I have also been rather bad at keeping up with my personal journal as well. I always find myself wishing I had brought my journal somewhere because I occasionally find myself in situations where I have to wait for something, and that's the perfect time to write my thoughts and experiences down. Zut.
Something exciting right now in southern France is that we're in the middle of Festival season! Well, t'is the season for a lot of things. Right now in Southern France, we have art festivals, music festivals, theater festivals, dance festivals... appreciation for the finer things in life! As a student, I get a lot of discounts to things. The London Symphony Orchestra was here this week! I really wish I could have gone to that, but I was busy.
It is also the season of sales, or soldes! Every year, and ONLY for the month of July, all French stores have giant sales. It's the only time of the year that they will have sales, ever, so make sure to do all your shopping then!
Some highlights from this week:
- on Tuesday, Iku and I went to this interesting short contemporary dance performance called Spirit. I wish I understood dance better... I really don't think it's an art form that I have learned to appreciate to its fullest extent. The dancer was only wearing khaki pants, and it kind of seemed like he was being tormented or thrown around in his conscience or something throughout the dance. It was very surprising at the end when all of a sudden the dancer took his pants off (there were kids in the audience!!). Neither of us were expecting it, so in retrospect, it was pretty funny. I suppose it's some sort of symbolism of the spirit being reborn.
Before the show
- on Wednesday, I had a picnic with my writing class. We are missing class Monday next week because our professor is at some sort of conference for the whole weekend, so we had to make up class. I thought we were actually going to be having class Wednesday night, but it turns out that it was just a picnic dinner. Better for me! We had so much food and it was absolutely delicious. We had goat cheese, Normandy cheese, lots and lots of fruit (apricots are in season here), 3 types of sausages, tabouleh, baguettes (of course), tapinade (this spread made of olives--I have officially acquired a taste for Mediterranean olives), hummus (or yummus, it was very yummy), and TWO types of cake.
PS. I also tried figues for the first time, so that was cool! They were very yummy.
Friendssss
Casey :) she's from CMU!
This cake was worth 60 euros O_O
Then, because we are celebrating films in Aix, Iku and I went to this showing of the opera La Traviata. It was actually really hard to understand because it was in Italian with French subtitles. The funny thing is, I understood the subtitles perfectly by themselves, but piecing together the story was really difficult. I barely understood a thing! The only thing I got out of it was that this lady was against love but then fell in love with this man and then they were having problems finally being together and the man was also the son of this other guy so lada yada yada... we didn't even stay for the whole thing because it actually got really chilly that night (even though we are still in the middle of a heat wave, or canicule) so Iku and I left early.
Movie on the Lawn: Part 2
- on Thursday, I and two other CEA girls went to Christine's house for dinner. She is this French lady who sometimes hosts students from CEA for dinner. Christine is a great cook. She made this savory tart with mayonnaise/mustard/tomato, then the second course was chicken with olives and ratatouille, and dessert was homemade mousse. Christine doesn't even like mousse but she made it anyway. It was very delicious. We talked about Paris, Bastille Day, and lots of things! It was interesting to see a different French person's house and to talk with a different French person. She was a very opinionated lady, which I thought was pretty eye-opening as well.
- on Friday, I went to this excursion to Bibémus, which is this art place on this mountain where Paul Cézanne painted a lot of his paintings. Everyone in Aix loves Paul. Anyway, I was there with the French Honors class because my friends couldn't go, so I replaced them and brought Iku. It was quite beautiful, very sunny and hot. Then my friends and I went to eat lunch and walked around Aix for a while. Finally, in the afternoon, we had a wine tasting! We tried 4 different wines. I was actually quite disappointed because they only gave us snacks, and NO BREAD AND CHEESE. HOW can you have a wine tasting WITHOUT BREAD AND CHEESE.
Moving on, we tried a white wine, two rosés, and one red wine. They were all Provençal wines, which means you can't get them anywhere else in the world! Actually, one of the rosés was made at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's vineyard!
Made a friend today
Pretty views of St Victoire at Bibémus
More friendss
So much wine!! Left to right = lightest to darkest
This was the white wine! It was really good. But white wine tends to have a lot of sulfites which can cause headaches. This wine is from Cassis!!
This was my favorite rosé! It tasted like flowers. It's from Vaucluse and is only 6 euros here!
So much wine
Then, since it is the Festival of Arts in Aix, I stopped by the radio show. Every day this week at 6 PM at Town Hall, there is a live showing for one hour of musicians playing for the radio. So I got to listen to this one choral group that made these really weird sounds (they were very good at what they were doing), a couple of singers, and lastly this trio of piano, violin, and cello. I am a huge sucker for classical music (especially piano and strings). The trio was so good, I almost cried.
Set up before the show started
Okay, so that's it for now. I'm staying in Aix for the weekend, but I'm hoping to go on some adventures nearby.
-Cindy
