Headed home...

Well I finally head home today. I can't believe I've been here for 6 weeks already. I honestly feel like I just got here yesterday. I do wish I got an earlier flight today, mainly because I don't really have anything to do until I leave for the airport in 3 hours or so (and I'm getting to the airport absurdly early because I have to check in, and honestly, there's nothing else to do in Paris with all my luggage). I really don't want to have to leave the city, and all my friends here. I apologize for this poorly written post. I'm tired and triste maintenant, so I'm sorry

Au revoir tout le monde!

Denial

Well I'm done with my classes and my final projects. So that's good I guess. I don't have any work. But I still can't get over the fact that in 48 hours from now I'll be on a plane to JFK.

The last couple of days have been filled with ups and downs. The downs, of course, are the absurd amount of work I had (thankfully it's done). The ups: spending time with my friends. All of them.

Yesterday was such a wonderfully day. After working for most of the afternoon, I had dinner with Sai and Gabby in the Buttes Chaumant. I wish I had found this place earlier. Ils sont vraiment l'endroit le plus beau à Paris (well out of the places I've been to). Here are various pictures:

Gabby looking off into the yonders

Sai's turn to look into the yonders

Yes I'm wearing a scarf and gray skinny jeans. C'est très français!

It was wonderful having an ELHS reunion. I wish we could have done something all together earlier, not just during my last days, but I really shouldn't be complaining. Anyways, Gabby had to go watch a movie with her friends (I hope it was good!), so Sai and I (update starts here:) chilled in the park for a little bit when some random black dude grabbed my empty Orangina can and pretended to steal it before putting it back down and shaking our hands (I'm still confused. Also, the update more or less ends here; I just forgot that I told Sai that the random encounter was "totally going in my blog"). After that, we decided to go climb la Tour Montparnasse, which, according to Wikipedia, is the third tallest building in Paris. But it has the best view, especially at night. Now I haven't climbed la Tour Eiffel yet (hopefully it'll happen later tonight), and while that seems absurd, I'll show you why I gave higher priority to la Tour Montparnasse:

I'm so glad I did this. Most beautiful view of Paris I've seen (not the best view I've seen in France though (le Pont du Gard will always win that contest)

It was so surreal being up there. So high up, above everything else. A beautiful picture of la Tour Eiffel (while I want to climb it, I can't take a picture of the Eiffel Tower when I'm on it, so yeah). I really have no reason to complain (except for the fact that, since I stayed out so "late" (read as 23h27ish), I ended up staying awake until 2 in order to finish one of my final projects).

Today was our last day of classes. Except they honestly weren't real (so no complaints there). I just refuse to believe that we're done with them. After class, we all had lunch at Le Train Bleu, a fancy restaurant in la Gare de Lyon. Here's a shot of the ceiling:

This picture doesn't do this place justice

Very fancy. The food was quite solid. I definitely enjoyed myself during the meal. This thing (I forget the name) was delicious:

Some type of duck I think. With a gratin on the side. And something called a  "sasquatch"?

After lunch, our teachers bode us farewell...for the last time in Paris. That was one of the saddest moments I've experienced in recent times (I'm bitter that they left without hugs and such). At the beginning of the trip, they were our lifelines; we were pretty much incapable of surviving in Paris without them (ok so this was really only for the first few days). And now we may never see them within Paris again. Wow that makes me so sad.

Anyways, after I returned home, I just finished my last project and now I'm writing this.

Here's a list of things that I want to try and do tonight/tomorrow while I can:

• Climb la Tour Eiffel
• Conquer the metro (there are only two lines that I haven't taken yet. This is definitely happening)
• Visit le Chateau des Vincennes (probably won't happen)
• Explore the abandoned railroad (likely won't happen either since it'll just take so much time)
• Spend time with my friends (this had better happen...)
• Visit the museum at l'Institut Pasteur
• See Lauren Paylor while we're in the same international city...

That list was really just so I remember what things I really need to do tomorrow.

