ohmyohmyohmy!

I can't believe it! Actually happening! After months of dreaming, doubting, and trying crazily to put it all together, Spring Break (uh, part 2?) is on its way!! I depart tomorrow after my physiology exam that I spent all weekend studying for, in the middle of crazily trying to finish that report I mentioned earlier. I even found time to pack, clean, and go out one last time with my dance friends to let off some steam!

So, itinerary? Wanna know? Yeah!! Tomorrow afternoon I depart for Nice, then take the 5 am train to.....Rome! Yes, I know a wonderful gal from Alabama who just happens to be studying there this semester, and she welcomed me to come visit! Italy, me? Incredible! I'm so glad I'm getting the opportunity to visit, it's seriously just next door - which kind of feels crazy to say, considering that back home all that can be considered "next door" is Georgia and Mississippi...So, I'll spend three days there seeing the sights, walking like a demon to work off all the food I'll likely be eating, then on the 30th I'll be heading to Pisa for the day. Why Pisa of all places? Well, it happens to have an oh-so-convenient airport with seven-euro flights to....

Morocco!!!!

Yes, I've been dreaming about this since I've gotten here - at first, I was kind of sad because I thought it wouldn't work out - my local friends were either going home to see family or not leaving town or working, and my other international friends had made plans for other places. But finally, a few weeks ago a friend from back home managed to get the money together and come along on this dream vacation of ours! She's probably the ost perfect travel buddy I can imagine, adventurous but still laid-back, responsible but not anal-retentive or prone to freaking out over little things.

So, as of today, the two of us said 'see you later,' because the next time we'll see each other? In the Maghreb! Yes, the two of us are flying in from different airports to the infamous, glorious city of Fès! I'm sure it will finally sink in once I get past customs, or something. But who knows?

Anyway, after that, our itinerary is Fès - Rabat - Chefchaouen - Tanger, where we'll take our flight back to Marseille on May 8th after what's surely going to be one amazing eight days! This is quite a big step here - traveling around Western Europe is one thing, but I get the feeling that this will be an entirely different league. And I'm ecstatic to see what it brings!

And before I go, I've been wanting to show all you folks at home why, in spite of the extra work it's given me, that I feel like it is so totally worth it to take the extra classes I have. Remember that huge lab report I was complaining about? Well, it's not so much of a 'lab' as it is a field report. That's right, everybody in our course is divided into small groups of under 20 people, and since it's a History of the Earth course, what better way to get to know it hands-on than by getting out in the field? Playing treasure hunt, wearing Indy hats?

Look, Marisa's really bad attempt at fossil finding!

Ha ha, so while it's not quite that glamorous, it was definitely super fun and educational. Off went on the bus at 8h00 Saturday morning (nnghhhh), driving north into the real meat of the region. And let me say, I can't possibly describe to you in any sensible manner just how cool of a trip this was. Basically what we did was hop off the bus at our northernmost point for the day, and progressively work our way south - traveling through time as we did so, from the most ancient early Paleozoic periods to as recent as 30 million years ago.

I will never look at rocks the same way again!

Okay, yes, as silly as that caption sounds, it's entirely true. What you see above is, in French, called an affleurement - and the amount of information you can gain from them is astounding. Our professor,

Off the beaten path, overlooking the hills around to get the 'big picture'

shown above, is truly an astounding gentleman. So knowledgeable, and the way he conveys that to students makes you really want to pay attention and, yes, learn all this stuff about rocks. When you learn about how those hills in the distance, despite being at the same elevation, are actually millions upon millions of years older, and then why, it all starts to kind of sink in. Suddenly you find yourself picturing what this place must have looked like 200 million years ago, and just how astounding a place this planet really is. These massive things, grand mountains, are pushed up from below as easy (though not quite as quickly) as you might fold a blanket.

I promise it makes sense.

