Guys, we live here.

A couple days ago (day before the last post) we had a little private "tour" of downtown. There's a French student staying in the dorms who offered to take us around, along with his friend. As usual I was so tired I thought I was going to die, and I really wanted to stay and sleep, but somehow I ended up going. Everyone had started drinking on our "stoop," aka the front steps of our dorm which we've sort of claimed as our own (we have no common room, so I guess we made one up), so there were roughly 30 drunk/buzzed (I'm pretty sure I was the only sober one. "Wait, are you actually completely sober?!" I was asked on the way there) students walking though the streets of Montpellier. 

There were some conversations that I was too sober to...fully appreciate, let's say. Lots of hugging. 

These photos suck, I know, there was not light, but the moment was great. We were just wandering the streets, looking for a random bar, and we just happened to stumble upon this. No big deal. One of the girls turned around and said "guys guys guys, look, we live here. We F***ing live here!" Drunkenness and swearing aside, she was right. (I have better photos from today, don't worry). This is just a relatively short walk away from our home, these are the kinds of things you see when strolling through the streets at night, huge, beautiful, old cathedrals. It was a good moment, we all stopped and gawked for a while. Guys, we live here. 

A semi-crappy video of the bar we ended up at

The bar was a bar. Pretty girls got free drinks, the rest payed. I got one "shot," which was more a half a shot of mostly sugar, to not be a party pooper, but I'm not much of a drinker. Plus it cost almost as much as a lunch at the University Restaurant. 

As I said, I was dead tired so I really couldn't appreciate it much, my eyes could barely stay open (much like they can't right now). * It was fun when we walked back though, really fun. Let's just say some drunks are incredibly entertaining. * 

Okay, time for sleep. Gah, sleep. Why do I keep staying up???

Irresponsible but fun

Stereotypical study abroad thing number 235: stay out in a bar dancing until 1:00 am with a bunch of people you met a week ago without having done any homework beforehand.

Okay: I am a boring nerd, I always do my homework way in advance, the idea of dancing in front of people would normally make me panic, I consider myself an introvert, and bars have never been something I considered fun. I have no idea what's happening to me. (Ewelina... stop shaking your head).

It's 2:00 am, please don't expect this to be coherent, pictures to come (still need to study).

I wasn't going to go at first. We had been leaving a festival in Montpellier, it's a wine-tasting slash everything festival that was just awesome. There were some people singing and a dance group (and some guy singing what sounded like native American chants).

At one point the dancers saw the other study abroad student I was standing with (a Chinese girl). One of the dancers was also Chinese, and they kept toeing the racist line with him (in good fun, he didn't mind, it was part of their act). When they saw her they yelled "Tu a de la famille la!" (you have some family here), and he walked over and started bowing, old-fashioned Chinese greeting style, at her. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened in Seattle? Rude I suppose...still funny though.

Anyhow, we had heard about some Australian bar/club thing and a lot of the group wanted to go. I generally don't like alcohol or dancing. Yes, I have homework and if I don't sleep a full night sometime soon I'm going to faint in class or die or something, and of course I have piles and piles of paperwork to do before next week.

So yeah, I'll come. I've started saying yes to everything, except for getting drunk (stereotype confirmed: Americans go nuts when abroad), which may or may not be a good idea.

But we went out, found the bar, half the group left and I was on my way out to leave with them because....man, I need some sleep. But somehow I ended up staying, and we danced for a while, left at one, and took the tram home.

In any case, time to "do homework" and then go to sleep. Or just go to sleep. Well...at least I used to be responsible.

Sausage-Doughnut

This, my friends, is what I have dubbed the sausage-doughnut, with a hyphen. A girl said it looked like a doughnut and a sausage, and I decided to call it that. It is the statue right outside of our dorm, I have adopted it as a sort of mascot, a source of pride, if you will. 

Ummm....

Days like today require more than three hours of sleep, but sadly that's all I got.

I stayed up studying then I couldn't fall asleep; my brain wouldn't stop. Here, we were just thrown into the program, no down time to figure out where stores are, walk around or, I don't know, get a full nights sleep. It's great, don't let my default-negative tone fool you, but we had an excursion the first day, then almost immediately after we started classes which last roughly five hours a day. On the day where we did have a couple of free hours, everyone spent it going to the store to get real food.

