Easter Weekend

This weekend, I went to see my second cousin, Justine. It was lovely to meet her and her family. I found it interesting to discover that there are many similarities between our families even though we have never spent any time together. Their household is incredibly bilingual. They switch between French and English all the time. I really loved their house. It is an old french house, but the inside is very modern. They rent it in the summer if anyone is interested.

Justine and her oldest son Thomas took me to L'Isle sur la Sorgue. It is a little town with lots of canals and water wheels. There was an antique festival/fair thing going on, which was fun to walk through. There were also these random vintage cars. Herby!
They had a big dinner party on Saturday night. There was a lot of French spoken. It is amazing how tired you are after a night of trying to follow all the conversations in French. It was particularly hard when more than one conversation was going on across me at once.
The next day the three boys, their dad, and the cat left for England. I spent the morning talking to Justine about her life, the many places she has lived, and what I should do with my family in Provence when they visit me.
I got back to Aix at about 4pm on Easter Sunday. That evening we had people over for dinner. We had breakfast for dinner. It was lots of fun and very delicious. I think it should be an Easter tradition.
Today I mopped and cleaned the apartment. I also spent some time outside in the lovely nearly 70 degree weather.
I am very excited for my family (minus :( Aled ) arriving on Thursday. I am also very excited because the housing results for next year at Wellesley were announced. I am going to be living in the same dorm as my friends Stacy and Kate. It was our first choice and it is right on the lake. It is also right next to our lovely friend Maria who is going to be the Resident assistant in the Spanish House.
I am a happy camper (except for figuring out classes for next year, but that is for another post)

hair

I got my hair cut! I will put up photos soon. I am not totally pleased, but I am more happy with it than I was with my damaged long hair.

Lately the strike has continued as has the blockade. All of our classes that were held at the school have been moved to various places around Aix and the classes that are on strike have been converted to independent studies.

I am doing laundry today, which I hate. It is such a pain going to the laundromat. I now appreciate the $1 laundry machines at Wellesley and I REALLY appreciate the laundry machine at home.

I am also going to make some scone/shortbread things today to go with strawberries and whipped cream for dessert tonight. Ali has a friend staying and we are inviting a few people to have dinner with us. I bought strawberries at the market as well as some gerbera daisies. So pretty!

Ali and I made a very successful quiche last night. We put ham, leeks, and peas in it. It was very yummy and we have left overs!

Alright time to pick up my laundry. ugh...

Wellesley Excursion

This is from the excursion I went on with the Wellesley program last weekend. We went to the hospital where Van Gogh stayed in St. Remy de Provence, an ancient Roman city called Glanum, and Les Baux where there are awesome ruins of a medieval castle. This photo was taken at Les Baux and it was raining by then. We had just had a very yummy lunch in town. It was a good day.

I'm not making this up

The strike continues and is getting worse. The students are now blockading the building. I thought you might want to see some pictures. Here are some photos that a girl on the program took. The first one is of the protests that happen outside of the school. That is the main reason we can no longer get in.
The second reason is clearly the fact that they make it as difficult as possible to get through the doors. It is not impossible though if you put in quite a bit of effort as displayed below by another girl on the Wellesley program.

Apparently Stalinism is that way

It might be hard to tell since the picture is pretty small but the hallways and staircase in the background are totally blocked with furniture. Pretty impressive. The director of our program says that the students continue to strike now because there is no point in starting the semester at this point. The professors have caused this semester to be a waste so the students think there is no point in going to school this late in the semester.

Oh the French.

p.s. notice what bad shape the building is in to begin with. There really isn't much care for the school facilities.

Ryan in Europe

It was great to have Ryan here. I went and picked him up from the airport. I was worried something would go wrong in Paris since he can't speak the language, but he arrived in Marseille without having any problems.
The first thing we did when we got back to Aix, even before returning to the apartment, was go to Crepes-a-Gogo. My favorite crepe place.
The highlights of his stay include climbing Mount St. Victoire, going to Cassis, and of course visiting family in England.
We left early on a Sunday morning to go to the Mountain. It was a good thing to do on a Sunday since everything is closed here on Sundays. The day before we had picked up all the things we needed for a picnic from Monoprix. This included wine, cheese, and bread. Very French. We also brought pistachios, cookies, and bananas. We took a little shuttle bus to get to the base.
We got off the shuttle at a stop where there was a resevoir and a big dam. It turned out to be somewhat of a mistake not to bring a map of any kind. We started going in the direction that everyone else was going, but after awhile there were so many forks that there wasn't a clear path. We sorta just went towards the mountain's peak.

We ended up on some random little trail that was difficult to follow. In the end, we did get near the top where we realized we had gone on a very old trail and there was a much easier way to get to the same destination. Oh well. It was an adventure.

(our picnic)

(one of the paragliders)

(on the mountain)

Near the peak, we had our picnic. We relaxed in the sun for a long time and enjoyed all the food. It was a lot of fun. We pretty much spent the whole day up on the mountain. We didn't get back to Aix until about 7 pm.

(on the beach in Cassis)

Later in the week, we went to Cassis. It is a beautiful little town on the coast. There, we relaxed on the beach, had icecream, went on a boat ride, and had dinner at a lovely Italian place.