Oy vey I can't believe this is almost over. Veronica had told me that I would love being in Paris, and while I wanted to believe her, I thought I'd only be content with the trip due to my emotionless nature. Well, let's just say Veronica couldn't express how much I would love it here (I can't either). This has been, without a doubt, the best experience of my life. I'm strongly considering majoring in French right now (note that I was ready to never speak French ever again after high school), I want to try and get an internship here (like Sai) next summer, and scratch that last one; I want to try and get a job here (or at least spend and extended period of time in Paris/France/Europe). I will never be the same person again (this is clichéd but true). I hate to say this (mainly because it makes me sound like a female teenager), but it's true: Paris, je t'aimes.

Au revoir tout le monde.
Au revoir Paris.

PS: I don't know why I make it seem like I'm at the airport right now about to leave Paris; I still have another day here. Just gotta make the most of my time.

Apologies for not writing (if you care that is)

Well as you can tell, I'm sorry for not writing in this as frequently as I once did. I suppose it's partly because of the absurd amount of work we have to do so I have no time. I also suppose things here seem so routine that my life here no longer seems blog worthy.

This last week was definitely interesting. Wednesday, I had dinner/flaned with Gabby Wukye. It was so surreal. Had some nice Thai food and a solid crepe afterwards. It almost feels like it was a dream; three different worlds (the EL, Duke, and Paris) collided. At times I didn't feel like I was in Paris; I was just chillin with a friend from home. But at the same time, I was feeling whatever the opposite of that would be. I'm glad I got to see her, and if you're reading this, we had best do something this week Gabby!

Uhhhhhh. Thursday was la Fête de la Musique, where there are random bands and such performing all over Paris for most of the night. I enjoyed it for the most part, except I ran out of minutes on my phone so I ended up wandering around Paris all by myself until 2, 2:30ish in the AM. It was nice being able to walk around the city by myself, and when I wasn't really near any performers, it was quite peaceful.

Friday was also bizarre. For dinner, I hit up this diner called Breakfast in America (recommended by Sourav) with Daniel (from Duke) and Sai (from the EL). The food there was super, to say the least (had a super burger) and it was really nice getting to see Sai. After diner, we got to see this ancient stadium that they uncovered when digging for a metro line (I think). It was really cool, but unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.

Yesterday, after doing an absurd amount of work, I hung out with Sai again and then had dinner with him and my friends. Had another pizza avec un oeuf (my favorite) but again, I didn't take a picture of it (out of laziness).

This last week has been quite surreal (as I've said before) because of all the EL connections here. In spite of the fact that I'm in Paris (et pour seulement une semaine de plus), I've actually been missing home a little bit. Part of that is because, when I return, I won't have any work to do at all, and that kinda seems nice right now since the majority of my free time this week will be spent doing work. It's also because of all the time I've spent with Gabby and Sai.

So I just reminded myself that this is the start of my last week here. I don't want to leave. I can't believe I've been here for over 5 weeks. It feels like I just got here yesterday. This experience, without a doubt, has been the best of my life. I'm so glad that I've been able to enjoy one of the best cities in the world with some of the best people in the world.

Anyways, I haven't gotten a lot of sleep the last few nights, so I'm quite exhausted right now (it's why this post has been boring).

Au revoir tout le monde!

I'm getting bad at doing this consistently...

Well it's apparently been nearly a week since the last time I wrote in this. I guess it's because of the fast amount of work I have during the week so I really only have time to write on the weekends...

To start off, I don't think anything exciting happened over the course of last week (until the weekend of course). Thursday I got a foulard (read: man-scarf). Judge all you want; it's awesome. I unfortunately don't have any (good) pictures of me rockin' it at the moment (someone hopefully will eventually post a picture on the Facebook and then maybe I'll steal it for my own purposes). After that, Daniel (who got a matching foulard) and I went to le Louvre to look at some more art (the other time we went we were supposed to look at very specific paintings which, to me were boring) while looking awesome in our foulards. I enjoyed this visit much more. First of all, I got to see some artifacts from the Aegean Bronze Age, so I actually almost knew stuff about them:

A Cycladic idol. In theory, I was once able to identify the island that likely produced this and  the time period of production. At least I remember what it was...

