Language students, fluency and not yet being German.

Language students are an odd bunch. We learn (for the most part) a foreign language in our home country, where we are told to immerse ourselves fully into the language and our studies (heh?); we express ourselves in different ways to everone else, for example by saying some words that sound exotic in a different language or screaming 'putain' whenever something goes wrong since no-one understands it. and thinking of ourselves as groundbreaking for listening to some exotic French reggeaton from the suburbs of Marseille.

Maybe all of that is just me, but I have noticed that a whole hell of a lot of people seem to act the same way.
Drawing Union Flags on their pencil cases, and telling others that the Beatles are 'obviously the best band of the British scene' because John Lennon had lovely hair and that Strawberry Fields really should be Forever. Anglophilia is actually pretty huge outside of England.
We're a flag waving nation, but bugger me, in 21 years I've never seen so many Union Flags as I've seen in just under a year here on the continent.

It is in this way that I was totally blind before I came out here to France, and to Spain, and to Germany. I had no idea what was happening behind the Channel if I'm quite honest. We'd wrote presentations and god knows how many ridiculous essays about political parties and regionalism, but I feel like I've learned a lot.

It's a bit fucking cliché to say that the Erasmus programme has opened my eyes, but it really has opened my eyes to the world.

I thought my German had been 'alright' for years until I was told a few days ago by a German friend that 'one year ago I couldn't understand you, Gareth...but now, it's definitely better' and that it was 'weird for him' to hear me 'speaking German for once'.

I'm not sure whether that last quotation was accidentally mean, or that I'm now speaking proper German, but either way it's a good kick up the arse to get myself motivated and actually sit down and do some revision instead of hoping to obtain this lifelong skill through osmosis. It doesn't work like that. I tried that in Spain, to a crowd of Catalonians I met in Tarragona all saying ¿Que? and most likely not understanding any of my severly broken Spanish. I daren't even mention my Catalan, which wasn't any better.



I have a hell of lot of stories to write about rom the last two months, in which I've not been motivated to write, nor to take so many photos. probably down to the fact that I feel very much at home here in Koblenz. I've always been best on the ball when I'm inbetween feeling at home and feeling totally alienated.
Anyways, I'll be tring to make more of an effort with this blog. I have a few months left in Germany, have met some new amazing people, caught up with old amazing friends of mine by god I am making the most of it, if it kills me in the process.

I'm a legal alien.

While I haven't been very active on my blog in recent times and haven't been doing a great deal of things apart from relaxing, enjoying my time away from university and not getting up until 3pm to then just go walk on the beach or watch Jersey Shore on MTV, I am still having a hell of a lot of fun in Tarragona.

The question of 'What are you even doing here' has cropped up quite a lot since I moved to Tarragona with my friends Carey and Lauren. Everyone from current Erasmus students, to corner shop owners and random hot men on Grindr asking me 'WHY ARE YOU HERE'.

WHY. JUST WHY.

It's as if Spain isn't a holiday destination or somewhere amazing to relax and lay low for a few months before moving onto a new university, new country and a new lifestyle. Or as if they don't get enough tourists here as it is. What is with that question? Maybe they don't even look at their amazing beaches and seemingly constant good weather in summertime.

By now, if you don't read this blog, or you're just catching up, or you're one of the awesome people i've met in TGN and not had it properly explained to you: I'm on a 2 month break (SPRING BREAK YEAH) in between the two semesters at foreign universities i'm studying at this year, down to some interesting academic year dates in Germany from April - August. This means I get 2 and a bit months of free time to do the hell I want with; some students at my university went back home to go to the grind and save and save and save and be miserable in cloudy, rainy England, but I am here in Spain living with my two friends, in a place and a country that I adore so far.

But on that note I've been here since the end of January and i've just booked trains to move to Germany for semester 2 of my Erasmus year abroad, and yet I am still confronted with that question.....and still considered a tourist. Even if I try and order something in a shop, or a café in my ridiculous broken and fragmented Spanish, I am instantly replied to in English, or French. Maybe I sound a leetle beet like zees now or maybe the Catalonian influx of tourism from France is infinitely greater than the UK. Who knows, but I've got my money on the latter to be honest.


