America, fuck yeah.

Carly the Patriot really enjoyed a day walking through WWII history, being able to compare up close the state of warfare today with that of the past, and to see the land where so many Americans lost their lives fighting to protect our Allies and a just cause. I could have spent a week seeing the sights of the D-Day landings and the liberation operations that followed, but only had a day at my disposal. I’m fully aware how lucky I am to have been able to see it due to my current position as an overseas resident, but I really do believe that it’s something all Americans should see. If you’ve ever considered it, go find a jar right now and start saving. It’s was without a doubt one of the most incredible and moving things I have ever seen, and I hope I can see it again later in life.

It’s no secret that I’m a patriotic person. Yet recently, it has become even more apparent how proud I am to be American. For the past eight months, my national identity has been front and center. Being in another country for a year, developing relationships with friends from all corners of the world, and studying political science at a foreign university have shown me a lot. There are plenty of things that I don’t like or understand about America, but there are still plenty of things I love, along with even more that I have hope for. So at the end of the day, I still have a strong relationship with my country.

A large proportion of American’s I have met over here don’t see this the same way. It’s quite common for someone studying international studies or foreign language and who chooses to study abroad does so with hopes of one day expatriating or at least possesses a negative bias towards the country of their birth. I was once part of that crowd.  You might remember me as a 16 year old rebel wearing a George W. Bush as Satan t-shirt (which I still proudly own) who wanted to leave and never come back, but I’ve come a long way since then. It was his foreign policy follies combined with my talent for foreign language that led to the academic track that I’m almost finished with today. I can’t point to a single event that made me have a change of heart, but don’t dare write it off as merely the kool-aid the Right claims that young people drank during the rise of Barack Obama…because that wasn’t it. But what’s important is that it happened.

I originally shipped myself to France for a year because I wanted to become a diplomat someday. That’s not exactly what I’m working towards anymore, but the spirit is still there. I’ve worked all year to serve as a good example of America to those I come in contact with. It’s true that we as a country don’t have the greatest image abroad, and I know one interaction won’t change someone’s mind about an entire nation, but it’s at least a step in the right direction. Just a little freelance civilian diplomacy, if you will.

I don’t know what I want to be when I “grow up”, but it’s my dream to have a real impact on the society I live in.  So while some might be discouraged by the negative aspects of American culture/history, it just makes me want to work harder to improve things for everyone. When I get home, I’m going to spend five months fighting for a cause I believe in, and that I believe will better serve my friends and neighbors. I can’t wait to dedicate myself to the hard work of the campaign trail, with my newly recharged enthusiasm for the US.

One of my pet peeves is blind, American patriotism. As far as my studies have taken me, that definitely seems to be another one of the areas in which our country stands alone. Pick up a book, read some history, talk to some people, and think about what you really want and what you stand for. I’m the type of person who doesn’t really get mad if I don’t agree with you, as long as you’re putting some thought into your decision. I just wish this was something more people put thought into.

This is one of the many things I've learned while I've been over here. I'm going to be a different person when I get back. I'm not entirely sure as of right now how I'll have changed, that will take a few weeks to fully manifest itself to me. But I do know, that I'll be pretty damn happy passing through O'Hare customs June 1st.

In related news, I miss this building. 

Spring Break

I decided I wanted to spend my spring break in France. The problem was, I only had a vague idea of where I wanted to go, and pretty much everyone I know either had big plans to leave France for elsewhere in Europe, or was staying in Aix to save money for post semester travels. Thankfully another girl in my program liked my idea of staying in the country and seeing new places, so we started planning and this is what we ended up with: 

Tuesday:
-6hr train from Marseille to Bordeaux, arriving in Bordeaux early that afternoon
-spend the rest of the day seeing the city
-stay overnight in Bordeaux
Wednesday:
-spend the morning/afternoon seeing Bordeaux
-take a 4hr train to Nantes, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Nantes
Thursday:
-spend the better part of the day seeing Nantes
-take a 2hr train to Tours, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Tours
Friday:
-do a morning tour of two castles in the Loire Valley outside of Tours
-catch an early afternoon train to Caen in Normandy
-stay overnight in Caen
Saturday:
-catch a commuter train to neighboring Bayeux and embark on an all day tour of mostly American sites from the D-Day landings, then head back to Caen
-stay overnight in Caen
Sunday:
-catch an early afternoon train back to Aix 
Here's a visual representation of the route. It ended up being a total of over 1,500 miles, and over 20 hours on a train.

