Stress

I guess I have to apologize a bit to everyone who reads this and knows me in real life, I've been one big stress recently and it's snowballed from nothing into literally everything winding me up:

As well as upping and moving on from a new life that I created here in Aix-en-Provence, with great friends that I'll hopefully keep for years afterwards and great memories above all else, I've got to start to think about what I'm going to be doing with my time in Spain, while trying not to blow all of my money on having too much of a good time.

I have around 3 months to kill essentially, and I want to find a job and get fit at the gym most of all, but I want to learn Spanish too while I'm there.

Not only all of that but little things here have been annoying me, like neighbours being arseholes, not leaving my room for a few days and the university here being ridiculously underorganised as ever, ending in me missing two of my exams, as well as worrying me to death over whether I might have to pay back my Erasmus grant for this semester, since it now seems on paper that I've done absolutely fuck all.

But I'm back on track and feeling good after spending time with some good friends of mine getting fucking drunk and being idiots and catching up. It's very nice to have everyone back in Aix, and it's gonna be so so very hard to leave.

It's 2013.

So I have actually set this blog to post at exactly the time that the clock on the computer changes from 2012 to 2013, because I have no idea yet what I'll be doing. 

I'll most likely be drunk somewhere not knowing what time it is, and missing the countdown like every year.....(it's getting to be a bit of a running joke with my friends after I went to outside a club for a cigarette in 2010 and came back in 2011, totally missing all the countdown and hugging stuff that happens around that time of year).

And now i'm in France.

The coming of the new year, at this moment, signifies two big things to me: I have just under a month left here; and time is going way too quickly on my year abroad. The first semester felt like just a few weeks and not actually 5 months!

With regards to resolution-making, I've got a list of quite realistic goals that i'm likely to do, rather than things like 'i'm going to be a more motivated person' since at the time and place, no-one thinks "oh I must wake up early tomorrow and every day after because it's 2013 and I said I would". No.

I'm going to start going back to the gym in Spain, start learning Spanish properly and try as hard as possible to stick to a monthly budget I've set myself. I'm also going to try and look for a job in the area (although that may be easier said than done given i'm only there for 3 months-ish) and put money away into my savings account by direct debit every month.

None of this, gym every day, be a better person rubbish or that old 'eat less, smoke less' chestnut....it never lasts. I enjoy my vices too much.

Christmas in Marseille: It's not the end of the world.

It's the 30th December 2012, and we're all still here. No zombie apocalypse, or rain of fire in this part of the world anyways, in fact, the weather here is still beautiful, and not seasonal at all. All I wanted for Christmas was a winter wonderland in Aix-en-Provence; Santa you suck balls.

I've not long returned back to Aix from spending Christmas with my mum and sister in Marseille, which was lovely. It's a shame there were no apartments on leboncoin.fr for the centre of Aix for a reasonable price otherwise we probably would have stayed here, but alas, we ended up in the big city.

And even after living here for several months, I've never been to Marseille that often, and I've certainly never spent a great deal of time there. I now kinda like it. It has that slightly local feel (despite it being France's second city), as well as being very multicultural. There are turkish kebab stalls everywhere, and Algerian-style clothes stores everywhere you look, even right next to Hermès, Louis Vuitton and the Chanel store.
It's a bit intimidating though, and the general advice given from our universities to female Erasmus students to be careful of French men in clubs and pubs applies to the streets here as well. My mum commented on how many heads turned when walking past a café, seemingly only frequented by North African men, and how, to her, they looked a bit like they were on the prowl even at midday.
My thirteen year old sister also got hit on by a much older (and drunk) guy near the main train station, but she brushed him off in quite a classy manner nevertheless, which was equally as surprising!

One memory which I will never forget is turning my back for two minutes and then my mum telling me she just accidentally got involved in a drug deal in the middle of the street.

Marseille is madness.

As well as being one of the poorest cities in France with a high rate of unemployment, it can also be the most beautiful and inspiring. We quickly realised this climbing up to the Notre Dame de la Garde, a large cathedral overlooking Marseille and its port. The views were so breathtaking and the panorama of the city is so big that it wouldn't even fit in one photo even from so high up, and they really made us feel small.

Seafood on the port in Marseille

Me, mum and sister in Marseille.

