So this will probably be my last blog posting, seeing as a week from now I will be at Mother’s Day brunch with many of you! The last few days in Montpellier have been beautiful, and all of us have been working hard on our tans so that we can come home pretending like Montpellier weather has been this gorgeous the whole way through. With the nice weather there have been a lot more musicians and dancers in the streets and we were able to bike to the beach (about eight miles—gorgeous scenery) and spend time “doing homework” on the Esplanade. I have just a couple more final exams to go and will be done with school on Wednesday. I’ve really come to love Montpellier as my home and my friends here, but I’m also really excited to get back to “real life” and to the people and places I love in Minnesota. I’ve been having dreams of the Minneapolis Central Library, biking down Mississippi Boulevard, Whole Foods, and being out on the river. And coffee. I can’t wait to see you all! Bissous.

Santorini!

Hello! I'm writing you from the beautiful Santorini island, the furthest greek island away from Greece. I took a seven hour ferry to get here on Tuesday, and it was really enjoyable. I found myself disapointed when I arrived and am looking forward to the ferry ride back to Athens. It was just very relaxing; four friends and I spent the morning sitting in a glassed-in part of the upper deck profiting from the beautiful views of incredible cobalt blue sea and misty islands off in the distance as well as the green-house warmth of our spot just away from the wind. We spent the hours reading and they passed in a flash. We arrived in Perissa in the afternoon and got picked up from the port by a cute old greek guy named John, who took us up the winding road to his hostel. In Santorini now it's off-season, so the fifteen people in our hostel make up most of the population, but it's been really relaxing. We have found really good food for the lowest prices in Europe, become well aquainted with a 24-hour bakery, and walked to "center" (a couple of tiny super markets and a go kart track) for a whipped coffee. Today I went on a fabulous day tour with a couple of my friends. We hopped on to this pirates-of-the-caribbean-ish boat with a senior tour and enjoyed the day out on the sea. We first stopped at a beautiful volcano and had great views of the main island and the vast blues of the sea and sky from the top of the volcano. We felt a few hot steam shoots and threw around the light lava rocks. Our next stop were "hot springs." We jumped off of the boat into FREEZING cold water in order to swim to the luke warm pockets of water. By the time we made it back out to the boat, our bodies were so numb that it was actually kind of nice to be swimming around. It did take a little bit of time after the swim for the system shock to wear off as parts of my de-numbed one by one. Our next stop was Thirassia, where we took donkeys zig-zagging up the steep island cliffsides to a little village of two-hundred people. We ate the only meal offered at the only restaurant up there on a patio looking out over the ocean and the islands (gorgeous!!!!) Our last stop was Oia for the famous sunset. Unfortunately it was cloudy, so we didn't get to see the sun set, but the town was really cool. If you've ever seen the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you might have a good idea what it looked like, because the Greek part of that book was set on Santorini island and the movie tries to capture the look of Oia.

Now I'm back in Perissa, with a little bit of sunburn, ready to say hi to our twenty-four hour bakers, and spend a night in reading! I just got to talk to my dad a little bit, and I'm ready for bed! I hope you're all doing well! Love, abbie

A couple minutes in Athens

Hello friends and family! I'm now writing you from Greece! After showing up to registration time for next semester's classes I have just ten minutes left of Internet time before getting the boot. Athens is fabulously warm. Today we marched to the top of the Acropolis (with the Parthenon and all of the ancient theaters dating back to before Jesus' time) and then went to the beach where I was the crazy Minnesotan who jumped in the salty Mediterranean. Tonight and last night all five of us stayed at a couch surfer's apartment (the cheapest way to travel through Europe) and we have 7 am boat tickets for our 7 hour long ferry ride to Santorini.
I just left Paris, where I spent the weekend with Mom, Will, Liza, and Will's friend Olivia. We did a LOT of walking there—we only took two metro rides the entire weekend! We saw the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, the Eiffel Tower. Paris is MUCH more beautiful in the spring than in the rainy winter and it was really nice to walk along the Seine river reciting poems I know on the Seine in my head (La Seine a de la chance, elle n'a pas de souci...)
The week before Mom spent in Montpellier. We made it to the beautiful city of Avignon and the cool industrial fishing town of Sete (the biggest French port on the Mediterranean). Her favorite meal was eating salad and fish with my friends at my apartment.
The weekend before that I met mom and Will in Milano—a gorgeous city! (if expensive!). It has the best window shopping and people watching in the world I think. Italians let their kids be loud and their dogs play. I really enjoyed sitting in their big park and climbing the thirty meters of spiraling stairs to the top of the Duomo.
Well, sorry this post is just stacked events, but, yipes! I only have a couple minutes left!
I love you and miss you all and will be home bientot! (I cannot believe how bientot!) See you soon!

I can’t believe how fast time is flying by; because of the two week spring break, I have just three weeks left living in Montpellier, and my mom will be here for one of them (she is now in Europe! I’m meeting her and Will in Milan on Friday morning). I hope you all had a lovely Easter—mine was pretty low key, I went out to the Creperie with Rachel, saw Juno, had a chicken nugget happy meal for dinner, and skyped the fam. I loved getting to be in contact with everyone at my house on Easter! I was super bummed that I couldn’t figure out the video thing at first. I figured it out while talking to Sophie and Alyx, and let me tell you, discovering Olivia sitting quietly there on that bench gave me such a happy surprise that I’ll remember it for ten years! She told me about ballet and Cinderella, and I told her I liked her haircut, and we gave each other kisses through the webcam—it was fabulous! Then I spent a couple hours skyping Will and exchanging funny stories. I really enjoyed Easter.

