Bienvenue à Aix-en-Provence!!

Bienvenue à Aix-en-Provence!

Well, I arrived in Aix yesterday afternoon after a crazy crazy day of traveling via turbulent airplanes. It was snowing when I landed in Brussels, and raining in Marseille. Luckily all of my baggage showed up, and I took a taxi to the center of Aix to the Vanderbilt-in-France (VIF) center to meet the director (la directrice) and the tutors. Afterwards we took a taxi to my apartment, which is called the "Bellgarde." It's beautiful. There are 2 stairs, a huge common room, a really fantastic kitchen, and 3 bedrooms. I have 5 apartment-mates ("colocataires"); 4 americans, and one Frenchie named Rénaud.

So far life in Aix has been pretty relaxing. After arriving, I took a nice 3 hour nap, because none of my other colocs had arrived yet, so after unpacking and realizing I didn't know enough of the city to find lunch/food (even though I was starving and hadn't eaten since dinner on the plane the night before...) I just decided I would sleep. My other colocs arrived around 3 or 4, which was nice. We all met up and went back to the VIF centre to go to dinner. For dinner we went to Patacrêpe, which is a FANTASTIC crêperie that everyone must go to! I ate a #15, which was something with cheese, meat, all surrounded by a square crêpe. Yum. For dessert I shared a banana and nutella (read: most delicious substance known to mankind) crêpe :) I felt very French! Will definitely have to return to Patacrêpe for more later. After dinner, passed out at midnight.

Woke up at one, and went out at 2 with my colocs for a tour of Aix. We all bought cell phones (which are weird here because there are no cell plans--you have to buy a télécharge to add minutes to your phone, and texts are super expensive so I won't be using those at all), saw the post office, Shleckers (grocery store), and some other places. We toured down main street, which is le Cours Mirabeau, saw le Rotonde (the main fountain), and had a beverage break where I had chocolat chaud. France's hot chocolate is very different; less sugar, more richness. Note to self: dairy in France still is not good to stomach. Oh well. After our tour, which most of us spent freezing our toes, fingers, and faces off, we went back to Bellegarde. Rénaud has a guitar, so a bunch of us just chilled and played guitar, and I got to play some things too. Yay guitar. For dinner we went to Restaurant Romain, which was basically a French restaurant with a Greco-Roman form of architecture and design. Very strange...but quite delicious! One of the tutors said it was good and cheap...but unfortunately nothing in Aix is very cheap. Today at Monoprix, one of the department stores in Aix, I bought tissues, soy milk, and honey nut cheerieos for a grand total of 7.3 euros, which is about 10-11 dollars. In America it would be so much less expensive to buy everything! Oh well. Guess I'll have to spend more money on food than I was hoping. Having to eat French food? Could be worse, right?

Well, it's time for get some sleep. Hopefully some shops will be open tomorrow so that I can buy a card for my cell phone (France is weird with their cell phone plans) and some more groceries :)

Bon soir!

~Dani