Allons-y! Exploring Nimes

Life is good and I am continuing to feel more at home here. Today is the first day in two weeks that I haven't done anything. It felt good to take a breather from the world because it's been so non-stop since I arrived, especially this last week.

I had my first classes this week, and the only thing I was worried about in any of them was the mention of oral presentations-- memorized. As most of you probably know, I HATE presentations. I am absolutely fine when I teach students, but when it comes to being evaluated, I get incredibly nervous. Thankfully, these are weeks away, and I will hopefully have had time to perfect my speaking skills by the time they roll around. At this point, it does not look like I'll be in courses with only French students. I had been trying to make this happen, but the system here (as I've said before) is a little dysfunctional. I sat in on a literature lecture that was supposed to revolve around mythology and I could barely keep up with what the professor was saying. To take this course for a grade would probably be a huge mistake, so instead I am looking to audit a lecture or two (probably literature or cinema) in order to still gain better comprehension. My courses will be language intensive, though, even if I am with other French language learners, and I think I will gain a lot (I already have).


Friday, I went with a group of friends to explore the city of Nimes, which is only a 30 minute train ride from Montpellier. The trip was very unplanned, and all we knew were the times of our train rides. When we arrived, we found that the city was not too complicated, and that it was easily walkable with lots of things to see! Our first stop was the Roman Amphitheater of Nimes, only a five minute walk from our train station, and right in the middle of a more modern city. There we were able to get a pass that allowed us into the Amphitheater, and two other sites for a very low student price. We began to walk up the stairs, listening to our guided headset tour, and this is what we saw:

It was pretty stunning, and as always, hard to believe how old it really was. To this day, they still use it twice a year for bullfighting. In my opinion, the best view was the very top seats where you were able to see the entire city and the arena. Funny enough, that is where the slaves and poorer classes were made to sit. Either way, a very amazing place to have visited. After this we took the side streets of Nimes to find our way to "La Maison Carée", an ancient temple also in the middle of the city. Today, they show a 3D film inside, which we did not see, but I think had something to do with gladiators? Go figure. We ended up sitting there for a long time watching from a distance as some teenagers tried to "parkour" the surrounding area.

After sitting around watching the city from La Maison, we went out to find lunch and ended up finding a little crepe shop-- I had a ham and cheese crepe, and it was very filling! To wrap up our touring, we made our way to Les Jardins de la Fontaine and le Tour Magne, which were about a 15 minute walk from where we had left off. The gardens were gorgeous and extensive, and it was really fun to explore for a bit. Right before heading to the Tour Magne, we stumbled upon another ancient ruin off to the side of the gardens. Apparently it used to be a temple, possibly, and it is completely open to the public, aside from a sign that said something about "Do not escalate the building" (it was poorly translated from French to English on the sign).

Les Jardins de la Fontaine

Les Jardins de la Fontaine

Les Jardins de la Fontaines

Le Temple de Diane

Le Temple de Diane

Finally, we climbed up some steep terrain to get to La Tour Magne, an ancient tower. To this day, people still aren't entirely sure what its original purpose was for. It used to be 4 levels high, but now only three remain, but at the top there is an incredible panoramic view of the city of Nimes. Reaching the top was breathtaking for a few reasons. One being the fact that to reach the top you had climb up many, many spiraling stairs. The second is the view at the top is truly stunning. We stayed up there for a while, just talking and taking in the views. There is not much room to stand there, so we were all thankful to have come to visit before the touring season began.

 To wrap up our trip, we found a place to eat more crepes, did some shopping (I finally found a French coat!), saw three Churches total, two carousels, and many fountains. In all, it was an exhausting day, but I am so happy to have made a full day of it! Hopefully, there will be more day trips in the near future!

More things I've learned:

•  May 1st is the "Fête du Travail", essentially labor day. My professor proudly described it as "A day to celebrate working-- so of course we don't work!" 
• Longchamps bags are cheap in France, compared to buying them in the US at least. 
• French stores only have sales twice a year: all of January and all of July. Each store participates, and the streets are full of people.
• Walking down a street is incredibly difficult. In the US, it's pretty standard to walk to the right so that people coming the opposite direction can walk past you on your left. There is absolutely NO system like this in France, from what I can tell. People come at all angles all the time, and will absolutely run into you if you do not move.
• There are no ovens in our dorms, just stove tops. This was a sad realization for all of us-- we had wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies.
• Baking cookies probably isn't a big thing here as we could not find a cookie sheet anywhere in Ikea, or in Geant (essentially Target).
• You can speak and understand a language well, but still feel completely lost. The train station is a perfect example of that. My friends and I pulled little details together to figure out what the announcements were trying to say.