First week of classes, Nice is Nice.

My first week of classes wasn't too bad. I'm enrolled at the Art program with the Marchutz School of Art just outside Aix-en-Provence. I spend a great amount of time at Marchutz because I have painting or drawing four times a week and Fridays is seminar day. We have 10 people in our program, which makes it truly intimate and allows to bond as a group. We started with figure drawing last week. It was a very interesting experience getting back into drawing the figure, as I never had much training previous. I'm excited to continue at the school of vision.... a silly joke we say, but back in the day the Marchutz school was called Marchutz School of Vision, a school of seeing. And really it is. It may a sound like something out of the 60's or 70's paired with an acid trip, but in all reality, this school is teaching us to SEE the world, SEE what were drawing and become more aware of what we're creating through our vision. It's a very cool way to put it. My Professors are both wonderful guys. Alan seems a little far out sometimes but he's got his head on most of the time... and very good insight. John is really, REALLY, intellegent and expects a lot from us. I have a feeling that being in these classes at Marchutz, it's going to allow me to broaden my self and where I want to go in life. We were paired quite nicely. :)

My other two classes are International Relations and French. My international Relations professor is very cool. He's an American from New Hampshire and studied in Marseille and Aix. He's pretty young but has a great attitude about Political Science and I see that he's very passionate about it. We started discussing the introductions to International Relations, the who, what's, where's... so on and so forth. But it's good. We were told that we get to go to Geneva in Novemeber for a "field trip" to the United Nations. I'm so excited!! i've always wanted to go. This time I won't get suspended though, :P

French class is cool... It's just correcting my corrupt slang from being around very familiar people who don't mind speaking a little broken French. (by broken I mean familar french, not proper.) That's all I've got on French....

The weekend started Friday afternoon. After our seminar some of the Marchutz students walked back to town and got food. We bought a slice of pizza from Pizza Capri, the best pizza/sandwich place a emporter (take away). Around the corner from school is a little tabac shop and a bar where you just buy drinks but can bring your food... a BYO..F. Hung around for an hour or so then we parted ways and headed home for naps and dinner. We were all pretty beat from the week and had a huge weekend ahead of us.

My host family is friends with another family who is hosting an IAU student named Chris. He's from New Jersey and goes to F & M University. His host family invited mine and me over for dinner on Friday evening. We made the walk over to their house and past Cezanne's previous residence. Awesome. When we arrived at Jerome and Kathleens house, we saw a beautiful garden included were seating area for hors d'oerves and tea, a magnificent table under an umbrella of tree branches and this wonderful old French house. Their back yard was absolutely incredible. It went up three different stories. The first level was for the clothes line, just close by you can see a rock stair way heading up to the second where you would find a chicken's cage, and the third was a pool an tool shed. The hen was awesome, as well as the pool, wonderful textile work. They had a fig tree in their back yard and from my knowledge of what Chris told me... they eat figs with everything. I saw that to be true at dinner. Figs in the salad, figs with the chicken, a bowl of figs next to the cheese.... Kind of funny to see Chris talk about how sick he was of them.

The dinner lasted a good four hours. Wonderful conversation with some very interesting people. Chris and I left around midnight to go walk around the centre ville and just get out of the house a little bit. We walked around the whole ring road. (the ring road is the primary route around the centre ville that's very well known. ) He walked me home and I headed to bed to wake up early for our trip to Nice, France.

Nice, pronounced Nee-s, is absolutely wonderful. We arrived and had about 4 and half hours to just do whatever we wanted. Some friends from the Marchutz, Jahmin, Martha, Katherine and I walked around the markets before stopping for lunch. We found all sorts of beautifully crafted jewelry, purses, paintings, clothing, you name it. Earlier in the week walking from class past shops in Aix a large ceramic cicada caught my eye. Unfortunately it was 49EU, which I shouldn't be spending on decorum. I passed, but to my luck, I found a whole bunch of them in Nice. I thought it to be appropriate to buy a small one at first then work my way up in the family. As annoying as the cicadas can be, they represent the folklore of Provence and the Mediterranean. Also, they represent lovegevity and nonchalentness. (The latter being the very attitude of Provence.) It was kind of cool to learn that. I really enjoy looking at these creatures and love even more that even though their purpose is different, they're represented well here. After a little shopping we found a restaurant that was overpriced, and not worth the hassle but we had to eat. After eating and spending a little bit of time talking to an Italian couple who now lives in France, we headed to the beach.

