Month: October 2022

Ok I’m finally caught up lol

Two weeks ago I went to the cutest cat cafe I’ve ever been to. Granted, I don’t think I’ve actually been to one before that Tuesday so there is not exactly a high bar to reach to become the best. It was unassuming looking from the outside, with some Halloween decor (a rarity here) and some pastel colored seating, which confused me as why would anyone want to sit outside where the cats couldn’t go but I digress. Step inside the first doors, and get let in through the second set however, and you’re blasted with cute cat paraphernalia, pastels, cat items, and most importantly: cats.

I went with my friend Ash, who within the span of the previous week had already racked up three stamps on his carte fidelite (stamp card).  He walked in with confidence and sat down, where as I was instantly distracted by this beautiful orange cat named Dexter who was perfectly sitting on a pink shell chair that when I sent a picture to my mom was more interesting than the cat.

The food was delicious. I had a blackberry tea and a grilled cheese, and it was overall a really fun time. The cats kept wandering around the entire time, going from table to table looking for pets, to which we happily obliged. They knew why we were there.

Eventually, after about probably an hour of being there, I had to get to class and Ash wanted to go back to his homestay and take a nap, so we got up to leave. Not without some more pets and a swipe by the youngest one from a cardboard box way too big for her. I got my stamp card, and I definitely see myself returning there again.

Then on Wednesday the 12th, our school’s GSA hosted a “Coming Out Day Expo” in response to National Coming Out Day being the day before.  I joined the GSA the week prior, and that was the week we decided to do the event, so we planned an entire event in 5 days. I’m proud of us.

We hosted the event for a few reasons. We wanted to provide students with a safe space that they could feel comfortable celebrating who they were, ally or part of the community. We also wanted it to be an event where allies could learn more about the LGBTQ+ community and ask questions. We had a few of the obvious annoying people as all events like that seem to attract, but otherwise I think it went super well! We got so many more people than I think any of us were expecting, and one of the guys I know stood at the table I was running for 15 minutes, reading the Trevor Project page I had pulled up and asking questions. It was super sweet. Its people like him that make us want to do events like that.

The rest of the week was just midterm after midterm. I have so many. I don’t know how they expect us to do work and also travel. I feel like traveling is one of the biggest perks to Studying Abroad, but with so much homework and studying, I don’t know how anyone has time for anything lol. I don’t travel nearly as much as some of the others in my program, and wow. I don’t know how they do it.

Of course, instead of doing homework and studying this weekend, I lounged on my bed all Saturday, and Sunday I took a day trip to Marseille. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve gone to Marseille, but it’s the first time for something I’ve wanted to do. We don’t count the Marseille Beer Festival in this house.

I went with Sophia of Disneyland Paris fame and the whole reason we went was to see an orchestra play Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts music, and wow we were in for quite the treat. We left earlier than we needed to because Sophia wanted to go to the Lego Store. Luckily it was only about a five minute walk from there to the concert venue. So off we went. The bus ride to Marseille takes anywhere from 25-40 minutes depending on traffic, and today it was on our side. What wasn’t on our side was the distance of our destinations from the Gare Saint-Charles. The Lego Store was a 25 minute walk from the train station, to which neither of us wanted to do, but we also didn’t know how to figure out the bus system in Marseille, so we started walking.

To the surprise of us both, the Lego Store ended up being in a massive mall, which neither of us were expecting. There are no malls in Aix, with it being a small town, so the only large shopping structure I’ve seen so far before that point was the one we stumbled across in Paris, which funny enough was also because of a Lego Store. There was the first food court I’ve seen since getting here, a million shops, and a blessed Starbucks. Why are there no Starbucks’ in Aix?

The Lego Store was a pretty decent size for the mall, and both of us ended up leaving with a set. I don’t know how I’m going to get all of my stuff back, but we’ll figure it out. That’s a December me problem. After walking around for a bit, we made our way over to the concert venue, which was an old silo and was aptly named as such. Super cool inside, very industrial feel, and even though we had seats on the side, our view of the stage was pretty good.

The concert itself was amazing. I didn’t know what to expect really going into it since I never attended any of my high school’s orchestra concerts and thus had never been to one. I don’t think my high school orchestra had electric guitars, fog machines, or color changing lights. I now know why they call themselves the Neko Light Orchestra. Movie music medleys, tributes to the most beloved professor, Umbridge (-_-), and a beautiful tribute to Robbie Coltrane were among some of the many sets they played, and honestly, I don’t think another orchestra will top it. What other orchestra has you on your feet clapping along to a rap version of “Double Double Boil Trouble”? Exactly.