On paper, is was all beautifully planned. We were going to make the best of our time and money; spending a good amount of time in each spot, and finding good prices on hostels and train. We researched and booked tours to get us to the castles in the Loire Valley and the sites of D-Day because they’re not possible to do without a car.
I’m proud to say almost everything worked out PERFECTLY. The only small problems were our tours of castles and D-Day sites never got booked due to some computer glitch. When I didn’t receive confirmation emails I got skeptical. Early in the week I called the D-Day company who told me they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing a tour that day. This was disappointing because this tour went to Mont St. Michel in the morning and the D-Day beaches in the afternoon. Instead, we booked an all day D-Day tour with another company who offered a student discount. The castle tour, I called the company the morning of and was told they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing the tour we wanted that morning—but they had another tour with spots available of two different but equally beautiful castles that we joined instead.
But other than those two small things that could have been a huge issue, which we solved calmly and with time to spare, everything worked out perfectly. Kristie and I have traveled with a variety of people, so we knew what we wanted and how we liked to see things and thankfully we made excellent travel partners. So that’s a summary, and here are my stories….

Bordeaux:
A six hours train was easier than expected. I thought an eight or nine hour flight here sucked, but after all this train travel, it’ll be easier to get home. We dropped our things off at our adorably small hotel and went to explore. It was really windy and rainy, but we didn’t take this trip to not see stuff so we braved the elements all week regardless of weather conditions. We spent the rest of the day exploring the city , and it was so lovely. Bordeaux is a beautiful city, especially at night.
In the morning, we decided to check out an especially exciting museum as something to to—the French National Customs Museum. For 1,50€, we learned about the history of French customs, import taxes, smuggling, and border security. If that doesn’t scream spring break, I don’t know what does. I can barely contain my excitement recounting this now. But seriously, it was oddly specific enough that it was genuinely interesting. Then we stopped for tasty homemade lunch at a restaurant called “Chez Maman” (At Mom’s), had some tasty food, and shared a pitcher of wine. When the server brought our after meal coffee, he also brought us shots of orange vanilla rum, he claimed it was good for your health with the changing temperatures. I wasn’t about to argue with him. Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good as we went to our next museum to learn all about the long history of Bordeaux and the region it occupies. To close out the first leg of the trip, we grabbed some pastries that were the local specialty and boarded our train to Nantes.
The ride to Nantes was especially beautiful. France grows a lot of canola, which produces bright yellow flowers. So the countryside was quite colorful. We even briefly passed by the Atlantic Ocean. We arrived at our super cheap hostel later in the evening, and crashed to rest up for the next day.

