Le Mer ou La Mer?

I had morning classes today and now I know that I prefer to have them in the afternoon. Falling asleep is very difficult here. I go to bed around 11 or 12, depending how long it takes to shower, but I always feel wide awake. Today was extremely difficult to stay awake in my classes. During the 15 minute break I took a power nap to try to help feel more alert. It did the trick. Whenever I’m about to fall asleep suddenly I just start thinking of home and also friends in Montreal. I miss familiar things. I guess it gets easier once things start becoming more familiar, but this place doesn’t feel like home. It’s beautiful and seems too perfect to live here all the time. I suppose I just haven’t really accepted that this is my home for three months.
The classes are long and feel even longer when I leave and still have to use French. During the lunch break, I went to a pizzeria with Caroline and two of her friends joined us a few minutes later after passing by on the street. We talked about the cultural differences between Turkey, US, and Switzerland. All Europeans are shocked to hear that my family has four cars. For gas, it costs twice as much here than it does in the States. We even converted the gallons into liters to really compare.
After my intensive class that occurs every day from 1pm till 2:30pm, I decided to head down to the beach. Ozge had class so she couldn’t go with me and Caroline was falling asleep so I went alone. I now know that I should do that. Girls alone at the beach are easy targets for creepy older European men to come hit on you. He said in French, “vous etes tres belle.” And I just said, “Je ne parle pas francais.” But he knew English like everyone else here so he continued to talk in English. As he talked he kept touching me and he didn’t seem to care that I flinched. I thought about running to the sea since he was fully clothed and I was in a bathing suit but thought otherwise. He just kept carrying on like I cared. It was annoying since I was about to head home but I feared he’d offer to walk with me so I just stayed there giving one word responses till he tired of my obvious lack of interest. Then I waited some more to be sure he wasn’t going to follow me. Paranoid? Maybe, but it’s not worth the risk.
Today was a lot colder in the morning. I think it’s colder for the majority of the days now and only hot after 2pm. I don’t mind since I mostly packed jeans, not shorts. I get to sleep in tonight which I’m happy about. My host mom just called me from the window above saying dinner is ready. I don’t have internet here so I guess I’ll bring my computer to school tomorrow.

Where are the mosquitoes?

On the second day, God destroyed the mosquitoes for they do not exist in Nice. I’m starting to fall in love with the climate here. It’s never humid, only hot when the sun shines directly on you. Currently, I’m sitting outside on my little patio (I’m not sure what to call it actually) and the weather could not be more perfect. It’s the kind of weather where you can wear shorts and a tank top or jeans and a light jacket and still be perfectly comfortable. I’m rockin the shorts and tank top. From here, I can people watch within my little fortress of metal fences and railing. Though, I’m not well hidden because this man just caught me looking at him… or I caught him looking at me.
Every day I hear American music being blasted from across the street. A second ago it was Sean Paul but now Beyonce is belting out “halo”. If my speakers were louder I’d play some Drake or Little Wayne for them. I feel when it comes to movies and music, other countries just adopt what’s popular in the U.S. I was walking by a cinema on the way home and half the movies listed were American movies, including “Inglorious Bastards.”
Another thing I’ve noticed is that pretty much everywhere I go I can always find someone who speaks English. The majority of the people I interact with know English or at least more English than I know French. My dad says to just dive into the culture and only speak French. Well the French don’t like it when I speak French. They insist on always speaking English to me as soon as they hear my accent. My teacher says I speak French very well but apparently not well enough for normal members of society.
Today was a good day. My classes are set up so that every other day they switch from morning to afternoon. I had classes this afternoon from 1pm till 6pm. I woke up at 11 and made myself breakfast, then walked to school grabbing lunch on the way. Lunch here doesn’t start until 12 everywhere. If you go to a restaurant before 12, you can only order a drink. Now I see why drinks cost so much. I don’t like how breakfast here consists of various forms of bread. I want bacon and sausage or cookies. That’s what I’m used to. But I’ll stick to the tea and croissants for now. They just aren’t very filling and gets boring after a few days. Croissants are way better than regular toast though.
The only problem with my classes is that I learned most of the things they write on the board but I know I’m not good enough to move up since I have trouble understanding when they speak. I’m getting a lot out of the class by just trying to have conversations with the teachers. My host mom and I have more difficulty understanding each other and her kids are never around to translate. I still don’t know the kids names and am embarrassed that I’ll have to ask again. When they said their names I was too busy trying to process what they were saying and the polite way to greet people. I haven’t seen the daughter since the day I arrived. The mom said she’s popular and goes out a lot. Sounds like me. But she was pretty cold to me so I’m not sure if we’ll get along.
My big fear of having to make new friends is over. I met two girls today who are staying for 4 months! Caroline is a nice blonde Swiss girl who invited me to go out tonight. But with my dad’s voice saying “STUDY STUDY STUDY” in the back of my head, I respectfully declined and rescheduled for a more appropriate time. Plus I’m still not used to the time here and I have trouble falling asleep and waking up.
I have a fun weekend planned. Sakoru and I signed up to go scuba diving this Friday after classes. Then on Saturday I’m going to tour Monaco with Ozge. Then Sunday I’ll probably call Caroline to see if she wants to go to the beach with me. I think it will get cold soon so I want to take advantage of their beautiful beaches. The beaches are stone which is strange and sounds uncomfortable but no matter, the water is so blue the beach could be of dirt and I wouldn’t care.

