International Gay Dating for Beginners

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That time of the year.

While exam time back at uni in England is generally best kept at the back of my mind until after gorging myself over Christmas and spending the 2/3 week holiday not actually doing revision, the university system here spreads the exams and assessments before and after the holidays, and whereas I would love normally to just get everything out of the way in one big block rather than bitty assessments here there and everywhere, I can imagine if this year was to count towards my final degree mark I would be shitting bricks doing it that way.

We've got it pretty sweet here as Erasmus students to be honest though, averaging on 1 exam per week over the next two months, maybe with a presentation here or there. And as stated before, they're all spread out to make things even easier.

Easier. That's all depending on actually turning up to classes, which Gareth has not been doing.
I'm normally good at exams, but that's because I normally spend moments of my life actually doing some revision and not drowning myself in mulled wine à la Katy a few nights before an exam I haven't even taken class notes for.

In fact, so many cares have been given so far this year that I actually forgot until today that one of my exams is tomorrow, as well as having a tense, revealing group presentation which certainly wasn't the highlight of my university career (...despite how well it actually went the planning stage was the most horrific thing i've possibly ever done).
I'm not such a good student, especially here in Europe....there's just too many distractions. I definitely blame the distractions: If it's not the lure of café culture and lounging around with a café crème all day long, or the lure of going somewhere exciting and seeing something brand new each day, it's the lure of my comfy bed and/or the people in it.

However, I'm not too worried about these next few weeks, the exam content is basically exactly what we studied last year in MFL (sigh), and the rest is common sense stuff. I would suggest to anyone studying abroad to make sure that your language skills are top before worrying too hard about the content. In our case, as long as we can explain something concisely and clearly we're off to a good start....


As well as December being a time for exams, i'm also off on my travels again. Myself and Lauren are all booked up for my birthday jailbreak from the 14th-20th this month. We're visiting Nice, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels and I am so excited it's unreal. Once again the king of corner cutting has managed to get a week long holiday for pennies, while staying in some amazing looking accommodation and cities around the world. I can't contain my excitement so i'm just gonna leave it there.

Mont St Victoire, and doing life on the cheap.

Without wanting to dwell on my financial situation too much, it has to be said I'm doing alright without money in my life whatsoever. I am now down to my last euro almost, which will be strategically spent on long life tasty French pain de mie.....or toast bread if you don't want to be so fancy about it, but I am still not really that worried.
I've been out every day, and almost every night at parties organised by others, which have often involved a little spread of food and a bottle of wine lurking around. Not to say the free finger buffets are the only reason I've been going out, but they certainly help! I'm loving being frugal and still being able to have a really good time.

A few nights ago there was an international Erasmus 'soirée' speech thing, which involved us Erasmus students having certain future plans regaled and unveiled about the halls and dorms for future Erasmus  years to us (which in my opinion was quite irrelevant because...err....we won't be here?!).
Anyways in celebration of -something I can't quite remember- there was a high-quality international buffet of food. There was japanese sushi, Indian food with lots of spices and humous, Italian style ciabattas as well as tapenade (a local Marseillaise speciality) and vol-au-vents and stuff like that.

It was beautiful.

These were lovely: Sundried pepper and tomato in
a very sour cream.

Sushi, some coconut marzipan balls and dried ginger 

Undoubtedly a very fake Italian chef

Another little party like this one was Katy's 21st surprise birthday party which a few of us organised. Some of the girls I'm here in Aix with booked out a room in the student halls buildings to host a nice bit of a do for her. We led her in blindfolded, thinking that she was coming to see me and see something i'd wanted to surprise her with personally, but in reality she walked in on the entire group of friends here. She nearly broke down in tears she was so shocked!

We made her an book with pictures of us in and holiday photos that we'd all taken together and that made her cry even more. Then we got drunk. Very very drunk.

All my sexy boys and girls from Aix-en-Provence for Katy's 21st. Katy's the one being lifted up on the top left, and that's me looking like a Japanese tourist on the left with the green jeans.

So eventually, coming to the crux and the point of this blogpost (.....me rattling off a load of text about what i've done the previous week happens way to much on this blog), this Sunday a few friends are going up camping on Mont St Victoire, a local massif which looks gloriously over Aix-en-Provence. It's quite famous actually, Van Gogh used to paint provençal lavender fields with St Victoire in the background, and most of the famous painter Cézanne's work was based on, or around, St Victoire.

There is a small pilgrimage rest-stop inside a church at the top of the mountain which we're going to camp inside of, as well as a giant cliffside where we can make a campfire. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about, and hopefully I won't be killed by rabid mountain animals or stranded and hungry cannibalistic tourists!

Sex-en-Provence

So i've been here for just one week in Aix. One week! I feel like it's been forever, and it's certainly beginning to feel a lot like home. I know my way around most of the city now with the exception of the tiny little alleyways, I have friends from here and friends from back home, I've registered for uni and i'm beginning to be get along with all that admin bollocks and as well I have a hangover (which is either a sign of drinking way too much or having a really good night out...bit of both). For me, it's been a week long hangover with short bursts of normality.

