Arrivée!

Well, I’m here. After all the applications, tedious visa visits, and 3 planes, I have made it to Aix! I arrived Saturday morning, and orientation didn’t start until Monday, so I spent most of the weekend getting over jetlag and getting used to speaking French all the time. Oh, and being hot. It is super hot here. And not like Rochester hot where the hours in the middle of the day are the worst, but the rest of the day is bearable. It is just always hot and humid. In French, they say “il fait lourd” which means “it’s heavy,” and it’s a good way to describe it. The air just sits on top of you as your try to wade through it. But it’s not all bad since my host family has a pool! And I can’t really complain because, for all the heat, Aix is beautiful! My host family lives outside of Aix in the country, which is lovely, and in the city center there are fountains everywhere! The Cours Mirabeau, which has all the major restaurants and bars on it, ends in this huge roundabout:

   

On different days, Aix has open air markets in different places. As today was Tuesday, there was a clothes market on the Cours Mirabeau and a food market outside the palace of justice. They manage to cram a ton of tents into a very small space, and all of the food looked delicious! I made the mistake of wandering through when I was hungry, but I managed to make it out without buying everything!

We also ran across a group playing jazz in one of the squares during our lunch break. That’s one of the cool things about Aix; the city center is tiny, but there is so much squished in together, and there is always something new to see!

I've really only spent two days in the city so far, so there's still lots to see, but it's all very exciting! For today, I'll leave you with my French fun fact of the day: in France, when parents name their children, the French government reserves the right to tell the parents they have to choose a different name if they feel the name will cause the child problems in the future. You won't find any North Wests here!