Aix was dark when we got back. We had missed the bus we were supposed to get on and the next one didn’t leave for an extra 15 minutes after what it was supposed to. So I walked back by myself. On one hand, I like the cool night air and the peace, but at the same time… I’m a girl. I don’t really feel safe walking around by myself during the day, nevertheless at night. I was fine, but even in a relatively safe city like Aix, I can’t get rid of these feelings. There’s not a light switch I can simply switch on and off.

I did make it home without being kidnapped thankfully, and despite how exhausted I was from walking everywhere, I proceeded to stay up until 2am building my Lego set. It’s not exactly a Christmas scene per say, but I’ve always contributed Hogsmeade to Christmas time, and in these stressful midterm weeks, I could use the bit of happiness. I mean, look how cute it is!

I’ve got another week of midterms to do, but my next post will be a massive one, since it’ll be about my week long trip to London! I’m doing a solo trip for six days, so look forward to all my pictures. Since writing the majority of this, I did go on an overnight trip to Paris with one of my classes, but I don’t feel like writing about it, so here’s a few pictures, and I’ll write again in a couple weeks.

I have so many more photos but that’s all for now.

Felicity

This is an early, mid-September update.

Classes started off pretty easy, with the exception of the English class I transferred into that made me do the homework for day one despite my not being in the first class. I digress.  I could’ve gone to Monaco before then, but I didn’t sign up fast enough.  So, we went to Saint Tropez instead.  Beautiful, expensive Saint Tropez and its hike of a beach trip.

When we came back from Saint Tropez, however, was the real interesting part of the day. I enjoy sipping rose and slushies on the beach as much as the next person, but what other city practically sets itself on fire for fun? I was slightly nervous, given our experience with wildfires in the past couple of years, but my roommates and I had been seeing it set up for a week, so we couldn’t NOT go.

Beforehand, since it started once the sun set, we got delicious 2 euro pizza that I’m definitely going back to at some point, and walked around. So many metal structures ablaze with fire. It was beautiful. It started at a local theatre, which had all sorts of little things set up. I believe there was more inside but we didn’t go in. I was too enamored by the outside.

Then we began walking towards the Rotonde, my roommates and I, along with a classmate of mine and a friend of hers. There was fire everywhere, but they had workers all over the place equipped with equipment if the breeze blew a little too strong. Finally reaching the fountain, we saw the big center point of the festival.

It. Was. Amazing. I mean, I did have a bit of a panic flashback moment to Phantom of the Opera and its ending, but aside from that, it was brilliant. The fountain looked ethereal under the flames and smoke. PotO be damned, nothing would ruin that fountain’s time in the spotlight. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I may have been in a summer dress at 8:30 at night, but I wasn’t cold in the slightest. There was so much fire all around us that it didn’t feel like the sun had gone down. It was a good test of my new phone’s night mode.

As amazing as it was, that wasn’t the only thing that happened in September (aside from classes of course). There was a fun bowling night put on by the school that I attended with my friend Ash. I was really worried how I’d do with house equipment, as I have my own custom stuff back home, but I did shockingly well.

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The last thing I want to mention is my trip to Arles, France. I went with my photography class and despite the fact that it was pouring in the morning, it was super beautiful and a pretty fun time. I’m not really huge on photo exhibitions (I much prefer museums) but those were pretty cool too. There was one on Red Cross photography that was particularly impactful.

I also got to know some of my classmates through that trip, and I talked with one about Disneyland Paris for like… 10 minutes over sorbet. Seems that both of us wanted to go at some point but couldn’t find anyone to go with 🙂

Felicity

The early start program I participated in was really fun, and I am glad I did it for the bonds I made with my fellow students, but wow I was exhausted.

The first day started off as most first days at a new college starts: sitting in a chair stupidly early listening to people introduce themselves and talk about the same thing we talked about during the pre-orientation meetings. My roommates, Grace and Eshen, and I were almost late that day because our app took us a completely different direction than the school.

After that, and each morning after, we had French class, although I was put in the wrong one so I had no idea what the professor was saying half the time.  I was too anxious to bring it up though, so I just had to sit and suffer. I partially blame the people who put me in that class, but also my French hearing comprehension has failed me miserably this whole time. I am so thankful that Mara was in that class too because she helped me a ton.

I know you want to hear every single itty-bitty detail about my time sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair talking about visas, but I will skip most of the other “orientation” orientation stuff and get to the good stuff:  all the fun activities.

So Tuesday, August 30th, was the first real day I was out on the town. We were almost late that morning too, but that’s besides the point. In our French groups, we did rotating groups doing two different activates. We did a tour of Aix, which was beautiful. So many areas I hadn’t explored up to that point, including the main monument of the town: the massive “Fontaine de la Rotonde”. I’ll be mentioning it in the future, but I’m just going to refer to it as “the Rotonde” for future reference.

