Day 23- Thursday 30 June

[written in the am] Currently eating breakfast and reading a magazine left on the table, which has a list of 46 laws the French citizen might not be aware of, including: One cannot spit in front of a school [38 euro fine] or at a bus stop [135 euro], and elsewhere it depends on the laws of the local government; one usually cannot wear just a bathing suit in public; one can give away free money in the streets; one cannot [drunkenly] sing in the streets at night [450 euro], etc.

[written in the pm] This morning was a reading morning, again, because the readings for one class are all on the computer and it'd be wa-ay too much to print, so I stayed for a while, had lunch, and headed out. Both classes were at Reid Hall today, so basically I ended up spending six hours there today, with a break in between, so I don't have much to report. Thursdays are turning into eating-out days, and for dinner I got myself a gyro and fries [because I've been craving Wendy's, so, so badly, frosties, their new fries, grease, unidentifiable finely-ground pieces of cow, so good, Tori, for my birthday, I'd like you to bring me a double, please, no onion or tomato or pickles, but I'll eat the lettuce, and mayo, mustard and ketchup are all fine, but no fries, they'd just turn into annelids, because the Wendy's closest to Maine seems to be in your city, and I'm not kidding] yeah, a gyro, and ate it on a riverbank, and read there for a while [Le Pere Goriot], and am taking a somewhat early night in to catch up on last weekend [it's there now, sorry to make you go back [you know, if you want to]] and prepare for this one: We're going as a group to Normandy tomorrow and tomorrowtomorrow, and I've got my two cans of ravioli at the ready.

second lunch! a brioche chocolat, absolutely fresh out the oven

where I had dinner, just on a quai of the Seine, just looking at Pont Neuf, you knooow

Day 22- Wednesday 29 June

Class was earlier than usual today, but the reading was interesting, a complementary piece to the Mercier we'd been perusing about the various vile aspects of Paris in the eighteenth century, and at the end we took the metro together and walked the streets that we'd read about, and saw two houses left from that period [because the rest had fallen/burnt down], and a few old palais, and ended on the easternmost end of Ile St Louis, in a parc that had been Restif's, the author's, Thinking Place. Going our separate ways, I went back to the apartment, first stopping by a supermarket for a few necessities [Nutella among them, of course], made lunch, then out for a bit of cadeaux-shopping and short-spotting, [though the lines were too mad to try anything on [but I have needed a pair of shorts, since April, eurgh]], then explored Parc de la Villette, wending my way through the Cite des Sciences et d'Insustries [it's a museum, like a really big MOSH [for you Jacksonvillians] complete with a planetarium and what they call the Geode, like a mirrored sphere with one of those wraparound movie screens inside it] and their free aquarium [a lot of brown fish, but still cute, I lovelovelove aquariums] and then out through the parc, which had bridges and these things called folies and bamboo and people on wide stretches of grass along the canal [that continues down to Bassin de la Villette and then through the Saint Martin area, which is on my To-Explore list] then through to a fountain where I sat and read for French tomorrow for a while then to the metro to Place de la Republique, notable for a large Liberty-esque statue commemorating the hundredth anniversary of their revolution, then back to the apartment to clean myself and hopefully we're going to eat soon because I. Am. Starving [later edit, we had spaghetti, and I had two servings, miraculous][OH, and I have to amend The Salad Rules AGAIN because you can apparently eat salad with spaghetti if you want to].

a certain shout-out .... there were a lot of Russians at the aquarium today, but I haven't bespied many other groups at all, ergo probably why this place is closed ....

the end of Ile de la Cite and two filles in my class

the temporary park in front of Hotel de Ville that sprung up while I was away, complete with shrubberies, mind you, another part of Paris celebrating 2011 as the Year of Forests

a bit of the museum, and the Geode, very pretty today, it hardly rained at all

this bridge was actually a boat that rotated to let other boats go by

a folie that was also a bar

a folie epitomizing folie-ness [they were great, the first aid station had a waterwheel, and almost all of them have human-sized staircases to nowhere in particular]

Place de la Republique, just for the record, you know

Weird things about France: I inadvertently deeply insulted Heloise, the resident daughter, by licking my knife while looking at her. At the time I was eating Nutella. Yup. So I had to explain that this was completely normal aux Etats-Unis [is it? nobody seemed to care before, unless it was a really sharp one] for several minutes and get the backup of the other resident American.

Day 21- Tuesday 28 June

Chowing on a chickenwich for breakfast, I did homework on the computer at the apartment until my host family drove me somewhat crazy and out of the apartment, so I went to the Tuileries, because it was relatively close to where our class was meeting, and I'd forgotten that they set up a sort of carnival there during Real Summer. Did more reading there, tried an apple-raspberry crumble-tart-pie-thing for lunch before meeting up with the group to have class at the Hotel Soubise, once a private residence, now, of course, a museum. Specializing in genre painting, it directly related to our discussions and reading, and being there, plus studying again later in the Tuileries, made today an awesome school day. I'm afraid of being too long-winded and mememememe all the time, so here are today's photos:

where I sat in the Tuileries

a bit of the carnival, which people either love or absolutely despise, and I don't think they have funnel cake, so I think I'll take the middle path ....

lunch

Fanprix anyone? I need to take close-ups for you guys :)

just a highway on the periphery

went back to the Tuileries, here's the Ferris wheel

this is where I sat again, good times

Weird things about France: Modification to Salad Rules I: One may eat salad with the main course if said main course is quiche. This caused some awkwardness at dinner today as the salad happened to be between the other student and I [btdub, there's another student living here now, making the in-apartment total seven, yup], and the other two were waiting for us to shovel ourselves some greens and neither of us made a move, so we just sat there waiting for the other two to start eating, and they sat there waiting for us, for about a minute, a whole minute of our lives.

