La Vie en France

Can I just start this post by saying that I love my life in France? But really. Montpellier has been absolutely amazing, and it keeps getting better now that we are getting the gorgeous 60 degree weather. On top of that, I get to speak one of the most beautiful languages in the world on a daily basis! I don't know what I am going to do when I go back home and can no longer go back and forth between French and English regularly. There's even a part of me that is growing to love having to go to the grocery store every week or two, and I had already fallen in love with being able to get freshly baked baguettes whenever I want. Also, I finally found another Chi Omega in Montpellier-- I knew there had to be at least one! Funny enough, she was in one of my classes already and just so happened to wear her letters the one day a week we had class together. That's the other thing about France: school. I am going to have the most bizarre transition back to ISU because I am only in four classes, and I have SO much free time which is completely abnormal for me-- but it's been easy to get used to! But, just because I'm not in 18 credit hours worth of classes this semester doesn't mean I am slacking. I am truly in a constant state of learning-- and I love it!

Outside the walled city of Carcassonne!

Example of a "top heavy" building on the left

This last weekend my exchange group had an organized trip to Carcassonne and Abbaye de Frontfroide. I had been hearing rave reviews of Carcassonne even before arriving in France. It is a medieval walled city and it was pretty incredible to walk some of the streets. Our tour guide, Christophe, showed us the various buildings around the city in a quick tour (it's a pretty small walled city, so we were done pretty quickly). At one point, someone asked him about the architecture of some of the buildings because we had noticed a number of them were narrower on the first floor, but the second floor was much larger which resulted in the building having a top heavy feel. Christophe explained that back when these old buildings were first built the more land someone took up in the city, the more they had to pay to build. To avoid these costs, people started building further out on the second floor as a way of not taking up city street space. He also mentioned that some of these buildings, which are all over Europe, actually end up swaying in the wind a bit now-- yikes! Fun fact though! After our short tour we ended up all getting lunch together-- all 15 of us. I was actually pretty impressed that any restaurant in this city could hold that many of us at one time because all the buildings seem so small! But, somehow we managed to fit into one that no other tourists had found yet and we sat down to get food. The food was delicious and I finally got to eat chicken-- which any one of my friends will tell you I have been craving my entire time here (it tends to be more expensive than beef or pork though). The one problem of dining with 15 people? It takes FOREVER to get everyone's food ready and served, not to mention the fact that we had soups and salads before our main course and then dessert! By the end of our (2 hour) lunch we had actually run out of our allotted time in Carcassonne, which I was pretty disappointed about since I had hoped to explore it a little further. Luckily, we had enough time for me to find a postcard. If you didn't know already, I am keeping a collection of postcards of each city I visit while abroad to hold onto as pretty (and cheap) souvenirs. I do have to say that Carcassonne is definitely a heavily tourist-y area-- every shop had souvenirs and was targeted towards visitors. I guess it makes sense though-- gotta pay for the upkeep of such an ancient city somehow! When we got back on our bus after lunch we then went to Abbaye de Frontfroide (pics below).

In all honesty, I have very little history to share about Abbaye de Frontfroide. We went on a tour here and because it was privately owned our tourguide, Christophe, could not show us around and speak slowly. So we ended up in a group of many families and couples, all of whom had to be fluent French speakers, and our guide spoke VERY fast and definitely too fast for us to get much out of it. Christophe tried to explain quietly as we went along, but it was still hard to get much out of it. What I do know is that it has been around for centuries and used to be an abbey. At some point, it was taken over by a family who helped to restore it to its former glory and this same family continues to own it, host tours, and make wine within the property. Like I said, I don't know much about it, but it was definitely in a gorgeous location and felt very peaceful to me so I am glad I was able to see it.

Now that the weather is getting nicer some friends and I are planning to visit Sete, France this weekend. The city is right on the water so we're going to have a beach day! We will be able to take a train there and back for not much more than 7 or 8 euros, so it's a really easy and cheap trip to make. Also on the agenda for my travels are the following cities: Florence and Rome (maybe Venice??) in April and then most likely: Paris, Caen, London, Barcelona, Nice, Strasbourg and Munich from May to June. I'm still hoping to fit in some more French cities on the weekends too, like: Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lyon, and Marseilles. If you have ANY recommendations on hotels/hostels or transportation, please feel free to get in touch.

More posts to come soon-- I'm trying to do one a week!

Things I've learned:

• The closet sized shower has been tricky to get used to, but I have finally found an upside! Because it is SUCH a tiny space, and is all water proof, cleaning the whole bathroom is super easy-- just take the shower head and point it everywhere! Voila :)
• Chewing tobacco must be nearly nonexistent in France-- I don't think I've seen it once! This is an AWESOME change from Indiana where it seems to be way too common.
• My teacher showed us drawings and pictures of our downtown dating back to the 1800s and it really demonstrated how the city has changed. Cars used to be all over our city center, but thankfully they've done away with that and it's more of a pedestrian oriented city. There was also a photo of the city in the 1950s, and one of the corner shops (a shoe store) is still there!
• I went to a bowling alley here the other day, but it wasn't just a bowling alley. It also had karaoke, an arcade, a bar, pool tables, AND go carts within the same building. The French use the same words, like strike and spare... and the balls are color coded by weight!
• The accent circumflex, â the accent on top of the a (and other letters), actually symbolizes that there used to be an S next to it, but that for style reasons it was taken away. Fun fact learned in grammar and it may really help me in remembering what words use this accent!
• Hotels and hostels are already fully booked for middle of May-- tourist season is upon us!
• I have also found that Montpellier can function like a small town, at times. Because the school doesn't provide students with printing options on campus, we have to go to off campus printing and copying businesses. I have been going to the same one since I got here, and now the little old man that runs the place really likes me! Because of this, he was super helpful the other day and let me walk out of the store with a brand new USB drive without having paid for it yet, AFTER having offered to let me use his personal USB drive (long story). Needless to say, this would NOT happen often, if ever, in Chicago or Terre Haute even. It's nice to know the man at the copy shop has my back, haha!