After we got to see stuff from Egypt which was awesome. As a young'un i loved Ancient Egypt, so I felt like a little child again:

This may  not be the best photo I took of the Egyptian stuff, but the thumbnail looked really cool when I was picking pictures so you'll have to deal

Then we got to see some famous stuff (La Jaconde, etc.). Wasn't terrible, mais j'aime les autres choses mieux. Here is an interesting photo:

La Vénus de Milo et quelques touristes avec Nintendo 3DS audioguides

We had a group trip to Lyon Friday and Saturday. It wasn't bad. It was quite pretty (not on Avignon's level, but better than Aix). I don't remember what we did Friday (I was very callous and I'm really tired right now so even if something happened, I'm far too tired to remember, but more on that later).

Oh I remember what happened now. After flanning a bit, we got to take a cooking class. We made pasta avec muscles. Normally I hate seafood (read: I've never been willing to try seafood because in my head I hate it). Cooking it was pretty fun:

Scott showing off his mixing skillz

It tasted pretty good too. Like the ocean (aka the EL which was a nice memory of home).

I don't remember what we did the rest of the day. Oh I guess we learned about silk because there's a lot of silk produced in Lyon. Let's see, after that we a guided tour of part of the city from some random dude. We just walked a lot so we were all exhausted before dinner, so we just laid out on some grass until we had to eat. Dinner was interesting. I don't remember the name of my main course, but it wasn't the best decision on my part...

The next day (samedi) was filled with a lot more walking and whatever. We got to visit the old part of the city, which was way up on a hill so it provided us with many beautiful views of the city. There was also this beautiful basilica, though there was some construction going on so it wasn't at its full splendor. After walking some more, we had lunch with one of our professor's twin sister and her two children, who were both absurdly cute and absurdly distracting during our guided tour that we had after lunch. We then took the long train ride back home (more things may have happened in between, but I wasn't exactly paying attention to anything over the two days so I apologize).

Upon returning, we decided to go celebrate Ananya's birthday (because son anniversaire was Saturday so it made sense). Jenn said there was a boat ride on the Seine for international students, but that didn't end up working out so we just chilled au Champ de Mars (near la tour Eiffel) and then flanned a bit until we were able to find a train to take us to an area we knew better.

When that was done, we started to head home. In a rather foolish move, Anna left her suitcase containing all of her clean clothes at Ananya's apartment (it was so travel to the meeting spot would be easier, even though Anna's apartment was much closer to the SNCF station). Since she wanted some clean clothes for the next day, she went to go get her stuff (Ananya and I live on the same street by the way). The real issue was that we pretty got on the last metro, so Anna couldn't have taken that back to her place. Ananya and I had taken the night bus before, so I decided to help her get back to her place since they're incredibly confusing (and as a large brown person I'd like to thing that, from afar in the dark, I'm somewhat intimidating). This is where things got interesting.

After walking for a while, we found a night bus stop that would take us in the right general direction. Of course, the first bus we saw just drove past the stop (the driver couldn't see us). Instead of giving up, we just walked to the next stop (which was in a slightly better location). We took that to the area that I think contains the largest amount of night bus stops (so we figured we could find a bus that would take Anna back and then I would just take the opposite path home).

I don't think I wrote about the first night bus adventure, but Ananya and I were at the area with the many stops and we once we figured out which bus we needed, we couldn't find its stop. We did see the bus in the middle of the street, though, and people were getting on there, so we ran across the street and entered.

Luckily, I think Anna actually found the correct stop, but the bus came very infrequently and it was cold so we decided against waiting for it. We walked to an nearby area that had a velib' station, because we figured we could take some bikes to Anna's area (we've all been wanting to use the bikes, and it seemed much safer to ride them at night when there were fewer cars to kill us). Unfortunately, our credit cards didn't work at the station (and the ticket the British dude we met at the station didn't work either so I guess that station was broken).

