Promenade

The other day, Fay and I went on a really long walk around our neighborhood to enjoy the beautiful weather and see what was in our area. We walked down a street parallel to our own and stumbled upon a beautiful large cemetery filled with flowers and beautiful Mediterranean trees. We came across wild rosemary, cypress trees, bright red and orange flowers and lavender. But the strange thing about one small patch of lavender planted by a grave was that though it is the end of September, the lavender was in bloom. Lavender flowers bloom in July. We thought it was beautiful that flowers that aren't supposed to be in bloom would be at someone's grave. I silently thought of something cliché like perhaps the love with which it was planted allowed for the flowers to grow...you know what? It's very well possible. I'm just going to keep believing that things like that are true :)
We also passed by a couple olive trees which definitely reminded me that I'm in the South of France. Sometimes, I forget exactly where I am and then I see, well, olive trees and pomegranate trees and fig trees and wild rosemary and then I remember.
Then, I showed Fay where La Torse is. La Torse is the name of this big beautiful park on the edge of Aix-en-Provence where I went running and plan on continuing to run. We had some trouble finding the entrance but there are entrances on either side of the park tucked away behind railings next to the street, under over-grown trees and along dirt paths and we finally entered the park. It was lovely:We walked through the entire length of the park along a gurgling creek and I picked up little pretty rocks, nuts fallen from trees, and little flowers to dry along the way. (I've started a collection of pretty pebbles, pieces of sea glasses, interesting-looking nuts and dried flowers) But the best thing EVER inside the park was what Fay and I decided is the PERFECT sitting-tree. With a big wide-trunk and widespread branches revealing a relatively flat area to sit in, it will provide a nice reading or thinking space. Fay decided to climb up into the tree and give it a try.
It was absolutely perfect.

I don't know quite why, but the sunlight that day in the park and all the trees and the creek reminded me of several books that I read when I was little and still pick up every once in a while today, books like Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting, those children's books that make you think. And Fay and I certainly did a lot of thinking today, and talking. We talked and talked and talked and talked (all in French!) about everything. About people we love who are far away, old relatives who we wish we knew better, about fatigue resulting from trying to fit in, the loss of character and personality that results from trying to fit in, food, interesting plants, travelling, music we like...it was wonderful. For a while, I got to forgot about missing people and worrying about classes and just talk and look around a little.
It was getting late and we had to get home for our early Rosh Hashanah dinner with our housemates, but before we headed back, Fay showed me one last thing that she had found a while ago: a heart cut out of an old wooden door in an abandoned building.

Fay and I had also talked about how much we've already learned and grown during our time abroad, this last month and a half (already!), and I truly appreciate that I'm starting to learn how to take my time and take a look around to notice tiny details that can make a person smile. Like our little heart in the door, the lavender at the grave.
Well, it was time for dinner and we headed home to help Carmel prepare. It was lovely.

