Aix and Beyond: Le Grand Marché

The school week ended quickly - most likely due to the fact that on three occasions my professors were still "busy" on holiday. The school system here is vastly different - and in some ways rather primitive - than university setup in the US. Professors hold 2 hour classes once a week during which they tend to sit and read their lecture notes aloud without much, if any, interaction. It can be a bit monotonous and keeping focused is the primary challenge. We are not assigned homework, and instead need to take good notes so that when we have our one and only final exam we can do alright. In truth, I'd much prefer to meet 3 times a week for 40 minutes with assigned reading and smaller projects throughout the semester, but this is France and all I can do is enjoy the fact that my nights are not cluttered with work and once class is over my days are free to be filled with whatever I choose.

Last night, Friday, we threw a going away party for a Dutch student who has been here since September - Jan's going back to Belgium on Sunday to finish up his studies. To celebrate everyone chipped in and brought cheap wine and energy for the night. To start the evening off we gathered in one of the residence halls' kitchens to make BLAT (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) sandwiches which turned out to be extraordinary. The only bacon we could find was basically uncut pork-belly so Angela (another student from Louisiana) and myself sliced it into thick strips and fried it in a skillet while a couple other kids graded some cheese, prepared the avocados and got the croissants ready we were using for bread. The end result was fantastic - especially after a couple glasses of wine. There was a fairly large group of us - maybe 20 strong - and we spent about 2 hours talking, drinking wine and having fun. I met 4 or 5 new people who were fun to talk to and get to know. Eventually, we made our way downtown to France's version of a dive bar with pool tables upstairs and a 14th century stone basement-turned-dance-floor. The place was packed and full of kids dancing and having a good time. After dancing for a bit we snagged a table and talked more - there are kids from all over at the university: I spent a long time talking to a guy from Chicago who was born in Ukraine, there were some awesome kids from all over France and some other Americans representing each region of the country.

This morning, I got up and made my way down to the massive Saturday farmers' market. At the Place des Pecheurs, outside the mayor's office, the square is filled with carts and stands peddling everything from North African spices to ravioli. The place was bustling with people buying fruit and vegetables or artisan cheese and hand-cut pork chops (the butcher would use a hack-saw right when your ordered). I wandered threw the stalls and grabbed some fresh avocados (4 for 2 euros) and some apples grown in the region before making my way to one of the butcher trucks where I picked up some saucisse de Toulouse (a spicy sausage good for grilling or sauteeing) and some fresh chevre that had been coated in shallots. At a different cart I asked the woman behind the case which of the two types of fromage de tête (head cheese) she liked the best. She recommended the stuff with black peppers and aromatics so I bought a small slice for later - I figure when in Rome, or France is it were, one might as well eat as much offal as possible.

In the streets all around the farmers' market a clothing and accessories bazaar gets setup where people can buy knock-off jeans, gawdy shoes or flashy jewelry while rummaging through tables of antiques and odds and ends. While I was strolling through the alleyways and looking in windows my friend Manon texted me and asked if I'd like to grab a crepe downtown and sit in the sun. We met up, along with one of the other new Americans, and ordered a crepe from a stand on the street filled with an egg, cheese and a slice of ham. They wrap the whole, melty concoction up and hand it to you with a small paper plate folded around it. From there we headed down to the Place Richelme in front of the Hotel de Ville to sit in the sunshine (it must have been close to 70 today in the sun) and eat. The crepe was fantastic - crispy and brown on the outside and filled with a semi-scrambled, soft friend egg and gooey cheese. After doing some people watching and relaxing in the square we headed out into the city to explore a bit and made our way to the other side of Aix - in the newer part of the city - to take a peak at the Grand Theatre de Provence and see if we could find a frizbee somewhere. No place had any discs for sale, but we did get another chance to sit in the sun and see a different part of town.

Tomorrow a group of us are going to try and find a bus that will take us out of a town a ways into the hill country so we can do a little hiking and maybe take a picnic. Hopefully the weather stays great and we can figure out how to get into the Provencal countryside.