Since plan B failed, we just decided to walk back (I'm not sure what time it was at this point in time, but I want to say that we left my neighborhood at 2ish, so it was probably between 3 and 4 when we decided to walk). We got to the Bastille area after a lovely walk (though I almost got destroyed by a night bus which was pretty scary), but since the metro reopens at 5:30 (or 5) and by the time we got near Anna's place it was 4:30ish, Anna said that she'd rather go to a café and get some coffee/hot chocolate so I could take the metro back home as opposed to trying to figure out the night bus/walking/taking a taxi (we contemplated whether or not Anna should have taken a taxi from my neighborhood when we missed the first bus, but I'm very glad that plan didn't work out). We picked a café that was still open (actually there were many open) and we just talked some more while we waited for the metro to open. By the time we got it, the sun was rising and it was pretty weird since I honestly didn't feel that tired at the time (even without the coffee). We finally parted ways after our 3-4 hour adventure and I just took the metro home (there were some thugs with what I hope was a fake (and not a real) gun on my train so I was pretty scared the whole ride home, but since I'm writing this now, I obviously made it back with minimal damage).

Today (as in after I woke up) was much more low key, especially after last night's adventure. Just an absurd amount of work, grocery shopping, and dinner with my host mother. And writing this blog post.

I would like to write more about the adventure, though. It was honestly the most enjoyable night I've had (n'importe où). It was just really nice being able to walk around without such a huge group of people (not that I don't love you guys) and without an absurd amount of people in the streets. And it was really nice just being able to talk to someone about anything and everything. Sure, I could have gotten more sleep had we gotten a taxi for Anna at the beginning of our adventure, but I'm glad we didn't. I hope that I'll remember such a legen- (wait for it) -dary story (well in my head it was awesome, but I'm sure the story's not as exciting as I think it is when it's retold in blog form) for the rest of my life, because it really was one of the greatest experiences I've had.

Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted right now (who would have thought) and I have to wake up almost as early as I went to sleep yesterday so I can get ready for class, so I think I'm going to go to sleep now (instead of doing some more work because I think I have a lot for this week). My sleepiness is also my excuse for the above-average amount of spelling/grammatical errors that I'm sure I've made throughout this blog post.

Au revoir tout le monde!

For the 3 (±6) people who actually read this blog consistently (I do believe it's possible that -3 people can read this blog consistently; I just haven't worked out the details as to how), this is must be a long awaited update...

I apologize for not writing over the past week. I blame it on a combination of the work we have to do (which is only increasing) and the fact that I'd rather sleep than write in my blog when I'm really sleepy. There's also the fact that I haven't really done anything interesting (in my opinion anyways) recently).

Let's see...after class on Thursday me and some people (Anna, Ananya, et Daniel) visited Versailles. We got into the château for free, and honestly, going inside would not have been worth whatever it cost. Sure, it was pretty cool seeing the ornate decorations and stuff, but it was packed with tourists, which made it hard to enjoy. Here's a picture taken in the hall of mirrors:

The hall of mirrors was quite disappointing as we had expected there to be far more mirrors there

The best part of the visit was our adventure in the gardens (which were gratuite by the way; on a random note, I apologize for my mélange of anglais et French; I'm not really doing it on purpose and I'm far too lazy to change it). The plants were quite beautiful in the sun. Random story, we were just chillin', near a fountain in a pond, when all of a sudden, Daniel yelled because he spied the downpour from a sudden cloudburst headed our way. Unfortunately, since my parapluie broke the day I bought it, I had to build a barrier from the rain using my friends umbrellas. As I mentioned before, it was a more or less sunny day before the 3 minute rain, so it was still sunny while we were taking shelter. Here's a picture of the weird weather:

This weather was absurd

Once it cleared up, we decided to head over toward a small lake/large pond in the gardens which contained rowboats. We wanted to go on a boat. And we did. And it was awesome. There's really no other way to describe it. According to the homme who reluctantly loaned us the boat (according to him it was too windy to go out on the water and he didn't want to have to save us if/when we flipped over), I was a good rameur (rower) since I managed to get us back to the dock without too much damage. Here's a picture of us on the boat:

An 11 euro boat ride for 4? Yes please!