C'est La Vie

I would like to inform you all that I have already done SO many of the things that were on my original "What do while in France" list that it's CRAZY. One of them was that I try a diabolo-menthe, a drink that I read about it in my French classes in middle school and high school when we had to read or act out French conversations among teenagers when they were at a café. A diabolo-menthe is a very simple, refreshing beverage, and it is that bright green atrocity on the left. It's mint syrup mixed with some sort of soda, basically. I think there are alcoholic versions of it, but this one definitely was not. But it was very good, and I got to listen to a jazz duo play and write in my journal while I drank it. Delish.
Another really cute tidbit that I totally forgot to update the world (you) about is that we have lots of plants in our house now :) I have a pot of beautiful orange flowers on my desk, Claire has a tiny pot of flowers that she is growing from seeds that she bought at Giverny while were in Paris, and we have three herb plants that now grace the window of our kitchen. If you will look to the right, there is a picture of Fay with our plants. When we cook meals, we just swing open the window and clip/pick off a few leaves of herbs to spice up our dishes. It's really quite cute. We have a basil plant, a rosemary plant, and a lemon thyme plant.
Also, as of Saturday, September 27th, CARMEL SCHARF IS 20 YEARS OLD! We were in Cassis for most of the day, but when we got back, the Cabanon Girls celebrated Carmel's 20th birthday. We went out to dinner at a delicious Moroccan restaurant and shared a bottle of rosé with 3 of our non-cabanon friends. The food was great and as usual, the conversation was lovely. We then, moved out and went to a hookah bar called Samarkande that is tucked away in a quiet little private corner hidden in the center of Aix-en-Provence. It was ADORABLE. Even for those of us who were not interested in smoking hookah, they had a very impressive collection of teas, steamed milk beverages, coffees, Middle Eastern desserts, milkshakes, and other interesting drinks to share with friends or enjoy on your own. I had green tea with a mint infusion, which was very strong à la Morrocan mint tea, but very very delicious. It was a tiny tiny place packed with tapestries, pillows, low tables, and we went down to the basement where there was some extra space. It is very warm and cozy, with dark nooks filled with brightly-colored pillows and blankets and very dim lighting. The walls and ceiling were made of rocks and they were draped with colorful sheets accented with tiny pieces of reflective metal. It was an incredibly calming, rather seductive atmosphere with hushed whispering in each corner, shared among close friends and lovers. Exactly what you'd imagine the perfect hookah bar, Middle-Eastern tea bar to be like.

Afterwards, we shook ourselves out of the haze and walked back to our cabanon, and we were finally able to get a picture of the 4 of us together! FIRST ONE! And so, I introduce to you, the Cabanon Girls, from left to right: Claire, Carmel (the birthday girl),
And before I sign out, wish me luck: Classes at La Fac start tomorrow! EEK.

Les Calanques de Cassis

BIENVENUE A CASSIS!!!

Yesterday, the whole Wellesley-in-Aix gang went on one last group excursion before the start of classes. Monsieur Lydgate and Melanie took us to the beautiful seaside town of Cassis, right on the Mediterranean Sea. The town has a harbor filled with small private boats and a beach and all sorts of beautiful small colorful buildings lined up along the dock. We were lucky enough to have some beautiful weather, perfect for a 45-minute boat tour of the Calanques of Cassis.
A calanque is an inlet enclosed by tall rock formations and cliff faces along the shore of a body of water. They are particularly beautiful along the Mediterranean Sea because of the unique colors of the natural environment along this shore. There are several of them along the southern coast of France around Marseille and Cassis. It was windy and sunny and perfect for a boat ride, and the view of the open sea and the rock formations was absolutely amazing. It's time like this when you realize how little of the world you've seen. Sure, I had seen pictures, movies depicting this environment, but after having lived in my American East coast life for the past 20 years, I never saw crystal-clear turquoise waters, a sun this brilliant, majestic rock formations like this before. Even thinking about my 4 weeks in Paris, the cultural and environmental differences between the two regions are astonishing. I don't think it necessarily made me feel small, but it made me realize that there is a lot more of the world that I want to discover during my lifetime.
The boat was tiny, and so when it hit big waves, it would jump up in the air, and people would stumble and fall a little, and it was hysterical, especially when the young woman sitting across from me screamed and clung to her husband, and in the process of almost falling nearly knocked over like all 4 people standing around her. But as we approached the calanques, the water calmed significantly, and the wind seemed to disappear. In the sudden calm, this is what we saw:

In one of the inlets there was a beach, and all along the top of the cliffs, I could see people hiking. I NEED TO DO THAT. Angus, Jin, just a heads up, at least one of you will most likely be spending time with me here hiking. If it's cold, if it's snowing, if you're tired, if you're jetlagged, tant pis. We WILL go hiking. Maybe these pictures will convince you that it'll be a-freakin-mazing:

After our boat ride, we had a group lunch at a restaurant called Nino's where I had a fish soup (really really good), steak, and an apple tart with coffee for dessert. So good. And then, we went swimming (and beachcombing, if you're cool like me)! I now have an impressive collection of every color of rock from that beach and a whole crapload of seaglass. The water was PHENOMENAL. As soon as I got in, it felt warm, and I swam out to the buoys and treaded water for a while, watching some cool boats, looking out at the cliffs, and daydreaming for a little while. It was really quite pleasant and refreshing.
Afterwards, when it started to rain, we walked around the town a little bit and then loaded the bus back up to drive along the Rue des Crètes, stopping at the top of some of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Driving up the narrow, incredibly steep, sharp turns of the mountain paths, I thought our massive coach bus was gonna take someone out or go tumbling down into some valley. It was kind of scary, but props to our driver, we made it. The view from the top was SPECTACULAR!!! We could see the entire town of Cassis and far out across the ocean. I felt like I was on top of the world, and I wish we could've stayed there longer, but Monsieur Lydgate rounded us up for a group picture and then sent us back on the bus in 10 minutes to head back to Aix-en-Provence.

Marseille

Today, Carmel, Claire, and I went left our humble abode to take a bus from the Gare Routière to the bustling big city of Marseille! Don't worry, I did what EVERYONE told me to do and held my bag really tight against me under my arm, so not only did I look like a ridiculous paranoid tool, but I also still have my wallet, so I win. Yeah, that's right, I WIN.
Min "Winner" Yi: 1 Infamous pickpockets of Marseille: 0
The bus dropped us off on this random street on the Northern edge of the city next to a gate and some roadwork. Kind of weird. But with my handy dandy American guide book, we quickly found out where we were and headed straight towards the harbor or "Le Vieux Port" to take a peek. We passed all sorts of small shops for discount shoes, bags, and watches, and also saw the coolest metro/train thing EVER. It looked like it came from the future, especially compared to all of the old buildings that we saw around us. Unfortunately, I don't have photo documentation of that marvelous contraption.
When we finally got to the port, it was so invigorating! I could smell the saltiness of the ocean water, and the harbor was FILLED with boats. And I mean completely filled, I don't even know how they get out of the harbor because they're so closely packed together. On the dock, there were tons of stands selling freshly-caught fish, escargots, shrimp, and shellfish. The buildings were all beautiful, and I noticed that the colors of the apartment buildings are much more diverse than those you'll find up North in France. It's really just how I imagined it, that everything around the Mediterranean Sea is brighter, more colorful, quite frankly, more interesting. The people, even, were more interesting, more diverse. Because Marseille was and is still a bustling port city, it is a major source of cultural diffusion from the trade as well as the immigration that affects the area. I could hear all sorts of other languages, slightly comprehensible dialects of French, lots of slang, a little English. There were people wearing hijabs, traditional North African dress, caftans. It was beautiful. It was refreshing to see something so different and more lively after spending what has almost been two weeks now in the picturesque, tranquil town of Aix-en-Provence.
Now, the awesome thing about Marseille's port is that you can see the various stages of architectural development over time in the bizarre assortment of buildings. There are modern shopping complexes and office buildings, pastel-colored apartment buildings with wooden shutters, flower boxes, and laundry lines, and at the very mouth of the harbor, the old stone fortresses and walls that once protected the Marseillais from invaders. We're really amazing, so we decided to go into one of the fortresses on the southern bank of the harbor.
We didn't get to go inside the fortress because it was gated off and closed for some reason, but we went up a series of stairs and then got an AMAZING view of the city of Marseille, the mountains, and the water that surround it.Afterwards, we were going to go to this really cool basilica that we saw that is perched on top of a hill overlooking Marseille...but it was too far. And it was too hot. And we were tired and dehydrated. So instead, we decided to walk really slowly through the center of the city and take a look around and head towards our lunch location. We saw tons of beautiful buildings, cute alleys, really cool graffiti, and stores filled with amazing sugar confections and pastries from the Maghreb. Here are some examples of things that we saw as we walked around.