Day 20- Monday 27 June

This morning was occupied with thoroughly cleaning myself, rediscovering the various objects that had been displaced by the domestic whilst I was away and doing my homework. Class was particularly interesting today as our work of choice was a first-hand account of a More Real Paris before the revolution [so, the 1780s], one that wasn't all artists in cafes and promenading of the elite but a Paris of blood congealing in the streets for blocks around the butcher areas, of the disposal of body parts from public dissections in primitive toilets, of the impoverished carting human waste in the night to just outside the city, to accounts of finding mismatched severed limbs in said outskirts, of prostitutes, an utter lack of building codes, privies leaking into the water bakers used, cemeteries being constantly dug into to place fresh bodies, thousand year-old skulls peeking from the stewing soil, and more along these lines, really interesting.

Did I mention today was hot? Freaking hot. In Provence everyone was wearing practically nothing, and I figured Cool, enjoy it while I can, but I got back and the rain and overcastness and cool-windiness from before was POOF and it was sunny and hot and the grass is always greener. We had our second class today in the Louvre, walking around until we were forcibly inclined to leave, and that I liked, too. Our professor's current area of research is in the period of eighteenth-century French painting, so she not only a) did not get us lost in the Louvre, but b) was very enthusiastic, and kept pointing out favourite This' and That's, and could talk about the museum itself, too. And, guys, that was basically my day. There was an interesting photography exhibition [link here, they were great in person, make sure you look at them at a larger size, like National Geographic eye candy] between the museum and the Palais that I looked at for a while, and did some reading, and Maria made beans and potatoes and, I dunno, beef? for dinner, and I have a lot more reading to do.

Day 19- Sunday 26 June

Just for the record, the bathroom:

I got a top bunk and out of the seven other girls sleeping in there, three snored and one breathed really loudly, and then there was me, and Tori always says I snore and Erin backs her up even though I DON'T, so maybe there were four snorers, anyways:

leaving the hostel, which, again, great place:

still leaving the hostel, it's there, to the left:

descending, this is Calanque de Port Pin, named after the pine trees on it, and you can see Rich Peoples' Pads, but apparently the rest of the calanques had been bought a fair while ago by Ricard, the alcoholic, I think, and been turned over to the government as nature preserves, which was why the rest of the area was natural and allowed others to be natural as well:

continuing on, yup, very pretty:

just a staircase:

I decided to rent a kayak for the day and get some exercise. Four euros got me food for the day, ravioli, two apples and a small thing of Nutella, and this is where I stopped for lunch, on a bit of the clothed-people rocks, and you can see my faithful vessel, whom I dubbed Aster in a fit of dehydration:

because the other side [not this one, around the corner] were less-clothed people, and here is a random kayak group:

there were a lot of rocks in different formations, really neat, though I know next to nothing about geology, of course. I held the camera pretty close to the water for this one:

I cannot tell you how many absolutely horrible, blurry, over-bright, just ick pictures I took trying to convey the fact that, if you looked, there were people all over these things, and you really had to look, because sometimes they were sniper bait walking along the top, waywayway up high, sometimes they were climbing, or dangling, and I got a good look at a trio [that you absolutely cannot see] climbing the lower bit of one, and there were their eyelets embedded everywhere in the rock that you could find by looking for the rust stains, freaking crazy people all over the place:

Heading back now, it took me and hour to get to where I stopped and over three to get back with a light tailwind, yikes:

and here I am back in Marseilles, and despite the natural lighting it is actually around nine pm, which should tell you one thing about the abilities of my camera, and another about how weird the weather is here:

aaand that was my weekend :) I was really dirty, there were no showers.

Day 18- Saturday 25 June

Leaving Arles, there was a small market and I got myself some pain au chocolats for the day:

this is near the gare [train station], and you can see the old city:

on the train to Cassis:

now I'm there, this is the port:

now I'm on another tourist boat, looking at the calanques:

and now you're going to see a lot of rocks and water and wind-beaten shrubbery:

the small fishing villiage of Sormiou:

different view of the vieux port:

beach again, clothed people, which was not always the case at the various spontaneous plages naturels on the rocks:

for the tourists, a re-enactment of a boat battle, I forget the word they used:

see the woman falling? They use basically poles, lances, to hit each other on the chest [they're wearing chest protection] hard enough to knock them off those weird elevated platforms on the back of the boats:

the Calanque d'en Vau, which I toured while walking to the hostel:

still walking to the hostel, forty-five minutes' walk from the town, wa-ay up in the hills, great place, I still got no sleep but it was fab:

On the path there, I overtook a trio of Germans in flip flops with whom I dined that evening on the trellis-covered front porch of the hostel, and we played a game a heck of a lot like another I knew, only with more rules, and conversed in Franglish and my seven words or so of German. They had a great story about hitchhiking from Toulon and, after seeing Marseilles, deciding to set off into the hills, and had to sleep on a beach, and didn't even know Cassis existed when, completely bereft of water and supplies, happened to stumble upon a beach whereupon a group of naked men told them where to restock, and they decided to stay at the hostel for a few days and take the sun.

Day 17- Friday 24 June

on the train to Arles:

got stuck in Nimes for a bit:

see, there were auto shops underneath the elevated train tracks. And here's like a really big vending machine:

and then I got to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer:

and toured the area a bit:

and had a Tourist Moment:

and walked around for a bit:

and they were selling things, of course:

and walked around more and there were flamingos:

and took the bus back to Arles:

and checked into the hostel, then had dinner here [canned ravioli], on Rhone: