible president, because he made policies that increased unemployment and inflation and apparently that was a huge issue in France at the time. Therefore, I figured that Madame Royale would get in because all of her policies were geared towards building the economy and promoting social welfare, and I figured her promotion of equal rights for immigrants and what not was practical because France is a very diverse state with a huge ethnic population. However, my journalism professor predicted this, as well as my French conversation professor doubted Madame Royale's ability to win the Elysee, mainly because she was a woman. "France is just not ready for a woman president," I remember my journalism professor saying, "it is hard for any of us to picture a woman as a political leader, no matter what their policies may be." I will admit, I felt a little angry hearing about this, however the US currently has a male
president so maybe both France and the US have this in common. I remember watching President Chirac's farewell speech on television, and feeling teary eyed because he wished the country the best for its future and encouraged the French people to unite and work together in the years to come. I also remember hearing on the news that on the day of Sarkozy's election that riots broke out in the Muslim banlieus because of perceptions that he is a racist that goes back to the 2005 Paris riots when those two Muslim teenagers died at the hands of Policeman. Nonetheless, that was all I got to see and experience about the election.
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