Nantes:
We didn’t really know what there was to do in town, since we figured we’d make those decisions when we got there with the help of the hostel desk and pamphlets. Over breakfast, we mulled over a little guidebook and made our plans for the day. Our first stop was a botanical/rose garden and were happy to be greeted by a surplus of flowers. We were strolling through the out of bloom rose garden and all of the sudden heard something strange coming from the river that wound past the park. A large group of children were having a sailing lesson, and for some reason they were screaming the baseline to Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. We walked a bit closer to see what was happening, and were very surprised at what we saw. There were maybe 12-15 tiny, rectangular boats with small sails, and each had two or three children in them wearing lifejackets. But there were no adults in the boats, instead three motorboats of adults were observing/herding the children. We laughed about how you would never see such a thing in the US. It was so ridiculous, I won’t elaborate any further. Heading back into the city, we checked out, at the suggestion of the guidebook, Nante’s revived industrial neighborhood. It featured a large hanger that had stored imported bananas until they turned yellow but was converted to shops/restaurants/bars, a big yellow crane, and some mechanical zoo.
Nantes used to be a very significant port, but eventually the river became un-navigable  by large ships, cutting off the city and its established industry from transportation lines. So they’ve tried to remodel this image, and that kind of reminded me of the work to revive the Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee. Their crane…was just a crane. It no longer serves any purpose other than a giant yellow eyesore. They’re pretending to smile and say it’s a tourist attraction now, which is hilarious. And the mechanical zoo was just some old factory you had to pay to get into (we opted out) to play with some science stuff and take a ride on a giant robotic elephant. Unimpressed by this area, we headed back into the center of town. We checked out the castle in the center, which was converted to a museum of the city/region’s history, much like what we saw in Bordeaux. It talked about the cities place as a major slave port back in the day, which was very sad. They also talked about their previously described troubles with their shipping industry. We then wandered some more, and caught an early evening train to Tours, to see castles in the Loire Valley.

Tours:
We weren’t there long, checked into our cheap hostel that evening and lounged around to save some energy/money. On our way there though, we were seriously weirded out. Walking past a war damaged cathedral, we heard the strangest noise—a didgeridoo. My friend peeked around the corner, only to see a hooded man sitting in the entryway…playing a didgeridoo. What the fuck.
Anyways, the next morning, we walked over to the tourist office to meet our guide and see some castles. We piled into a van with our guide, two Japanese women, and a Frenchman who was in town for the weekend for a French language Scrabble tournament (ADORABLE).
Our first castle was called Azay le Rideau. There are over 500 castles throughout the Loire Valley, where Tours is located. About 100 of those are open to the public and privately owned, and another ten or so are open to the public and government owned. Azay le Rideau happened to be one of the government owned was, which was awesome because it meant we got in for free as young European residents (the cost of the tour only covered transportation to the castles). It had a moat and the castle itself was so beautiful. The second castle was privately owned and called Villandry. Though the castle is best known for its gardens, the interior was absolutely gorgeous as well since, being privately owned, there was more money invested in it. But the gardens were beyond breathtaking. Everything was so elegantly sculpted and manicured. We returned to Tours and caught a train to the city of Caen, our base for seeing the beaches of Normandy.