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille.

the city doesn't even fit in  the background of this photo. Amazing.

Christmas Day was nice, we had dinner late, watched some trashy films on trashy French TV channels, opened presents and got drunk.

Boxing Day was really interesting though, we went for a walk right down the coast from the Port down by the Calanques [rock formations on the coast just outside of Marseille] and the weather was lovely, there were even people on the beach!

I woke up in a church on top of a mountain in the South of France this morning.

Not every day I get to say that.

The mountain was great, the climb was hard and the church was eerie. But it was such a nice trip to take. I feel like I've been rattling on too much to people how awesome a fucking mountain was, but awesome is an understatement. I love the fact we have an enormous mountain just round the corner (and actually visible from our halls) and that we just conquered it!

When it got dark and colder we even built a fire inside the refuge on top of the mountain summit.

Mont St Victoire - overlooking Provence

The courtyard of the church and refuge at the summit of the mountain.

La Croire de Provence - a gigantic cross at the very summit of Mt St Victoire overlooking everything and everyone.

Building fires

Me on top of a mountain INSIDE A CLOUD

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!

Back to the grind. (Ha, ha, très drôle)

After a weekend away to Croatia with some of my very good Erasmus friends here in Aix, I am back and settled in France once again. At least I think I am.

This last week has been such a whirlwind of things happening here, stress (or lack thereof) at uni, things with friends from home, chatting with friends abroad in Germany and seeing how much of a good time they're having, as well as trips we've been organising here there and everywhere, to the point that it has all made me feel a little displaced at the moment.

And that's not the only thing: the weather is going beserk recently. Last night there was a giant lightning storm over Aix with thunder, lightning and torrential rain and apparently a tornado in nearby Plan-de-Campagne.

Not only that, but winter is slowly coming. Slowly being the operative word, of course.
Today was around 20° in Aix whereas in Newcastle the temperature was around 13°. That's still pretty warm for mid-October and it's putting me off a little bit because by now i'm expecting to have to wear more than one layer at a time. I'd already be searching for a decent pair of winter shoes back home near the bloody Arctic Circle.
I'm interested to see how the French cope with winter...and i'm definitely looking forward to seeing a well-dressed lady fall and slip in her heels. Will she be graceful, or won't she? How do the French deal with falling on their backsides in ice and mud over winter? Me personally? I end up covered head to toe in mud before I've even left the house. It's 3 months of the ability to wear all your clothes at once, be covered in ice and snow and not look like an idiot, and I love that.

But this is France, and as much as I can imagine it getting a wee bit nippy I can't honestly imagine it being the winter wonderland of my dreams :'(

I've mainly talked about the weather in this post, and I didn't even really mean to. I wanted to write about being in limbo between countries and where I feel at home. Whatever. Here's a picture of ice cream that we bought in Aix. IT WAS SO GOOD. Mine's the awesome one with the blue sour sticks and the M&M's and Julien's is the one that looks like a shit in a box.

Trainspotting and doing stuff...

In a flurry of language hurled at you daily, you begin to wonder if it's only you who can't understand it all. All these people can wear gorgeous dresses and dapper suits, and laugh at things and hold interesting high-brow conversations and understand it all and that's just fine. And as much as I like to be my own person I don't like to be an outsider. I want to know it all. I want to know it all, and be able to hold interesting high-brow conversation but then also have the ability to tell them to screw off because talking about all of their shite is by no means more interesting than talking about the pornstar you saw on French TV at dinnertime or the plans you have tonight or the gossip you just heard about so-and-so and so forth and so on.

Luckily, in most conversations I have (as one sided as they are) I can work out what people are saying with a manner of things like gestures and situational things that I can't properly explain and tone of voice. But in others i'm totally lost.

And it's for this reason that i've decided to put an end to just casually learning the language: It's not going to happen through osmosis. I'm gonna go full-throttle on this badboy and conjugate verbs and form grammatically-sound sentences that would have even Balzac giving me the thumbs up.

