The Last Day of Alliance Francaise

Believe it or not, this particular Tuesday was the one I had been dreading since almost the beginning of the year. I know it's nerdy, but I was dreading the day I would be done at Alliance Francaise.

School has been my favorite thing about being here. Of course I loved working with the kids and travelling and all of that. That was all like the icing on the cake. But school is what I loved best.

Now, if Hannah was reading this right now (but she doesn't read my blog so we don't have to worry about that) she would be rolling her eyes at this point, the way she always does whenever I start gushing about school. But it's just true and I can't help it.

I love learning the intricacies of the French language. I love seeing the progress I've made throughout the year. I love my international friends, my teacher, the games, the grammar lessons, the movies, the lunch breaks at Paul, and even the building we were in. I love it all.

So Tuesday was the last day. We had so much fun that it made it that much harder to leave. In the morning we listened to music by Benjamin Biolay (le chanteur préféré de ma prof), played Taboo in French (my team won!), and went on a field trip to the African market of Noailles and the graffiti spattered streets of Cours Julien. Then we all ate lunch together, did the bisous, and said au revoir.

This was the second in the line of these unfortunate goodbyes. Leaving is so hard.

Une Colocataire

For this week in limbo between work and vacation, I've been living with Camilla in Cassis. It's been a great way to finish out the year, resting and spending time with my friends before we all leave to go our separate ways.

We've been going on adventures to the nearby beaches, concerts for the annual French 'Fete de la musique', and even so far as visits to Nice and Cannes.

Here's a little photo journey of our adventures so far:

First we spent a lazy afternoon lounging and swimming at the beach in nearby La Ciotat.

Then we did a whirlwind trip of Nice (pictured above) and Cannes all in one day.

And here we are on the red carpet in Cannes!!!

Au Revoir

Goodbyes are hard. You'd think I'd be getting used to them by now but I guess no one ever really does.

The first of this year's goodbyes was sad. How do you really say goodbye to a family you've lived with and kids you've taken care of for 10 months?

It's not like the goodbyes of leaving home to go study abroad for a year. In that case, you know you'll be home soon and most everything will be just as you left it. But this, I have no idea when I'll see again all these people I've come to know and love.

All I can say is, thank goodness for internet and Facebook, and even telephones and letters. In this age of communication, I'm glad France is just a click away.

Mozart l'Opera Rock

Finally, the day I'd been waiting for since February! Camilla and I got to see the French musical Mozart l'Opera Rock on June 13th at the Marseille Dome.

It's the story of Mozart's life with excellent period costumes, exerpts of Mozart's music, and fantastic rock songs (5 of which I have translated into English. The lyrics are just as amazing as the music.)

It was absolutely one of the highlights of my time here in France. I'm attaching a link to the video of my favorite of the songs. It's brilliant!

'Le bien qui fait mal'

A Birthday Party

This day started at 8:00am, two full hours before my alarm was set to go off. It was a text from Camilla. We were planning to go to her house with some friends to celebrate my birthday with a Mexican lunch at 11:30. She was letting me know that one of her kids was sick and she wouldn't be able to do the party, which means we no longer had a location for said party.

So I hauled myself out of bed and started contacting the appropriate people. I texted Hannah and woke her up too. Then I emailed our friend Marinella, who is Italian and doesn't have a French cell phone. Since I couldn't fall back to sleep while waiting for responses to my messages, I went ahead and took a shower and took the laundry off the line.

Finally we decided to have the lunch at my house and I would just pick up the two girls at the train station. I was going to leave at 11:10. By 11 I still hadn't heard back from Marinella, which probably meant she hadn't gotten the email and would end up in Cassis all alone. Then at 11:05 I got a call from Hannah saying she'd missed her bus. So, I raced out of the house to pick up Hannah, hoping to get to the train station quick enough to find Marinella on the train as it came through and get her to get off.

On the way, I got behind every slow, massive truck within a ten mile radius. I was annoyed. Hannah later called my behavior saucy. I called it agitated and pissed off.

