Sunday, February 22, 2009

the day of JOUR




Yesterday, Claire, my host father's sister (and he said she said you said... no) took me riding. It was amazing. I am so glad I lugged my riding stuff over seas! The day was epic. First we arrive and everyone is drinking tea and eating croissants and chocolate and relaxing. We get our horse assignments and I have "jour" which means "day" in english. There are two rides of the day, the first is a Trail ride, and it was beautiful! We braked for lunch... 2 hours of lunch! I had chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and dark chocolate bars! (I ate much more than that, but it was heaven, chocolate and horses!) In the afernoon we rode a small cross-country course. We jumped logs, fences and barrels. I felt very comfortable with Jour and may have actually fallen in love! (I still love you Russell) It just reiterated that I can't live without horses. It was only Claire's 4th time riding (her daughter that has been riding for a few years finally convinced her) and she did amazing! I hope to go as often as I can afford!

Emil Nolde





Last Thursday I went to Musée Fabre to see the Emil Nolde exhibit. I am typically an avid museum hater,
but after seeing advertisements for his work I counted the days until it would be open. A little background information on Emil. He was born in Germany in 1887 as Emil Hansen (and would late change his name to leave behind his farmer family name). He was a supporter of the early Nazi party, but his artwork would later be banned and burned my Hitler. He died in 1956 after being given an award of honor by the German government.

I have mixed feelings of his as a person... but his artwork covers every spectrum. Going from one room to the next I couldn't believe all the works had been done by one individual. Here is a small example. My two favorite works by him could not be found on the Internet, Sadly.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Weekend in BED! uh... Weekend in AIX!





This weekend I visited G in Aix, we had plans to go to the beach, go to his mother's, take a tour... and instead, I didn't get out of bed at all! I was like a little princess, I ate every meal in bed and I finally saw every installment of Back to the Future! Friday night G had to work and I went with him. The venue he books had a show... now, let me say, that if you thought Metal was questionable in English, wait until you see it in French. OH MY, all these guys are going around kissing eachother hello and then screaming the language of love, AMAZING, YES! So I eventually made my way to "back stage" with a balnket and slept off the show. Saturday I got out of bed at 6pm, G had to go back to the venue for a few hours, and I said, like little suzzie homemaker... ok, i will make dinner. Well, funny story... I was so hungry while waiting I first ate half a block of cheese, proceeded to just about burn his house down (cause i didn't realize there was a cover on the hot plate--note the gigantic burn in the photo) and then did NOT have dinner on the table when he got back. Sunday I stayed in bed again until 6pm, just enough time to finally shower, run to get what G calls an "emotion cookie"-soooo good it gives you emotions (it was amazing!) and make it to my train. Here are the pictures of the weekend. I have included a picutre of G inwhich I say he has only 1 thing on his brain--CHOCOLATE!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

First Supper

Last night was my first night at Chez Christine and Didi. Dinner every night will be promptly at 8pm. Friday started the 2 week spring break for actual French students, so both the "kids" 18 (Amendine ... totally butchered the spelling of her name) and 19 (Simon) were out of the house, so dinner was just me with "mom" and "dad." It was great. An amzing and simple veggie meal with great brown rice!! We sat at the table for over two hours--Didi is hysterically funny. And then dessert was fruit. I had a pear... which I ate with a knife... however did I eat a pear before last night... how prehistoric to eat with your hands and mouth only. After dinner I gladly retired to my room for the evening and watched Real World Brooklyn... until 3 am. eeek. I just knew I was too sick to try to navigate getting to a Bar.
The weather looks nice out today, although this window eveluation can be desceptive. I think I hear wind. More to come later...

Saturday, February 7, 2009

NEW ROOM! more sun!

So, it has occurred to me that I am 24! eeek! i have been living out of my parents house for 6 years and I just needed some more space, independence, liberty... so today I switched houses. Now I have my own house entrance, sink in my room, and a nice big desk. Here are the pictures of my new room. I have only been here for a few hours, I did some running around this morning, bought a 12 à 25 card so I can now buy train tickets for extreemly cheap and unpacked. I will detail the new "family" when I get to know them.

what you want to do... i don't know, what do you want to do? GRÈVE!





OK, so there is nothing the french like more than a good STRIKE! there have been 2 already in the past week and a half. Where EVERYTHING shuts down. There were police everywhere... all doing NOTHING. So I decided to take some photos of that too. (note... it appears to be a family event... )

Here comes the SUN!





after all the rain there was finally a break with some SUN. So Christy, Elizabeth and I decided to rent some bikes and ride to the beach! Getting the bikes was the longest, craziest, most ridiculous ordeal ever! It took us over 2 hours to finally get it together, and once we started riding we discovered we did not know the route to the beach (which is 6 miles each way!) and it seemed rather dangerous to continue on the way we were going so our plans changed and we rode back into town and we navigated the little side streets and manger-ed some fromage and baguettes! Here is a picture of what I would consider my new favorite cheese and them some sights we saw.

tut tut, it looks like rain.

it has been a long time since i've been able to write... and much has happened since.. For instance, I moved homes today! I will get to that in a bit, but for now, here is an update on things that happened in between dates.

It has been raining here non stop!! I mean non-stop rain! One day when it was raining sheets of painfully cold and mean rain I took the bus after class back to my house... The bus stopped at a street corner and proceeded not to move for a few minutes. I thought nothing of it until other people on the bus started getting pissed off... well, it turns out that a car had gotten stuck in the pools of water and could not move. It was on a very narrow street that is only wide enough for one vehicle, and it's actually a two way street, that traffic lights control... so, with this car stuck in the middle, both sides of traffic were stuck. Perhaps if it was nice out I would have been upset that I was stuck on the bus... or rather I would have walked. But I was glad to have the dry shelter, despite the fact that i was completely soaked through. So eventually, People got off the bus and moved the car. Here is a photo of that!