So i'm translating literature again. (I tried this method years ago, and only failed because I lost interest in   the shit books we were given to read by the uni: Stupeur et Tremblements by Amelie Nothomb, and La clé sur la porte by Marie Cardinal, both pretty lacking in interesting storyline to be honest, sorry ladies)

I bought Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, and Bilbo Le Hobbit by JRR Tolkien: Both in French, and both different levels of language all together.
I've started going through Trainspotting page by page and reading and noting down the words/phrases I don't understand then reading through again once I do know them. This was a great start.

But I need to tidy my desk.

I can't read with a messy desk, and I don't read well in bed.

I need to eat, because I can't translate if i'm dead.

And I need to write this blog for some reason to tell people how much i'm reading and translating literature because it will inspire me to actually start again


Fuck, I did it again.


Gareth 0 : 1 Procrastination

La rentrée

So I finally made it to the Université d'Aix-Marseille in France, and after one month of no work, no studies and no major responsibilities i'm back to the grind. Sort of. You should see my timetable....most of my lectures / seminars are in the afternoon and i've specifically dropped modules which start at 9am AND don't sound toooo interesting either .It's all for the greater good. If I wake up too early i'm moody and unhappy, and therefore I'd be unhappy for the rest of the day: If I wake up later and go to the modules I have in the afternoon already, i'm more likely to do better in them, and enjoy them more if I drop the shit ones early on in the morning!

Method in the madness.....

I really didn't realise how different university here is to the UK until this week: the workload is already a lot bigger, the lectures are true lectures with minds full of historical dates and names of kings and writers and penseurs to soak up somehow, lecturers sometimes turn up late with no apologies, students turn up late and apologise profusely, the building is covered with political graffiti and 'down-with-capitalism' posters (French students seem enormously more politically active than back at home which is great), and French students seem very work-orientated rather than pissing around in class chucking paper balls at each other like in kindergarten. Serious studies happen here, and for someone who has come from universities where students regularly take the piss and waste the lecturers time, that's quite a refreshing thing actually...

Also, i've realised that admin is absolutely capital in these parts. For my Traduction class, I need written confirmation from my tutor at my home university to verify that it is course-related and I have the sufficient language level to participate, despite having already discussed and planned which modules to take with my home lecturers. I can't enrol for the class until I have that and the class starts soon so it's a big mess of paperwork and trying to wrestle my lecturers into action, which is tougher than it might sound. Fucking academics.

I have une fiche pédagogigue which has to be taken to every exam , un certificate de scolarité which has to be guarded 24/7 and never lost on pain of certain death, une fiche d'évaluation which to be honest I still don't know what to do with, as well as all my other Erasmus shite to wade through; arrival forms, exit forms, grant forms, learning agreement, changes to the learning agreement forms, changes to the changes form etc etc.....

It's going well though, and it's only my first week/few days back so I have plenty of time to make a tit out of myself as usual by getting lost or walking in the wrong class (which seems to be my speciality).
But I like it here. I'm looking forward to my courses, although i'm sure this blog will be the only thing keeping me sane with the immense workload we have ahead of us!

Life in the ghetto is pretty damn good, actually.

Despite hearing a multitude of horror stories about Cuques (specifically the unrenovated halls with communal showers and toilets), I decided to take a room here. Anyone who has ever tried to find an apartment here for the same low low price as halls will understand my pain and several month's worth of wracking my brain as how to find the money to cover the obscenely high rent and living costs in Aix, and Provence in general.

So my place is basic, it's a single bed 'dorm room' in halls. We share toilets and showers on a floor of people.....which isn't as bad as it sounds: There are plenty showers and toilets for a whole lot of people to get naked and wet at the same time and they're cleaned and maintained by the staff here, twice a week I think. At least I don't have to scrub toilets......I'm getting every penny's worth out of my rent in  reality! The rooms have mini-fridges, biiig windows with shutters and plenty of storage space for all of those photo frames with pictures of you and your cat that you so desperately needed to bring with you to Provence.

Kitting my room out cost me around 130€ for everything including kitchen stuff and food and some more clothes and most importantly, lots of bedsheets and comfy pillows. The rooms here are given as just that. A desk, a chair, a fridge, cupboards, bathroom area and a mattress for your bed. No blankets or quilts or any 'luxury' items come for free here....