(the beautiful water around Cassis)

(the cliffs)

(Ryan and his favorite kind of pastry with apricots)

Over the weekend, we went to Southend to see my family there. It was lots of fun and great to see everyone. We went into London for one day. There was a great exhibition on at the Natural History Museum called, Wildlife Photographer of the year. It is a photography exhibit made up of the winning photos from a competition put on by the museum and the BBC Wildlife magazine. We bought a little booklet and brought it back to show everyone, which inspired Pete, Jo, Rowena, and Rob to go later on.
Another big event of that weekend was Peter's announcement that he and Jo will be getting married. Yay! It is very exciting.
Overall Ryan's stay was wonderful. We went to many great places, spent time with family, and had great food. Both of our bank accounts have large dents in them now, but it was well worth it.

(Ryan in Hyde Park in London)

Rome

I am going to have trouble remembering everything Hilary and I did in Rome. It is such a big city with so many things to see. It was somewhat overwhelming. I didn't like Rome as much as Florence. It felt a bit chaotic to me. Although the sites are brilliant.
We arrived late in the evening from Florence so we just found our hostel and went to bed on the first night. I didn't like this new hostel as much. There were a lot of party type people there so it was noisier and messier.
The next day we started our Rome adventure. Hilary likes to walk so we walked everywhere. It is quite a large city so that got tiring. We headed to St. Peter's Basilica. On the way, we saw quite a few things like a castel/fort thing and the Pantheon.
St. Peter's is crazy. There were so many people there and it is soooo grand and ornate. Hilary and I went into a small museum off the side where they had a lot of past jewels and goblets and other various decorative things from old popes. I find it unbelievable that so much money and time has been poured into this religion. Looking at the pope's thrown, I thought about the fact that you aren't allowed to worship anyone or anything more than God and yet there was all this stuff for the pope. It is as if he is worshiped. I don't know too much about Catholicism in detail so I could have the wrong impression, but it certainly did seem overboard. I do appreciate the art that was produced though. It was wonderful to see Michelangelo's Pieta.
Next we went to the Vatican museums. We found the signs for the Sistine Chapel and followed them. Hoards of people followed the signs as well. They take you through a maze of hallways and rooms. I suppose they want to make sure that the people who are just coming to see the Sistine chapel see a few other things as well. I really liked seeing the School of Athens painting by Raphael. I also enjoyed the map paintings. I have always liked maps. Since some of them were so off from what we know the world looks like today, it made me think of when Aled would draw made up maps of his own worlds and spend hours coloring them in and naming all the countries.
We finally arrived at the Sistine Chapel. People were packed into it. I can't imagine what it would be like in the summer for the main tourist season. People kept trying to take pictures. You were supposed to be silent and photos weren't allowed. The security guard would yell, "Silent! Silent! No photo! No photo!" Then it would be quiet for about a minute until the noise level raised again and people regained confidence to snap another photo. Hilary took this photo. I don't think I would have taken a photo even if I could. My camera was too full and couldn't take any more pictures.
Hilary and I actually preferred the exhibition right before the Sistine chapel. It was a Contemporary Religious Art exhibition. It included artists such as Dali, Chagall, Klee, and Matisse. Most people wizzed by; I don't think they knew what they were missing.

After the Vatican we walked around the city more. This is a picture of the Castel fort thing we went into earlier, but at night. We saw the Trevi fountain and walked down one of the main shopping streets.
The next day was Colosseum and ancient ruins day. We saw the Trajan Column and then got in line for the Colosseum. There were all these guys dressed in gladiator costumes. They would try and get tourists to take photos with them and then charged them a euro or two. There were also a bunch of people trying to get tourists to join tours and things. It felt pretty chaotic. When we finally got inside it was nice, but not spectacular. It basically looks just like the photos. Still, I am glad I waited in the line to see the inside. Now I can see I have seen it.
After that we walked around the ancient ruins, which I really enjoyed. I didn't realize how much is left. I guess I didn't expect that much. I love columns. I don't know what it is about a row of columns that no longer have much of a purpose, but I just find them beautiful. I feel like they really give you a sense of how grand the buildings were. They give you a sense of the dimensions. We also got to see these old frescoes. I find it really amazing that they have survived all these years. They were so lovely. I wouldn't mind having them on my wall today. The deep yellows, reds, and greens were quite modern.
So that was Rome. My one piece of advice to anyone who is going to visit Rome would be to bring a guide book specifically about Rome. I felt like there wasn't much information printed about the ruins and things. I would have liked to learn more about what I was seeing. The next day we got on a train and headed back to Aix. Actually, we only made it to Nice that day. We stayed in a lovely hostel, but we were only there for a total of about seven hours. I will have to go back though because they were so friendly.

More to come

I just put up the Florence post. As you can see, I started it long ago so it is dated March 10th even though I just published it.
I will try and put up both Rome and Ryan's Visit tomorrow. I have the pictures chosen and ready, which is the part that takes me the longest.
Today I met up with Maud. I was put into contact with Maud through my second cousin, Justine. Maud was the babysitter for Justine's daughter Eva when they were living in Aix. Maud no longer lives in Aix either, but was here for the day and was kind enough to meet me. We went to a cafe and then went to a few shops. She was very friendly and it was nice to find someone with whom to speak French.
That sounds crazy since I am in France, but as a result of the striking, I haven't had much of a chance to meet French students and therefore haven't had all that many opportunities to speak French. When I say speak French, I mean more than what you would say to someone in a shop or a restaurant and different from the way we speak French in class. It was good to have a normal and somewhat lengthy conversation.