The next day, we visited le Louvre to complete some sort of treasure hunt for our class. We didn't encounter a significant amount of tourists since les tableaux weren't near the more mainstream pieces of art (La Jaconde, pour exemple). This was pretty tiring since we had to walk a lot, but we got to see some pretty cool stuff. Like this:

Le singe antiquaire, de Chardin. He was quite fond of monkeys dressed up in cute little outfits. We definitely have similar tastes...

Apart from that, I didn't really do anything this weekend (lots of work). Sunday I went to go watch the finals of Roland Garros on a giant screen on Court 1. It wasn't terrible, in spite of the rain (and my lack of rain jacket and parapluie). I waited out the first rain delay in my seat because it wasn't raining too badly and I didn't want the seat to get too wet. But then I left after Nadal was up in the 3rd set 2-1. I suppose that's good because I didn't have to watch Djokovic finish his run of 8 straight games. I wish I could have watched the match from within Philippe-Chatrier, but I'm not exactly rollin' in the dough these days, so I had to settle for paying money to watch it on a giant screen (which I technically could have done for free but I actually got a seat and whatever so it was totally worth it).

Today we got to visit some sort of insane asylum/hospital and an orphanage (well the grounds of these places). It was...something. We did visit this one jardin which had really awesome plants (and sculptures). There was also a zoo there, but it would have cost us 8 euro each so we didn't go, which is really sad because I love animals.

I can't really think of anything interesting to say here right now. What is kind of scary, though, is the fact that I'm over halfway done right now. I hate thinking about that. I've been here for over 3 weeks, and I'll be home in less than 3 weeks. Honestly, I have no desire to return to the EL (no offense). I mean, I'm in Paris. And in all honestly, I'm never going to be able to have another experience like this the rest of my life. Sure, I can visit the city (if I ever end up rollin' in the dough), but unless I somehow get a job here, I'm never going to live here again. I'm actually strongly considering double majoring in Chemistry and French (dropping my philosophy minor because, let's get serious, that wasn't for real) and then maybe trying to get an internship here one summer because that would be even more awesome than this.

Well, I got nothing else to say now...(I've far too sad at the moment to write anymore)

Au revoir tout le monde!

Roland Garros et Macarons

Well I don't think that this will be too long of a post because I'm incredibly exhausted right now and I already wrote about half the stuff that I intend on writing about in this post for some journal that I have to keep for my class, so it's not very exciting to me right now.

Anyways, yesterday, I got to enter the grounds of Roland Garros. The ticket only gave me access to the outside courts, but they showed the big time matches on giant screens outside the two main courts (which was better since I could then watch both matches at the same time). My friend Daniel actually managed to get into Federer's match, but I had no desire to follow him because i wanted to watch Jo-Wilfried Tsonga play the Djoker. Unfortunately, neither of the two matches went in my favor, so now I'm rooting for Fed (only during the next round). Speaking of Fed, I managed to get some good creeper shots of him while he was giving an interview (my camera apparently has 20x zoom that results in pictures of a surprisingly decent quality):

Roger Federer (too tired to think of a creative caption)

Anyways, I bought one of the towels that the men use to wipe their sweat off with during the matches...It was expensive. Let's just say that I'm probably not buying anything else (for myself) while I'm here...

Today, we learned how to make macarons. It was great getting back into the kitchen to relive the glory days of Culinary (Kitchen 2 FTW (unless it was kitchen 1, but I'm pretty sure we were 2)). The meringue was pretty easy to make, but the technique called "macaroning" was quite difficult (my forearm got pretty sore doing it). It was also pretty hard putting the macarons on the tray (when I finally figured out the technique to make them in a good shape, I ended up making them way too close together). Anyways, they ended up looking really awesome (they have to be refrigerated for 48 hours, so I don't actually know how they taste yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to eat all of them in one sitting...). Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures because I had put my bag away before I could get my camera out, but here's one that I'm stealing from my friend Anays of me and my friend Scott.