Monday Rachel’s friend Sara flew back to Rome and my friend Miles came for a visit. He goes to Macalester, is best friends with Liza’s boyfriend Mike, and is studying in Denmark. He mostly came to visit our Macalester friend Diana, but I was happy to host him for the week.

Liza came on Friday night! It was the best weekend I’ve spent in Montpellier. Not only did she pick our first nice-weather Saturday, she picked Francois’ birthday weekend so she got to meet almost everyone. We spent Saturday at the beach collecting shells and digging our feet into the soft sand, and then we got to eat at our friend Diana’s host family’s house! She got to see our Dr. Seuss music park (that’s what I call it), eat dried strawberries from les Halles, get a Crepe at Café du Theatre, and be “disco” with all of the frenchies. And I dragged her into my favorite stores—a lamp store and a children’s bookstore called Nemo that I spend hours in.

Some things I may not have written before: only café’s are open on Sundays, so you have to make sure to buy enough groceries on Saturday for two days. If you forget groceries, you can survive with the cafes, but Rachel and I have had more than one miserable Sunday because we forgot to buy toilet paper. Toilet paper is mostly pink, and ours smells like peaches (though I hate the scented toilet paper, it’s my turn to buy the next pack, and I’ll just go for the plain pink paper). At home my goal was always to get rid of my coins, here my goal is to get coins—and there are many! There’s the 2 Euro coin, the 1 euro coin, the 50 centime, the 20 centime, the 10 centime, the 5 centime, the 2 centime, and the 1 centime. The 1 centime’s are useless; I don’t know why they exist. And the 2 centimes annoy me too. On the other hand, at least they’re marked! Our coins in the US have no numbers on them, so foreigners must have trouble!

Well, as I said, I’m meeting Mom and Will in Milan this weekend. Then mom will come home with me, and we’ll meet up with Will again in Paris. From Paris I’m going to spend a week in Greece with my friends for spring break! I have one more week of spring break after that and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I think I’ll try to go to Normandy beaches and see another region of France. I’ll see you all bientot!

It's an Easter miracle! We have internet!

Montpellier is a funny place to live. This weekend we’re hosting Rachel’s future roommate at Penn State who’s studying abroad in Rome this weekend and she woke up to the parade this morning wondering the same thing we wondered a few weeks ago, what is all that noise? The frenchies love to parade. Last Friday morning we were startled out of bed by the drums and looking out the window we saw a huge crowd of people dressed all in white waving flags with the number 38 painted on them. The next group to pass was purple with “79” flags, then the pinks with their “42”s… Today’s parade featured multiple groups of tweens in matching jogging suits. The parade was headed by a bunch of grandparent type figures with trumpets and other brass instruments, flanked with mom’s and strollers, and peppered with adults in matching jumpsuits. I heard that the last parade had something to do with a meeting of the engineering school’s in the south and this latest parade had something to do with celebrating club sports. When there was a pause in the flow, I watched one of the red-suits break out some tecktonik—the biggest dance craze in France, this is what it looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36e9kZcRWGI . This is not a joke. I repeat, this is not a joke, they actually dance like this. Well everyone under 20. We want to learn some tecktonik because it’s so funny, but none of our friends will teach us more than how to dance the making-fun-of-tecktonik dance. Also, the high schoolers wear tight bright blue tshirts, skinny jeans, and mullets (well the guys) all of the girls at the high school wear black skinny jeans, black shirts of some sort, and black high heels. I finally got internet! I’m not sure what I’m doing for Easter, I think Ariana and I will dress up and wander into one of those big cathedrals around. Then I plan on skyping the fam tomorrow! I’m excited to see everyone! Happy Easter! He is risen!

I loved Orange. It was so … provincial, and so Stillwater. It was Provence’s version of Stillwater. The differences? The colors, the colorful little houses, the vineyards, olive orchards, and Van Gogh trees lining streets and back yards. It was exactly what a provincial town should be. For our “historic” (that word has a much different meaning in France), for our historic lift bridge that we’re so proud about (one of what is it, three remaining? Or is it just us and Duluth now?) Orange has an ancient theater (one of three remaining). For our Main Street, Orange has a few store-lined streets. I even had a good café in Orange (100% Arabica from Sumatra—my favorite origin). And on the way out we grabbed a couple boxes of really good pizza to eat in the car. It was a great weekend. We spent some time in Pablo’s garage listening to band practice (how normal is that? totally). Wandered around his area (on one side of the house + yard there were grape vines, on the other rows of olive trees, perpendicular, a stream). Pablo’s house itself was very cool; his dad is an artist, so there were paintings hung amongst the murals. He does deco art, so it’s totally different from mom’s, but at the same time much like our house at home with the hung paintings and murals. Sunday I got to meet Loris’s nine-month baby sister Lio (for Lionella)—she was adorable! So smiley! That was after Loris’ mom took us to see how the French people vote (they had municipal elections on Sunday). We shook hands with the mayor. We did it because we were just following Loris and his mom (we didn’t know it was the mayor, just thought it was a friend); his mom thought we were hilarious for doing it. The weekend trip to Orange definitely ranks highly on my French experiences.

My presentation went well, I think. I think Allison was satisfied with it. We got together before hand to practice, I was trying to tell her that I had seven and a half hours of class on Monday’s so that I wouldn’t have a lot of time, but luckily she has my schedule memorized, so she thought that if I got out of class at 2:15 that would be plenty of time to take the tram back to Centre Ville, eat lunch, and return to Paul Valery at 3:15 for practice. I was late to practice, but the presentation still went alright. I’m looking forward to Wednesday lunch with Allison (she comes over almost every Wednesday for lunch before phonetics) without this project looming over our heads!