Normandy:
The weather in this town/region was not pleasant the entire time we were there, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We grabbed a quick dinner and crashed at our hotel. In the morning, we took a quick commuter train from Caen to neighboring Bayeux where our guide picked us and three other Americans up for our tour. He was  a young Frenchman who was from the area and was very nice. Our first stop was the German military cemetery, located a short drive from Bayeux. The other Americans we were with, two middle aged sisters and one of their husbands, didn’t really get why/how the cemetery was there. I tried explaining how things like that are necessary for civilized war and a future of peace, but they didn’t seem to understand. Next was the village of Saint Mere Eglise, where paratroopers landed in the wrong spot early in the morning on D-Day. They were supposed to land outside of the town, but due to wind and other problems, they ended up falling right into the main square in town where a large fire was burning. There was already a large German military and French civilian presence dealing with the fire, so when the sky started raining American paratroopers, the scene that followed quickly got ugly. Nearby fences and chimneys still had bullet holes in them from that night almost 70 years ago. We also stopped at a museum that had a plane used in the operations, and plenty of artifacts from the period. Also while in town, we visited the church some of the paratroopers accidentally landed on. War bombing destroyed the original stained glass windows, and after the liberation two new commemorative windows were put in place that featured images of the paratroopers (one made by the town in their honor, and the other as a gift from the veterans to the town). The guide spoke a lot about how thankful the people of this town were for their sacrifice and how they understood the price they themselves paid in the destruction of their town and civilian casualties taken on in order to bring end to German occupation.
On our way to the next spot, the guide stopped at several small things, such as the first temporary airfield the Allies set up in the area which still had the same wire fencing used in 1944, a few smaller monuments, and some of the fields that the Germans had flooded as a means of deterring paratroopers. We had a bit of time at Utah Beach, which was the more successful of the two landing beaches. They had some of the original beach obstacles on display that the army encountered. It was very harrowing to see. It mean, the whole day was…bullet holes and bomb damage everywhere, but the beaches were something else. Looking out at the English Channel and imagining the boats coming in, and then glancing over at the shore, only I really knowing what they could expect to find there.
The next spot was the Point du Hoc, where 200 Army Rangers scaled enormous cliffs to overtake a long range German gun station. The whole site was still full of craters from the 40 minutes of bombing delivered prior to the Rangers’ arrival. Round holes were from aerially delivered bombs, and oval ones from naval strikes. We toured a German bunker. The ceiling was charred from when the Rangers entered with flamethrowers. Some of the walls were full of bullet/shrapnel holes. Everything still seemed fresh. This was also one of the only sites in the area where bomb craters remain. Elsewhere, locals were anxious to fill them in and move on from the war. Our group stopped for lunch at a little fishing village and then moved on to Omaha Beach. We actually visited the sector made famous in Saving Private Ryan, and it was a very emotional experience, with similar things going through my mind as had been there at Utah Beach. The sea was also very rough that day, painting an even better picture of the conditions they had to endure that morning. I could have spent hours there, but the tour had to move on to the next stop, the American Cemetery. On the way there, we passed the first temporary cemetery where American bodies were buried before they were shipped back to America. We were also surprised to see there were houses built all along the beaches of Omaha, but no one is allowed to build there anymore.
Going to the cemetery was technically going back to America, since the land has a similar status that embassies have (http://youtu.be/imeQs7rkPRs?t=11m40s). We wandered through the visitors center, which I could have spent hours more in, and headed out to the cemetery. It was just as moving as to be expected. The soldiers are all buried randomly, officers and common soldiers alike, because everyone’s sacrifice was equal. The guide showed us Teddy Roosevelt Jr’s grave with its Medal of Honor markings. He was buried next to his brother who died in WWI (and the only non WWII soldier buried there), because when you’re a Roosevelt, you can make things like that happen. We stayed for the lowering of the flag and they played Taps.
We then headed back to Bayeux and Caen, grabbed dinner at another adorable creperie, and called it a day. And now I’m recounting all of this in a journal Sunday afternoon on my way back to Aix. I have an hour or so in Paris to change stations, so I probably won’t be above ground but for my time in the stations and won’t actually see the city. But can we observe how crazy it is that I’ll be in Paris for an hour, just passing through? My life is so crazy…and I love it.

And so this is what I did this week. Due to the extreme success and good travel partner chemistry, I was able to do quite a bit of personal reflection and begin to process this whole year, which I’ll share bits and pieces of as the week goes on.

One month left!
For more photos, here's a public link to my album.

THE END IS NEAR

Well I’m almost done in France. This is not a reflective post, just a preview of what the rest of my time looks like.

This week I have some final exams, two of five. My university is a bit strange. I have one week of finals, two weeks of Spring Break, and then one more week of finals. So next Tuesday I depart on a trip west with another girl from my program that will be explained later, then a bit of time in Aix preparing for my last exams, and then about two weeks in France before I head home.

My flight leaves from Paris on June 1^st, but I’ll be taking the train up the day before and staying overnight just because of how the times worked out. I’m very excited to come home, but less excited for my time in France to end.

If you’ve seen on the Facebooks, I’ll be having a welcome home/graduation party Saturday June 2^nd at my house. More details about that are still in the works, so I’ll keep everyone posted.

My tentative plans for when I get back include working for a Congressional campaign. Unfortunately, since I had to work multiple jobs in order to be able to go to college, I didn’t have time for being active with the College Democrats or get in any experience with a campaign during the past four years. You’re probably thinking, “Carly…you spent the summer with Congress, isn’t that enough?” And no. It’s not. I need to get in some time with a campaign to fill in the last bit of skills I need to be eligible for employment in my field of choice. I’m not thrilled about the idea of working for free, but I’m so excited to jump back into American politics. I’m still waiting to hear if I got a fellowship with the Democratic Party and placed with a specific candidate, but I’ll know in the next couple weeks. I have a concrete game plan for this, but I’m not going to discuss it here. If you’re curious, ask me yourself.