First Day of School

First day-

Not as bad as I thought, I started my day off wrong waking up from a bad dream. In my dream, I thought I was back in Montreal with all my friends from there but then woke up to an unfamiliar place where I don’t know anyone. However, I’ve managed to make a few acquaintances and this place became more bearable. People here aren’t quite as friendly and open as the ones in Montreal. Also I’ve realized that most people here are leaving for university in a few weeks so I’ll have to repeat this friend making process during my entire stay, just like Octavio.

I’m in the beginner class which I find pretty easy. Today we learned to introduce ourselves and also how to count. Since I know both I just used the class to mark where the letter change in my dictionary. It was a good use of an hour.
Its Andrew’s last day so I’ll be eating with him instead of my family. I still haven’t had dinner with them yet so I’m a little anxious to see what it’s like and what type of food they have. Hopefully it’s something I’ll like or at least tolerate. The mom is so nice I don’t want to offend her just because I’m a picky eater.

Arles

For about 50 euros, Andrew and I hopped on a tram to Arles. We thought we were being smart when we left the hotel by checking the weather and dressing accordingly. Today did turn out to be warm, but not till a few hours after we left. The four hour train ride was miserably cold. I brought my Netbook so we could watch a movie on the trip up, so at least we weren’t bored, just really cold.

Currently, Andrew and I are sitting on a bench at the Gare waiting for the train to Marseille. We’re an hour early so I’m killing time by writing this while a French bee harasses Andrew who discovered that it’s “just as annoying as its American brother.” On our way here, he tried to ask a woman where the train station was saying, “ou est la gare?” She just starting laughing and didn’t even respond. He thinks she might have thought he asked, “ou est la guerre?” which means, “where is the war?”

While we were roaming around Arles, we went to see an old Roman Arena where the gladiators used to fight. Now it’s used for non violent bullfighting, where they don’t kill the bull. Nothing was going on today so we just explored the arena admiring the impressive architecture which was still intact after 2,000 years. We took lots of pictures and one very amusing video of me crawling through this tiny whole in the wall. I think it used to be some sort of prison. It was a depressing little room and smelled like poop. Andrew didn’t think it smelled all that bad but that’s not saying much… Andrew is re-watching the video for the 10^th time now and he’s still giggling. I’ll probably upload it because it shows the inside of the arena which was very cool.

After, we went to the Theatre Antique which was falling apart. During the middle ages, the French began taking the stones from the theater after the Romans had cleared out. Looking at the pictures, that place would’ve been pretty sweet if they didn’t mess it up. We tried to string a few pictures together to get the whole theater but it didn’t really work. I ended up taking a little nap in the stands as Andrew looked up other funtivities for us to do. We searched for Van Gogh’s house but failed. So, defeated and a bit hungry, we ventured through the small streets till we reached the Forum Square. There were lots restaurants with outdoor seating. It was nice and awkward standing at the entrance of three different restaurants debating whether we should just sit or wait to be seated. France is weird that way. When we tried to get breakfast this morning, we didn’t realize it was just a thing they give you. In the US, we’re used to ordering from a menu of different things but here, they just give you coffee, croissants and bread with butter and jam. It was very confusing and took us two restaurants and a friendly interpreter to figure it out. We still haven’t figured out how to tip waiters correctly so we just tip them what we would if we were in the U.S. Hopefully it’s not far off from that.

Andrew seems to have bad luck when it comes to walking. Only he would step in gum while leaving the plane. Today he almost fell off the raised sidewalk because he tripped. The sidewalk was pretty high too it would’ve hurt a lot. He mainly trips over his abuses flip flops as you will see in some of the videos he has taken.

I’ve been practicing my French a lot speaking to waitresses and ticket booth workers. Andrew refuses to speak any French besides “oui” and “gare” which gets annoying.

Arrived

I'm here in the Grand Hotel de Florence somewhere in the middle of Nice. It's about 4:32am right now and Andrew is already jabbering away quoting every movie we've seen recently. He likes saying ignorant things to embarrass me. It's actually hilarious.

Today we're going to try to journey to Arles, which is pretty far away. It'll take four hours I think but according to our tour book it's definitely the best thing to do. They have an old Roman Arena and lots of interesting museums. We got to be out of here by 5 to reach this place with enough time.

The weather here is perfect. Today it's going to be 26 C which is somewhere in the 80s. I figured out to convert you double it, then add thirty and you should be close.

I need to stop this blog now because I made Andrew feel bad that I'm making him sound "like a retard" on this blog.

Au revoir

To my best friend

Don't be offended that I'm using you as my target reader because I'm sure you are my only viewer. And yes, it does help take away from the awkwardness of me writing my thoughts out loud. Now as you sit there in your dorm room watching season 3 of Weeds again, you'll be able to follow me on my little adventure. I still feel like emailing you would be a lot less awkward. But I already created this damn thing.

I hope you don't mind but I'm taking some of your clothes to France. I've pretty much finished packing or at least sorting what I'd like to bring. If I'm living in Nice, I can assume that the weather will be nice, right? I feel like you'd be rolling your eyes at me or something along those lines so I'm just going to say, "stop that."

Andrew will be accompanying me to Nice and will stay until Tuesday of next week. We plan to hit all the touristy places while he's there like Cannes. It's that film festival place we saw in Entourage. He's excited since he's never been to Europe. We were arguing today about traveling and he said he's been out of the country more than I have. He's gone to Canada like 10 times. Big whoop.

Since I haven't left for this trip yet I don't really have much more to say... and I don't want to be like you and ramble on about lady bugs and neosporin because other people just wouldn't understand.