Anyways, i've got my tickets to Germany booked up for the end of the month: i'm taking an overnight train-hotel from Barcelona to Paris, and then onto Köln in the morning where I just have to take a regional train to get to Koblenz all for around 150€, money i've saved up since January.

I honestly will miss this place, Barcelona especially....it has such a liberal feel for a city, mirrored by its friendliness and openness to new, bizarre things. People here seem to have a lot of piercings, tattoos and interesting haircuts, all signs of a place that feels new and fresh. I like that about Spain. People are much friendlier than UK or France, less stylish than both, but at least they're not as arsehole-y as the French about it.

We spent a day up in Barcelona with friend who were visiting from Aix, riding bikes into student riots, into hailstorms and then owering into cosy, warm Irish pubs all the while being freezing cold and wet but absolutely loving the place. Not the first time I've been to Barcelona, but one of the best just because I saw pretty much everything in the space of a few hours -on street level- for once. Also on the way home our train broke down which caused a few tears from the girls, but after looking at the mad situation we'd just been through was cause for a bit of a laugh actually. I loved it, definitely one to tell the grandkids.

Also, finally while I haven't uploaded many photos to this blog to document my travels recently, I do have a lot of interesting ones to share, if not just for myself in the future to look back on. Here's a few interesting ones from Barcelona / Tarragona.

One month later

So its been a month since my last blog post due to a lack of internets over here in my Spanish casa and a whole hell of a lot of stuff has been happening, I moved to Spain, found an apartment with my friends from university and i'm slowly settling into the manic Spanish lifestyle which only stops for 2 hours per day for siesta time.

Tarragona is beautiful and beachy and full of Roman architecture and remains while remaining very modern in parts nonetheless. I really missed being by the coast in Aix and now this is my lovely lovely interim before heading off further more inland to Koblenz in Germany.

Obviously one month of happenings is quite a lot to read about, and quite a lot of effort to type out but i'd like to sum it up just for the sake of documenting my year abroad, if nothing else:

Leaving Aix-en-Provence was hard; moving away from my comfort zone once again and leaving behind all of my newly made friends from around the world was the worst. All I wanted to do was to curl up in someone's 9m2 room in Cuques, watch bad films and maybe go on an expedition to Avignon or something. but in some ways i'm lucky in the fact that I know I have made some amazing friends who I will see very shortly back home, or maybe on a little weekend jaunt to Ireland for a nice cheeky pint down the local!

The journey was interesting. We stopped over in Montpellier on the way to Tarragona, had the most French meal in the most kitschy French restaurant i've ever seen and slept our backpains away in a comfy hotel room after somehow travelling with around three times our weight in luggage.
Unfortunately the French were on strike once again and our train was cancelled and converted into a coach, significantly less awesome, but still it got us from A-B. The girls had a horrendous time, but I was just excited about moving to somewhere bright and fresh.

Me and some friends visited Jerez de la Frontera/Cádiz/Sevilla for a weekend before I'd evven found an apartment with the girls. We saw dancing horse shows and went on tours of brandy cellars in Jerez, milled around local architecture and city sights in Cádiz and I went on a night out with some random Americans I'd stumbled upon. I lost my passport though, and had a bit of a hungover nightmare at a police station and trying to trace my steps, since I had a flight the next day to catch from Sevilla.
I ended up staying in Sevilla for a night in a hostel, skipping my flight and accidentally taking a business class train back to Barcelona for a cheaper price than the rest of the train, which was lovely. Couldn't have had a more bizarre end to the trip to be honest.

We found an apartment in the Old Town of Tarragona, right next to the Cathedral, a Paul bakery and a shop called Ale-Hop ('allez-hop'). It is more French than France itself, and it even has lovely views from my balcony which has been decked out with some gay flowers and some CD's to keep the pigeons away.

We went to Carnival in Salou, and a festival called Cós Blanco, a giant parade through Salou with 25,000 kg of confetti being thrown around by children and drunks alike. It was awesome.