Also, this academic semester in France is the first time i've ever lived in halls, and it's a great experience as well as a great way of saving money (which I want to use to travel more). It's also, of course, an enormously good way of throwing myself head first into social situations and ways of learning the language with real natives: Erasmus students here are an enormous percentage, seemingly, of the student body, so finding French students with decent banter is of course imperative. I found myself some casual alcoholics. They're awesome.

The first night I was here, as I already said in my previous blogs, I was invited out to the hill at Cuques, and from then on met tons of people and my boyfriend too. It was a great night and living in halls really is good for that sort of situation. I recommend finding your Erasmus group for halls anywhere in Europe. The groups here work quite well and it's from there/that that I met the casual alcoholics who I see almost every night now.

However i've noticed that it's very work-orientated here. There doesn't seem to be such the same social-leaning to French halls as to UK halls. My direct neighbours here are phantoms who I never see, although I have met an awesome Spanish guy called Jorge who lives right next to me, and a guy called Raphael with the best taste in music ever. I'm trying not to generalise too much, but it's a lot quieter here than compared with UK halls. I don't mind that at all though...one of the reasons I didn't want to live in halls in UK was for fear of just losing myself in a mad frenzy of drink and drugs. (of course I didn't need halls for me to do all those things either ;) )

So for anyone coming to study in Provence, take heed. Cuques is good.... as long as you don't mind being asked for a cheeky tenner off your neighbour because his girlfriend wants to buy some crack cocaine. True story, bro.

I couldn't think of a good title

I really don't have much to write for this post, a little bit like the last one I made, but i thought i'd upload some pretty pictures of things for your viewing pleasure. I've not been very good at taking photos of Aix recently (unlike Marseille/Sanary/Le Lavandou etc etc) since i've mostly been getting my bearings right and making sure i actually 'see' most of the town as opposed to doing the whole touristy thing too much. But there's a few anyways

Anyways, it was the Erasmus 'Flag on your Face' party a few nights ago and the first real outing with the Erasmus students as opposed to the group of French friends i've made. It was okay, it was really weird to see just how many people there are here in Aix just in this one bar from all four corners of the globe, and the bar was packed but I had a fun night with the girls from uni at home and some other English/Australian girls too. 

 We may have absolutely taken over the streets next to the Wohoo bar

Obviously I don't have to try to be sexy after two bottles of wine.

Being tourists on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix. That's Carey btw, she has a blog too.

We saw this procession of traditionally dressed people walking through Aix, but we still have no idea why. Anyone can explain? It was September 2nd 2012.

Me and my first baguette. It was love at first sight. And she was cheap.

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. 

Aix-en-Provence

Aix is lovely, quite a mid-sized city with enough to see for months and months ahead but not as intimidating as Marseille; although that being said I really haven't seen too much of Aix itself yet, but more of the student residences and some of the shopping areas. It seems perfectly lovely from here.

I'm living in Cuques halls in Aix en Provence, which is just on the south side of Aix and it's been nice so far. My room is pretty basic and relatively small, although I do have my own fridge, corner washroom with a sink and....a bidet. So continental. I've read loads of blogs about Cuques and how manky it is: It really does depend what sort of room you get, there are renovated studio apartments or single bed rooms with shared facilities. Sharing toilets, showers and the kitchen isn't ideal by any means but I think after a while anyone would get used to it

In all fairness, I wouldn't care how trashed or fucking run-into-the-ground the place was, it costs 155€/month, which for Aix is probably the cheapest you will ever find a room. That works out to be around £120, which then translates to around £30 a week. That's fucking cheap. And that's without the CAF government subsidising/benefits for students and those without an income.
I honestly challenge you to find somewhere in Provence that costs so little, but is in such a beautiful city......most T1 studio apartments here start from 400€ bare minimum and then they were just as shabby as halls can be.

I've been meeting a hell of a lot of really nice people from here too, and in fact the first night I was here I was invited straight out to 'la colline': the little hill next to halls to drink and get brutally fucked up with pastis. I didn't have any energy after travelling from Sanary, via Marseille and via getting lost in Aix with a bag of fucking everything with me, but it was an awesome night. We ended up getting 'forcibly removed' for creating too much noise so we went to someone's apartment and danced to Call Me Maybe all night long. I still cannot for the life of me even remember whose apartment that was. I was ofc enormously drunk....