At the same time we have loads of stuff we need to take care of: getting cell phones and plans, being adults and making our own food, thinking about what classes to potentially take (and trying to figure out their mess of a website to do so), etc. etc. My desk is turning into a post-it note parking lot.

We have class six days a week and Sundays we're gone all day for trips, weekdays are 9-12:30 classes in the morning, and 4-6:00 classes in the afternoon. I really really want to go for a run but I don't know when. It has to be a morning because that's the only time it's light and under 90 degrees, but I'm too tired.

I feel horrible because I haven't had time to Skype anyone except for my mom once and for a short time.

So in conclusion it's great, but for now at least, it's busy, there's a lot on my mind, and I was a little worried about our quiz and thus I could not sleep.

Moving on: we went to class, took the test, yadda yadda. I thought I was going to crawl in the corner and fall asleep afterwords. I was excited to get back to my room and take a nap (if you know me, you know I need to be absolutely dead dead tired to be able to nap), then I remembered we had a been administrative meeting today where we'd learn about housing insurance and banking and forms and all the things that make us hate travel in modern society. (Yes I know, I'm being a whiner, I'm tired, I have an excuse).

We sat in a small, very hot classroom. To the girls sitting next to me: I am so sorry: deodorant is basically useless here, I smelled like cow.

Now, I think you had to be there to really understand what it feels like to have nearly three hours of administrative paperwork nonsense thrown at you, half French half English. 

"Wait, so do we need a picture of this one or not?" "I'm confused, so they told us to make five copies of the visa but we only need one?" "So is this for the Cité U thing or the bank thing?" "Wait, so these folders are separate?" "Where do we write our room number? What about cell phone?" "What did she say?" "Okay wait so do I need the extra insurance or not?"

It was a lot of that, I think most of my brain cells died within the first half hour, and I honestly don't remember a thing she said. I'm not hyperbolizing in an attempt to be comedic, I literally forgot almost everything. Maybe I'm experiencing PTSD. I laughed a lot though, it just became so ridiculous it was funny. 

Then the guy from the bank came in, again, half French, half English that may as well have been French, and then a surprising amount of Spanish. I think the bank man was South American, and it was easier for him to explain something to a Spanish-speaking girl in Spanish than English, and it was easier for her to understand than French. *shrug*, okay, sure, why not? 

Did I mention it was hot?

So that was that. I finally got back to my room, and made some food. Speaking of which...

A note concerning my meals: I am horrible at preparing them. This is our kitchen:

It's on the right side here, behind the wall, one per floor.

It's not so terrible, but it's... I mean it's a French dorm, so what would one expect? The burners are timed, so you need to push a button to turn on the burners, and it shuts off after a few minutes, so you need to keep pushing it. Same goes for the light in the kitchen. And there's no trash can. 

So cooking is slightly annoying. So far I've made an egg, heated up soup in a pot that I then had to clean with shampoo because I have no dish soap, and, the most elegant item yet: rice, which I ate today. I'm sort of always hungry because my meals suck, I cook like a frat boy. Today I had rice and canned lentils in a cup because I used my only bowl to store the leftover rice, and then I threw in some tomatoes and lettuce. Before I scrambled an egg, half of which stuck to the pan because I have no butter or oil, and then I ate it with some soup. There's lots of yogurt, too much bread. In any case, I need to work on my cooking skills because I have no idea what I'm doing, and warm meals have become a rarity. Too. Lazy. To. Cook. 

So there you go, a strange, exhausting, overall confusing but oddly funny day. 

I'm trying to decide whether or not I feel like taking a shower. I smell awful, but I'm so tired. Sigh... people won't want to be friends with the smelly person. Right now I am a smelly person. Shower it is...

Oil and shots

Today was the kind of day that made me decide that coming here was a good idea. I was unsure, for many reasons, whether or not I should hit the "accept" button last year when I received my decision letter from the Study Abroad offices. After my first day here I wasn't so sure I had done the right thing. But now I'm glad I did.