This photo is stolen from a friend because it made me so happy to see on Facebook. If you’re flying into Milwaukee from the west, the planes pass not only right over Greendale, but directly over my house. I’m flying into Chicago, not Milwaukee…but I can’t wait to see this again. From the ground.

Is this real life?

Continuing the theme of “my life is way too cool right now”…last weekend was simply amazing. 

Saturday my program took us on an excursion to three nearby sites that all contained ancient Roman ruins. Back in the day, they settled in the area…so there’s still some stuff left from when they were here. First place we visited was a site called “Pont du Gard”. It’s an absolutely massive Roman aqueduct that has been updated a bit to make sure it stays intact for all to come and see, but it was really, really cool. The next stop was the nearby town of Arles, which I had already visited in January with a group from my university, to see their Roman constructed stadium, theater, and other things. A friend and I wandered around the theater, and there were literally just chunks of intricately carved roman ruin things just laying everywhere. Like they were normal rocks and not really cool man sculpted rocks. And the last spot was a site called Glanum that they found on accident in the 20’s, that was actually full of gallo-roman ruins dating back to 600 BCE. Everything we saw was really interesting, and just the idea that I’m living in a place surrounded by settlements that old is absolutely mind blowing.

Sunday was a bit different. A few weeks back I had an idea for a pastry tasting picnic where everyone shows up with a few treats from the bakery, and then everyone gets to try a little bit of what everyone else brought. There are soooo many goodies in the windows at bakeries and pastry shops here, but you’d go broke and gain so much weight if you actually got around to trying them all. So this picnic was a good compromise. There were so many tasty treats and everyone left happy. I got back to my apartment and sat around the kitchen table with a few friends, who were discussing the apparent carnival that was taking place in town today. They had seen confetti all over the main street through town and an abundance of adorable French children in costumes. Intrigued, I pulled up the website of Aix’s tourist office to see the order of events for whatever this carnival was. We were in luck—from 4:30 to 5:30 there was a parade finale at the town’s main fountain/square and it was currently 4:15.

We walked into town not really knowing what to expect, but weren’t surprised by the copious amounts of adorable children and confetti we saw on our way to the location. But then things started to get a bit weird. The main fountain, which is massive, was turned off and the basin was full of silk pillows and decorated with ribbon. There were several highly decorated floats parked all around the roundabout with people dancing everywhere. A confetti cannon fired every few minutes. I thought that there might be a parade finishing here, or just going around the circle a few times, but I was wrong. I soon noticed some arena sized confetti blowers were placed around the fountain, along with some sacks of feathers nearly the size of twin mattresses. Several minutes later, they proceeded to pump billions of feathers into the air for 10-15 minutes. It looked like it was snowing. If I count every feather I see on every bird for the rest of my life, I will still have seen more feathers on Sunday. For something that my friends and I literally just happened upon, I could not have asked for more. It was way too cool, and I have no idea how they cleaned up all those feathers. It now being Wednesday, there are still a few floating around town but the vast majority were cleaned up by Monday.

We still have no idea exactly what this carnival was for, if it’s every year, or why they were using feathers, but I’m not asking too many questions. I’ll just accept it as one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Me hanging out at the aqueduct.

Soooo many pastriesss

The aftermath of feather time.

Paris take three.

 Earlier in the semester; I proposed to three of my friends here that we all go back to Paris together for a long weekend. They’re three of the same people I went with back in October, so we were planning on a more relaxed stay in the city since we collectively had now seen all the mega tourist sites. So Easter weekend we hopped a train and headed north. We all got there eventually and I experienced no travel troubles. But I’ll just say that the trip got off to an interesting start for some. 