All in all it's been great so far. 

It's really really expensive to live here, and 20€ will get you sweet f.a but that's the South of France for you, I guess...

In other news, I met a boy. 

Forget romance, Paris is darker than you think

 From my arrival in Paris I have seen as many sex shops as cute boutique cafés and restaurants and as many drunk French guys falling out of back alley bars and closet alcoholics drinking all the night through at the Sacre Coeur as i've seen couples romancing each other over a bottle of champagne or decent wine in upmarket street bars and restaurants.

Love in Paris isn't a lie, but it's not an epidemic like Hollywood makes it out to be.

I'm staying the best hostel so far in my travels; this place is the meeting place of the world. We have a large courtyard as communal area decked out with graffiti of Dali and other artsy stuff.

So i've been hanging out with a lot of awesome travellers, coming from every corner of the world looking for a slice of Paris. An awesome set of friends from New York, Sam and Liam as well as  whole heap of Dutch guys/girls and some English girls too. I've met an artsy Russian girl who smokes a lot of everything, Polish guys who hate art and a Turkish guy who was drunkenly talking about people in his area having sex with donkeys. Madness.....

I'm not really gonna post too much of the tourist tat photos that I have.....simply because everyone has seen the bloody Eiffel Tower, but I might add a small collection of photos that I like for you all to see. I've been pretty much everywhere and today is my last day. I've been so far drunk and flying high under the Eiffel Tower, right around the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre...down the Champs Elyseé to the Tuilieries and down the Seine, the artsy fartsy Pompidou Centre and today i'm going to go to the Père Lachaise cemetery to make love to Oscar Wilde's grave.

Here's me with a fucking awesome car in the Mercedes-Benz store

drunk on the Sacre-Coeur at 3am with a whole bunch of the travellers and some random dude who fell asleep. The view from this hill is the most spectacular view of Paris at night, by far.

So from Paris, i'm moving to Marseille for two nights and then on to Cannes, unless I find an extremely cheap hostel like this one in Marseille......i'm also getting really fucking nervous about moving to Aix. I guess that's just normal before starting at a new school or, in this case, a new university.

I'm having an awesome time though. I miss home, but not for bad reasons.

LDR = FML

 "Sex makes everything more complicated. Even not having it, because the not having it... makes it complicated. 

That's why it's better to have it... some say"

While i'm not psychic, nor a perfect example of what someone in a relationship should be like (and i'm certainly not some sort of fucking relationship guru either), I can safely say that if you find yourself in a relationship before a long period of living abroad, you should get out of that shit as soon as possible....

Not only will you end up wracking your brains to find a perfect arrangement for you both to no avail, you'll probably also argue and cry and writhe in the fear of losing each other, or trust in each other and you may even lose yourself in trying to make the other happy without fully thinking about how happy you yourself are.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I know this certainly isn't a good advertisement for the Erasmus project, but i'm a realist and I don't have my head in the clouds most of the time and I wouldn't want anyone else to be like that.

I'm now a single man, after being in a long-term relationship, who is embarking on an Erasmus exchange for 1 academic year in France and Germany. I can honestly say I can't wait.

I've heard it many a time, that relationships that for one reason or another become long distance can't and never do work, and that going into a LDR [long distance relationship] especially across borders is never as easy as it sounds, However, I've been in one LDR in the past so I can empathise totally:

 I used to be going out with a guy from Germany in my first year of university. I'd fly over and stay very regularly (so regularly that I ended up living there for a few months), and he would fly over to England only very sporadically and that really took it's toll financially, emotionally and of course sexually.

Arnaud Clément is a retired French tennis player
born in Aix-en-Provence. He reached the finals of the
2001 Australian Open.

I still wonder how me and my now ex-boyfriend would have fared with such an LDR.
Not only would he be in a full-time job, with extra after-school work to do, I'd be travelling as much as possible and probably not be able to afford to fly back as regularly as I did with my previous ex in Germany. I would be at university for a massive chunk of the week and trying to socialise with as many people as possible to really make my Erasmus exchange worthwhile.

How possible is it for a relationship to survive that constant barrage of problems?

Consider also the language barrier issue if/when your partner visits you in your host country, it must be stressful being the only person in a group who doesn't speak a language, so no doubt it would be awkward having to interpret everything to your significant other, or end up just falling back into the use of your L1 even when abroad.
Not to be so cynical to suggest it would be a ball-and-chain scenario, but it would definitely makes things a little bit strange.

I don't want to be on Facebook or Skype with my partner all evening, when I could be socialising with others in person, nor do I want to be flying back at every given moment.


However, i'm not going to dwell on the past too much. I wish him good luck, in life, love and work etc but I am going to go nab some hot, single Euroboys now thank you very much....