It's really hard to explain, there's such a unique sense of... camaraderie, I guess you could call it, among all the exchange students here. We were in the bus today and I was just looking around at who I was talking with: people in the Greek system, "life of the party" types, very odd types, dorky types... If I would have met almost any of these people at the UW I would have probably decided at first glance that they weren't "my type." In a different context I probably wouldn't have liked many of them at all, we would have had nothing in common. But here that's all different, we have quite a bit in common. It's like this artificial bubble of companionship.

The dorms are tiny and I haven't really eaten a real meal in the past few days, I haven't slept much, and I've slowly been doing my laundry, three items of clothing at a time, in my sink because I don't want to use the laundry-mat, but it's worth it. (at least for now)

We started off the day by going to Oulivie "une belle oliveraie aux portes de Montpellier et dégustation." An olive farm, where they sold their own olive oil and olives. Personally I loved it because I love love love European countrysides. And there was a goat. Double win.

Goat, I know you're tuning your butt to me, but on the inside you love me, because I love you, and that is how love works. 

Their gift shop

Olive trees. We have a ton of them on campus (and I found a bunch of pomegranate trees on our way to class. Fruit ninja success!) 

This is a little out of order, but she was explaining to us that the big wheel thing in the fourth picture down turns the thing in the second picture down and crushes the olives, then the paste is put into those blue things in the picture below and the oil is pressed out of it. This is the old method, which idn't uesd much anymore, but hey, there you go, olive oil history. 

And then we ate the olives and the oil...

And then we bought the olives and the oil...

This is our civilization professor. Mom: he reminds me of Wojek Adam. I swear it's him in French form. He's awesome, well-traveled, fascinated by everything. He says everything as if he were reciting a Shakespeare play.

When we got back a few of us went to La Place de la Comédie, which is the central part of Montpellier, and absolutely gorgeous, especially compared to where we live. (a few days ago I heard a girl ask "wait, are we in the ghetto?"). A couple of the people wanted to take the tram, but we convinced them to walk (much better idea). I can't wait to finally have some free time to be able to explore it some more, it's beautiful. 

school of medicine

Arc de triumph 

Statue of good ol' Louis

And we ate food

We had originally just gone to the train station downtown to get ID photos taken because we need them for all our paperwork. We all had quizzes and homework for the next day, so we're just going to go and come back. 

Then we passed what the group has been calling the Pirate Bar. Okay, it's no secret, lots of students study abroad and freak out about alcohol. Yeah, I guess it's cheaper here, but it's really not that big of a deal. Some people though... you worry me. 

Anyways, the bar is called the Black Pearl, and for some reason everyone had been talking about it. "I'm going in to get a drink, I'll just take a shot or something." Said one guy (I need to think of names for these people...). "Are all of you going?" I asked, being both my 'I need to study for the quiz' nerdy self and the 'I don't really like alcohol' party pooper self. But they were all going, and it was just one drink, and so what was I supposed to do, walk back alone? So I went, they ordered and I babysat the stuff. 

One drink my a**. They brought a tray of 12 shots, each flavored like a different fruit. 

"You liars!" I said. "I don't know how it happened, I wanted a shot and somehow I ended up with this. It was only 20 Euros!" Replied guy who I need to name. I'm not going to lie, it was really fun. Everyone tried a bit of each one. Eh, it was alcohol, not a big fan, but it was amusing nonetheless. 

I got back and started studying with a girl here at 10 pm, which was a little stupid of me. I stayed up until midnight, decided I needed a break, and went out on our "stoop," the stairs in front of the dorm which we sort of claimed as our hangout place. 

I met a French person! They were just hanging out. I had seen him cooking in the kitchen. Skinny little typical French guy with a name to match. Finally a conversation in French...well, mostly French, a little bit of English, some Spanish, and three words of Polish. 

So besides going to bed way too late, it was awesome. There are a lot of subtle things, short conversations, inside jokes, etc., that have been making this so great. It's impossible for me to explain, it's not really like anything I've experienced. Like I said before, it's a little like Dawn Days, a little bit like camp...but different. Suddenly four months seems too short and I want to film all of it.

