First trip: London for one night then Dublin for 3!

So the first trip has finally been planed! March 3rd we leave Montpelier and head to London. We are staying one night in London and plan on tearing it up for that one night. The next morning we leave for Dublin Ireland. We will be staying in Dublin for three nights. Unfortunately we have to leave extremely early on Sunday morning to connect with our flight back to Montpelier from London. The hole trip just to travel will cost an eye gouging $120. So excited!

Even better is after that weekend Felicia comes out the following weekend!

the plan for trip during Easter is to go to Morocco. Hopefully that gets booked soon. Thats all for now.

Au Revoir!

Pictures

Check out this clown

Gnome, drinking a cappuccino.

View of Sete from the Sea... its awesome.

My lovely room... 6'x6'... and bunk beds!

haha its cozy...

This is the view of the sunset from out balcony.

cool beans!

Ok so we've been really busy here since the first day. we hit the ground running, literally. as soon as we landed we started the semester. since then we've been getting assignment after assignment.

Besides that nothing too exciting has been going on.

I think I've figured out what my trips will be. March 3-7 Taylor and maybe Chris and I will be going to London for a night and then to Dublin for the rest of the weekend. Then from April 1st the the 6th I will be going to Morocco. Where in Morocco you ask? I haven't a clue, wherever I can find cheap airfare and hostels.

The fist weekend in France consisted of us playing board games with children and their parents. As lame as it sounded I actually had a lot of fun @ game night. I don't think I'll be doing it every Saturday night, but i do see myself going back maybe a few more times.

After the game night we went to a cafe that turns into a disco night club at night. It was a cool place I guess; It was loaded with 17 year old pleathers who thought they were hot shit. mixed drink run ya about 8 euro; beers were anywhere between 2.50-5.50. I bought one 50 cl. kronenburgh for 5.50 and just sat back and watched all night. I wasn't in the mood to be spending tons of money.

It was interesting because a lot of people in our group were drinking the 50 cl beers and everyone else in the club was drinking mixed drinks or other weird shit. They actually ran out of the 50 cl beer glasses, I don't think they are used to having 16 americans there drinking lots of big beers.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves that night and I think we'll all go back again some other time. The next time i will go predrunk. that way, i will still only buy one beer and sip on it all night.

Sunday consisted of me being in studio all day. no Super Bowl, No wings, No pizza, No beer. Really lame super bowl sunday if you ask me. I am glad the Saints won though, what made it even better was that peyton manning threw and INT to ruin the game. If i saw that live i may have celebrated just as hard as when brett Favre threw his INT to ruin the NFC champ this year.

still no pictures, internet blows

Internet is still spotty so be patient with pictures. Days 2 and 3 were very busy. We rode a bus to the tops of the mountains and hikes around. The views were magnificent. It was kind of annoying because apparently we had some famous ecologist talk to us about Sete but he only spoke French so everything had to be translated. Three of my teachers don’t speak much English so everything has to be translates. Kind of annoying. Studio is going to be more work than I though. It is a 30-minute walk away from the apartment, mostly along the sea. I have not had any crazy food yet. Apparently Mal had Kangaroo last night… she said it was good, I think I’ll have to take her word on that.

Another thing about our studio… drug dealers hang outside of the door all day and do their business. They are funny and try to talk to us in English. Nicholas (our main professor) tells us to be nice to them and they’ll be nice to us. . Its pretty funny.

I’m getting used to the small room. Its not as bad as originally thought. I think I was just cranky from the traveling.

Last night I bought a 2 euro bottle of win and it was delicious. Tonight I shall try a new wine.

Today was exciting because we went to an outdoor market. They have this market every Wednesday morning. Everything Is sold here, fruit, vegis, seafood, meat, clothes, underwear, watches ( I bought a watch for 5 euro). It was really exciting, I didn’t buy any food but I sampled some cheese, some were good other were gross.

Tonight I shall try something local for dinner with a nice wine. It is 8:00pm, we got out of class at 7:15, we usually will get out around this time so that going to take a while to get used to.

Something that is really cool about Sete is that everyday between the hours of 12 and 2 everyone takes a break. Stores shut down, and people just go out and relax. It’s pretty cool. I have enjoyed just laying around next to the canals and eating a fresh baguette.

I know this is very scattered but I’m still really tired from traveling and words and keyboards are not my best friend right now.

Au revoir!

Gnomes, planes, and France

Today was a long day. Woke up at 3:00 AM on January 31^st and it is now 9:00PM on February 1^st (3:00 PM Boston time) I have only gotten a few cat naps here and there nothing over 20 minutes. My plan of waking up early so I could sleep on the plane ride to Frankfurt failed miserably. I couldn’t sleep on the plane.