For lunch, we decided to go to a little restaurant called "Ivoire Restaurant", which came highly recommended in the guide book (which has proven to be AMAZING. It not only gives good suggestions for things to see, ways to save money and time, but it also gives a lot of great recommendations for food that I have already found to be very very helpful.) So, we decided to listen to "Let's Go: France" and check out this place. It was TINY. Like, tiny. Barely any decorations on the walls except for some weird poster of a woman with palm trees advertising vacations in the Côte d'Ivoire. There was no big sign for the place, just a tiny tiny board that had the name of the restaurant squished in a place where you couldn't even see it. It is owned by someone whom locals refer to as "Maman Afrique" or "Mama Africa". It took a while for the food to come out, and it was just one woman cleaning, cooking, serving, everything...but it was SO worth it. I don't even remember what my dish was called. Something like "Akaké" maybe but it was spiced tomatoes and onions with a kind of tangy sauce with baked chicken and an interesting rice-type grain on the side. SO. GOOD.
Claire and I also decided to try the "jus de gingembre" or "ginger juice". Interesting choice. It was delicious, and at first very refreshing. My guide book had said to watch out for the "jus de gingembre" because it's an aphrodisiac. But as Claire put it, "chocolate's an aphrodisiac, seafood is an aphrodisiac, what the hell". And so she ordered some. It was great, a little sweet, a little spicy. Really delicious. But then, at some point during the meal, I put some hot pepper sauce on my chicken and almost burned my mouth off, and then I felt really weird afterwards when I chugged ginger juice to cool my mouth (bad idea, ginger is spicy, too). After the burn of the pepper was gone, I realized that my head felt a liiiitle bit fuzzy, and my breathing was like kind of shallow..everything that happens when I drink alcohol and I'm getting tipsy. Except it was the ginger juice. The following conversation ensued:
Min: Hey guys, I feel kind of funny.
Claire: ME TOO.
It was the ginger juice. Really really strong ginger has that effect, apparently. Wow. I plan on going back to that restaurant when I'm back in Marseille, but perhaps next time I'll pass on the ginger juice. Now, even though we had eaten WAY too much, we decided to stop somewhere and look at those pastries and sweets from the Maghreb. If you look at the picture of Carmel standing in one of those lovely shops (by the way there are like 230583925898585 million of them in Marseille), you'll see the confection that is an obscene, frightening bright orange color. That's what I bought. Of course.
I don't remember what they're called, something that starts with a z, but they're made of finely ground semolina and completely soaked in honey. Really really really really really sweet. Actually difficult to eat one of them. I had some of one with some tea (sans sugar) and it was still slightly nauseating. Whoo, boy. Better save it for later.
Then, we got back on the bus and came back to our little hometown of Aix-en-Provence. What a lovely excursion :)

Marcher au marché

Every couple days, I go to the open-air farmers' markets in thecenter of Aix-en-Provence to get fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms around the Southern region of Provence in France. This time, I finally remembered to bring my camera so I can give you an idea of what I get to experience when I go grocery shopping each week! To the left, you see picture of the market. There is a courtyard/square paved with smooth cobblestones where local families and farmers bring their produce 3 or 4 times a week for the residents of Aix to purchase! The fruit and vegetables here, I've found, are much cheaper and much better quality than the things you'll find in the supermarkets.
You can choose to use the plastic bags here, but we tend to re-use plastic bags that we get from buying stuff at the supermarket and bring a big basket or reusable tote bag to carry our purchases home with us. You'll see a lot of people with durable shopping bags attached to metal carriers with wheels to carry heavy produce like potatoes and tomatoes home. And everyone walks :) Today, I bought enough 2 nectarines, 4 big carrots, 4 big potatoes, and 2 bell peppers to last me probably for the rest of the week...for about 2, 50 euros.
Today, I also went to the Marché aux Fleurs (Flower Market) for the first time. The picture above and to the right gives you an idea of the overwhelming explosion of color with which you are greeted when you turn the corner from the produce market to the flower market! I decided that my room is lacking some color, yes, even with my prayer flags and tapestry and various photos and hangings. So, I bought a pot of orange flowers for 4 euros. And I don't think they will die for a while because you only have to water them once every 10 days. Very hardy. BUT they're gorgeous and will make waking up for my morning run all the more pleasant :)
Below is a picture of me stopped in the produce market on the way back through town after buying my lovely new flowers:
When I got back to the house, I took a picture of the crocuses that have blossomed in the backyard right in front of our Cabanon. I mentioned to Claire that it's not the season for crocuses, they're supposed to blossom in the first few days of Spring. But she brought up a good point in response! It's always warm enough here for things to grow, so there is no "season" for flowers. That "season" lasts all year long :)

Ai.

