Cezanne

There are random moments every so often that make you realize where you are and what you're doing. I was just wandering around town, exploring, and I looked up and saw a little marble plaque about ten feet off the ground. It said that that building is where Cezanne died on October 23, 1906. It was 23 Rue Boulegon, a street that I have gone to a few times to purchase cheap sandwiches. It was about 4 stories tall, with melon green persiennes (Persian shutters). Although I spent all last Saturday touring Aix going to various spots of importance for Cezanne, it really hit home to me that this is where he lived. He lived and died about 5 minutes from my school here and probably attended mass across the street. It's quite amazing to be living among history like that.

I did it

I ate escargots tonight. Snails. Two. They were actually pretty good. They were really chewy and tasted like the sauce. Actually, they came in a cassonette, which is kind of like a bunch of stuff in a liquid, usually sausage, beans, and some spices, etc. This cassonette had snails (deshelled--I still have to use the little forks to get them out of the shell sometime) and some spices and it was served in a round, croissant-type pastry/bread. The taste was actually pretty good and the most surprising part was that I tasted earth in my nose. That sounds weird, but that's the best way to describe it. Almost like the way scotch creeps into your nose, the taste or sensation of earth and soil rose into my nostrils after a couple of seconds of chewing. Very strange, but good strange.

My friend Maeve invited me to dinner with her mom and her mom's friend, who just arrived in Aix yesterday. We went to a nice place on "cafe alley" as I like to call it. It's a large street with no cars that is full of tables for the cafes that line it. There are maybe 30 cafes on one side of the street, all with their own outdoor section. We went to Côté du Soleil (next to the sun), which was really colorful and had great little murals inside. We had the cassonette, fantastic baked mussels, and eggplant permasean for entrees (appetizers--we had to teach some french) and I got a ridiculously creamy dish of gnocchi covered in crème de chevre, which is either sauce made from goat cheese and cream (like a roquefort sauce my hostmom taught me to make that I'm going to make for my grandpa) or it's just goat cream. I'm pretty sure it's the first one. Anyway, enough about food.

Halfway done?

Well, I'm in the midst of midterms, but they have ended for the week. Luckily, I really only have two left next week. I've been doing a lot of stuff since going to Italy. I hiked to the top of Mt. Ste. Victoire, celebrated a couple friends' birthdays, been to a wine tasting (including a 1989 Porto), spent a weekend catching up on sleep and reading, and finally, getting back down to business. This weekend, I'm sending out my applications for internships and I'm continuing to research possible summer employment in law, media, and anything else, really. I'm applying to work for WBUR, the NPR station in Boston, and I'm going to apply to some law firms in Boston and to a couple of Tufts internships, most notably in the Finance office as an accounting assistant. It'd be tedious and boring, but I'm sure I'd learn a lot about accounting. Living abroad and taking a class on the EU, I've become more interested in business and economics and how the global economy works. Certainly, I'm experiencing the effects of global economy as the euro continues to break records forex rates against the dollar. I wouldn't have even known what that means a few months ago. Anyways, I have just made plans, more or less, for spring break. I'll know for sure tomorrow, but I'm either going to Stockholm and Barcelona or I'm going to Barcelona for a week. If the latter, we may go on day trips, possibly to Sevilla for the festival that will be going on, or somewhere else in Spain. There is a sale on RyanAir that ends tonight. If it continues tomorrow, which is possible, AND if we can stay at a friend's house for free, it wil actually be cheaper to go to Stockholm and Barcelona and that's what we'll do. If not, Barcelona for a week. Either way, I'm really excited. I'm going with two of the people on my Italy trip (Andy and Caroline) and possibly one of Caronline's friends from home who just moved to Paris.

Sunday, I'm going to the Luberon, which is a corridor of small mountain villages in Provence just north of Aix. I'll be visiting Roussillion. If you remember the book I read in Mexico, it was called Village in the Vaucluse. The book was an ethnography (social study) of Roussillion and helped turn Roussillion into a tourist destination. Easter weekend, I'm touring Aix with my art history class to look at Cezanne sites--studio, house, favorite motifs and places to paint, etc. Sunday, I'm going to Cassis, a beautiful beach town. Monday, since we don't have class, I'm going to hike St. Victoire again with some friends who will are going to Paris this weekend. In a few weekends, I'm going to visit Arles- van Gogh's home--and I hope to make it to a few more towns around Marseilles in the Bouches du Rhone. There is a fantastic program called Carte Ticketreize here. You pay five euros for a permanent bus ride debit card. The buses are limited to a few destinations, like Arles, but the cost of travel each way is only one euro ($1.50 right now!). Until this afternoon, I was thinking about either using this program to ride around Provence and visit little towns or going to Morocco for Spring Break. I'm going to buy the card tomorrow to use it for day trips the next few weekends. Already, the end of the semester seems near. I'm halfway through and I can't believe it! I think I easily could have spent an entire year in Aix. Maybe not financially. It's really hard for guys to make French friends here. The guys are only interested in the girls and the French girls are really closed off because French guys tend to be really aggressive with them. I had hoped to meet some French people and be friends with them, but that's not exactly the way it works for most students here. I still haven't even seen most of Aix or really gotten to know it or even been to many cultural events, like museums, lectures, concerts, etc. Now that the end of the semester is approaching, I feel much more pressure to do everything I want to do, especially trying all the various ethnic restaurants around. I just need to make time during the weekday, I think.

I forgot, Tuesday, I'm going to a Moroccan dinner in town. Couscous, mint tea, and appetizers. I can't wait.