....and in Tarragona too, lots of people dressed up (including me as Princess G, Carey as a hippy and Lauren with a big red wig and some sexy silky red gloves), dancing and singing in the streets. Looking over onto the parade from Doddy's balcony was really fun, as was getting drunk without realising it, going to an Erasmus house party after, the shot bar Chupitos and losing everyone on the way home and waking up with a new bit of furniture to add to my room.

I'm having a load of fun in Tarragona at the minute, and as short as this trip(?) will be for me in comparison to those staying for tyhe entire duration of semester 2, at the end of March I will definitely be able to take a lot away from it, if nothing a slightly better level of Spanish and hopefully Català too!

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.

Journey to Catalunya

After finally getting my student loan and having all my mates return to Aix after the Christmas holidays,   we finally got together and booked our trains to Tarragona in Catalunya (Spain).

I'm really excited about getting to Spain and being faced with something different: finding a new life, apartment and potential job in Spain, with the language barrier and the fact that, at the moment, I speak no Spanish at all. It'll be one mad adventure though!

We're travelling there by train, via Montpellier, and staying the night because of a lack of a connecting train. Good excuse to have a look around Montpellier, which is fashioned as a very friendly, good-looking and very gay-friendly Mediterranean city in France. I originally wanted to go to Montpellier for my year abroad, but our university didn't have any specific Erasmus relations with their universities.

So there you go, one week and a bit left until I move to Spain!

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.

Wanderlust

wanderlust, n. ˈwɒndəlʌst/ /ˈvandərlʊst/
Etymology: German.
 
An eager desire or fondness for wandering or travelling

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

One of my favourite words, which perfectly sus up my feelings right now. It's coming clearer to me that we're soon in December, bringing my time in Aix-en-Provence to a close, almost. Whereas i'm staying here over Christmas with my mum and sister in a vacational rental apartment and then not leaving Aix as a student until mid-January, December is going to be one massive blow out of seeing as much of the south of France as possible before I leave for not so sunny Spain (...it'll be January for christ's sake. I couldn't have picked a better time to go, obviously).

It's a dreary day in Aix and I all I can think of is future plans and idea. What plans I have already are, of course, subject to me actually finally getting my Erasmus grant through, which has been in  the 'pipeline' for ages.  Grumble grumble.

Me and a friend Lauren are going to Berlin for my 22nd birthday weekend via Nice, then on to Amsterdam and then Brussels around the start of December, along with friends who will be in Berlin at the same time!

I also really wanted to explore the Luberon, and all its small villages and beautiful scenery as well as some beachy towns on the Côte d'Azur.

And hopefully, if I haven't spent all of my money on planes and buses and trains by then, i'd love to go skiing in January. I've never skied before, and what better part of the world to be right next to than then French Alps. Apparently from Nice it's only 2 hours away by bus, costing 1€ each way. Awesome.



Almost a perfect circle of new travelling experiences all into one week.

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!

Beg, borrow and steal.

Aix-en-Provence is really not the easiest of places to live without a job unless you were either born with a silver spoon in your mouth or you won the lottery a few years ago and are happily cruising on the cumulative interest on your bank account. It's a place where rich people go to die in provençal rental apartment heaven and where students actually look like they've made an effort in the morning; there are no jogger pants and last night's t-shirts here i'm afraid.... (Gotta say I love that feeling when you roll into uni feeling like shit but know everyone else is the same too).

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I am pretty fucking penniless right now. And still waiting for my Erasmus grant which ill give me enough money to live comfortably until January when I get my nxt student loan payment. It sucks.

On the plus side, it has made me work out how to be a bit more frugal and not just sit in bed shovelling Viennoiseries down my throat all day and then wondering where my money went. I miss cake so much.

So imagine my elation when a friend suggested we all get together to cook curries to celebrate Diwali? There turned out to be around 15 of us who wanted to join in, so we all bought vegetables, spices, rice as well as wine on the cheap and then split the cost for everyone who was eating. Worked to be about 2€ each to make enough for everyone 3 times over; about four big vats of curry and shitloads of rice to add to that. There was an aubergine and chickpea curry as well as chicken coconut curry which everyone kept trying to nick tastes of behind the cook's backs and some others which i've forgotten the ingredients of but oh my god I need the recipe because they were so damn tasty.


