chez medecin

I have returned from the life and the rich and the famous to the life of the rich...hehe. This week I took a sewing class with this woman who used to work for all the big labels like Gucci, Prada, etc. She had her own store in Monaco! I don't know how good of a teacher she is though because my creation is not that amazing...

ok i have to document this because it was so funny and i want to remember it. tonight at dinner we had the funniest conversation about hair. Charles has really long girlish hair and he refuses to get it cut. he likes to hide behind it and he thinks it looks cooler. at at the same time Christian was saying that he needs more boys in the house, because there are 5 girls and charles looks like a girl with his haircut. then charles got mad because he thinks he is a grown up man. Christian asked him if he had facial hair, and he screamed "NO! BUT EVE HAS ONE ARMPIT HAIR!" haha eve was so proud of it! she showed everyone at the table! and then charles told her to cut it and she matter-of-factly responded that if you cut it it will grow back thicker and darker! haha it was so funny.

veronique thinks everything can be solved by a "tezane" which apparently is a kind of tea with herbs in it. lilly wasn't feeling well the other night and she made this huge concoction with honey and and herbs and tea. and manon was cracking me up because she said she wanted to go to the doctor, but vero wouldn't hear of it. christian said it is because she is from bretagne and it is the bretagne method to refuse medicine! haha.

they are always keeping me laughing :) but at the same time they remind me of home because no one sits at the dinner table...i miss my fam!!! can't wait until my rentals come :)

LUXE

Hello Monaco! On Saturday night we got to Monaco, where we enjoyed the most luxurious weekend a college student could ever dream of! Included in the price of our program was a dinner with the whole group. We went to this delicious restaurant overlooking the yachts in the harbor of Monaco. It was so delicious! Afterwards we went to the Monte Carlo casino, which is the casino in the 007 movies (so I've been told I've never seen it). It was so cool! I'm pretty sure Beau would have died here haha. I've never been gambling before, and I was too scared so I only gambled a euro on the slots. But it was still cool just to be there! There were so many fancy cars, yachts, designer clothes stores, restaurants, etc. Definitely a different way of life!

Carnaval

I just got back from an amazing weekend in Nice and Monaco! Nice was so beautiful - the buildings were so colorful and the sea was amazing! When we got there we tried all of the native food at the market. There is a lot of Italian influence there so there is really great Italian food and seafood as well. I tried socca, which is kind of like a crepe but made out of chick pea. It was really good. Then they also had this delicious pastry made out of swiss chard, pine nuts, raisons, and dough that was soooo good.

After we walked around and ate a little we went to carnaval! The carnaval parade that we went to was called "Bataille des Fleurs". They had huge floats all made out of flowers, it was really cool. The outfits of the people in the parade were amazing as well! They threw mimosa flowers on us, which are they yellow flowers that are in season now. It was really fun !

Pictures are copyright of my roomie, Lilli! Isn't she talented???

L'homme qui rit

Tonight I went to a French play written by Victor Hugo called, L’homme qui rit. The play was performed by a traveling theatre company who set up camp in Aix for two weeks. It was a sad story about a boy who has lived an unfortunate life, and of course it ends in tragedy. The music and acting were great! I had a hard time understanding some of it – the actors were not actually French, they were British, so that might have had something to do with it. Luckily I read the synopsis on wikipedia before I went – gotta love that website.

The ambiance of the play was almost better than the actual play! Shall I set the scene un peu? Imagine freshest, coldest air, in the middle of the woods in southern France on a dark night – and stumbling upon a small and cozy tent filled with rowdy French people and traveling thespians. I almost felt like I was an extra in the movie Chocolat, when the band of gypsies (aka Johnny Depp!) takes Juliette Binoche to the boat party to hang with his fellow gypsies. You walked into a little tent filled with people, with vintage posters for theatre on the wall. There was this crazy man who looked like a character from a movie: he had a huge mustache, darker skin, a newsboy hat, dangly earrings, and a vest. He was serving “vin chaud” and tea to everyone before the show began. The show actually took place in a big tent – and when you walked in you could see the actors getting ready in their makeshift dressing rooms on the side. It was like Moulin Rouge in real life! Afterwards the actor stayed around and talked to us.

Maybe I’ll just stay the summer and travel around France with the theatre gypsies???

Here is a pretty bad picture of an actor getting ready, and sitting next to me is my roomie Lilli and our friend Alex!

la dégustation

So...three weeks in and already I went wine tasting! IT WAS AMAZING! A local American woman who has her wine certificate (it's actually a Masters!?? who knew?) hosted a class for students in Aix. She had it in her adorable apartment, and I met lots of cool new people. At the beginning of the class she said "who is not able to legally drink in their home country?" and I was the only one who raised my hand haha. Everyone was very happy for me it was funny - especially the other Europeans.

French wine is not sold like American wine by the type of grape. It is sold by the region where it is made. In Aix, we have the best weather conditions in the world for making rosé. I learned that the color of wine has nothing to do with the grape juice - the juice is all white. The color depends on how long you leave the juice with the skin while it is fermenting. Rosé can be as dark or as light as the producer wants. Also, wine in France is never 100% of one flavor - it is usually always mixed.

I happened to like the light fruity wines and the dark spicy ones. We had yummy fruit with the light wines and dark chocolate with the red. We took little sips of each one - and learned all about snobby wine etiquette. Swirl swirl swirl, SNIFF! and sip! Hilary gave us a wine wheel aroma to help us figure out which tastes we liked best. There was so much to remember! At the end they served us a student-budget-friendly wine that was made in Chili. It was delicious, and it only costs 4 euro! Yes mom and dad I can buy wine in the store...mwahahaha!!!

Maybe the Mulvaney/Parker families can have a wine tasting party early this summer before it gets too hot? Now the only problem is that I have to learn how to cook the food that goes WITH the wine...

Calanques

On the tour with Erin, she took us in her rusty old Renault to the Calanques, which are big cliffs that overlook the sea. You can go hiking all the way to Cassis, which is a nearby beach town. The Mistral was so strong that day, my French friend said "il faut etre américain pour aller dans les calanques," meaning that no sane French person would go hiking on cliffs with the wind so strong! It was a beautiful day, but the wind made it freezing cold. It was so beautiful though, I am going to go back when it gets warmer. We climbed all the way to the top of that cliff in the picture. Afterwards we sat and had hot chocolate on the beach to warm our chilled bones.

marseille (again!)

I spent the weekend in Marseille! There is so much to see and do there. On Saturday it was the last day for winter sales, so me and my friend Cari went shopping and I got a cute jacket. On Sunday a former CEA student who lives in Marseille now took five of us on a tour of Marseille. She took us to places I hadn't visited before, which was awesome! Plus, for lunch we went to her boyfriend's grandmother's house. She was this little French lady who didn't stop talking for two hours straight! It was so funny. And there were one of two people who just started learning French, but she wouldn't accept that and just kept talking and talking. She kept force feeding us cheap white table wine, which she said was "a woman's wine" because the top has a twist off cap and it has less alcohol content than normal wine. Then, as she giving us stale bread and the french equivalent of tastykakes she called herself a "vrai gourmand". Ha! She was cracking me up.

In this picture, it's a Coke ad but it is saying "allez OM". OM means Olympique Marseille, the soccer/football team that everyone loves here. I am dying to get to a game! Maybe i'll go one weekend to see what it's like :)