I've been incredibly busy in the best way. I hate to admit this to my devoted readership (probably my parents and a few relatives), but my blog has been put on the back burner. This is mostly because whenever I have an hour or so to write, I write in my journal that I have to keep for class called "L'Approche Interculturelle de l'Autre." My classes are all very interesting but more time-consuming than I'd anticipated. Linguistics, one of my most interesting classes, requires a four-page paper each week, which is hard to manage when writing in French. The French Honors Program has certainly been rewarding, but don't do it if you want your study abroad experience to be vacation-esque.
Anyway, here are some highlights from the past few weeks:
I went to the Marseille vs. Arsenal game with Perle and her boyfriend Armand. Absolutely crazy. A couple of guys were screaming chants into microphones, and the whole crowd was screaming along with them. "AUX ARMES!" "ALLER L'O.M.!" etc. It was a bit like a punk concert; there was a good deal of moshing as well. The Marsellais identity also became evident during the match when they sang a chant that translates to, "Marseille isn't France, Marseille isn't France!"
La montagne Sainte-Victoire was made famous by Paul Cézanne, an Aixois impressionist who painted it something like 76 times. For one euro, you can take a bus to the foot of the mountain (about twenty minutes away from Aix) and enjoy a beautiful two-hour hike to the enormous cross at the top of the mountain. When it's warm enough, you can also stay the night in a little priory about fifty meters down from the cross. There's a dining table and a fireplace inside the priory, but there are no beds, so you have to bring a sleeping bag and a cushion. When I stayed the night with a few friends, there were some college-aged French people who played guitar and sang with us late into the night. They knew how to play "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You" from the Jungle Book, so they sang the French versions of the songs while we sang the English versions. One of the French guys, whose name is Lucas, told us that when French people sing American/anglophone songs (which happens all the time), they often imitate the sounds of the lyrics without knowing the meaning of the words. They call this type of singing "Yaourt" or "Yogurt."
This past weekend I went to Amsterdam with eleven other IAU students. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, and we had some fantastic and very silly times there. The most memorable part of the trip, though, was the Anne Frank house. I won't try to describe it fully since I would definitely fail, but I will say that the museum is a jarring reminder of the most inspiring and the most terrifying sides of humanity.
But my best experiences abroad have been here in Aix. I've started playing soccer regularly, and the locals are very fun to play with and often very talented. Soccer has been a great way to pick up everyday expressions that we don't learn in class. There's also a beautiful park south of downtown called Parc Jourdan where Aix-Marseille students always hang out. My dad was nice enough to bring my travel guitar over to France when he visited, so I've been able to play music with lots of French students, which has been a great way to meet friends. A couple of my new French friends, Nas and VJ, are excellent freestyle rappers, and they have some written raps as well. French rap is very good once you can follow along with the rapid-fire delivery and catch on to the slang, and it's extremely popular here. When I met Nas he said very seriously, "US rap and French rap are the only ones that matter. All the rest is complete garbage." I don't really know enough about international rap to agree or disagree, but I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say, especially with his dramatic spitting for punctuation. Moral of the story: go to Parc Jourdan whenever the weather's nice (which has been almost every day so far).
À la prochaine!
Anyway, here are some highlights from the past few weeks:
I went to the Marseille vs. Arsenal game with Perle and her boyfriend Armand. Absolutely crazy. A couple of guys were screaming chants into microphones, and the whole crowd was screaming along with them. "AUX ARMES!" "ALLER L'O.M.!" etc. It was a bit like a punk concert; there was a good deal of moshing as well. The Marsellais identity also became evident during the match when they sang a chant that translates to, "Marseille isn't France, Marseille isn't France!"
La montagne Sainte-Victoire was made famous by Paul Cézanne, an Aixois impressionist who painted it something like 76 times. For one euro, you can take a bus to the foot of the mountain (about twenty minutes away from Aix) and enjoy a beautiful two-hour hike to the enormous cross at the top of the mountain. When it's warm enough, you can also stay the night in a little priory about fifty meters down from the cross. There's a dining table and a fireplace inside the priory, but there are no beds, so you have to bring a sleeping bag and a cushion. When I stayed the night with a few friends, there were some college-aged French people who played guitar and sang with us late into the night. They knew how to play "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You" from the Jungle Book, so they sang the French versions of the songs while we sang the English versions. One of the French guys, whose name is Lucas, told us that when French people sing American/anglophone songs (which happens all the time), they often imitate the sounds of the lyrics without knowing the meaning of the words. They call this type of singing "Yaourt" or "Yogurt."
This past weekend I went to Amsterdam with eleven other IAU students. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, and we had some fantastic and very silly times there. The most memorable part of the trip, though, was the Anne Frank house. I won't try to describe it fully since I would definitely fail, but I will say that the museum is a jarring reminder of the most inspiring and the most terrifying sides of humanity.
But my best experiences abroad have been here in Aix. I've started playing soccer regularly, and the locals are very fun to play with and often very talented. Soccer has been a great way to pick up everyday expressions that we don't learn in class. There's also a beautiful park south of downtown called Parc Jourdan where Aix-Marseille students always hang out. My dad was nice enough to bring my travel guitar over to France when he visited, so I've been able to play music with lots of French students, which has been a great way to meet friends. A couple of my new French friends, Nas and VJ, are excellent freestyle rappers, and they have some written raps as well. French rap is very good once you can follow along with the rapid-fire delivery and catch on to the slang, and it's extremely popular here. When I met Nas he said very seriously, "US rap and French rap are the only ones that matter. All the rest is complete garbage." I don't really know enough about international rap to agree or disagree, but I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say, especially with his dramatic spitting for punctuation. Moral of the story: go to Parc Jourdan whenever the weather's nice (which has been almost every day so far).
À la prochaine!