For the first time since I left for France, I feel really overwhelmed and slightly homesick. I guess it makes sense now that I've been in Aix-en-Provence for a week now, so I've gotten over the novelty of going grocery shopping every other day at the local market which involves a good 2 to 3-hour block due to the walk into the center of town. I went to "La Fac" today, which is short for "La Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines", the Université de Provence à Aix, where I will be a student starting next Monday.
Because the website for La Fac is completely disorganized, outdated, and impossible to navigate even if you speak French, it is necessary to go to the building and visit each and every department office in person to be able to figure out what classes you can take. And, because the offices don't print out copies of their course schedules for some reason, you have to battle the 30 other university students that need to see the single sheet of paper posted on the chipping walls of the hall outside the department office to quickly scribble down the course number, title to help you remember what it is exactly you were interested in in the first place, the room where the class meets, and the day/time of the week it meets. For every class. For every department that might interest you so you can make a potential schedule. La Fac is a humongous and badly designed. It has all sorts of branched-out parts that were just stuck on as the building expanded, and some stairs don't lead to certain floors. Basically it's crap. It's 6 floors + a rez-de-chaussée, so basically 7 stories of departments and then some departments are not actually in this building. They're in the MMSH. But no one will actually tell you what MMSH stands for, and it's not actually near the rest of the university. Also, some of the departments haven't prepared the lists yet, so you might show up at the department and not have any information there. They say they might be ready by Wednesday. So then you'll have 2 days in which you can call the registrar to ask questions about any concerns that remain because the offices will close over the weekend. Oh, and the offices are only open from 9:00-11:00. Oh, and by the way classes start on Monday. You don't know what classes you're taking? Oh, you should go to the website to check your options out...HOLYYYY HELLLLL and it starts all over again.
This is why there is no way in hell that I am taking up Steph's incredibly awesome suggestion to go to the Cote d'Azur with her and like 5 other girls to stay for a few nights. I would just explode with stress. Also, as I always do in any new place, I seem to be nervous that I'll tire myself out. So instead, I decide it would be better to let myself rest and relax. Then I miraculously have more than enough time to sit around and be around. I need someone to come over from the U.S. in a boat and give me a good old tough love talk so I get out of this funk. Grr. Because no one should be sad or upset when they get to walk down this street every day to buy groceries.

"J'aime la vie"

This past Thursday, we helped our dear friend Lana celebrate her 21st birthday! We made a reservation for 13 at an Italian restaurant called "Le Bellagio" and had a big pasta dinner, paid for partially by Lana's incredibly generous parents. Then, the Cabanon girls and I brought the party back to our cabanon (which was TOTALLY cool with our landlady) and we surprised her with amazing white dessert wine, candles, and a raspberry vanilla mousse cake from Paul, a very popular French patisserie. After having spent the last few days running around the town, cleaning our apartments, unpacking and organizing, running errands and trying to situate ourselves here, it was really really nice to be able to host people for the first time in our humble abode and entertain our friends.
But the BIG kahuna of breathtaking experiences was definitely something that happened today. Monsieur Lydgate and Melanie rented a van and took us to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. YES. THE FREAKING MEDITERRANEAN SEA. The drive to the shore was about 30 minutes long and very very picturesque. We could see the ocean to our right in the midst of fog and pale gray skies. But no one could predict what we would see as we turned around the corner of one of the cliff faces. There was a collective deep breath in the van as the blue-green waters of the sea appeared in front of us, and it seemed all of a sudden that all of the colors we were seeing were suddenly more brilliant. We parked in a small lot from which we could look over the little harbor below us and see far out into the horizon. After taking an obscene number of pictures, we began our descent down a winding road that cut down the side of the steep hill towards the water. There wasn't really a beach. Take note, the Southern French shore doesn't really have sandy beaches. They're mostly rock formations and shells. And so, we put our stuff down on a stone dock, lay out our towels, and after Monsieur Lydgate and Melanie got in, Claire and I held hands and jumped into the water. Eventually, everyone got in although some did the dip-your-toes-in-shit-it's-freezing thing :)
Here are some wonderful photos of myself and my lovely lovely friends messing around in the water:

During our experience in France so far, we've spent so much time and energy trying to acclimate ourselves, so I've found that I often end up unintentionally skipping over moments to be amazed and just sit for a moment to appreciate what I have been so lucky to have had the chance to experience. But this was one of those times when I could just sit, look out across the water, look down at the bottom of the ocean floor and take a moment to be impressed.

P.S. The title of this entry is a quote from Jacqueline Klapak (in the picture with me above in the water). It was completely quiet in the van on the way back because people were thinking, sleeping, daydreaming, still thinking about how beautiful it was when she suddenly just shouted "J'aime la vie" and everyone in the car couldn't help but just smile and agree. Translation: "I love life".

Boo-yah, Wellesley-yah

Watch out, France, the Cabanon girls are BAD-ASS. And I mean BAD-FREAKIN'-ASS. Not ONLY do we have a girl that makes candle holders out of wine bottles, not ONLY do we have 4 girls who cleaned out the nastiest kitchen in the entire world and make it nice, not ONLY do we have a bunch of girls who will walk 30 to 40 minutes with backpacks and massive rolling shopping cart/bags to go grocery shopping an unnecessarily high number of times a week, but we have girls who will give a big "who's your daddy now" to the strict, no-fun institution that is the Wellesley administration.
Wellesley: "To rent a wireless internet box or sign up for an internet subscription at your apartment is strictly forbidden."
the Cabanon girls: "psh."
Yeah. I said it. Guess where I'm posting this blog entry from? Yeah, that's right. LE CABANON. As in, NOT 30 MINUTES AWAY AT THE WELLESLEY CENTER! We're pretty content. Although I was going to try and see if I could go with the non-American way of checking my email only once a day and walk to get internet...but sorry, kids, looks like Min's going to be packing on the pounds, eating fatty foods and boozing in front of the computer for the next 4 months. Zut, alors!
SO, yeah. I'll try to reply better to emails and be more accessible and stuff. But not too much, because there's far too much beautiful weather, outdoor marchés, and fountains to enjoy :)

Le Cabanon

Alright, so the long-awaited photo house tour!!! Come along for the show, kids!
Welcome to Le Cabanon or La Maisonnette or Ma Sylvanie (the name painted next to the doorbell). This is the humble abode of Fay, Carmel, Claire, and Min. It is a 2-floor building. Now, don't you be scared. Step on up and come on in. Yes, our front door, and the door to our kitchen both have doorknobs in the CENTER of the door. I swear, it's like freaking Harry Potter. Take a look:If you come into our dark tiny foyer, you can go straight up the stairs to the bedroom upstairs where the lovely duo that is Fay and Carmel resides. However, we should leave them alone. Because it's not my room. But here is a picture of the stairs. Instead, let's turn to the right and pass through the doorway to our salon or living room! Cute, isn't it? Here is where we eat dinner and meals if we have guests over. Then, continue straight through another doorway into our lovely kitchen, we just spent 2 hours cleaning today. WOOHOO! We found all sorts of crazy kitchen tools that we'll definitely be busting out, such as a panini maker and an Asterix-shaped cake pan. Continue through the kitchen, the bathroom is on the left. Not interesting. And then the room of myself and Claire is straight ahead! Here it is. Very spacious, beautiful, clean, and if I don't say so myself, well decorated.
And then, here is a close-up of my bed where I go to sleep/write in my journal/am probably lying down if you're talking to me on the phone. This is the view from the window next to my bed from which you can see the front door to our lovely home and the window to the living room. Well, that's it for now! Hope you enjoyed the tour!