Looking at the forecast ahead of time, it appeared that Friday was going to be the only day with guaranteed sun. Since the palace of Versailles and its gardens were on our list of “things we must do”, we headed over there first after dropping our backpacks off at the hotel. We were excited not only because everything about this place is beautiful, but it’s also free for us. The gardens are usually free to everybody, and getting into the palace itself is free for European Union residents between the ages of 18 and 24. To get in, I didn’t even have to go wait in the long tourist line to buy a ticket. I just had to walk up to the entrance and flash my passport full of official stickers that say I live in France. It’s awesome. The palace was just as beautiful as I expected and it was insane to walk through the same room where they signed the treaty ending WWI. The gardens ended up being a bit more complicated, because apparently the day we were there was one of the six or so out of the entire year where we had to pay about 6€ to get in, which was slightly disappointing at first. But then we perked up because we realized it was because they were playing music throughout the whole outdoor space and the fountains were actually turned on. So it was nice to see the gardens in their full glory.

Saturday we all split up for the most part, with assorted things that we all wanted to do ourselves. I took the train across town a bit to find this little American grocery store so I could buy an expensive bag of peanut butter cups to help keep me sane while studying for finals. They were a bit pricey (9€ for a 1lb bag) but I regret nothing. But on my way where, the strangest thing happened. I was looking at a metro map on the wall after I bought my ticket to double check the lines/directions I was supposed to take, and a man approached me asking in French how to get from where we were now over to the Louvre. I showed him on the map a possible route and offered to go halfway with him because the station I was trying to get to was a place he could transfer to get in the right direction. He took me up on my offer and we chatted the whole way. He was about 50 and from the city of Lyon, and remarked on the irony of an American who wasn’t even studying in Paris showing him how to use the metro. We got off our train and I sent him on his way. It was a really random, yet welcome, event. And even stranger, as I was leaving that station, some other person asked me in French which way “République” was. What was so strange about it was that was the large square/station near my hotel that I had just come from, but we were no longer near. I was not aware that I was wearing a sign that said, “Hi, I speak French. Ask me how to use the Metro”. I spent the rest of the day doing a little shopping, going to see the tiny cemetery where General Lafayette (the main Frenchman supporting George Washington in the revolutionary war) was buried, and wandering around town a bit with one of my friends who came with.

Sunday began with a little project. A few weeks earlier I had tossed around the idea of doing a sort of “senior pictures” photo shoot in Paris with iconic backdrops and super French props. We selected Sunday morning as the best time to do this, because it happens to be time of the week when there are the least people out and about. IE…the least amount of people who will kick my ass for walking around in a blue/white striped dress, a beret, and carrying baguettes. So after stopping for coffee and fresh bread, my friend and I headed over to the park next to the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely beautiful that morning, and we got some great shots. After that, we grabbed some rent-a-bikes and rode along the Seine and dropped them off at a station near the Louvre. It was super cheap and super fun. Paris has rent-a-bike figured out.  We had picnic lunch at one of our favorite places along the river, and then toured the opera house in the afternoon. And in the evening, another friend and I headed back to the Eiffel Tower to see it sparkle at night one last time, once again pick up rent-a-bikes, and rode along the river a bit before dropping them off near the Champs Elysees/Arc de Triomphe. It was as close to a perfect day in Paris as you could get.

Monday, we checked out of our hotel and headed to the nearby Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It’s famous because well…it has a lot of famous people buried there, including Edith Piaf, La Fontaine, Moliere, Chopin…and tons more. We then split up a bit and one friend and I went to a café while the other two went to see some stuff that they missed the day before. We found THE MOST ADORABLE CAFÉ I have ever seen. It was on a little random side street, and there was no one in there except my friend and I and the owner. It was amazingly cute. I then spent the rest of the afternoon meeting up with an ex-resident of mine from my days as an RA who’s spending the semester in Paris. We grabbed lunch and caught up, comparing experiences in France and whatnot. She was actually the first face from home I’ve seen since I got to France in August. It is a little sad realizing that almost everyone else in my program has friends also studying all over Europe, friends coming to visit them, or family coming to visit them. Having not many friends in a place to study abroad nor having a few grand to drop on a trip to Europe, and family with other more reasonable/responsible financial priorities, I’ve pretty much been left alone here. I’m not complaining though. As much as I wish I could share this with some of the people I care about most back home, I’m really doing fine here by myself. Just commenting on the situation. But even more exciting, said former resident is coming down to the south for her spring break, so I’m meeting up with her and her travel partner and helping them get to a town extremely close to mine. But back to Paris…that evening we caught a train home.