As I was writing this, I decided I definitely needed to finally buy some food before I die of starvation.  I just spent my last few euros on a few baguettes, some fruit and soft cheese so hopefully I should be able to snack my days away until my bursary comes through! Definitely considering living on Nutella sandwiches....

Newcastle, reverse culture shock, Greggs pasties and drugs and jazz.

Returning from Provence was a trek. Instead of taking the train from Marseille - Montpellier as was planned (due to train strikes on that exact date), I had to explore a few of my options:

1. Stay in Provence. Okay, so it's a lot warmer, the food is better and it's maybe even more of a place i'd like to live in than Newcastle, but I still really miss home, my friends and my family. This was not an option
2. Covoiturage from Aix -> Montpellier. A car share website just like CouchSurfing, where you apply to people's pre-given routes/destinations and organise a possible carshare together, for a small fee given to the driver to cover petrol.
3. Staying in a hostel in Montpellier the day before my flight. This was my preferred option, but unfortunately due to the time restrictions of actually having responsibilities for once, I couldn't miss my B2 French class. It's a shame, because it's a city I would have loved to explore.

Those were genuinely my only options around this time of year, so me and a friend from class who coincidentally booked the same flights/dates & times/UK destination chose to try out Covoiturage. It was awesome. We got picked up at 7am just outside of Aix, had a bizarre conversation with one of the passengers who was about 70 and travelling on her own until I ended up falling asleep and woke up to being poked awake when arrive at the airport.

I would recommend it to anyone who wants to save some money, or save their journey because of some higher uncontrollable problem such as striking for sure!

Coming back to Newcastle (via Leeds and York) was surprisingly different than I expected. As I approached Durham on the east coast line, I began to see snow and as soon I arrived in Newcastle all hell had seemingly broken loose.
Newcastle Central Station was packed with travellers like me, waiting for delayed services to Scotland and even more central parts of the Arctic Circle.... Buses were running skeleton services and, despite the snow and rain being pretty gruesome, there were still middle aged women prancing around in t-shirts and belts (can't bring myself to describe what they were wearing as even mini-skirts).

Such things are quite ordinary up here, but after living here for around 20 years, being away for just 4 months and then coming back, these things become more glaringly obvious and slightly bizarre.

I'm not about to bad-mouth my hometown, and home for most of my life so far, but there really are things I bloody hate about this place. I'm not giving up on it so easily though, and i'm not sure i've been totally bowled over yet by the promise of moving to Provence after my graduation.

Anyways moving on, someone commented on this blog congratulating me for not posting 'self centered' tit-bits of my travels 'like most year abroad blogs', but I have quite a few cool things to tell, so here's a self-centred recall of one of the best. I don't want to blow up my ego after all.


We went to see Mr Scruff in a nightclub in Newcastle, he's a electro/jazz/reggae/funkywhatever DJ who is absolutely amazing and I would love to see again. The nightclub wasn't too packed which was awesome, there was brownies and a tea stand as well as normal alcohol at the bar and we all dropped a whole shitload of drugs just to top it all off. The best jazz is jazz with a side serving of mandy, after all.

We danced on the bar, talked to random people about absolute rubbish and pulled out some absolutely wicked dance moves (As usual, of course) and a great night was had even though the moustaches we were gonna wear fell off for most of us!

Apart from that i've just been hanging out with friend and seeing my family again. Tomorrow it's Halloween and I have my costume sorta planned so i'll let the interwebs know how that went and if I managed not to fall into a gutter in Newcastle or not. 

Going home.

In 4 days I am going back home, and I'm quite excited actually. I always thought I'd be the last person to be homesick,  but i've kinda caught the bug of missing creature comforts like Mum's Sunday dinners and lovely things like that.

I'm gonna make an absolute whirlwind tour of as many places with as many of my friends back home as possible. I'm stopping off in Leeds, York and then Newcastle (and possibly Liverpool at the start of November), which should be exciting! Might be going to Blackpool too, to go ride on some scary looking rollercoasters with a few friends from York.

I'm not sure what to expect from being back home, so I think i'm just going to try to not expect anything. I want to do as many cool things as possible which won't make me homesick but  will really remind me of home. I think Greggs and saveloy sandwiches are definitely in order.