Right underneath your feet, the earth is squishing itself together slowly but surely - and every earthquake, while it is a tragedy for us who are mercy to its whims, are as natural and expected as the progression of time itself. So, despite how much we like to think we've got life and the universe all under control as the human race, Earth just sits there as does as it well pleases. The continents move apart, come back together, and hey, when we go a bit farther south we find out that where we're standing was once completely underwater - all by examining these affleurements, taking samples, etc...it was a bit over my head at times and the vocabulary definitely got tough, but I swear this professor is the nicest gentleman you can imagine. He seemed to appreciate that despite the natural lack of this technical vocabulary I'd have as someone who neither spoke this as a first language nor has taken a geology class, I was motivated and wanted to learn. He answered any questions I had, which was good, since this wasn't just a show-and-tell day. We had to do our own waypoint-finding, draw our own conclusions, determine what was important information and what was superfluous. In spite of the difficulty, still quite possibly the best "lab" I've ever seen.

Using my carte topo as a place mat as we stop for a leisurely, hour-long lunch. The French do it right!

Prime pic nic spot, middle of nowhere and on the bank of the river.

Alas, all good things must end...back to work!

Last stop of the day, sneaking in a sniff of the flowers.

Got home that day at around 17h30, tired, pleasantly tanned, and quite happy with life. So, in spite of all my complaining, was it worth it? oh yeah. Besides that, Easter Sunday was lovely - got together with some friends and had a biiiiig brunch, complete with hard-boiled egg cracking to see who wins, crêpes, baguette and cheese, nutella, fruit salad, saucisson, and just about anything else we could throw into the pile! Definitely a wonderful way to break up the week end of studying:

But for now, I've gotta run. Sleep is needed before the exam tomorrow! Until next time, guys, two weeks from now!

Alors on danse!!

This post is going to be dedicated to...yes, you guessed it. Dance! Intermittently it seems to have popped up multiple times on my blog, whether talking about club-hopping, latin nights, or salsa class. Needless to say, there is not a shortage of opportunities in this town to really get your groove on - no matter what genre of groove you may enjoy.

For those who don't know me well, I may not seem like the dancing type. After all, I admit to coming across rather reserved, mostly composed and chill and generally fairly earnest. I have noticed a fun phenomenon as a result of this; people who meet me in everyday life, whether in class, through mutual acquaintances, or whatever, don't seem to pin me as a danseuse. But when I get out on the dance floor - well, I get a real kick out of surprising people, who generally get the where did that come from look on their faces and ask me where I "learned how to dance like that?" In this case, I'm speaking mostly about dancing in pairs - salsa, bachata, merengue, kuduro - although I definitely don't mind letting loose in the clubs either!

And where did I get this from? To tell you the truth, not entirely sure. I only learned the absolute bases in any dance course I took back in Tuscaloosa, back at that beginning social dance course that appears to have started it all. After that, I did a lot of watching...better female dancers, Dancing with the Stars (yeah, yeah, I liked that show way back when!), youtube videos...and trying to imitate what seemed to make them good. I think that's something I seemed to do easily, and part of what I now know makes you a pleasure to dance with - following well. Takes time to develop, and you definitely step on a lot of toes along the way (and maybe even make somebody bleed...), but eventually you can get there.

So, point? Well, Montpellier, besides all its other wonders, is seriously like one big playground for me in comparison to the relative dryness that is Tuscaloosa. It'll be tough going back to that! For example, for the past month a group of people from my salsa course, led by the instructor, had been practicing a choreographed group salsa routine for the past month in preparation for a big day of dance at the university. The whole day involved introductions to various genres of dance, culminating in the evening with a big event - a recital, if you will - showcasing all kinds of dance talent, to a full crowd! Off the top of my head I remember a classical ballet scene between the white and black swan from the Lac des Cygnes, danse oriental (belly dance), danced Egyptian style, and by a male!, a group of marvelous tahitian dancers, kuduro, contemporary, hip hop, and an amazing couples dance that's Angolan in origin that I can't remember the name of but all I know was that it was smokin' - and the female was blindfolded for half of it!



Oh, and of course there was us - the atélier de salsa (salsa workshop), a group of about 10 of us who volunteered from the larger weekly class to work on this performance with our instructor! The group contained everybody from the truest beginners who had just joined that semester, to pretty seasoned dancers who know what's up, and everybody in between! Though mostly French, there were a couple internationals sprinkled in as well. And let me say, we really did bond as a group, and doing this has made me some wonderful friends. Our collective nerves on the day of the performance transformed afterwards into ecstasy when we realized we'd actually done it! We were so giddy that the lot of us went out, all dressed up in our matching attire and high heels (for the ladies) to the latin dance night at Cargo. The lot of us showing up like that definitely caught attention, and though I'm a modest person, we definitely earned ourselves some fans that night! And I pretty much killed my feet dancing in those heels of mine for hours on end, but I was having so much fun that they only really started feeling it at the very end on the way home, so good luck there.