The Beach. Omg. The smooth mediterranean rocks under your feet. The beautiful water ahead. The gorgeous scenery behind. It was perfect, absolutement parfait!!! Katherine, Martha Jamin and I just hung out on the beach for a few hours and drank in the pure beauty that we were experiencing. I went for a swim in the Mediterranean sea and was speechless. I've been before whilst visiting Spain years previous but it was nothing like this. I swam out and watched people from the water, very peaceful from the water. We spent the majority of our afternoon telling stories and getting to known one another just a bit more. We had to be back at our meeting point around 4 o'clock to meet our group and bus drivers to take us back near Nice where we would have dinner together as a program. After dinner we were all anxious to either go to bed or go out. I chose to go out with a few people.

Katherine and I met Chris to go to the "Pizza Place", a restaurant called Le Roi Rene where we have drinks before going out. Joy, Molly, Marcel, Stephen and Andrew met us there. Our first drink was called "Get 27". I was told there would be glowsticks involved with this drink, but my first experience was a bust. It was a minty drink that is a turquoise green color that truly resembles and tastes like mouthwash. Its pronounced "Jet" and was produced by Jean and Pierre Get in 1796. In all seriousness I felt the effects of this drink rather quickly. Who knows how often I'll be drinking that, probably not so. We left the Pizza Place to go to the Wohoo bar down the street form school that has some pretty good deals and has a great building for it. It was loud, crazy and only American music was played, again. Ugh. We left to go to IPN down the road but the guys had to pay so Stephen, Katherine and I opted to go to the bar next door. Shots were 3EU so Katherine and I decided to do one.. but we didn't really know what was in any of them, so we told the bar tender... "deux shots tres fort!" (two shots very strong) Ultimately it was a bad idea because we were given a shot of tabasco sauce, lemon, salt and vodka-- all the while it was set on fire. It didn't fare well with either of us so we got beers.

The bar closed shortly after so we walked around to find some food for Stephen. I bought a Kronenbourg for 2EU from the Kabab place and we headed into what would be one of the most memorable nights of my life. We walked around to the Rotonde. Stephen wanted to go sit on the public benchs and people watch but Katherine and my agenda included walking over by the fountains close to the rotonde with the many colored lights. We were stopped by a folle (crazy) young french girl asking us about ourselves etc. We parted ways with her and turned a corner and found a couple of guys playing guitar and a drum. This continued for hours with great conversation, dancing, drinking wine and ultimately having an amazing night. These people were so genuinly nice that they were rolling cigarettes for us, playing songs we might know and sharing their wine. We arrived at the place at 1 and didnt leave until 430, it was just an absolutely transforming night. Granted, we woke up this morning with a hang over and lack of sleep it didn't bring our spirits down for a minute.

Today, we journeyed to Cassis, a small fishing town on the coast. If you've been to Paris, you haven't seen anything yet. Cassis is known for it's awesomeness. (Great terminology, I know) We were driven up to the highest point in the mountains overlooking Cassis. It was just absolutely breathtaking. You could see everything from up top. The other islands in the distance, the houses, boats, beaches, cliffs and the most beautiful water. I fell in love from the mountain. On the other side opposite of Cassis was another small fishing town, La Ciotat, where the game Petanque was invented. In all reality petanque relative to Bocce Ball. Ciotat was gorgeous as well but it was a little more industrial than Cassis was. We took the bus down the mountainside and parked the buses and walked down a very step series of hills to get to the city. Katherine and I kind of trekked solo today and went to the petite casino, bought baugettes from the boulangerie and headed for the beach. The beach was wonderful and the scenery even more so. If I were ever to live near the coast in France, it would be in Cassis. It was a magical place. Plenty of culture, visitors, cute little french kids, boats, fishermen and the locals to create a perfect Sunday.

We returned. Katherine and I were walking home and found there was a little bazaar going on for all the different associations in Aix to promote their stuff. we found a 12 piece band being crazy playing French folk songs and across the street was a group of drummers banging in perfect unison with their different rhythms only to find that you can actuaaly take lessons. HOW COOL!! If it were 300eu for the semester, I'd be all over that. But u have to pass somethings up. I had the perfect day on the beach only to return home to Aix to find more amazingness that this country hides...

What's next?! OH YEAH, Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany. :D