This is all reliant on the fact that I can actually get to the airport to catch my flight. France does not like things going smoothly.

A different perspective on some of the buildings in Newcastle City Centre. The nice one is a Waterstones and the modern glass building is a shopping centre slap bang in the heart of the Toon.

Croatia

Without getting too deep and spiritual, venturing into the unknown can be one of the most enriching experiences of your life. Until now I'd never been to Eastern Europe (and never understood the hype) and now I can totally check that off my bucket list...

Croatia really was amazing, I can't stress that enough, and i've probably already stressed that enough to the people who didn't come for the weekend. We've been quite annoying like "omgzzzz getting the Croatia blues guys!" so apologies. We just loved it.

As I said in my previous blog (which you should probably read first if you haven't already) we stayed in a hostel called the Drunken Monkey in Zadar which was just outside of the Old Town. What a great hostel that was, such a good atmosphere....

(some of these photos have been lovingly stolen from the Drunken Monkey hostel website and Facebook etc)

I was a sleepy bastard on the plane there. I hadn't slept in 2 days before getting to Zadar (night before because we woke up at 3am and I am shit at waking up nevermind at 3am...)

On the piss in Zadar

Zadar Old Town....the most interesting architecture and all that.

Krka National Park, Croatia.....so many waterfalls round here and excellent swimming!

Me and some of the girls chilling by the waterfalls

Bustling streets in Zadar

Ice cream is like a national hobby in Croatia. Who knew.

That's me (on the right) jumping into the Adriatic Sea

Finally a nice photo of me.....at dinner in a restaurant called La Bruschetta.  I had octopus salad and ravioli with truffle sauce. And a carafe of wine. haha sooo good.

Me and Mano went climbing the ancient walls which were round by the port. They're effectively defences against foreign troops and we scaled them, like badasses.

More beautiful waterfalls

The Gentlemen!!!

In Zadar beer is cheaper than water, grapes and chewing gum. I have never known a holiday to be so bizarre. Trying to wade through the mystery of the currency was the hardest bit. A pizza for 40 kuna is actually only 5€ and taking 500 kuna out of the ATM works out to be £55...so confusing.


But a great time was had. We visited Krka National Park and we even rented out minivans to get there. Clément our French friend actually dived off the top of the waterfalls, which was super scary but fucking awesome.
We experienced Croatian techno bars, amazing night dancing with pole dancers and dancing like madmen with crazy weirdo Croatian men.
Walking around the Old Town we also found the Sea Organ. The sea organ is exactly what it says on the tin; it's an organ which is played by the movement of the water beneath it....and it's extremely bizarre to listen to, but it's so relaxing at the same time.

We went skinny dipping after a drunken night too which was hilarious, and the water was freezing, so running back to the hotel wearing wet clothes and being too naked with friends is definitely something you should try but maybe not on a cold night.

This is a blog allllllll about Julie Koothrappali.

So there's this girl here who is Corsican, lives in Aix, speaks English (with such an Indian accent she might as well hold a dual-nationality passport despite her not being Indian whatsoever) and is moving to Liverpool in the UK for the hell of it for a year to find a job and all that.

When she's not harassing me to buy a chateau with her, she's calling me a gayboy but then demanding that George Michael personally call me up to party on down with her. He's obviously way too cool for that though, he always apologises on the phone but makes it very clear that he'll be in Liverpool soon but only if she is a little bit cooler.

So, Liverpool. Godspeed. If she doesn't drink your taps dry, she'll blow you the fuck up man. After all, she is Corsican.

No in all seriousness, tons of good luck to her. I met her the first night I was here with the 'casual alcoholics' and she's definitely one of the biggest characters here who i'm sure will be sorely missed! Liverpool's a nice place apparently, and she'll hopefully have enormous luck finding a job and settling in well with the rain and the miserable comedy and the Scouse accent! 'Caaaaaaym caaaym down lad'

Here's her mugshot haha:

On the left

Julie + Lén = SWAG

I love this photo of us. she might 'fuck you up' but she's still such a cutie 

OHHHH JULIE, IF YOU LEAVE ME. I'LL NEVER MAKE IT ALLLLOOOOOOONE.

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.