C'est la Vie

So I'm writing part of this blog to you while I sit in a courtyard in Aix en Provence. It's a large area in the newish part of Aix. There's a whole bunch of benches all around the outer edges of it. I'm thinking that maybe they have performances in the center of this courtyard because it's huge and would be an ideal place for a dance or music act. There are lots of people walking around and going about their daily...Aix day. So like shopping and eating and rendezvous-ing. 

Street performers

Random mob for something

More performers these guys were awesome!

So I'm sure some of you were expecting this blog to about the lovely time I spent in Paris but, it's not going to be for one fairly good reason. In my h.moms job every 5 years or so someone comes in and evaluates her while she's working and if she does well she gets benefits and a raise etc. So for this she had to prepare a lot of paper work. Which there was a lot of. I didn't see her all weekend! :P So unfortunately I didn't go to Paris but, fortunately my h.moms job thing went really well and we moved our Paris trip to the 19th of October.

It has now been over a month that I have been in France. Holy. My french is coming along well (at least I like to think) and I'm starting to get used to everything. How lunch is the biggest meal of the day, how everyone drives crazy and how everything has a chocolate version. I seriously mean EVERYTHING. I am also happy to report that school is getting betterish too. I talked to a counseller person at school and we organized my schedule around a bit so it's more beneficial to my...situation. I substituted my math classes for history/geography classes and my uncomprehensible Philosophy classes for French classes. So school is a little more enjoyable now. Bellow I've posted photos of my walk from school. It's only the 2nd half of my walk seeing as I only decided to do it half way home.

This is my bus stop! :)

You go right here to get to my house

Mount Saite Victoire in the background

My chemin

My house is kinda on a hill

this is it!

Voila!

So since my last blog post I spent one day of one weekend in Aix with Imelsy (exchange student from Mexico) and Bobby (also an exchange student from California). We walked around and saw the market got some yummy lunch then hung out with some ice cream. After we decided to go to the theatre to see what movies were playing. When we got to the theater we found out that there was another 2 theaters. We can a program and then found out that they even played movies in English with French subtitles so we decided to do that. Everybody's buses were leaving around 6 so that narrowed our selection of movies to one. Killer Joe. And if you're wondering how it was DON'T see this movie. It was a really weird movie that I'm not even going to try to describe because I don't even think I would be able to. That it was pretty much time to go and get on our buses. Imelsy and I said goodbye to Bobby and then her and I got on a bus to go to her place because I was going to spend a night at her house. The bus ride was maybe half an hour and then we were in her town called Rhonges. When we arrived we waited at the bus stop for her host dad to arrive. He came and picked us up and then we were on our way to her house. After stopping to get bread of course. The drive through Rhonges was short and it is a really charming little town. We made it to her house and I met the rest of the family and they were really nice. Shortly after arriving I found out that tomorrow (sunday) they were going to marsielles and then to the islands just off shore and if I wanted to and was allowed I could go with them!

 

This is the market

lunch time!

We made it to the islands fine without any problems. There were multiple little islands one had a prison on it, one a hospital and one mostly just had little cafés. (the one we went to).

We spent more of the time on this kinda like beach thing, went swimming it was a little on the not warm side but have no worries, I'm Canadian and had no problems. Ime on the hand who as I mentioned is from Mexico...bref, you get my point. (Side note: bref is a french term technically meaning brief but when used like this is kinda means etc, in short) After the beach we promande around a bit and it was suuuuppper windy at the crest of the island. Good thing I wasn't wearing a skirt this time... -___- 

I also went to my first Rotary meeting finally! The meetings are on Tuesdays at lunch and because the meetings in another town and my h.mom works during the day and can't give me ride I got to skip out on school and go to her job with her. She's a teacher at a school in Vitrolles. It was organized for me to go into the English classes at the school where I did a presentation on Canada that I made. It went really well and I did two different presentations. Just before lunch on of the Rotarians from my club and picked me up from my school and took me to the Best Western hotel which is actually right by the Airport I arrived in. My whole club is men but they were all very nice. I told everyone a little about myself and then I gave everyone a pin and one of my travel cards. Lunch was wonderful with 3 courses. A salad, a main course and then a desert. It's unfortunate that I'm apparently not going to another meeting till December because I was hoping to go at least once a month. Oh well maybe that'll change. I just go with it.

 This was desert and it was yummy

The following weekend it rained a lot! And I had my first soccer game! The soccer games here are set up a little different because at the beginning the starting line-up forms 2 lines and follows the refs out and then we shake hands before the game, do and cheer and then we go. We didn't win but that's okay because I had fun :) 

Also you may have noticed I'm skipping over the week days but that's because most happen in the same manor, school, soccer Wednesday and Friday. 

The next weekend I finally got around to going for a run! I went with my host dad who goes fairly regularly, about every other day. And we decided that we are going to try to go together more often which will be good I think! It'll be nice to keep running plus it'll keep me in good shape for soccer. Later that day I went to Aix: see far above. Then Sunday I went to the Gardanne market with my h.parents and then had another soccer game, we tied 2-2 against Marseille. (I have pictures from the market but I've already got about a million on this post so if you feel so inclined to see them they are on facebook)

This was the weekend that would have been Thanksgiving and I missed having turkey and seeing all my family but I did get to have a nice Skype chat with a pretty good lot of my family because lots of them were together for dinner. So that was really nice. 

You are now caught up! Next weekend holds a trip for me to Dignes-les-Bains where I'll get to see a friend from Rotary! YAY! And then the weekend after Paris! It has been a long time in coming and I look forward to it!

ps thanks for sticking it out till the end of this extremely long post. 

Oh well,

c'est la vie! 

Bisous to all,

Rebecca