Mom sent me a couple pictures of Josie Jones, she’s adorable! I can’t wait to meet her! I also liked the display of your portraits at the exhibit, mom. I love getting pictures!

I feel like I should have something to write about, but life has been pretty usual in Montpellier for the last couple of weeks. I had plans to visit Cecile in Dijon last weekend but when I went to the train station to buy tickets there was a fire in a neighboring city so I was not able to buy the tickets. Because Cecile and her friends leave Dijon by March 30th for stages in different cities, I won’t be able to go after all. This weekend I’m going to spend a night in Orange. It would be a suburb of Avignon, except it has one of three remaining walls to an ancient theater—their claim to fame. Orange is where one of our social assistants and all of his friends are from so I’m going with a couple other Americans to see what life is like in a dinky little provincial town. Other than that I’m spending my time in school and my internship. I don’t do much for my internship, I shelve books and she’s in the process of putting barcodes on books so there are huge stacks of stickers and I spend my hours looking up the books that correspond with the numbers and putting the sticker on. This is the work that I do while my friends take Friday day trips to Avignon, Carcasonne, and the other ancient cities around the south. I’m working on getting a resume together for summer internship applications and I’m preparing for oral presentations—I have two twenty minute oral presentations to give this month. The first is not intimidating because it’s for my lit fantastique class and the rest of the students are Americans. I am also preparing a twenty minute presentation for my Paul Valery class on parody in the media, but reading about the history of French newspapers is actually very interesting to me. I’ve had a lot more time to read here. I bought a yoga book that cracks me up. I picked it because it was the cheapest yoga book at the used book store with the most pictures and is actually very helpful in setting up different routines, but it’s also a book made by the French singer Aria. It’s called Le Yoga De Ma Vie, “The Yoga of My Life.” In the first couple of pages she describes her travels around the world and how all of the cultures influenced her, but the most influential of her travels was to Las Vegas working at MGM. She talks about how she met this great Yogi Master there, “A little good man, but a great yogi master.” Later we read that the Yogi Master’s name is Shawn and that he studied under “the Great David Swenson.” Haha! Rachel and I joke about The Great Yogi Master Shawn now. The used bookstore by my apartment is one of my favorite places—it’s five floors! Mostly I spend my time outside where everything is under three euro. For a euro each I bought the fourth Harry Potter in French, and a CD called Les 20 Tubes de Vos 20 Ans: 1987 (the top twenty most popular songs in France in 1987, “Walk Like an Egyptian” is thrown in amongst the French eighties music). Well, I’m off to work on my lit fantastique presentation, I’m giving it with a chemical engineering major, so, we have some structural disagreements to work out—it might make you laugh to imagine us working together. Allison expects that literature, like anything in life, should be logical, chronological, plug-and-chug, without ambiguities. She doesn’t trust that Lit classes are my strong suit because I told her that it didn’t matter if her socks were two different colors of black. Poor Allison, I quoted a poet my last English prof always quoted, “Allison, you can’t tie literature to a chair and torture meaning out of it, you have to walk inside it and feel the walls for a light.” It was probably the scariest thing she’s ever heard from someone whose grade is tied to hers. Our presentation is on Monday and it will probably be the best because of the different mindsets we have (Allison's on the grade, mine on the piece itself).

whoa, did i seriously post that at 8:48? I've already have most of my day behind me! I'm just about to head out for dinner and church with Ariana.

Okay, I have eight minutes and I'm dealing with a French keyboard, but I wanted to say Thanks Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, and Dad for the Valentine's Day presents, and Jill and Suz for the cards! I loved getting them!

Also, last week I was walking home through the Place de la Comédie and the acordian player was playing as usual, but I saw something that really made me smile-and I think it will make you smile too. France isn't so different from home because I saw a little boy of about four years dancing to the music dressed in his batman cape--just like Will's! Ears, eyeholes, everything. His hair was probably white blonde underneath that disguise :)

Also, I don't think I wrote this before, but Kebabs are extremely popular in the south of France, there's a kebab restaurant every six steps in Montpellier. The first night I was here (the jet lag/dramamine night) I stumbled across one called "l'Oasis." I took a picture of it because I thought it would make you guys smile to know that if I ever feel like it after church one Sunday, I could head down to the Oasis to get a kebab and maybe some hashbrowns.

Two minutes, not bad, I'm getting better with this rearranged keyboard ;)

Flocon de Neige

The Alps were gorgeous. We arrived in Vallouise, a little alpine village, late Friday night. Saturday morning we were all up early for breakfast and a ride to the slopes. We went to a relatively small chalet, but it certainly wasn’t Afton Alps. The pistes (slopes) seemed to have no middle option—I went from a green slope (the bunny hill) to the summit (red or black slope options there). I was skiing with a group of French students that came on the excursion with us—they started calling me “flocon de neige” (“snowflake”) because I always seemed to be covered from head to toe in snow. I would be skiing down the slope and trying to make a sharp turn, and I’d just lean back a little bit too far so that my butt would grace the side of the mountain; once that happened, my body would pivot I’d flip over, my skis would be crossed behind me, my arms out front, and I’d slide down the slope on my stomach like a penguin until the steepness wore off a little bit. I never got hurt (probably due to a lot of pre and post ski stretching) so all of my wipe-outs were mostly a lot of fun.