We were both supposed to have seductive faces, but I was laughing way too hard to concentrate (also, our macarons are pistachio flavored...so good)

It was all so much fun, and I hope we get to do more fun stuff like that (I think they're teaching us to make a French meal in 2 weeks when we visit Lyon, so that should be fun (plus I don't have to worry about not being delicate enough when cooking)).

I can't really think of anything else interesting to say. I haven't really done much since returning from Provence (man oh man do I miss it down there). Hopefully this weekend will bring some cool stories (I think I'm visiting Versailles with some friends tomorrow, so that should be a jolly ole time).

Au revoir tout le monde!

Week-end en Provence

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. As I said in my last post, we spent the last weekend in the south of France (Provence more or less), and I didn't really have a significant amount of computer access. I've also had an absurd amount of work to do, but I managed to get the bulk of it done today so I finally have some time to tell you of my adventures.

This weekend was by far the greatest weekend of my life. The south of France is the most beautiful place I have ever been. Right now, I think I'm going to retire there and run a vineyard or something like that. That's how awesome it is.

I had to wake up really early Friday morning for our train ride to Avignon. I had heard of the city, but my expectations for it were low. When we pulled into town, though, I was amazed. Avignon was the most beautiful city I have ever visited. Beautiful old buildings, not too crowded. The perfect place.

We were given some free time for lunch, so some of us decided to grab some food and eat it in a park we were told about by our wonderful tour guide Mireck (more about him and his awesome-ness later). This park had the most beautiful view I had ever seen (at the time). Here's a picture from there (I ended up taking about 100 pictures on Friday, so you can tell how beautiful it is):

There were far too many pictures to choose from, so I decided to go with this because honestly, it doesn't really matter. Everything was absurdly beautiful

Anyways, after lunch, we were given a tour of le Palais des Papes, which is where a few Popes lived (and some anti-popes too). Mireck, who works for the ACCENT Center in Paris, gave us a wonderful guided tour. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention because the history of popes in Avignon bores me. Still, he was so knowledgeable and I'm glad he was with us.

After the tour, we were given some time to chill in our rooms. After that, we went out to dinner at some nearby restaurant...

OH YEAH. THEY HAVE SMURF FLAVORED ICE CREAM. IT WAS BLUE (I ate it before the visit to le Palais des Papes but I only remembered it now).

So after dinner, we decided to walk around Avignon a little bit. We were relaxing on some steps when my friend Bridget (like Bridget Jones) suggested we play some campfire games. The first was called slack-jaw. You basically have to slacken your jaw and stare other people down without laughing. It was hilarious. I wish I had some pictures of people's faces during this game (especially Bridget's and Scott's) but we were all too busy laughing to take pictures. The next game we played was called pterodactyl. For this game, you go around in a circle saying "pterodactyl" without showing your teeth to the person you're saying it to. The direction can be changed simply by making a pterodactyl sound and motion back to the last speaker. As you can see, this is a recipe for fun. Scott and I frequently got into head-to-head pterodactyl call duels, in which we both lost because it was far too funny to not laugh. I'm honestly surprised that I was so involved in these games. Normally, when I'm in public situations, I'm incredibly introverted, yet my pterodactyl calls filled the ears of the residents of Avignon.

After that, I went back to my room where I took a bath using bath salts that were in the bathroom. I felt like this:

The next morning, I went for a run with my friends Bridget, Jenn, and Amee. It was pretty difficult since I haven't ran since Spring Break with Winnie, but I manged to survive for the most part. I wish I had brought a camera with me because everything was so beautiful.

After breakfast, we were off to the Pont du Gard. For our trip, we rolled in an almost new Mercedes tour bus. The greatest ride I'll ever be in to the greatest place I've ever visited. When Mireck gave us our tour of the Pont du Gard, which is a Roman aqueduct from the 1st century, I was captivated by his every word.