Look at us go! (I'm the white skirt on your right) This video is of the performance itself: being one of the more reasonably experienced dancers, I picked up the role of the cavalier for this one - so now, anybody who wants to learn back home, I can teach! Needless to say, well worth all the rehearsal time and running back and forth between my classes - so rewarding, and we're planning a reprisal tomorrow at another latin bar in town!

Us in action, this time out in the field!

Now I can move on to another dance related topic, this time of a more posh nature - I went to the ballet! Thanks to some lady friends informing me last minute, we put on our pretty dresses and went to go see Boléro - a one-act ballet, about an hour and a half long and like nothing I could have imagined. The introduction was done by a man singing in Algerien Berber, and the costumes and musical background reflected that. About a man going off to war and never coming home, it was emotional, passionate, and so so colorful - though I don't pretend to be savvy enough to really follow the story, it was magnificent - an absolute treat, and well worth the weeknight outing!

Photo taker said be silly - something I do well, and subsequently look like a goofball in photos like these!

 Even better, immediately after the ballet, the same company (Russian, from Moscow) put on a célébration de danse - and if the ballet before was excellent, this was astonishing! Scenes from the Nutcracker (I wanted to squeal, I go nuts to the music from that ballet); the death of the swan from Swan Lake; a traditional Russian winter's dance with flowing robes and voiles; a ukranian men's dance that you had to clap along to and made everybody in the audience cheer and laugh; dark pieces that left everyone silent as a stone; everything you could want and more. Got home somewhere around midnight, the lot of us completely giddy and flabbergasted. It's too bad there weren't more students who came, I felt like the entirely elderly population must have come out to join us! It was nice to be amongst mixed age groups, again though.

Boléro, singer in the middle

Ballerinas twirling out for their encore at the end of the show!

 And since I'm quite pooped here, I'm going to call it a night a little abruptly to this public love session to dance. You don't want to know the level of work I've got to do this weekend - a huge scientific field report in geology, a lab final in physiology, on top of final preparations to depart for Rome and Morocco - all on top of spending time with the people in this town I've come to love! A little stressful and sleep-deprived, but otherwise happy. Until next time, if anybody still reads this! (hi, mom!)

Beach bum?

 Since my last post, things have made quite a turn around! It doesn't hurt that these past two weeks have been absolutely filled with the most glorious weather imaginable - mid 20's celsius up to maximum of 30 one particularly warm Friday, so much sunshine you just can't take it anymore, and a general feeling of premature summer ease and relaxation that seems to be floating around the air about as tangibly as the smell of crêpe and kebab when walking past some of my favorite quick order places.

So, what exactly have I been up to? Well, this past weekend, I went to the beach. Not once, not twice, but three times in five days. Whoop de doo, you're saying, right? After all, I live near the beach, don't I? Well, here's the astonishing part - central Montpellier is 10 km from the coast, and Vert-Bois (my residence) is another 5/6 to the north. Why is this important? Well, I went to the beach each of these times by bike! And after an interesting experience that I'll recount later, I came back from my third and final beach trip and did some calculations - I biked a grand total of 90 km (that's more than 50 miles) in these few days. I had no idea I had it in me! I ended up too exhausted to move for the next day or two, dragging my self to salsa rehearsal and trying to put up a good performace.

Friday afternoon after my physiology course, in which I'm currently learning about all the complex wonders of the endocrine system, I tell myself this: "hey, nice weather we're having! You deserve a break from "real" training (running and more running), why don't you take a nice relaxing bike ride around town before you need to be at the train station? Well, that nice and easy bike ride ended up leading me somewhere totally different than I envisioned, and so when I found myself on the south side of town I though hey, what the heck, off to the beach! So away I went. In a brilliant move of city planning, Montpellier has a dedicated bike road - removed from the highway - that runs directly along the river, all the way until it spits you out at the Mediterranean Sea. And let me tell you, it's glorious.