We are told to not be the drunk American stereotype, but one of the reasons why our tour guide rushed through the beginning part of the tour, was to be able to show us “Bar Street” as everyone calls it. Needless to say, that’s a popular spot. Fun fact: the busiest day to go out here is a Thursday night. Another fun fact: one of our alumni fellows this semester is a graduated English major from Linfield! Isn’t that nuts?

The other event we did was a wine and cheese tasting, and that was interesting as I don’t like wine. This was the one event my mom was jealous of when I told her, so I instantly sent her a picture when I did it, to which I got an annoyed response.

Fast forward a day and we have our first excursion: a trip to Ile de Porquerolles. The beach! This was probably my favorite excursion we’ve gone on since I’ve gotten here. We took a bus to an island that we had to ride a ferry to get onto and then we were on this beautiful Mediterranean island!

The food was delicious, and oh my gosh the water! Obviously we go to school in Oregon, so the water is cold. I’ll swim because I’m crazy and used to it, but most won’t. This water was so warm and blue, and while it was a lot saltier than I expected, I did not care. Swimming in the Mediterranean sea is what really made it sink in that I was in France.

Around this time, COVID decided to rear its ugly head and while I did not catch it, one of my roommates and almost all her friend group got it.  It actually spread through quite a few of the ESP kids, causing us to be uninvited to the ESP/Regular student mixer that Sunday. Oops 🙁

The last day of the program was  a picnic in a nearby park after French. It was a really chill way to end off the chaotic week of cooking classes (which is ironic because most of us can’t use the kitchen in our home stays) and library visits.

You’d think we’d be at classes now, but nope. There was one more thing in the way: regular orientation plus it’s excursion. We were banned from the regular orientation because of COVID, but were allowed on the trip to La Ciotat, another beach town. While beautiful in it’s own right, this trip required more hiking and overall, more busywork than our gleeful splash through Ile de Porquerolles. The ocean was colder there too, but just as salty. I still had fun though.

Felicity

I’m very behind on these blogs, so let’s go!

I’ve never been out of the country before (sans the one time I went to Canada when I wasn’t even a year old), so tackling a journey like this, with a collective 15 hours of flights and even more hours of layovers, was nerve-wracking to say the least. I flew Portland (PDX) to San Francisco (SFO), SFO to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA), and finally FRA to Marseille, France (MRS).

My flights were interesting, to say the least. PDX to SFO was routine enough. I had made the same trek down not two months prior, for my visa appointment. There was a funny moment when getting beverages though.  I asked for cranberry juice and I guess the guy couldn’t hear me well through my mask, but he gets me my juice and then asks “did you say you wanted vodka with that?” I hadn’t said anything remotely close to anything alcohol, and I’m not 21. I just laughed and said no, but I appreciated that he thought I was older than I am, and it got some chuckles out of my seat mates, who proceeded to order a white wine and a tomato juice respectively. Tomato juice guy wasn’t asked about alcohol.

We didn’t have a lot of time on the layover between our first two flights, but the international terminal in SFO was shockingly bougie. They had a Gucci and Hermes store in the airport.

The longest flight I’d ever been on up until that point was a 6 hour flight from NYC to Portland last June, so my 11 hour flight from SFO to FRA was rough. It was my first time on those massive planes with a middle set of seats, which I thought was cool, but Mara, who is also here in Aix-en-Provence, and I were separated and I sat next to a couple who didn’t speak a lot of English. This meant that the entire trip, I felt like I was third wheeling as the two cuddled and watched movies. I also can’t sleep on flights, so I didn’t do more than nod off for increments of 10-30 minutes. That flight wasn’t my favorite.

In contrast to the SFO International terminal, FRA was huge! We got off in terminal Z. Z! I’ve never been to an airport where there were so many gates. And I swear 90% of the gates I saw were Lufthansa.

We had a 5 hour layover in Germany, and I didn’t see a different plane until probably hour 3 of what ended up being 6 (our flight got delayed). They had a whole departments store full of perfumes and alcohol and toys that we walked through directly after going through customs which baffled me. Parts of it felt like we were in a mall instead of an airport. Neither Mara nor I had breakfast when they came around (lady passed right by me after giving my seatmates food. Rude) so we got pretzels. They are as delicious as their reputation entails.

Eventually we got to MRS, and despite us rushing off the plane and collecting our baggage as quickly as possible, we still ended up missing the bus we were supposed to take by less than a minute. We saw it drive away as we were approaching. We had to catch the last bus of the night, which was technically the first bus of the morning. I ended up getting to my homestay after a 40 minute bus drive and a 10 minute taxi at like… 1:30am.

Needless to say, I crashed. My roommates didn’t even know I arrived because I slept in so late. I was so glad that the early start program I was participating in didn’t start until Monday because I needed Sunday to recuperate. 

If only I knew what I was in store for with the ESP.

Felicity