Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Gnomes, planes, and France

Today was a long day. Woke up at 3:00 AM on January 31st and it is now 9:00PM on February 1st (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!

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