A picture, so you don't have to just take my word for it :)

Stopped to make a friend!

So, I enjoy myself for the entire 30 minutes I could spend on the beach (bike ride of an hour from centre of town) until I have to get back to town like greased lightning - another group of students from the same exchange program in Chambéry (where we went skiing, remember?) were coming to visit for the weekend, and a few of us agreed to greet them at the train station. So I, being late, pratically flew back and got there in time, a little scruffy but on time!

The students from Chambéry came with us on our regional trip the next day, in which we visited the Viaduc de Millau, officially the tallest bridge in the world! It was lovely.

Seriously. Behemoth. And still beautiful.

Surrounding view.

We also visited a pleasant medieval town called La Couvertoirade, which I'll pass over for now, and the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in which, yes, you guessed it!, the famously moldy Roquefort cheese is made. Now, let me say one thing here. The French take their cheese SERIOUSLY. Like, you think it's a joke when people call American cheese plastic, but it's true. Even though I will say time and time again how I really don't enjoy Roquefort (it's potent stuff), at the end of our tour of the caves de Roquefort (yes, you read correctly: cheese cave. This cheese sits and develops in these caves for months and months) when we were offered several samples, I tried. Although I'll stick to less potent cheese without colonies of penicillin fungus inside, thanks, I still was savvy enough to notice that this is good cheese. Very good. Sure, the caves smelled kind of like old feet, but it was overall a very informative tour - and we got to learn just why these caves, and only these caves (with a couple others nearby), are right for making this cheese. Has to do with the constant air currents that run through these particular rock formations, etc etc.

Qui a coupé le fromage?

Moving on to Sunday. The other exchange students were being taken to the beach in the morning (by bus). Seeing as how there are very few buses and I preferred to sleep in and come on my own a little later by the gorgeous bike path, I planned to meet the group around noon. As it turns out, they had decided to go to the beach at Carnon, not Palavas (the beach I went to Friday), which is actually 15 km from the centre ville - which was really no problem, I got to enjoy myself some more by the river and the awesome salt lakes that greet you just when you're starting to get reeeeally close.

So, I manage to be a good little navigator and find them on the sand fairly easily. I, being warm, set my towel down and go for an obligatory hop in the water. I was brave enough to get all the way in (really really cold), but didn't stay for more than a few minutes because my feet were getting numb. So out again I go. No sooner do I plop my behind down on my towel before I notice that there's an air of stress about. Our program coordinator's on the phone, with a girl who - as it turns out - had been missing since yesterday night when the kids went out. So, as soon as the phone is hung up, our coordinator (who is wonderful and sweet and definitely didn't deserve having to deal with this) looks at me with that look on her face. You know the one - the one where someone's about to ask you a favor. How did I arrive? By bike, I respond. Is there a seat on the back? Well, there's a small kind of rack that you can sit on in a pinch, but my tires are a little under pumped. I'm still uninformed on the "missing" portion of this, and why everyone's suddenly looking at me.

Well, the situation: it's after 12h30. The next bus to Montpellier departs at 13h30. The following bus will not be here until two-odd hours later. The problem with that? That's when these kids' train leaves. Apparently, the missing girl wanted to come catch everybody at the beach, took a different bus, and ended up staying on the bus until La Grande Motte - which is way off to the east. Now, it's time to play Fun With Maps!

I should be a cartographer.

Point A, my dorm in Montpellier, is off-screen. Also 16 kilometres away. Point B, Palavas, is where I went on Friday. C is Carnon, where the group is, and 5 km farther east. La Grande Motte is off the map to the right.

So, it appears to be up to me here. I ask what the girl looks like and where she is (they'd finally managed to establish phone contact with her, so that's good), put my shorts back on that wet behind of mine, and get back on the bike to hunt her down. Point D is where I found her, walking on the road parallel to the beach in our direction - which she had been doing for the past hour, she told me, visibly upset. Now, by the time I found her it was already past 1 pm. 4 km is about 2.5 miles. A brisk walk is 4 mph. Conclusion? Walking wasn't going to cut it. Had to calm her down (lost in a strange city, walking alone with nothing but her phone for over an hour, with the threat of being stranded and missing her train? Yeah, stressful.) and convince her to get on the back of my bike so I could ride her back. Halfway there the road got too narrow for it to be safe (riding with a shaky person on the back ain't easy, let me tell you) so we have to abandon that. Five minutes of walking later, receive an increasingly panicked call from our coordinator saying that the bus leaves in 10 minutes and everyone else has already left the beach to try and hold the bus. I hang up, calmly explain the situation to our poor stressed girl, and finally get her on my bike with me running alongside to direct her. After all that, we make it back to the beach and they run off to catch the bus, leaving me alone to take a much needed nap on the sand. All in a day's work, I suppose.

