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.

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....

Taking trips

I just stumbled again on my old blog which, written in 2009 at the tender age of 19, was supposed to 'document my life before, during and after university'. It's now the end of 2012, i'm almost 22, still at uni and reading this blog makes it sound like a million years ago. It also reads like what you would expect an angsty teenager's blog to be like. There is a lot of angry ranting posts towards my housemates in Coventry who I really hated, as well as mushy posts about my ex Kai, who i'd been going out with for almost 2 months in a weird Anglo-German LDR via the internet.

I'm not going to show the world it however, especially because there is one post where I uploaded almost-naked pictures of Kai, who was posing with only a trilby hat covering his modesty. As much as we didn't break up on enormously great terms, I'm still not that much of a bastard to potentially embarrass him over the internet especially after so long without hearing from him.

Anyways, i'm not entirely sure whether that little discovery has cheered me up or made me feel a little bit more down today, it's made me realise that i'm still not finished university, and made me think again how long left I actually still have. I don't want to be a perpetual student anymore...

Everyone promised me that i'd have a fucking billboard time in France and that I wouldn't have anything to worry about, yet here I am sat in my chambre traditionelle in just my boxers eating vine tomatoes as a 'main course'. I just cannot wait until the next installment of my uni Erasmus grant comes through in a few weeks.

It's about time to get on to the real topic about this post and something a hell of a lot more relevant to the title than moaning about my lack of wealth. I was going to be substantially more subtle about this topic because I didn't want people to judge me, but fuck it. If you judge me, you judge me. An ex-boyfriend of mine even suggested that I should go on my Erasmus year and come back to England a much more mature person, yet I can safely say that I am a hell of a lot more world-wise and a lot happier from not following his advice.

I recently took quite a lot of a legal hallucinogenic drug (legal in France) while here in Aix-en-Provence and it was a really fucked-up experience. It was LSA, similar to acid, but in grain form and it's quite cheap but still very powerful.
What I definitely do remember was the effect it had on language, making it seem much 'smoother', easier to comprehend and sound a lot more pleasant. I find it quite interesting to note how alcohol changes language ability, and without trying to sound like a PhD student or a junkie, I certainly do like to test that theory quite a lot. I turned up to my German and French oral exams last academic year quite tipsy. It worked well and I did surprisingly better than what I thought I would.

Aaaanyways, it was fun. it's only the the second time i've done something like that and the first was better, but our mistake was going outside. Meeting some friends in a packed Irish bar in the middle of Aix through Dark provençal alleyways and lots of drunk people is not the best idea for when you're tripping balls on acid.

It's not the glorified colour-changing mind trip that films make it out to be. And there's certainly no little dragons that pop out from nowhere. Lights were brighter and colours were more intense and my pupils were as big as dinner plates but according to friends we just looked really drunk. I did get very lost though trying to find a toilet in an Irish bar across the street, ended up wandering alleyways a little bit and then panicked (not a good idea), but all was well.

There's not enough letters in the alphabet for all the things I've done in the last few weeks.....

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.

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. 

"holla, city of squalor!"

Okay, so major breakthroughs. I was offered une chambre simple [simple room] at Cuques halls in Aix-en-Provence for 155€/month by the uni.

After a good 10 days of deliberation of whether or not I can live with a a whole host of potentially sketchy Euro-tramps in the extreme south of France, or whether I really do value my own [expensive rental] space, I still had no idea what to do.....

- Friends suggested I just move into halls for 'the experience'  (NB i'm a total halls virgin...I've lived with friends and partners so far through uni.)

- My mother suggested I find a cheap apartment, even if it's in a sketchy area miles out from the city centre.

- previous Erasmus students from my uni suggested not living in halls, for one reason or another; cramped conditions, other students etc

...but as the deadline approached I had to be more adult about the decision. I'm not often adult, or mature so this was a big thing for me....

The fact I had nothing sorted yet was quite a scary concept, and I took the room in halls.
I'm quite nervous about it all really...but still open minded.

I pay 155€ a month for a room, and i'm planning on travelling a whole hell lot more than I would have been while paying expensive rent as well. So really, I'm quite excited for the opportunity!

At least i'm not an SDF [sans domicile fixe / homeless].......

Oh and stay tuned for my plans to casually backpack around the South of France for a week and a half before uni......

How to travel Europe for diddly squat (from the king of corner-cutting himself).

I have just made an extraordinary discovery. More extraordinary and life-changing than the Higgs-Boson quantum particle could ever be, and certainly more useful to the layman:

I just found out today that the Megabus has a new European service from London.
This actually brightened up my day. It was that good.

On the Megabus, which trundles through UK cities with their bright, bold, blue exteriors and instantly-recognisable fat controller mascot Sid, you will now be shuttled to Amsterdam, Brussels, Boulogne or Paris in an attempt to make crossing The Channel a much cheaper, simpler affair. Ooh la la, indeed.

With tickets from the minimum (but nearly impossible to get) £1 + 50p booking fee to anywhere on their route map, travelling Europe and getting onto the continent has never been so promising, especially to me, a skint student from the North of England who has previously found it impossible to get anywhere onto Mainland Europe without it biting a sizeable chunk of a budget.
Not only that, but every Megabus journey that i've ever taken has been an experience. I've either been stuck next to some random tramp, or there was this one time some poor doddery old lady fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled everywhere, or the dog that barked from Birmingham to London, or the stag (coach) parties or breaking down in the middle of the motorway and having to walk up the hard shoulder for miles to the nearest service station to be rescued a few hours later.

My point, is that it is an experience. I kinda love it. And the price isn't half bad too....

Actually, today I've been looking at prices for trains all the way from London to Provence and they range from £100-£200 depending on time of day/week, whereas a train from Paris to Provence costs a meagre £35.

The Eurostar is officially dead then, you'd think. You'd probably be wrong. The main reason that the Megabus can afford to keep such a route is because so many people don't want to spend a great deal of money on the Eurostar. But on the other hand, the only reason that Eurostar hasn't been killed off by the big, blue 6-wheeled monster is because the journey across La Manche takes a fuckload of time.

It takes 8-odd hours to get from Victoria Coach Station, right in the heart of London, to the drop off point in Paris which lies outside the city itself (but is still served by the RER) but as long as you've got tons of books and a comfy pillow, and you get the lucky seat next to someone who isn't a tramp or a general sexual deviant then you're sorted.....