Hopla, it was a long week. I started classes, attended carnival, and I’m getting ready for a weekend in the alps! My classes are great. I have four classes with the other Americans in my program (grammar, phonetics, internship class, and literature fantastique) and two linked classes in the actual Paul Valery program. The Paul Valery classes are interesting, I cannot believe French students. On Tuesday morning Andrew and I (the other American in my P-V course) showed up to the classroom on time. We sat down in the third row (Andrew didn’t want to sit in front) and waited for about ten minutes, wondering if the classroom was switched or the class was cancelled. About ten minutes after the class was supposed to start the French students showed up (and filled the back of the class, so Andrew and I were alone in the front row) and then the professor showed up. Throughout the lecture the students chatted. I can’t imagine what an American professor would do if students chatted like that through the class.

Tuesday night I came home from my internship at the American Library and carnival had started. They started up by the arc de triomphe and there were a couple different drumming groups with dancers, the crowd followed the drums around town. Later, it was like Halloween—everyone had very bizarre costumes (though I did see a couple of Harry Potters) and they followed this train made out of junkyard scraps and the drummers. It was cool, a fun experience.

Paris

I forgot to tell you I was going to Paris. I was going, and I went. I just got back home from spending four days with Liza. It was fabulous. I arrived at Liza’s in the thirteenth arrondissement on Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately she was sick, so I braved the freezing rain and checked out her neighborhood toute seule. I watched horse races and drank a café at her local tabac, found a Panini and Internet… it was the next day while Liza was at school that my real sight-seeing began. I hit the Bastille, L’Arc de Triomphe, Concorde, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Hotel de Ville, and Hotel de Sully while Liza was in Class. Thursday night the two of us made it to the Musee D’Orsay (my favorite place in Paris). Friday I got to join her class on a tour of Belleville and then we wandered around Paris window-licking (that’s the French term), made dinner, and hit the Louvre. Saturday was Montmartre (and Sacre Coeur, bien sur), the Pont Mirabeau, and les Halles. Evidently there’s a lot to write about. I think, for your convenience, I’ll compartmentalize each site so you can read about the ones you’re interested in.

Bastille: Liza’s Paris guide-book described the Bastille something like this: « the world’s most famous non-site; a place millions of confused tourists flock looking for the prison that is no longer there. » The Bastille was a prison and the start of the French Revolution was when the non-royal frenchies stormed the prison to set the prisoners free. Now there is just a monument in its place and cool murals depicting the revolution in the metro tunnel below it.

L’Arc de Triomphe: I wasn’t fussed. I was cold and hungry. I got out of the metro and saw it looking like every picture I’ve seen of it and thought I would rather be in a warm building looking at a picture than walking around it. Napoleon put arcs up all over France to celebrate victories (there’s even one just a down the street from me in Montpellier). This one is famous for multiple reasons. One reason is because the death-wish traffic circle around it is a twelve road intersection designed by Haussmann (working for Napoleon III) while cleaning up Paris. According to my guide book, Napoleon built his arc there on the Champs-Elysée, architect Charles François Ribat was going to build a giant bejeweled elephant as a tribute to the French military. My guide book seems to think this would have been worse than the arc, but I think it would have been amusing to see. The arc has been the backdrop of many French parades—the allied troop’s victory parade in WWI and then the Nazis march into Paris in WWII, a parade celebrating the inauguration of President Charles de Gaulle—who randomly made the former president get out of the presidential car halfway through the parade and walk back… If I hadn’t been afraid of the maniac drivers speeding around the circle (I keep saying that I’m going to get run over by some form of French transportation before the program’s over) I would have gone to check out the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—there’s a flame there that has been burning since WWI.

The Place de la Concorde: Honestly, I have nothing to say about it. I would have more to say if it were summer and I got to see the fountains running and if my hands weren’t freezing. Apparently this is where both Marie Antoinette and Louis XV, among many others, were beheaded. I just popped out of the metro station, got my cold hands to take a picture, and hurried back under ground. The Concorde metro station, however, was listed as one of the top ten stations to pass through (if you are on line 12) because its curved walls are covered in mosaics spelling out famous quotes.

La Tour Eiffel: I don’t know why, but I loved the Eiffel Tower. I think it is because the first time I saw it was a surprise. I was on the metro train going to find it and as we were passing over the Seine river, I looked up, and there it was, through the scuffed up window. It was a fabulously normal way for me to see it--surrounded by decaffeinated commuters. I hate all of the grandiose post cards depicting the Eiffel Tower at the end of the Champs de Mars (originally Napoleon’s military training grounds) with the fountain leading up to it, but there was something beautiful in the clean lines of the metal. Also, I love all of the reactions to the Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel, its creator, said, “France is the only country in the world with a 300m flagpole.” Some Parisians called it the “metal asparagus.” Famous author Guy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at its ground-floor restaurant (which I couldn’t find) because he said it was the only place in Paris he couldn’t see offensive thing. It was made in 1889 for the World Fair in Paris—almost two million people climbed the stairs of the Eiffel Tower during the fair. I don’t think that it was supposed to be a permanent Paris attraction, but it remains.

Les Halles de Paris: We have our own little “les Halles” in Montpellier. It’s a place where fruit, vegetable, cheese and flower vendors come together under one roof. Les Halles in Paris is quite different. Les Halles in Paris is a massive modern-day Dr. Seuss Mall with its outdoor center cascading down four floors from ground level. Les Halles are filled with only-in-Paris designers and haute-culture specialty stores. The chain stores (swanky in Montpellier) humbly inhabit the buildings bordering les Halles. According to my guidebook, les Halles has been the main market place in Paris since 1135. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when we were there and a lot of people were roaming outside les Halles. Liza and I got to see some high schoolers dancing the Techtonique (a teenage dance craze I’d been trying to tell Liza about—WEBSITE) and because it’s the last weekend of les Soldes we got to do more than lick the windows at some of the stores—I found a mini cadeau for bébé Jones there and some cool little gifts for my tenth grade girls.

Notre Dame: I didn’t expect to have any type of religious experience while visiting this sight, but it was inevitable—I immediately thought, whoa, Jesus is probably ticked about this place. It was like a Disneyland, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people in oversized costumes walkthrough giving people hugs and taking pictures with them. The first thing you see when you enter Notre Dame is the information booth where you can purchase guidebooks, souvenirs and audio tours. The next stop is a bank of penny machines in which you can roll your two Euro pieces into souvenirs depicting Notre Dame. Above the candles (which you can light for 2 Euro a piece, or ten Euro for the big candles) hangs a beautiful sculpture of Jesus on the cross. It’s natural that Notre Dame was jam-packed with tourists—it has been a cathedral, dubbed the “Temple of Reason” by secular revolutionaries, home to Hugo’s Quasimodo, the site of Napoleon’s papal coronation, the place of Joan of Arcs heresy hearings, the site of royal weddings, the place Charles de Gaulle almost got sniped by Nazis, housing for livestock… but still, John 2:13-22.

Le Pont Mirabeau: One of my favorite places in Paris. It was tourist free because the non-French speakers don’t know the Guillaume Apollinaire’s famous poem I could recite for you when I get home. It has the best view of Eiffel tower with one of the statue of liberties and big river boats in front of it. I liked it much better than all of the other famous bridges—though I couldn’t help but like the Pont Neuf (New Bridge) as well—it’s ironically the oldest bridge in Paris.

Belleville: On Friday morning I got to join Liza and her class on a tour of Belleville. I was originally interested in it because of the great movie The Triplets of Belleville, but there were many reasons to love the neighborhood. I learned that both Belleville and Montmartre were originally outside the walls of Paris so people who couldn’t afford to live in Paris lived in these neighborhoods (immigrants and artists). Also, outside of Paris there wasn’t any tax, so there was a thriving bar and café community there because Parisians would step outside of the city limits to amuse themselves. Now Belleville and Montmartre are a part of the city and have maintained some of their multicultural charm. Belleville hosts the Bobos (bourgeois-bohemian) and is home to many fantastic art ateliers. Murals depicting a silhouette man with his suitcase and a red balloon tell make once-plain buildings more interesting. Also, there are “Space Invaders”—little PacMan aliens hiding on tiles around the neighborhood, apparently there’s a point system and French children play a spotting game.

Montmartre: Despite the hoards of tourists covering the slopes of Montmartre, I really loved it. At the top of one of the highest hills in Paris looms the Sacré Coeur—just as touristy, but less sold-out than Notre Dame. Like Belleville, Montmartre was once home to many artists when the rent was cheap and it maintains its artistic enthusiasm—many artists set up their stands in squares around Montmartre selling their souvenir paintings and walking around with clipboards asking people to buy drawings of themselves. Montmartre is also known for porn shops and prostitution. It’s a very funny place where opposites coincide. In the tourist shops pictures of the Sacré Coeur and nudes line up next to each other on post card stands. The streets are just the same, at one turn you’ll come across a street packed with tourists and tourist shops, and at another you’ll be in a practically empty street with residents and African hair salons. Liza and I laughed most to see a huge crowd of tourists sitting solemnly on the stairs up to the beautiful cathedral behind them listening seriously to a harpist play our Titanic favorite “My Heart Will Go On.” We got a Sugar Crêpe from a stand for a good price (even if the tourists have invaded Montmartre, the tourist prices haven’t caught up yet) and ate it walking down to the metro station. I’ve eaten a couple of Crêpes since I’ve been here, I like to get them when I miss my dad—they’re not as good as his skinny pancakes though.

The Louvre: I’m excited to go through my table book of Louvre works when I’m home. That’s what I thought about while I was at the Louvre. First of all the Louvre is massive with beautiful walls and ceilings, but after seeing the Musee D’Orsay, it wasn’t as spectacular as it should have been. I would have been just as happy looking through my table book as I was walking through the halls of the Louvre. After admiring the massive paintings and taking pictures of the mass crowding around La Jaconde (Mona Lisa) with their cameras (and ignoring the spectacular paintings behind them), Liza and I amused ourselves by posing with statues. We might be the only ones who have pictures of ourselves mimicking Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and many other famous and funny-posed statues. We even gained a little bit of a following. A group of French people seemed to think we were more amusing than the actual works in the Louvre and started following us around—luckily we shook them off. The glass pyramids of the Louvre—the entrance of the Louvre—are actually very cool. In theory, they should be obnoxious against the backdrop of the historic building (royal castle turned art museum), but in person they are quite cool. They might have been my favorite part of the Louvre.

*The Musée D’Orsay: I loved this museum; most of you could have predicted it. Once a train station, this spacious museum hosts my favorite artists. Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir… it was pretty close to heaven. Liza and I spent about an hour and a half there Thursday night before closing (that’s when it’s free for 25 and under) and we only visited the four chambers of the impressionists I just listed, but it felt like we sprinted through them. I fell in love with a couple of Monet pieces I’d never seen before, and many others. I almost felt like I should’ve had my Linea doll with me (from Linea in Monet’s Garden—my copy is well-worn) since I was seeing in person the paintings I grew up loving—I did my sixth grade hero paper on Monet. I also thought a lot about Olivia and Grace while I was in the Musée D’Orsay. I always took them to the impressionist rooms at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and we would look at all of the colors really close and walk backwards to see the picture. They’re fabulous companions in an art museum. No one is too young to appreciate art. Oh, and, Monet and I have the same birthday.

The Metro: Did you know that the musicians in the metro have to try out to be there? That was my favorite detail about the metro. Some stations are really cool—my guidebook listed the top ten and I made it to almost all of them—but most smell like urine and are pretty dumpy. I loved the advertisements covering metro walls—I started using phrases I learned from them, my favorite being “Hoplà, nous vivons!” (Hopla, we’re living!)—and I thought tunneling around underground like rabbits or gophers was a pretty funny thing to do. I kept wishing I’d memorized the very short Ezra Pound poem “In the Station of the Metro” so that I could recite it while seeing the trains come in and out of the tunnels like the snake in the Chamber of Secrets (HP).


Saturday afternoon I hugged Liza goodbye and metroed my way back to the Gare de Lyon where I waited for the TGV to pick me up and bring me back to Montpellier. I spent an hour in the train station watching pigeons play soccer with a Peanut M&M while listening to a couple children sing Edith Piaf’s classic “La Vie on Rose”—I’m sure you’ve heard it, la lalalalala la…

January 27, 2008

We went on another excursion to Provence yesterday and it was spectacular. I saw some of the most beautiful sites. We first visited the Pont du Gard—a roman aqueduct that crosses a beautiful river surrounded by verdant grasses and white rocks. I could have spent hours there hiking up through the trees and picnicking on high rocks overlooking the valley. We then went to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, a pretty little town wedged into the base of a beautiful canyon, that has the start of the most beautiful river in the area—the Sorgue de Vaucluse. The river has baffled scientists for centuries because the source has not yet been found. It’s phenomenal. In walking towards the beginning, the temperature drops significantly (in just a couple of steps!) There is a clear river cascading over rocks, and then there are just rocks. Further up there is a little cave with a turquoise pond. Looking at the water you can see the rocks go deeper and deeper, and you can see the reflection of the canyon—this would be a challenge to paint! The furthest down they’ve made it in this little cave pond is 308 m (1010.49 ft), after that the device that they used is too big to fit through the galleries. On the river, there were mallard ducks, just like home, but these were gorgeous. Their colors were so clean and vibrant! We fed them a little bit of a baguette. It was at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse that my camera ran out of batteries, but my pictures couldn’t do anything I saw justice anyway. The next site was Les Baux de Provence, a small village around a castle owned by les Baux, situated on the top of a huge canyon. The village was really cute. I ate a delicious honey sucker made from the lavender blossoms there. Our last stop of the day was the Windmill of Fontvieille. It’s Alphonse Daudet’s windmill knows as “Moulin Saint Pierre” or “Saint Peter’s Windmill.” It was built in 1815 and functioned until 1915—one of the last functioning windmills. I could have spent a couple of days at any of these sites (except maybe the windmill), but they are all places that are only accessible by car. Maybe when mom comes we can rent a car—Kami would be jealous of the colors mom would get to capture at these beautiful places. I’ll have to set up another website for pictures; I haven’t had luck uploading pictures onto the blog. I’ll try again today though.

I called Will yesterday, he was having breakfast in Madrid, where he’d spend the night at a seven story club and in a hostel with his friends. This week we’re on vacation—our prestage and registration are behind us, and we start real classes on Monday. I’m taking a French grammar course, a phonetics course, a course to accompany my internship, a course on French fiction lit, and my one true Paul Valery course which is a course on media.

January 21, 2008

So I’m in the process of doing my laundry by hand. I’ve been dreading the laundry for a while, not because I have to do it by hand, but because I’m not looking forward to hanging three weeks worth of underwear out on a line for my neighbors to see. I’ve never cared how cute my underwear was until this point. Today is a great day because I have a fever-nose cold combo—meaning that I’m spending my first day relaxing and getting chores done instead of feeling like I should go out and experience French culture.

Yesterday we went on an excursion to Provence, which, some of you know, is the place in France I’ve always wanted to visit. Unfortunately, because it’s winter, the lavender fields weren’t in bloom and, because it was Sunday, nothing was open. But we still saw some pretty cool things. In Arles we visited a Roman Amphitheater and learned all about the Roman and Medieval ages there. After the Amphitheater we had free time so most people evacuated the place, but my friends and I stayed to walk around the top of it, and to go down into the middle where the gladiators fought. It was really cool. We danced and did yoga and headstands. We also went to Sainte-Marie-de-la-Mer Sunday afternoon. The city is named after the three Mary’s who came to evangelize there. We spent our free time there just sitting on the rocky pier and listening to the gentle waves hit the rocks. I felt very proud and blessed that for me this was a sound that reminded me of home—my friends are from other places in the states that don’t have as much water as Minnesota! The weekend here was beautiful. It was about sixty degrees on Saturday and Sunday (which was a fabulous change from the rainy 30/40s). The weather here fluctuates so much in one day. Every morning my roommate asks me if I know what the weather will be like and what I think would be appropriate, I honestly don’t know because I’ll leave feeling freezing, and then it will get very hot, and then very cold again. It’s funny to feel freezing in thirty degree weather. At home I might not mind being in a t-shirt if it was thirty degrees in the middle of the winter. Here I’m always wanting more layers.

Last week I had a wine and cheese tasting. I’ll tell you what I learned. I took notes, but by the fifth glass of wine, some of them were a bit ridiculous. We started with a Mouscat wine. The Mouscat is a type of wine that’s a specialty of the region and everyone loves it except for me because it is so sweet. First we looked at the color of the wine, the darker the color is, the older it gets. A good wine (generally, each wine varies) is about two years old (a light yellow for white and a red-purple for red). Then we put the glass on the table and carefully swirled the wine inside. If there are a lot of “legs” (defined drips) the wine has a lot of alcohol in it (a Mouscat is 50% alcohol so it had very thick legs). Then we smelled the wine—I can’t quite remember, but I think if the smell is more floral then it’s younger, if it’s more fermented, it’s older. Then we drank. After the Mouscat we had Camembert, I wrote (in French) that it smelled like our bathroom, but that it didn’t taste too bad. The next wine was a Riesling, which comes from the French province Alsace (located on the border of Germany). The Riesling was my favorite wine because it’s dry and a little fruity, and it has bubbles. Next we tried my favorite cheese—Conté! It was sweet and smoky—totally different from the other cheeses we ate. The next wine was a Rosé from Gard (a town in Provence). It wasn’t bad; it was kind of sprite for a Rosé. Then was the Roquamador (I think this was the one made from sheep milk). Somebody said, “Mmm, smell’s like a pet store, I can’t wait to dig in!” It wasn’t bad, it was creamier than the Camembert and less strong. The Bordeaux was good, it was thicker, and it had more legs. For the Roquefort I wrote “Whoa! Strong! Sweet and salty and a little bit like the cow barn at the State Fair.” And we finished off our session with a glass of dessert wine, a mousseax from Bourgogne, it was fruity and bubbly. If you’re serving fish for dinner, serve it with a white wine. Rose goes with salads or white meat. Red goes with red meat.

Tomorrow is my last day of classes in the Prestage, then I have tests on Wednesday, registering for Paul Valery classes on Thursday and Fridays I have my Internship at the American Library (under a very funny French woman who is always adding to my vocabulary and who is a “pipelette”—she’s told me about her two cats, her fiancée, her twenty-three year old son who’s in Paris trying to get into the music industry—she gave me his CD—and that she has the same birthday as George Clooney).

Also, if anyone wanted to send me a letter, I have my own mailbox now, so you don’t need to put “Mme Marcou” on the letter (or else she’ll get it). The address is just simply:

Abbie Defiel
1, rue du Petit Scel
Montpellier 34000

Take care !

So I’ve just finished my first week in Montpellier. It’s eleven pm on Saturday night and I just woke up from a two and half hour nap (my way of pre-gaming for the discothèque tonight). We spent the day traveling around the province in a tour bus—it was fun but cold! I got my first touch of the Mediterranean, visited Moliere’s crib in Pezanas, saw the biggest port on the Mediterranean, and tried the local fare (including the pastry of Pezanas which…Chanell said it perfectly, “My mouth is really confused right now,” well… it turned out to be filled with caramelized veal!) Our morning French classes at the Instuit started on Wednesday and schedules are starting to form. Friday nights I make dinner with my four closest friends here, I have my internship meeting next Tuesday, Sundays are for an espresso shot at the Café du Theatre after church... I’m looking forward to some down time tomorrow.

In France they don’t have clearance racks, but twice a year they have “Les Soldes”—a time when every store puts almost all of there merchandise on sale at once. It lasts three weeks in the winter and three in the summer. We celebrated the first day of les soldes by going to IKEA (I know, very unfrench, but it was nice to get necessities that weren’t so expensive). I’m going to look for some inexpensive shoes. I had a dream last night that my entire shoe collection was just five minutes away and have been thinking about my green beaded shoes all day. I stick out as an American not only because my clothes are colorful, but because I wear my running tennis shoes everywhere. I brought a pair of nice clogs with me, and usually I prefer clogs, but I walk miles every day so I need to wear shoes with backs on them. When I packed, I tried to pack practical clothing. I should have packed fashionable clothing. It would have been more practical here...

Blog:

Whoa, so much has happened in the last three days it feels like I’ve already been here a couple of weeks. First of all, I love Montpellier—and my apartment is INCROYABLE! It’s straight out of Gigi. We enter the courtyard through big green doors and take the old stone stairwell up to the third level. We then go through a blue door that brings us back outside onto a little … walkway to our third door. Once we’re through that door the apartment to the left belongs to our very sweet, cute, landlord—Mme Marcou—and ours’ is to the right. Dad will be happy to know that there are four locks to get through before making it to our apartment. Our apartment is wallpapered in old prints and furnished with antiques. We have beautiful wardrobes with plenty of space for everything. The ceilings are really high, maybe sixteen feet. Mme Marcou gave us towels, sheets, comforters, dishes, an electronic teapot, fruit… she’s really sweet. I think she’ll let you stay here on our couch, mom, when you visit.