Anyway, I got Hannah and got back to the train in time but there was no Marinella. So we walked up and down the platform peering into the windows trying to find her. It felt a little awkward. Then the train pulled away, leaving us alone on the platform.

So we drove to Cassis. And we found Marinella sitting all alone at the train station. And then we drove back to Aubagne. We gave her the grand tour of Aubagne (which lasts about 3 minutes) and went back to the house to make tacos and guacamole.

Finally, we sat down to eat. We were so hungry! I got through one taco. The gate buzzer went off. I set off to find my host dad to tell him some painters were here. He was gone. I met the painters. I tried to figure out if they were actually painters or lunatics out to steal our stuff. They were painters. This made me glad. I left them to do their job. Then host dad got home so I didn't have to worry anymore about unknown painters.

After that everything went just fine. We ate so much it was hard to stand up and since we couldn't stand up, we decided we might as well eat some cookies since we were already at the table. Then we went on a beautiful drive through the countryside, passing terraced gardens, cherry orchards, olive trees, and even two tiny nearby towns.

All in all, after the chaos of the morning, it turned out to be a really nice day. In the end, I dropped Marinella off at the bus, Hannah at her house, and now I am in my room, about to take a nap, which in my opinion, makes any day great.

A Sampling

I generally get annoyed if people wait really long between each post and then apologize each time they enter a new one, but that's what I'm going to do tonight. I haven't been a diligent blogger and I apologize.

I do sort of have an excuse, or two. It is partly due to the fact that I am busy thinking about trying to get everything I've accumulated this year home in a suitcase and a few shipping boxes. It may also have something to do with thinking no one reads this anyway except the Chinese website who keeps leaving inappropriate comments on my posts.

But despite it all, I am back to keep you in the know. The first thing you should know is that it's summertime. I know it's been hot back home for months now but summer just sprang upon us here and it is hot. It's not just muggy, swimming through air kind of hot. No, this hot has to do with the sun. The hot, Mediterranean sun. The sun that scalds your eyeballs and makes you see twinkly stars in the middle of the day. The sun that has turned my practically translucent skin to a toasty, probably unhealthy, brown.

But with scalded eyes and toasty skin comes lounging by the pool and taking refreshing dips in the sea. That makes it all worthwhile. All the flowers around are jealous. They wish they could take dips in the sea. They are unfortunately all dying of heat stroke. At least they didn't have to brave jellyfish infested waters last weekend like I did. Scary!

The other piece of info, which most of you probably know, is that I just had a birthday! Twenty-three years of being alive. I think that's kind of an accomplishment. I celebrated the day before with an aperitif at our neighbor's house and then dinner with my host family. It was lovely! I then celebrated the actual day by going to school (which did make me happy) and then spending the rest of the day by myself, moping about being alone.

But tomorrow, I'm getting a mini party at Camilla's house in Cassis with some buddies and I'm really excited about it. Tacos and guacamole!! Somehow I moved to France and fell in love with Mexican food. Hm. Maybe that's because it's so ridiculously hard to find in a restaurant here.

I've also gotten some encouragement on my French speaking abilities this past week so that makes me really happy. I'm always a novelty in the local McDonalds, which can sometimes be incredibly annoying or sometimes it's great, and this time I had a nice conversation with the man taking my order and he told me I speak good French. That made my day.

Then later my host family told me I was finally mastering the R sound. In my opinion, that is the hardest sound in the realm of human communicative sounds. Well, that is until I heard Camilla's family speak Polish and changed my mind. But still, R is hard.

Finally, today I was able to have a typing conversation with my French teacher from college. We were able to have the whole conversation in French and I was so excited about how much I've learned since I've been here. I definitely have a long way to go but I haven't given up hope.

So, I guess that gets you pretty much up to date. Hopefully it won't take me as long next time to write and hopefully I won't get any more inappropriate comments. (But I doubt it. It's been happening a lot. I should probably reflect a little before posting blog titles with the word "nudity" in them, even if it was completely innocent.)

I'll be stateside in less than a month. So, see you soon!!