The valley around the Pont du Gard is by far the most beautiful place I had ever been (eclipsing the area around Avignon and our next adventure which I'll get to eventually). Here's one of the many pictures I took there:

While it's possible that I took a better photo of the Pont du Gard, does it actually matter? (the answer is no, this is beautiful enough)

It was the most beautiful place ever. After an exhausting climb to the top of the aqueduct, we decided to go down toward the river so maybe stick our feet in the water since it was so hot out. We carefully made our way down a steep, slippery, rocky path. At the bottom, I ran into our teacher, who had taken the safe (and apparently faster) way to the river.

When we got there, my friend/muse Scott stripped into his skivvies and dove into the water. While I was initially stunned by his actions, it was really hot and I had wanted to swim in ever body of water I had seen in Paris (various fountains, the Seine) due to the heat, and I knew this would be my best opportunity to go swimming without contracting some disease from the trash of the Seine, so I too stripped down to my boxers and dove in:

This moment (and the ones surrounding it) was the greatest moment of my life. I honestly don't think that I'll ever be as happy as I was at that moment.

This was by far the greatest decision of my life. The water was so comfortable. I had never felt so free before. I wish I was still swimming in that river right now. That was the greatest experience of my life. After getting out to dry up a little bit before putting my clothes on, we skipped some rocks, and I threw some to the other end of the river (a few made it across), mainly because I've had this burning desire to throw stuff really far since I've been in France. Basically, I accomplished the two things I had really wanted to do at the Pont du  Gard: go swimming, and throw stuff.

After the Pont du Gard, we continued our bus ride to Aix-en-Provence, while reminiscing about 90's television. On the way, we stopped by an old fortress called les Baux de Provence. We had a nice lunch with the class, and then we got to explore the old fortress. Unfortunately, Mireck didn't give us a tour (we were kind of rowdy and once we entered the grounds, they were demonstrating the use of a trebuchet so we all ran to watch that). Speaking of which, I got to help arm what I think is the second largest trebuchet in Europe with my friend Chevalier Daniel (he got knighted):

This day was by far the most fun day of my life

After that, we got to explore the grounds. I forgot to mention that this old fortress was on the top of a small mountain, giving rise to the second most beautiful view I had ever seen (eclipsing the view from the park in Avignon for second after the view around the Pont du Gard). Here's one of the many pictures:

Scott, Amee, and Jenn looking off into the yonders

After exploring, we finished our journey to Aix-en-Provence (it's possible that this is when the reminiscing occurred, I don't remember anything other than swimming in the river honestly). Aix was honestly a bit of a disappointment. I had decent expectations for it before the trip, and it wasn't nearly as good as neither my expectations, nor Avignon/le Pont du Gard/les Baux de Provence. Still, it was quite the hip town, with many college students, so there were plenty of things to do. I was just frustrated at night, probably because I really missed le Gardon (the river). Oh man I really miss the river right now. Sigh.

The next morning, we got a tour of the city, and we got to see Paul Cézanne's house. It was alright, but I still wasn't in the best mood/Aix wasn't as picturesque as Avignon/le Pont du Gard/les Baux de Provence, so there aren't really any good pictures from the day.

After our tour, we got to explore the town a little bit on our own. There were many outdoor markets distributed about the town. At one, I bought this one book containing the works of Gérard de Nerval, who is probably my favorite poet (I actually only really know one of his poems, which I had to memorize for my French Phonetics class, but it spoke to my soul on so many levels, so I decided to buy this book so I could enjoy it any many of his other works). At another, Scott and I bought a large bottle of fresh apple juice, which was by far the most delicious thing I had ever drank. Man i really miss that stuff right now (I'm making the mental note to buy some apple juice tomorrow, though I doubt it'll be as good). We then took a quick train to Marseilles (getting a glimpse of the Mediterranean) where we took the TGV back to Paris, back to homework.

I'm sure there is a lot more stuff I wanted to write about (probably about le Pont du Gard because that was by far the best experience of my life), but it all seems like a distant memory right now, which is kind of sad (thankfully I managed to take 267 photos this weekend so I have 267,000 words to remember it by).

Au revoir tout le monde!