Sometimes we risk identity theft...

Today I did some smart things, then I did something not so smart.

For Thursday we need copies of every single document on the planet, so I went over during my class break with my passport. Photocopied everything, turned around and left.

Then I ran into people going into La Place de la Comedie, which is basically the town center, to set up their cell phones. I needed to do that and get I.D. photos taken.

We finally got there, sadly we didn't really have time to walk around since we had to be in class by 4:00, but we wandered a tiny bit before we found the store. We passed a man on the street singing the same song over and over again with a sign asking for money for alcohol and drugs. Honest hobo. But I digress.

I then got a sim card and activated my phone, go me. The guy at the counter was really cool, and he and I somehow started talking about Poland, turns out he was Polish but didn't speak it (darn), and somehow we ended up talking about how he wanted to get a specific picture of the virgin Mary that you can only get in Poland, but I didn't get which one he was talking about, so then he got out his smart phone and showed me, and I was like "oh my grandma has that picture"... now that I think about it it was a little strange, but hey, it was a legitimate French conversation, I'll take it.

And then he asked me for some form of identity. Perhaps a passport. Right, yes, I have that, un moment, je l'ai... ici? Hmm, peut-etre je l'ai mis ici....? Oh no.

Yeah, I left my passport at the copy place. And to top it off we were running kind of tight on time. So on the tram we went, I raced over the the place, no "bonjour" or any of the politeness nonsense. I sort of just stood in the doorway: "Je pense que j'ai oublié mon passport ici, est-ce que vouz l'avez?"

He did. Thank God. I think hearing that was better than finding the big grocery store yesterday. Maybe.

And then we had to book it to class, got lost three times, finally got there a bit late, huffing and puffing and probably smelling like sweaty camels. What can I say, deodorant is no match for the Mediterranean heat.

Moral of the story: don't do very stupid things abroad.

The most beautiful thing in the world: a grocery store

Let's see if I can remember what happened today. There seems to be so much crammed into the days alongside trying to figure out what paperwork I need, where I have to get my photo taken, where I can make photocopies, and buy food, that one day seems to feel like three.

This morning we had placement tests: written and oral. Then the French people fed us! They fed us food! Real food.

That took up most of the morning. Then we all took the tram to get some food. This ended up being a bit messy, the day before I had planned to go with one group, lost them, kind of went with another. In any case, we found at the end of the tram line a most beautiful sight: an outdoor mall. In which there was a little slice of heaven called Géant which is sort of like a really big, good Walmart. I went a little nuts buying all the things (note to self: sit down and plan my budget), but I suppose I needed all the things. I got laundry detergent! (How you know you're old: laundry detergent makes you happy. Wait...do I need softener?) And bread! And fruit! And a pot and pan! Which you don't learn to appreciate until you have to eat cold things out of cans for two days.

Downside is I spent all my Euros so I'm kind of totally broke and not sure where the bank is or if I'll have time to go there tomorrow. Upside: I finally have food!

Then everyone drank. That's one thing I don't quite get, almost all the exchange students are freaking out about alcohol as if they don't make it anywhere but here. I'm not much of a drinker and alcohol makes me a bit nervous, which would make sense to you if you knew my family history. So I sort of sat out, it was fine though because I needed time to sort through my things, and I was able to talk to that girl I mentioned in the post before the last one.

Tomorrow: we find out the results of our placement test and start our French classes.

Nimes!

Warning: very long blog post for a very long day with lots of details, lots of pictures, and also lots of history. 

I didn't give a very good impression in my first blog here. I'm really sorry, I feel very stupid and stuck up. Let's restart on a more positive note: yesterday. Sorry if this seems rushed or is written weird, I feel like their is so much I have to do I don't even have time to sit.

Yesterday was great: we went to Nimes (capital of the Gard department in the Languadoc-Roussillon region) and le Pont du Gard. Soooo much better than the first day here. As I said, everything here is closed on Sunday (or is it? We'll get back to that later), including the University cafeteria. So...there was no breakfast. We got on the bus at 10:00, and I overheard some guy telling another guy he was from Seattle, and I asked if he was from UW, he said yes, and I said "oh! Do you know so-and-so?I think he told me about you," and he said "oh yeah, so-and-so, really cool guy," etc., and we started talking. He's also in the Jackson School, typical International Studies kind of guy, laid back, etc. But more importantly than anything: he had trail mix. And he shared. So he was my favorite at that moment in time.