It was a lovely long weekend and I really, really love Paris. It’s a great place to visit for a long weekend, but I’m still happiest where I am. I’m going to have an afternoon and evening in the city before my flight home leaves in June, so I didn’t have to say goodbye for good.

And it’s still surreal that I can say, “Oh yes, I just went to spend a weekend in Paris. Whatever”. My life is too cool. 

Senior photos at the Eiffel Tower

General Lafayette's grave

One of the fountain shows we saw

Day trips.

So if we’re facebook friends, you’ll have seen that I’ve been busy lately. The last voyage I blogged was Strasbourg, one month ago today. And I have done quite a bit of traveling since then…

March 8^th-9th.
An American friend from school and I took a train west to a town called Montpellier to see M83. If you haven’t heard of them, though they are French, they’re famous internationally and have this recent hit song. So after hopping on a train late that afternoon and arriving early evening, we got lost for a while trying to find out hostel walking in every direction except the correct one. But we got there eventually, and the concert was absolutely amazing. They hadn’t played in the south of France in five or six years, and you could see on the lead singer’s face how excited he was to be able to speak French to the audience in between songs and to just be playing a show in France. The next day we woke up, had two hours to wander around the city, and then catch a train back to Aix. Montpellier was a really lovely city. Not that much larger than Aix in terms of space, but it was definitely more urban and less “cute-provençal-town”.

March 9^th-10^th.
The international organization at my university organized an overnight trip west to the cities of Toulouse and Carcassonne. It was so simple—I give them 50€ and they give me a hostel room with friends, all transportation, and they showed us around both places. It was a great time with friends seeing a new corner of the country. We wandered around Toulouse most of Saturday and then some more Sunday morning. If that city rings a bell, it’s because it was in the news a week or so after I was there. But I saw none of that. I just saw some pretty buildings, pretty parks, and ate some delicious regional food. Sunday afternoon we stopped at Carcassonne. I was there at the end of February with one of my friends before I knew this trip was happening, but it was fun to visit again. Carcassonne is a town a few hours west of Aix that has an old medieval city from like the 12^th century. It used to be on the Franco-Spanish border, but then the border got moved at some point so the castle lost significance. But this medieval city was full of toy stores selling princess and knight outfits. It’s kind of funny how Americans take their kids to Ren Fairs and Europeans can just take their kids to a real castle.

March 24^th.
This semester, my American program organized two trips for us that are paid for out of the tuition dollars I pay them. This first one was to a region just a bit north of Aix called “Luberon”. We visited four small villages, a nature park, and an abbey. The villages were all very cute, and most of them were perched on top of hills so that once upon a time when they were built, they could be easily defended from attacking persons. But the best village was Roussillon, where the nature park was. Randomly in the middle of this area, there’s this little blop of colorful soil. There are a total of 17 shades ranging from browns, to reds, to yellows and oranges and they’re used for a bunch of stuff (pharmaceuticals, paints, dyes, etc). They’re really picky with what it’s used for now to protect it, and part of it is now this nature park. It was easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The last place we visited was this abbey in a valley. It was kind of depressing because if you run a google image search of the name (Abbeye Senanque), almost all results show it in the middle of a blooming lavender field. Beautiful, no? I was just a tad bitter because the lavender booms two months out of the year here…June and July. Literally, those are the only two months that I’m not in France and I don’t get to see the one thing that Provence is absolutely known for. So it was slightly insulting for me to see a field of dead lavender that will bloom as soon as my plane takes off. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It was a really, really lovely trip. I’ll just have to use this as motivation to save money when I get home so I can come back here someday at the right time of the year.