I don't think there was much point to this story, except that I added another 8 km to my day...and that if I hadn't shown up when I did, I'd hate to see how this day would have ended. Also, perhaps I'm too nice for my own good since I seem to find myself in these sorts of scenarios more frequently than I probably should. Despite the fact that my parents seem to find me generally incompetent, on the whole I'm not too bad at taking care of business when the need arises - or maybe I'm just better at taking care of others than I am of myself. Ha, who knows?

So that was a lot of writing. Uh, conclusions? Finished up the weekend at the beach and got my legs all nice and burnt on the ride back, in which there was a beastly wind blowing against me the entire way. It was torture, but I did it. Oh, and managed to recover my energy enough to go back to the beach (this time, with another friend! Together! On bikes!) on Tuesday, with picnic of sammiches and gummy worms. So, like I said, total = 90 kilometers. I'm trying to decide if this qualifies me as a beach bum or a beast.

Heading home under the beautiful evening sun. Also, when did my arms get so buff?

Until next time, when I talk about...the ballet!

The pursuit of happyness.

No pictures, today. Just writing. (sorry!) But it's needed.

It's now April. I'm entering my eighth month here. I sometimes take a step outside myself and can scarcely believe I actually did this. Just looking where I am now in relation to this same point a year ago...every so often I have to remind myself that yes, it's true.

One of my favorite movies is the title of this post. The Pursuit of Happyness, purposely misspelled. Evidently it's not like this particular story reflects my own life or anyone else's exactly. The thing that makes it so compelling and why I constantly return to it to give me some much-needed perspective on life is because of his determination- and how he feels so relatable. Take your own problems, self-doubts, and challenges and at least for me they transcend this medium until you feel like you very well could be watching yourself on the screen; your highs and lows, the feelings like nothing's going your way but you keep going because you can't stop. Because, really, all anybody wants to do is the best with what they've been given - no matter what that is - and overcome, bit by bit, clawing ahead one hand after another, to find whatever happy is for you. So before advancing from this unexplained episode of philosophizing, I'll just take a moment to say that Will Smith rocks.

Some people go abroad to further their career opportunities. Others go to learn a language, experience a new culture, escape their own, get the opportunity to travel...or any combination of the above. Me, I think I've pretty much figured the principal reason out. I'm a pretty simple person. All I want out of life is to be happy. And to try my best to do what it takes to achieve that. Coming to France, though perhaps a bit unusual and certainly something that won't give me anything concrete to show for being here, seemed to be the right thing to do at this point in life. I'll probably reflect more on this at a later date, but for the moment at least this fact is established. Happiness.

Naturally, one can't expect to be one hundred percent happy and giddy the entire time here, and doing that would set you up for some big disappointment. That being said, these past couple weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster ride, finally culminating in one of those moments when you get to learn through experience (argh. who else hates that word.) one of those nasty little Facts of Life. It sucks, a lot, but to steal a quote from somebody who escapes me, sometimes you've got to remember that failure is an event, not a person. So there you go. I feel like I've done a good job so far keeping negativity out of these blog posts, and now it's time to move on. Can't keep a soldier down for long.

Besides that, life is more or less as usual. Planning a vacation to Italy/Morocco/who knows where? in late April, so that's cool! Also, the weather here is nothing short. of. amazing. Focusing on studying is so hard it isn't funny. Every day I want to go out for a bike ride, a jog, or just lay on the grass and do nothing. Or take said bike and go downtown on a whim with friends on a Friday, and gratuitously buy two pairs of sandals from one of the cheap shoe stores in town. So I feel entirely ready for summer, perhaps a couple months too early, which may not be the best idea since exams at the fac des sciences are looming right before vacation. Until next time, wish me luck (and concentration)!