Well my midterms are finally over, some of them were a lot harder than I expected but now I know that I need to study harder for the final.
Tomorrow I am off at the crack of dawn to see my friend KJ in Barcelona. She is currently studying abroad in Granada and we decided that it was just easier to meet in the middle. So hopefully all goes well while I am there (like not missing any flights (knock on wood)).
So when I get back Monday night I should be able to fill you all in on something exciting.
Can you believe that my program is over half way done?? Because I really can't.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Football Game and Midterms
All this week we have to take "examens blancs" which are basically just midterms that don't count for your grade, which I think is kind of lame. However, it is nice to see what kind of questions will be on the final.
I took one on Tuesday and it was pretty ridiculous. There were 6 pictures of what I think were French presidents but I am not sure and we had to identify four of them and describe them a little. So hopefully the ones I said were actually in the pictures =) I might take one today if I am able to get to the campus because there is another national greve so the buses might not be running today, which sucks, but I guess that is okay because I can always take it tomorrow. Then I have two more next Tuesday inmy Business and Translation class, but again they don't count, which is nice.
Last night I went to a football (soccer) game with my host brother, his friend, and me friend Julia. It was Grenoble against Monaco in the quarter/finals for the French league or something like that. It was a lot of fun, the fans a crazy though. There is a special area for the away team's fans in this cage like place so that they don't get in fights with the home team's fans and there were a bunch of police in riot gear and security gaurds with metalboxes with sand in them in case there are flares. They were definitely prepared for anything to happen.
I took one on Tuesday and it was pretty ridiculous. There were 6 pictures of what I think were French presidents but I am not sure and we had to identify four of them and describe them a little. So hopefully the ones I said were actually in the pictures =) I might take one today if I am able to get to the campus because there is another national greve so the buses might not be running today, which sucks, but I guess that is okay because I can always take it tomorrow. Then I have two more next Tuesday inmy Business and Translation class, but again they don't count, which is nice.
Last night I went to a football (soccer) game with my host brother, his friend, and me friend Julia. It was Grenoble against Monaco in the quarter/finals for the French league or something like that. It was a lot of fun, the fans a crazy though. There is a special area for the away team's fans in this cage like place so that they don't get in fights with the home team's fans and there were a bunch of police in riot gear and security gaurds with metalboxes with sand in them in case there are flares. They were definitely prepared for anything to happen.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Weekend In Grenoble
This weekend 5 people out of our group were gone. 4 went to Geneva and 1 went to London to go see an exhibit, which left just Lauren and Philip and me. However, this was one of the best weekends to have stayed behind in Grenoble because the weather was gorgeous. We spent most of the weekend at this huge park behind the local highschool laying in the grass. It was a really nice relaxing weekend.
We also went out because Lauren's host brother, Martin, was having a sleepover for his birthday and he wanted to house to himself so Lauren wanted to go out so I went with her. However, at my bus stop there was about 7, 14 or 15 year old and I could tell something was a little off with them. One girl goes behind the bus stop and her friend tells me not to look. I wasn't looking to begin with, but telling someone not to look instantly makes them curious. I really should not have looked because to my dismay I see that she is peeing. Mind you it is only7 o clock at night. After she peed two of the boys she was with did so also. And then one boy asks me what time the bus is and this girl was like what did he say to you! And when I told her that he just wanted to know what time the bus was she was like oh okay. She then wanted to know if i was french? english? and finally i just told her I was an America. Bad idea because then they all flocked to me and demanded to know where I was from and I said California. And then they start naming random cities in the US such as Las Vegas and New York. Finally I just said near San Francisco.
They all wanted to know what I was doing that night and I just said I was going down town and then they all wanted me to go with them and I was like no thanks, I have to meet my friend. I am super glad that I did notgo with them because one of the guys threw up at the bus stop. I could not believe how these young kids were acting and to top it all off it was barely even dark out.
We also went out because Lauren's host brother, Martin, was having a sleepover for his birthday and he wanted to house to himself so Lauren wanted to go out so I went with her. However, at my bus stop there was about 7, 14 or 15 year old and I could tell something was a little off with them. One girl goes behind the bus stop and her friend tells me not to look. I wasn't looking to begin with, but telling someone not to look instantly makes them curious. I really should not have looked because to my dismay I see that she is peeing. Mind you it is only7 o clock at night. After she peed two of the boys she was with did so also. And then one boy asks me what time the bus is and this girl was like what did he say to you! And when I told her that he just wanted to know what time the bus was she was like oh okay. She then wanted to know if i was french? english? and finally i just told her I was an America. Bad idea because then they all flocked to me and demanded to know where I was from and I said California. And then they start naming random cities in the US such as Las Vegas and New York. Finally I just said near San Francisco.
They all wanted to know what I was doing that night and I just said I was going down town and then they all wanted me to go with them and I was like no thanks, I have to meet my friend. I am super glad that I did notgo with them because one of the guys threw up at the bus stop. I could not believe how these young kids were acting and to top it all off it was barely even dark out.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
American Birthday Party
Tomorrow is Kathryn's birthday, but Julia is flying to London to see a Byzano tine Empire exhibit so we had a picnic today to celebrate. Julia, Dianne, and Catherine all went to Leader Price, which I guess is this off brand, discount grocery store, where they bought a lot of "goodies" for Catherine. Some of these goodies were bacon flavored potato chips, violet candies that tasted like soap, perfume, and makeup, smurf gummies, tequilla flavored beer (not tequilla but beer that tasted like it), a pudding dessert in a can, party fizz with disney princesses on it, and lots of chocolate. Suffiencet to say most of the stuff was degusting, but we all had to try some of each (this was the only time I really wanted to be a vegetartian, so I could have gotten out of the bacon flavored chips).
Tomorrow Lauren is coming over to my house so we can bake we some cupcakes and then bring them over to Kathryn's house before we all go out.
Tomorrow Lauren is coming over to my house so we can bake we some cupcakes and then bring them over to Kathryn's house before we all go out.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Life in Morocco
Basically to sum up everything about my trip in Morocco was that everything was late. According to everyone the French train system is ALWAYS on time, but apparently that doesn't apply to me since only 1 of my trains has been on time. Cat and I left Grenoble to go to Marsielle but that train was 15 minutes late so we almost missed our connection. We had to run to catch the train.
In Marseille since our flight was so early in the morning we decided to stay the night at the airport to save money. That was not such a good idea. I was unable to sleep not because of the uncomfortable chairs or the lights (although that didn't help), I couldn't sleep because it was sooo cold in the airport. At 3 AM I decided to put more clothes on so I put another pair of jeans over the pair I already had on. But I still wasn't able to sleep, however, I did find a British tabloid newspaper that I could read, which was really nice.
So our flight was into Tanger (Tangiers) but we were going to meet our friends in Fez so we had to take a train. However, there was something wrong with the train tracks so we had to take a bus. The bus was a 4 hour long ride in the middle of no where and then we could take a train. However, that train was late so we had to wait around the train station. Once on the train, there were no seats left so we had to stand in between two cars. This apparently was the smoking area for men, even though there were no smoking signs everywhere and we were the only girls, which brought a lot of stares (which would follow us everywhere). On the train Cat noticed that her cellphone was nolonger in her pocket, which meant that somewhere in between the bus and getting on the train someone had stolen her phone. This also started an unfortunate pattern of bad things happening to us.
Eventually we made it to Fez and luckily the hotel was really easy to fine and our friends Julia and Kathryn were on the terrace of the hotel. Cat and I were starving since we had not eaten real food so we went across the street to this cafe. I ordered couscous and mint tea and it was SO good and it was only about 4 dollars. There was so much food that I was unable to eat it all.
The next day we walked to these French ruins at the top of this hill with panoramic views of Fez and then we decided to venture into the Medina and then proceeded to get lost for an hour and a half. People everywhere we hassling us and call us names to try and get our attention and get us to buy things from them, or to become our guide and then rip us of. But eventually we found our way out of the maze like Medina, but not before seeing men carrying live chickens in the hands, people selling live snails, a camel's head, and other things that I am not even sure what it was.
After our long day of walking we went back to our hotel and went to the same cafe, where "Chad" talked to us about the differences to Berber and Arab cultures. (Chad was a worker at the cafe and he was Berber). He offered some pretty interesting insights, which we found to be true later on.
We left Fez the next day to travel down to Marrakesh. This was about a 7 hour train ride and after not finding seats on the first train we decided to ride in first class with only about a 10 dollar difference. In our compartment we met a man who was a little crazy and when he found out we were Americans he proclaimed to hate Osama Bin Laden and call America paradise. Thankfully he wasn't going all the way to Marrakesh with us.
In Marrakesh there were massive rain clouds and thunder, so Cat and I decided to eat really fast before the rain came down. We ate at the main square, where there are a bunch of restaurants that basically sell the same things and all of the workers call out to the tourists to get them to eat at their restaurants.
The next day we went to a Hamman at our hotel, which is basically a sauna and a bath house combined. Where the workers wash you and use this soap that is exfoliating. After our hours of traveling without a shower it was really nice. Then we went walking around the Medina in Marrakesh and got a little lost, but not too lost.
Miraculously in our wandering around town we saw this man with about 5 camels and a couple of little ponies. He wanted 150 from each of us just to get on a camel, but we bargained down to 75 for the both of us and he even took some pictures of us. After the camel adventure we walked around and got henna tattoos at the big square and then went back to our hotel.
The next day we went to the royal place and took some picture which apparently is illegal because a guard came up to us. I thought we was going to take our camera or our memory cards, but he just made us delete the pictures, which was nice considering. I still don't know why we couldn't take pictures because there weren't any signs or anything.
We basically had a lot of time to kill because we had did everything that we had wanted to do on the first day. But we waited in Marrakesh to meet up with our friends, but they never called us but we thought that they were going to check into our hotel. I guess they did try to call us, but none of our phones worked in Morocco. Oh well. Eventually I got so sick of all of the leering and name calling and people asking for money that I didn't want to leave our hotel room anymore because it gets pretty exhausting.
We decided to take the night to Tanger from Marrakesh because it was a 10 and a half hour train ride, which was supposed to get us into Tanger at 7:30 with plenty of time to make our 9:45 flight. However, how train was almost 2 hours late, so we literally jumped off of the train before it stopped and ran to get a taxi. But we definitely chose the wrong taxi because he didn't go fast at all and the proceeded to take almost all of the money out of my wallet. I say almost because he left me a 200 dirhaim bill, that no one would take because it was ripped a little, but all of the numbers on the bill were still there. But essentially I had no money left. At the airport they wouldn't let us check in and since we flew with ryan air, we couldn't check in online because we weren't EU nationals, so there was no way onto the plane. I then started to cry in the middle of the airport because I was just so fed up with Morocco and just wanted to go back to France.
There were no flights to France from Tanger out that day so our other options was to take a 36 hour boat ride to some city 250 KM from Marsielle, which is about 500 KM from Grenoble all together. Cat gets seasick so that wasn't an option. So there was a flight to Paris on Saturday and a flight to Marsielle on Sunday. Both tickets we would have to pay for and none of us had any money for food or for a hotel and we both wanted to leave as soon as possible so we took the flight to Paris.
Since we didn't really have any housing options, Cat asked the lady at the desk if we could sleep at the airport, which she said we couldn't. But she did ask if we wanted to go back to her apartment which she shared with her sister. We both said yes and we were so greatful for her. Cat and I waited at the airport until she got off of work and then went back to her place, where her sister had cooked us dinner. We watched Arabic MTV with a bunch of arabic music which was really nice. They wanted to take us our dancing, but we both hadn't had a shower since Monday so we didn't want to go.
On Saturday, they took us to the airport and they didn't charge us to check-in or to check in Cat's bag which was super nice. Our flight was about 30 minutes late though, so when we got to Paris we discovered that we missed the last train to Grenoble by about 15 minutes. So we then took a train to Lyon and got in at 11 PM and the last train to Grenoble from Lyon was at 10:45 PM. So we both had to stay in a hotel at Lyon and wait until 6:45 AM for a train to Grenoble. Finally in Grenoble we look at the bus stop and see that we missed our bus by about 10 minutes and then had to wait an hour and a half to finally get home.
Basically it was an adventure and a half. I am glad I went though because I got to see a completely different culture and although it was stressful I was able to do a LOT of shopping and got my friends some really cool presents.
In Marseille since our flight was so early in the morning we decided to stay the night at the airport to save money. That was not such a good idea. I was unable to sleep not because of the uncomfortable chairs or the lights (although that didn't help), I couldn't sleep because it was sooo cold in the airport. At 3 AM I decided to put more clothes on so I put another pair of jeans over the pair I already had on. But I still wasn't able to sleep, however, I did find a British tabloid newspaper that I could read, which was really nice.
So our flight was into Tanger (Tangiers) but we were going to meet our friends in Fez so we had to take a train. However, there was something wrong with the train tracks so we had to take a bus. The bus was a 4 hour long ride in the middle of no where and then we could take a train. However, that train was late so we had to wait around the train station. Once on the train, there were no seats left so we had to stand in between two cars. This apparently was the smoking area for men, even though there were no smoking signs everywhere and we were the only girls, which brought a lot of stares (which would follow us everywhere). On the train Cat noticed that her cellphone was nolonger in her pocket, which meant that somewhere in between the bus and getting on the train someone had stolen her phone. This also started an unfortunate pattern of bad things happening to us.
Eventually we made it to Fez and luckily the hotel was really easy to fine and our friends Julia and Kathryn were on the terrace of the hotel. Cat and I were starving since we had not eaten real food so we went across the street to this cafe. I ordered couscous and mint tea and it was SO good and it was only about 4 dollars. There was so much food that I was unable to eat it all.
The next day we walked to these French ruins at the top of this hill with panoramic views of Fez and then we decided to venture into the Medina and then proceeded to get lost for an hour and a half. People everywhere we hassling us and call us names to try and get our attention and get us to buy things from them, or to become our guide and then rip us of. But eventually we found our way out of the maze like Medina, but not before seeing men carrying live chickens in the hands, people selling live snails, a camel's head, and other things that I am not even sure what it was.
After our long day of walking we went back to our hotel and went to the same cafe, where "Chad" talked to us about the differences to Berber and Arab cultures. (Chad was a worker at the cafe and he was Berber). He offered some pretty interesting insights, which we found to be true later on.
We left Fez the next day to travel down to Marrakesh. This was about a 7 hour train ride and after not finding seats on the first train we decided to ride in first class with only about a 10 dollar difference. In our compartment we met a man who was a little crazy and when he found out we were Americans he proclaimed to hate Osama Bin Laden and call America paradise. Thankfully he wasn't going all the way to Marrakesh with us.
In Marrakesh there were massive rain clouds and thunder, so Cat and I decided to eat really fast before the rain came down. We ate at the main square, where there are a bunch of restaurants that basically sell the same things and all of the workers call out to the tourists to get them to eat at their restaurants.
The next day we went to a Hamman at our hotel, which is basically a sauna and a bath house combined. Where the workers wash you and use this soap that is exfoliating. After our hours of traveling without a shower it was really nice. Then we went walking around the Medina in Marrakesh and got a little lost, but not too lost.
Miraculously in our wandering around town we saw this man with about 5 camels and a couple of little ponies. He wanted 150 from each of us just to get on a camel, but we bargained down to 75 for the both of us and he even took some pictures of us. After the camel adventure we walked around and got henna tattoos at the big square and then went back to our hotel.
The next day we went to the royal place and took some picture which apparently is illegal because a guard came up to us. I thought we was going to take our camera or our memory cards, but he just made us delete the pictures, which was nice considering. I still don't know why we couldn't take pictures because there weren't any signs or anything.
We basically had a lot of time to kill because we had did everything that we had wanted to do on the first day. But we waited in Marrakesh to meet up with our friends, but they never called us but we thought that they were going to check into our hotel. I guess they did try to call us, but none of our phones worked in Morocco. Oh well. Eventually I got so sick of all of the leering and name calling and people asking for money that I didn't want to leave our hotel room anymore because it gets pretty exhausting.
We decided to take the night to Tanger from Marrakesh because it was a 10 and a half hour train ride, which was supposed to get us into Tanger at 7:30 with plenty of time to make our 9:45 flight. However, how train was almost 2 hours late, so we literally jumped off of the train before it stopped and ran to get a taxi. But we definitely chose the wrong taxi because he didn't go fast at all and the proceeded to take almost all of the money out of my wallet. I say almost because he left me a 200 dirhaim bill, that no one would take because it was ripped a little, but all of the numbers on the bill were still there. But essentially I had no money left. At the airport they wouldn't let us check in and since we flew with ryan air, we couldn't check in online because we weren't EU nationals, so there was no way onto the plane. I then started to cry in the middle of the airport because I was just so fed up with Morocco and just wanted to go back to France.
There were no flights to France from Tanger out that day so our other options was to take a 36 hour boat ride to some city 250 KM from Marsielle, which is about 500 KM from Grenoble all together. Cat gets seasick so that wasn't an option. So there was a flight to Paris on Saturday and a flight to Marsielle on Sunday. Both tickets we would have to pay for and none of us had any money for food or for a hotel and we both wanted to leave as soon as possible so we took the flight to Paris.
Since we didn't really have any housing options, Cat asked the lady at the desk if we could sleep at the airport, which she said we couldn't. But she did ask if we wanted to go back to her apartment which she shared with her sister. We both said yes and we were so greatful for her. Cat and I waited at the airport until she got off of work and then went back to her place, where her sister had cooked us dinner. We watched Arabic MTV with a bunch of arabic music which was really nice. They wanted to take us our dancing, but we both hadn't had a shower since Monday so we didn't want to go.
On Saturday, they took us to the airport and they didn't charge us to check-in or to check in Cat's bag which was super nice. Our flight was about 30 minutes late though, so when we got to Paris we discovered that we missed the last train to Grenoble by about 15 minutes. So we then took a train to Lyon and got in at 11 PM and the last train to Grenoble from Lyon was at 10:45 PM. So we both had to stay in a hotel at Lyon and wait until 6:45 AM for a train to Grenoble. Finally in Grenoble we look at the bus stop and see that we missed our bus by about 10 minutes and then had to wait an hour and a half to finally get home.
Basically it was an adventure and a half. I am glad I went though because I got to see a completely different culture and although it was stressful I was able to do a LOT of shopping and got my friends some really cool presents.
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