March 25^th.
So I was looking at my map of France and marked off all the places I’ve been, and noticed a gap within my immediate vicinity. So I planned a day trip to Toulon, which is the next major city along the Mediterranean east of Marseille. It has a big port with ferries to Corsica/Italy/Africa, ship building, and it’s where France keeps most of their Navy. Their aircraft carrier wasn’t in town that day, but I hear it’s impressive. So three friends and I hopped on a train for about an hour and ended up in Toulon. We walked inland farther to find our first activity…a cable car to the top of a small mountain (2,000ft). Mount Faron is right next to Toulon, so we were essentially on the outskirts of town when we caught the cable car up. Up top, apart from the amazing views, there was a zoo that specialized in the breeding of endangered cats. Obviously, we went there first. It was a bit sad because the cages were all small and I felt sorry for the kitties, but everyone was happily asleep in the sun…like cats do. It’s sunny over 300 days a year here…so it’s a pretty nice place to be a cat. Or a panther/puma/lion/tiger/etc. We saw the pair of tiger cubs born here 10 months ago staring at a random donkey that was wandering through the back part maintenance area of the zoo like they wanted to go eat it. Super cute. After the zoo, we walked around the park up top some more, taking in the views, and then moved on to the WWII memorial. They turned an old fort into a museum to commemorate the Allied landings in Provence in August 1944 and the liberation of Toulon. After Allied troops landed up in Normandy the previous June, they did the same thing all along the south of France. It was super cool actually seeing stuff like that where it happened, as opposed to watching a film or seeing a similar exhibit set up at an American museum. After that, we took the cable car back down the mountain, wandered around the center of Toulon for a bit, and then came home.

March 31^st.
A while back I was looking through a list of “the most beautiful places in France” and saw that one of them, the French Grand Canyon, was located relatively close to where I am. A few girls and I were talking about renting a car to go spend the day there, but then we discovered that this company in town that plans 25€ day trips to all sorts of neat places was organizing a trip so we decided to just do that. Next to the canyon, which is either called the Gorge du Verdon or seriously Grand Canyon du Verdon, is a man-made lake that is the prettiest shade of green. They don’t allow any gas motors on it, only electric and canoes/kayaks/paddleboats, and it’s a reservoir so there’s no gross stuff draining into it. The trip organizers told us that the water would probably be too cold for swimming, but I wore my suit anyways. A former swimmer friend and I decided to go in anyways, since it couldn’t be any worse than an early morning swim practice. It was…because we couldn’t properly swim with our faces in the water and I think my lungs went into a bit of shock the first two minutes because it was hard for me to talk. But we warmed up a bit, and swam from the beach we were at out to the bridge nearby and beached ourselves like sunning seals on some rocks on the other side. We contemplated jumping off all dramatic-like, but our legs were too cold to ensure that we’d be able to safely leap far enough out. So instead we just played with the mud that covered the bottom of this lake. It was all goopy and pure and made our skin all soft. Then we swam back, played with some more mud, and dried off. There were probably 60 people on this trip,and a few dozen more along the shores of other parts of this lake…but my friend and I were literally the only ones swimming. I don’t think I’ll ever swim in a lake that naturally pure again or have a lake to myself. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever. After that, they drove us through the canyon to see it from up higher/up close and take some picutes. I’ve never been to the American Grand Canyon…but I’m pretty sure it’s hard to compare the two. Either way, the French one was so pretty. The last stop was a small village near the canyon where we saw villagey things and climbed up to a little chapel way up high. It was a great day and I got so many good pictures.

And now for some photos:

Swimming at the canyon, compliments of a friend on a paddle boat.

Cassoulet, traditional dish from Toulouse.

Tinted soil at Roussillon.

Final notes:

-If you'd like to see more of a geographic representation of where I've been, I've been mapping it on Google. Click here for the map, and you can zoom in and click on each bubble to see what city it is.
-If you'd like to see pictures, this album contains everything I've done since the end of February for the most and it's visible to people without facebook accounts.