Anyway, let’s see, things we’ve done. Friday morning we met our program coordinators—four people on staff for bureaucratic purposes, and three Paul Valery students whose job is to invite us to parties and take us out. Sabrina, a masters student at Paul Valery, lead me around the city with six other students. It was raining, but it was my first sight of the city after the Dramamine wore off, so I thought it was beautiful. We had orientation at our student center and then a little break during which I perused a four story book store. After our break, they took us all out to a good French restaurant with very good food. I got to sit across from Francois, who’s not allowed to speak English to any of us, so I was really lucky to have the chance to use French, though I felt like I blundered through everything. Dinner was fabulous—it took two hours to eat, but it felt like forty minutes. After dinner they took us to a bar frequented by Americans (probably because the atmosphere is so homey and they show sports on the TVs) called the O’Carolins, which is two doors down from my apartment door. After, Francois took a small group of us to a bar called Rockstore so that we could dance. Unfortunately there were not a lot of people because the students are all on vacation, but we danced anyway, and the style and rhythm of dance was so different that I felt like Baby in Dirty Dancing—that awkward. Francois will teach us, he’s very good at this style of dance… I think it’s called… the Techdec? It’s the latest craze, Sabrina thinks it’s stupid. Oh, and Jimmy, our other French student worker is studying ball room dancing, so he was happy to hear that he could practice swing and salsa with me, I didn’t think I’d find anyone in France who knew swing.

Yesterday was move-in day at the apartment; we got settled, bought groceries, and went to meet friends. I went out to dinner with four brand new friends (the cheapest we could find—I’m trying to turn everyone on to my frugal ways, Europe is so expensive!), then we went to the O’Carolins to watch the Paris-Montpellier rugby match (Montpellier got slaughtered—33-6), and then to Sabrina and Francois’s favorite bar The Circus Bar. I had a fabulous time, it was the first time I really was able to carry on conversations and I felt like an hour at that bar improved the ease of my language tenfold.

Today we (roomie Rachel and friend Adriana) woke up and took the tram to find this little church group. It was in a small room and there were twenty two people. We got their while they were singing French Christmas carols about the visitors that came after Christ was born and then the pastor asked for bible verses, testimonies, prayer requests, and something else I didn’t understand. People would pick bible verses and we’d take turns reading (good practice for my pronunciation) then the person would tell why they were inspired by that bible verse in the last week and the pastor would elaborate on the verse. After we were done with this process and with prayer requests and prayers, we all sat down and the pastor and his wife (who are both from Michigan, but have lived here for eighteen years) fed everyone lunch. After we’d left, we looked at the time and we spent four and a half hours there—and we were a half an hour late! After church we checked out Adriana’s apartment and sat down at a table on La Place de la Comédie (which has the opera house, a carousal, the statue of the three graces, and a lot of activity) to have a shot of espresso. The nice thing about France is that you can take your time, I don’t feel like I have to buy things at every place I go to as long as someone else does, and buying a shot of espresso (though it was expensive at 1,30 E) gives you about two hours of people watching and relaxing at the café with friends. Now I’m cooking dinner for myself but then I’ll go out to dinner with my roommate and Adriana and have a glass of wine with them (it’s cheaper than water). I’m looking forward to an early bedtime tonight, and tomorrow I will do errands I couldn’t do today because everything was closed. And I’ll go to the student center for the wi-fi and post this blog J.

I’m a very lucky abroad student. Not only did I get a terrific apartment, the student strike and delayed semester at Paul Valery is really advantageous. We get three weeks of an intensive language course before classes begin and to supplement this course they’ve planned free fieldtrips to Provence and to another region in our province, and there are wine and cheese tasting excursions planned and French singing sessions. The group of Integrated students is actually very large, and I have met a lot of people I really like.

arrival

I am exhausted. It says on my computer that it’s 11:45 AM back in Minnesota, which makes it 6:45 here. My goal was to stay awake until at least seven (the best way to fight jet lag is to assume the new sleeping schedule). Good things about the trip—we made it here… I had a group of people to walk back and forth through terminals at Charles de Gaulle (lugging luggage up escalators, down escalators, and up again)… and I wasn’t one of the people whose luggage didn’t make it. And the girls in one line while boarding for AirFrance had to pay over a hundred dollars for their second piece of luggage, but in my line I didn’t have to pay anything for having two. Drowsiness is swooping over me, soon I’ll put a movie from home on and fall asleep. And my body still doesn’t quite know which way is up. We had turbulences all the way here. On AmericanAirlines (a flight that gave as much room as the charters to Mexico and only had communal TVs—my last trip to France was MUCH nicer) we bumped to the left, and then we went bump de bump to the right. In the last hour of our flight before landing we experienced real turbulence. I was really impressed with the children who kept sleeping (there were about ten within a couple seats of me, which was fun because French children have sing-songy voices that I like listening to). I knew that there were at least four other people on the group flight, but I didn’t get to sit next to any of them. After, when we were checking luggage, we found about 10 more. On the flight from Paris to Montpellier most of the passengers were study abroad students. This flight was a common bonding experience because on the way down, after experiencing some bad turbulence, the pilot announced that we’d be experiencing “des turbulences fortes!” (they got stronger). It was like a huge roller coaster ride all of the way to landing and a lot of people had trouble standing afterwards. There were a lot of white faces. We were met at the gate by our program director who came to give us a schedule for the weekend and told us to take a taxi to the hotel, “Which hotel!” some of us shouted at her back. We arrived in Montpellier to see the rainy wind blowing palm trees and the faint smell of salt water. Our taxi driver told us that the three days of rain this winter are yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Anyway, we made it here; I’ve spent the afternoon in a drowsy bubble walking around Montpellier with new friends. For the moment, I just want to be home relaxing (after those hectic travel days), but I’m sure once I get some sleep and especially in a couple of days when we get to go to our apartments (I hate hotel life), I’ll have recuperated. Then I'll get to move into my apartement and the weather will be nice, I'm really looking forward to settling in.