I'm finding it quite hard to understand everything in a conversation, but that's mostly down to the speed and my lack of vocabulary. I've been taking in quite a lot of the local patois provençal and really familiar language which we were never taught at school: dégun, tarpin, dégueulasse etc etc. By the end of the year I am determined to sound like a local and not like some dodgy Englishman who has just taken up French or so.

Anyways, I haven't taken any photos of Aix and stuff yet because i've been too busy, but I'm gonna go on a long wander of the town soon enough and hopefully see as much of the beautiful provençal city as  possible.

After 2 weeks I finally made it to Provence...

After leaving Newcastle on the 14th of this month, I have finally made it to Provence. Via London and Paris for a week(ish) each I'm actually in the region which I will be calling my home for the next 6 months....but still not actually in the city where I will be living. Don't ask. I just get itchy feet.

I arrived in Marseille after taking the TGV from Paris Gare de Lyon, which presented itself as a huuuuge, long double-decker train with about 10 carriages. It really was an epic journey too, right through the rural heart of France, southward-bound to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, or Marseille station in particular. 

For those not in the know, the region I am in is highlighted here (in red)

I will be staying here for 6 months in Aix-en-Provence, hopefully travelling around as much as possible, while at the same time learning about the local culture and lifestyle as well as taking up the language more easily. I'm studying here (if you haven't been reading my previous posts then you've missed the party) and then afterwards I will be schlepping over to Koblenz in Germany to do the exact same thing again.





So I made it to Marseille after a long TGV journey, lost and totally unaware where my hostel was in the city. Turns out it was right next to a métro station in the city centre, yet I still managed to get lost for an hour or two. Whoops! Ended up seeing a hell of a lot of the city centre though, which was lovely....regardless of how many hundreds of bags of sugar my rucksack felt like.

My hostel was nice, but in no way as communal as the hostel in Paris, which is a shame as there was no real place to hang out inside; we were almost forced to go to a cocktail bar to talk and share stories etc. I say forced......5€ mojitos were calling my name all night.

Marseille is a nice city, quite big and quite intimidating at first, but as soon as you have your bearings, understand the métro system and can find the boulangerie, there is no real major problem. It's a very culturally diverse city, lots of nationalities and different cultures meet at this city to create a melting-pot of hip-hop, provençal and typical touristy culture. Some say the city has its own mindset, but I am yet to see what this means exactly. Either way it's the nearest big city to me when i'm in Aix-en-Provence, so i'm sure I will be visiting often.

Restaurants near the Vieux-Port

Boats on the Vieux Port

Nice tasty looking little things which I may or may not have gorged myself on in Marseille....

Irish pub in Marseille....definitely one of the busiest places I've found so far

View of the Cathedral from some Provençal-looking streets

view over the city from the train station down 102 stone steps....

So Marseille was nice, just very very hot. It's the end of August (one of the hottest summer months down here) and we really did experience the beginning of the heatwave.


After Marseille, I travelled to a large fishing port called Sanary-sur-Mer, which lies further to the south of France and therefore closer to the Mediterranean Sea. It's really a gorgeous place with over 310 days of heat/sun per year, totaly inverse to the UK where we have 310 days of constant rain throughout the year. We even had snow/hail/torrential rain this July!!!

I've been staying here a while, visiting some local Provençal towns/villages and sunbathing naked all casual and that. It was a great experience, although now i'm a little bit sunburnt on my back and my forehead. Not cool......
Here's some pictures of the town and the neighbouring beaches blah blah:

Sanary-sur-mer view over the port with palm trees and boats and all manner of pretty things

There's a night market here in Sanary - where you can buy local produce like soap, herbs, lavender and bottles of overpriced pastis

Le Lavandou beaches

There's a whole lot of totally bollock naked people sunbathing down there haha

This one's just for my mum and sister - So jealous of me being so close to St Tropez

And finally....a picture of the local drink pastis with a carafe of water in the background to dilute it to taste. It's basically aniseed liquer by Ricard or 51 which is great to drink allll day long. Drinking pastis is my new favourite hobby.

So that's about it from me until I finally arrive in Aix-en-Provence 2 and a half weeks later than when I left Newcastle, UK. Hopefully it won't be too scary an experience to move into halls and work out the bloody university administrative system.....