AixPatriots: Our Semester in Aix en Provence: La rentrée

The past week was not extraordinary, which is to say that is was normal.

We arrived home from London on Sunday and didn't start classes again until Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday were blurs - we were sick, tired, and only left the auberge twice I believe. One bright spot was Halloween - it was Monday night. Another auberge was having a fête, so Emily, Sara, and I dressed up and brought candy. I dressed up as a "french person". I wore a striped shirt, baret, and black pants. Emily was Eloise at the Plaza, and Sara was Jimmy Neutron. It was really great to see everyone after their breaks. Also the party was a nice excuse to get out after being cooped up in the auberge for so long.

Our rentrée (restarting classes) was unremarkable. On Thursday I had my bénévolat (volunteering) at the school. I was asked to explain Guy Fawkes night to the children (the 6ème, 12 year olds). As it is their first year of English, I tried to speak slowly and use simple words (tried instead of attempted...). Once I finished my simple explanation, the teacher asked if they understood what I had said and the all answer "pas du tout" (not at all). Then she asked if they understood any individual words. A few raised their hands and responded "king" "very" "sixteen". Clearly my explanation was not very helpful. So I tried again in French and they got it - so many little light bulbs went off! It was pretty funny.

This past weekend, Sara had a friend from Paris come to stay with us while Emily went to Paris to visit a friend from high school. Sara's amie was MK. I had met her the first time I was in Paris, a few weeks ago. Despite the extremely rainy and windy weekend (it poured all weekend!!) we had a good time. Sara and MK walked around town a bunch and went to the local art museum. We also spent a good amount of time at the auberge working on letters (a bunch of our Duke friends send us letters last week, so I had to write them all back - luckily this allowed me to whittle down the insane stack of postcards I have accumulated this semester) and scrapbooks (I am making 2, one for a class assignment about Provence, and another that includes all of my trips outside of Provence). One night we went out to dinner and the other we visited another auberge for a pot luck! I assumed that not many people would go to the pot luck because, oh guess what, it was POURING that night (luckily the auberge was only about a five minute walk for us) but everyone who was in town went. I believe there were about 18 people there. It was a blast! Auberge Bellegarde (that's us) is going to host a pot luck/lucky pot (as the french call them) this Saturday.

I had to buy a new SIM card today for my cell phone (which is actually Sara's old Kenyan phone) because I lost mine in London. Luckily the SIM card was not too expensive at all. I went to the cell phone store and waited forever (it was worse than going to the apple store in the US). During my long wait, I started to get worried that the phone wouldn't work, or that I hadn't brought the proper form of ID (just general Maggie type worries) but luckily everything worked out, and I now have a working phone.

Our good friend from Duke, Nick Bodnar, is coming to visit us this weekend. Faithful readers will recall that we saw Nick just two weeks ago in London. He will arrive on Thursday and stay for the weekend. It will be fun. We are planning to go to Marseille on day and also to have a pot luck.