This week in review

I'm finally blogging again! There are so many things I thought about writing that I can't remember anymore, but we'll go over everything day by day, starting with Saturday.

Saturday I went hiking with Cara and Eliza! We tried to hike Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain that Cézanne painted. Unfortunately, we had a few mishaps getting there. First we missed the 10 am bus because we were at the wrong stop, and then once we got out to the mountain we tried a few wrong paths before finally getting on the right one. But then... instead of going across a reservoir we ended up going around it? Long story short, we didn't go up the mountain. However, we did go around this beautiful blue reservoir... making our own trails, sliding down rocks, wading through prickly vines... what an adventure!

Sunday I read Jean de Florette for class all day. It's by Marcel Pagnol and takes place right in Provence. It's actually really depressing. I'll tell you more when I write the obligatory post I've been meaning to do about my classes and daily life. But my daily life, while awesome, is not as exciting as...

Monday night, I went to see a movie in town with Clara, Brooke, Kyle, Kevin and Lez. We saw Omar m’a tuer, which was based on the true story of Omar Raddad, a Moroccan gardener who was accused of killing his boss. They found the woman’s body in her basement, where “Omar m’a tuer” was written on the wall in her blood (bad French for “Omar killed me”). Although the police arrested Omar immediately after the discovery, the circumstances were pretty weird. There was a lot of evidence that he hadn’t done it—his continual protestation of his innocence, but also the fact that the woman’s body was found in a weird contortion and it didn’t seem likely that she could have written that in the dark with her last energy. The police were pretty brutal toward Omar, because he was not French and because he didn’t speak French very well. And yet there were no other likely suspects for the murder. Omar was found guilty, and then pardoned partway through his sentence, and they don’t know any more even today. The movie itself covered the story of Omar at the same time as the story of a writer trying to prove Omar’s innocence. It provided commentary on the immigration issue, which is a big deal for France right now, and also on the justice system of course. It was very intense—graphic at times, emotional at other times, but ultimately very compelling and fascinating.

Other notes: French movie theaters don’t have the big popcorn poppers. That’s what I want! I bought a little tub of prepopped salted popcorn, which turned out not to have butter. It was actually pretty good and certainly healthier, but still a disappointment. French movie theaters also don’t have previews, which is pretty cool. And I understood the entire movie all the way through so I was really proud of myself.

Tuesday there was a free concert on the Cours Mirabeau (the main street in Aix) with excerpts from La Traviata. Every summer Aix has a big opera festival, and La Traviata is the headliner this year. I’m going to see one, possibly two other operas while I’m here. But anyway, for the free concert they set up chairs in the street facing the statue of the Bon Roy René, the good king René who supported education and arts in Provence during the Middle Ages. If you’d gotten your ticket online, which Cara had done for us, you got to sit in the chairs; if not, you could still stand around and listen. It was really amazing to me how they were able to close off the busiest street in town for opera. You go, France!

I don’t know a whole lot about opera or La Traviata, but it was beautiful. We were sitting kind of far back, so I couldn’t see particularly well but I just listened and thought and found the whole thing very soothing.

The least blurry picture I could take.

Wednesday I procrastinated for most of the day. It's hard to motivate yourself to do homework in the summer. I had a big presentation to do for today (Friday) in archéologie on the Battle of Alalia, so I was supposed to work on that because the past two nights had been so busy. I didn't really do much of note, but you'll be glad to know that I gave my presentation this afternoon and it went well!

Thursday I was planning to focus on my presentation, but my host mom told me that we were going to her friend's house for dinner. This is the friend who's hosting Kate and Elle, two other girls in the program. So I finished my presentation after class, wandered around downtown with Kyle to kill time and met my host mom around 7. Dinner was delicious and really fun! One of my host mom's friends from the barbecue the first day came too. We were there until about 11. So late! Oh France you have such silly ideas about dinner.

And that brings us to today, Friday, and I'm probably going to go to the movies with Cara and Kyle, and then maybe go out. It's been a long week but a good one!