Aix is a rare flower, blooming in front of my eyes one petal at a time. Every corner I turn seems to unveil a new road yet unseen, a secret fountain so intimate I swear I am the only one to have seen it, a centuries-old statue erected just for my eyes. I have never been in a city so charged with millennia of secrets and stories, thousands upon thousands of tales of individual people walking down the same streets as my own clumsy feet.
Each square is teeming with people, cafés, live music wafting from the fingertips of nomadic guitar or accordion players, delicious smells, and air so thick with humidity and history, you can taste it.
Although my host parents have, as of yet, been vacationing out of the country, but my stand-in family is unbelievably kind and understanding. Each day, I look forward to dinner with them and the rest of our hodge-podge family, a meal filled with stories and laughter, and a chance to practice my French outside the intimidating "real-life" social situations. I live with another American girl in the same program as me, a French girl from Cannes who just began her first year of university; we just said our good-byes to a middle-aged Canadian woman who spent two weeks in Aix doing a short-term language program, and we are expecting a Swiss-German shortly who is doing (I think?) a similar program.
I did a lot of studying up before I came, and I read that the people here seldom wear shorts. I did not want to stick out like a sore thumb, so I refrained from packing any...and boy, am I sorry! Not only do I see les jeunes français wearing shorts everywhere, it is also sweltering hot and sticky with humidity. I have worn the same couple of skirts often. I guess on the plus side, laundry day will be easy!