On the ride over I had a window seat, however, I did not get to sit with anyone from the trip because we were spread out all over the plane. I sat next to some chick from Turkey who was visiting BU. Her English was very broken and trying to have a conversation with her was almost impossible especially with the noise of the plane on top of her bad English. The first flight was delayed an hour and was only 6.5 hours long! Ha seemed like forever. I watched the movie “Up” and also some discovery channel specials.

We landed in Frankfurt @ 6:15ish AM Germany time. We didn’t realize at the time but we had to pass through security again. So we dilly-dallied our way to the gate only to realize that we had to go through security again. Berlin’s group flight was supposed to leave @ 7:15 and France’s group flight was leaving @7:50. The German group almost missed their flight but they all made it onto the plane. We made it just fine onto our second flight. It was only a one hour and 15 minute flight. It went by so fast. We landed in Marsaile and met with Nicholas (our Teacher) and some other guy who’s gonna be our teacher too but I forget his name. We jumped on the bus and started heading to a town which the name no one knew. The plan was to do a quick walking tour (Which I did not want to do because I was exhausted) and then get pizza and visit a bull-fighting stadium. We went to an old signal house and climbed to the top. It was very cool to be at the top of the signal house because it was a clear day and you could see for many miles. We then went to a house that Nicholas designed for a doctor friend of his. The lady was very nice. She let us all into her house and property where we ate pizza and drank her wine. She also had freshly picked oranges. Everything was delicious.

From there we went to Sete to finally see our flats, which we will be living in for the next 3 months. He had informed us earlier in the day that there were 8 rooms. 6 were in one building and two were in a building next door. The building next door contained two small bedrooms and a living room/ kitchen. The building with the 6 is one bedroom, living room/ kitchen. No one wanted to live in the building next door because that would mean they would be separated from everyone else in the group. We picked keys from a box and whatever key you picked would be where you stayed. Of course I pick the key for one of the rooms in the shitty building next door. So my roommate Matt and I are in a building that looks like it was designed as a 1960’s Las Vegas motel.

However, I refuse to let that ruin my time here in France, its only where I’m living for the next 3 months right??? We got to the room and the place kind of sucks. Kitchen is tiny, we have one terrible couch and an old ass kitchen table. One room has a Full sized bed in it while the other room is a glorified closet with bunk beds that don’t come apart. Matt and I flipped for the larger room. I lost. I am living in a closet with bunk beds. The rooms in the other building are so much larger thank ours. They have two couches/ futons, Large open kitchen, the bedrooms aren’t all that big but are probably the size of our living room. Taylor’s room contains a 42” TV a washer/ dryer, and an excellent view of the ocean. I’ll upload pics to compare both rooms at a later time.

We are already hated by the local youths. These fucking Frenchies like to wear pleather and drive around on little scooters/ mopeds. They yell at us what we all believe to be the only English they know, Motherfuckers get out of here. One of the picked a 4’ plank of splintered wood and was walking around with it hitting things a good 100’ away from our group. They live in another building next door in the complex.

The city is beautiful, the Mediterranean is beautiful, and there are markets, bakeries, and butcher shops near by. So far no legit bars or nightlife near our flats. There is a Casino that is a less than a 5-minute walk away. Hopefully today we find a better grocery store to do some shopping at.

Since there is no Internet in our flats I will only be able to update in studio or until we find a café that was free wifi, fat chance.

That is all for now, time to get some much needed sleep. I’m waking up early tomorrow to go running along the beach maybe go to downtown sete and pick up some breakfast.

Au revoir!

Leaving in 9 hours

It's 7:00 am in NH right now, I am packing up the rest of my stuff. I think I should have everything but who knows. Rodger Federer just won the Ausie Open. The third set was the only challenge for him as it went into I think 18 tiebreaker points.

Leaving for the airport in 4 Hours. Right now I'm feeling more exhausted and still a little queazy from Friday night (Thanks a lot assholes) than excited.

This should be my last post from the states until I get back. So wish me luck and I'll see everyone in 12 weeks!

Counting down the days

Today is Wednesday, 3 days before I take off for France. I am getting really excited! I still haven't started a research paper that I need to finish before I leave the states, woops. It will get done, I'm not worried about it.

Today I exchanged for my first euros. I ordered 500 euro and had to pay $760. It would have been $740 but I had to pay for overnight shipping because I didn't oder them in time... stupid me.

That money will be going towards my "flat" deposit, key deposit, and keys... why do I have to pay two key fees you ask? I haven't a clue.

yeah.... exciting stuff right here!

Side note- Olympics start soon and I couldn't be more pumped. I really hope there is a place for us to watch the games while in France. I want to shout USA USA USA so badly.

Until next time....