When we got off the bus they did give us each a little piece of bread. Answer to the age-old question of why the French eat cheese and stay so skinny? They barely eat anything, I guess.

We drove for a while, all just sort of talking among ourselves. There's an interesting vibe: most of us don't know each other, but it seems perfectly fine to just jump into anyone's group conversation. I would compare it to Dawg Days at the UW: jumping from place to place, trying to learn each other's names, too exhausted to remember them, exchanging information, "where are you from?" "what are you studying?" "are you staying in the dorms or a host family? Oh you're living in an apartment, how is that going?" "how long have you been taking French?" etc. etc. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty cool. Very chill. Hopefully it's not temporary. It's even making introvert me feel oddly social.

Now I'm going to let the history nerd of me take over, because traveling is really hollow if you don't get the importance behind it, you can skip this if you don't care:

"The modern city of Nîmes has a history that dates back 2000 years, but in fact various prehistoric peoples inhabited the area of the Vistrenque River plain up through the Bronze Age.  There are monolithic reminders of this most ancient past. Later the area was the home to various Celtic tribes, and during the Wars of Gaulle the region fell under Roman control, becoming a colony of Rome in 50BC.

The city grew in size and stature during the Pax Romana era and much of the Roman buildings still remain to be seen by visitors today. The town declined due to barbarian invasions that began in the 4th century, and after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West the town was controlled by the Franks but faced invasions from the Moors in Spain.

The town suffered greatly during the Middle Ages when there was a lack of central rule in Southern France. Even once the city of Nîmes was part of France its troubles were far from over. In the 14th and 15th centuries the city faced a series of invasions, and during the various religious wars of Europe, Nîmes was one of the last Protestant strongholds in France. Finally by the 17th century the city rebounded with the late arrival of the “Renaissance” to the region. During this century numerous improvements were added to the ancient city.

Following the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars the city became a cultural French metropolis in the south of France, and today serves as a reminder of its turbulent past."

(http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187154-s203/Nimes:France:History.html)

We had this guy as a guide who told us a bunch of stuff. He was really awesome, he even offered to take us around individually if we would be interested. Surprisingly I understood everything he said, but I'm sure the snail speed with which he spoke coupled with a complete lack of slang helped quite a bit. This was him:

We started off with a tour of the amphitheater in Les Arenes, or the Arenas of Nimes, constructed in the first and second centuries by the Roman empire. It's one of the best conserved antiques in the world. Gladiators fought here! We learned a lot about it, I only remember the bits and pieces I found most interesting: slaves, women, and children (because slaves = women in those days) sat at the top, important people sat at the bottom, citizens sat in the middle, each separated by a kind of mini wall. From what I could understand, it was constructed by the Romans for the people (people were encouraged to come, it was free, they even gave out bread and coins) in order to control them (like: hey, so my empire just took over you, but I don't want you to be mad, so here's some bread and a penny and you can watch big men injure each other. Truce?) 

There were three types of entertainment at the amphitheater: Hunts, where two animals fought each other, executions of prisoners sentenced to death, and gladiator combats, which was the most popular form of entertainment. 

In the middle ages, in response to increasing attacks, the Amphitheater was transformed into a fortified city with houses, two churches and a chateau. 

Today it's used for various different spectacles, concerts, tennis, and I think even bullfighting. 

Fun random fact: jeans were invented in Nimes in the Middle Ages. 

Anyways, that was a really rough, patchy history lesson, hopefully it made a little bit of sense. Time for pictures:

In this one you can see the walls that separated the social classes

I tried to take a video, it's a little choppy but you get the idea. 

  

 We then went through Nimes a little bit. I was asking one of our UVP grad students how to set up a cell phone here, so I only half heard everything the guide was saying. He took us to this building which I think is the modern political center of Nimes. You can see the French flag, the region's flag, the Nimes flag, and the EU flag. The closeup of the doors shows the Nimes symbol of a crocodile chained to a palm tree. I'll restrain myself and not go into the history of that, but if you're interested here is a pretty good explanation.

We then walked to the Nimes Cathedral:

After that we went to the Maison Carrée, built around (from what I can find online, although I keep finding different dates) 12 BC. It's one of the best conserved temples of the Roman world, and was one of the expressions of the new regime introduced by the Emperor Augustus.

After the Roman Empire fell the people continued to use to temple for various things, which explains why it has survived so long and in such great shape. 

Then we literally turned around and looked at the Carre d'Art, a contemporary art museum and the city's library. Half of the nine-story structure is underground. 

I have to be honest though, by this time it was hot, we were all hungry, so not many of us were listening. We got to walk in and take a peek, and then we tried to go get lunch. That was interesting. We supposedly had 15 minutes to find something and get back to Les Jardins de la Fontaine. Most of us went in a big group (remember: Sunday, most things are closed) and ended up going into a little Kebap place. Now, imagine owning a tiny little restaurant in France, and suddenly having something like 12 hungry Americans barging in. I have no idea how we ended up getting our food, but we did. It was described by someone as a bit of a cluster****, and rightly so. I hate to do this, but I think you had to be there. 

Our bizarre attempt at getting food:

Then we walked by this thing, which I'm sure has historical significance but to be quite honest I don't have the energy to research it, and a lot of you (Ewelina) probably don't care much:

And then we ate in the garden. I wish we had had time to walk around a bit.

Then (yes, there is more, for the two of you who are actually still reading this) we hopped back on the bus to Le Pont du Gard which was my favorite. 

There are different ways to travel: you can walk and look, you can walk and look and learn the history, or, my favorite, do all of the above and then also experience the place, which is what we did here.

We were actually able to swim under the Pont which one professor described perfectly as "swimming under 2000 years of history." It really was fantastic. The Pont dates back to the first century, and was used as a bridge and an aqueduct used to transport water to the growing empire. 

Seeing it was cool, but swimming under it was the best, partly because of the history thing...but probably mostly because it was almost 100 degrees. 

It looks really dry from here but there is actually a river flowing under the Pont. 

See, told you so. 

I was photo-bombed by boy-who-provides-trail-mix. 

See that cliff in on the left side? A lot of us jumped off of it which was freaking terrifying and I almost lost my swimsuit. Worth it though. If you look closely you can see some girl in mid-jump. 

We only had about an hour to swim. I jumped twice, a couple girls jumped and ended up hurting their eardrums so... that may have been a stupid idea. At one point I was sitting on the rocks and I saw a guy JUMP FROM THE PONT. In the picture above you see the ledge? He jumped from that. It sounded like the most painful belly-flop you can imagine. For a second I though he had actually died, but he was fine. A little stupid, but fine. 

And then...we were done. Sort of. We got back at eight-ish, starving again (that seems to be a running theme so far). I was convinced nothing would be open and I would be eating paper, but thankfully there is a little convenience store (think 7-eleven) that is open until 10:00 pm (EVEN on Sunday! Bam!) We went there and got the most random stuff ever. We went in three huge waves of students, the owners probably hated us. I got some sort of bread which ended up being the kind of dry bread you use for breadcrumbs (oops) some ham (I think), yogurt and lentils in a can, soup, and tomato sauce. Then we somehow all collectively decided to take over the dorm and just eat in front of the door on the stairs. Because that's what the cool people do...? We ate without utensils, we drank things you'd usually eat with a spoon, ate random things out of cans. It was strange, but it was pretty great. 

After that I left my extra food with trail mix boy and went for a walk with some people. Me and another girl ended up walking farther, getting a little lost, and getting back after everyone had left. So I went up to get my food from trail mix boy and saw he was studying with another girl and drinking a beer, and would I like to study with them (for the placement test the next day) and I said sure, and it was more talking than studying, but that was fun. 

And then I Skyped with my mom, and then I went to sleep. The end. The was ridiculously long. I refuse to go back and proofread.