finally a day to catch you all up.

The BIG turkey. one of like 20 that we ate. so delicious

All the belle filles at my table. i'm a lucky guy
Me and the guys bowling and goofing off
Ahh. the vineyard
Getting ready for the 30 minute ride to the wine country

Sorry. it's been busy here

So it has been a little while since i have updated you guys. Sorry about that. I must be having too much fun. But let me finally get this thing started.

so what like two Sundays ago is where i will begin. I had lunch with a small group of friends at that restaurant/pub the Bulldog (i believe i mentioned this place before. it has the American football). so we met and just all got caught up on each others lives in France. after this, we went to the international church here. it was pretty crazy. we actually had this really drunk beggar guy like right at the church door. and at the beginning of the service he came in and was shouting in French. so he was politely escorted out. after the service like 50 of us went back to the Bulldog for some burgers and Football. some of the guys here have a fantasy football league. and the true intention was for it to be just them going to watch the games and keep up with their points on the web. but it is just such a great pub that everyone wanted to come. so i think i was there until 12ish. then it was time for the long walk home. but all in all Sunday was a good day.

Let's move on to Tuesday. So in one of my language classes we were having our first test. I was not that difficult for me. but then again i have not received my grade yet. hopefully a 20 (but yeah right, nobody ever gets a 20. p.s. the french grade everything on a scale to 20 not 100) but after the test we had a really fun event planned in class. the day before we all organized to have a party! One of my friends in the class, Misha (pictured above in the bright blue, next to M. Tissot, one of the profs) has a fiance who happens to own a vineyard outside of town. so she brought a few bottles of the wine they make, and the rest of the class brought different cheeses and bread. we spent 2 hours or so just socializing and drinking and playing crazy french games that the teachers knew. It was so much fun. we really came together as a group. and now we are all much greater freinds. and i think we all did leave just a bit tipsy. but hey. can you say you ever got to drink wine with your teachers in class. you gotta love the french way of life.

On thursday me and some friends decided to do a soup night. Each person, outta the 16 that came, brought an ingredient of their choice. and we made up the soup as we went. The object was to make something really tasty and then take half of it out to the streets and feed the homeless. so we accomplished the first part. the soup was really good. But when we went out in search of homeless people we could not find hardly any. which is really strange since durring the day we all know where at leaste 10 are on our normal routes through the city. I guess they all have somewhere to go at night. this is a really good thing tho. And it also meant that we got to have more soup for ourselves. haha. oh, also i got to invite a friend from class to come. and before we went to the soup tasting we stopped by her appartement for a couple glasses of wine. and i really got to know her a lot better. we talked for a couple hours. it was really good. she has definitely had a very interesting and varied life so far. So yeah thursday was a success.

This is all i can right tonight. i will try and publish everything i did on the weekend really soon. and it was a jammed packed weekend. and i loved it. second favorite since i have been here. well i have got a test tomorrow so i shoudl get some rest. hope all is well

middle of the week.

so we had today off of school for armistice day (veteran's day for all of you stateside). So i took advantage of this and went to a fun dorm party last night. we had pastis and smoked hookah. it was really cool getting to meet some more French people. i think we were up til like 3 am. so needless to say, i slept way in today. i woke up around 2 in the afternoon. that's the latest i have slept yet!

tonight some friends and i had dinner together at Loni's apartment. We bought a couple rotisserie chickens and some green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, and gravy. It was really good. It felt like a mini thanksgiving. we sat and ate and talked for a long time. then we played some cards. i actually learned a new game. It's called "Turrets" . I will try and explain it to you, because it was really fun and i think you would enjoy it. So you sit around the table and one person holds the whole deck of cards, just for convenience we will call this person the dealer. So the dealer will turn over one card and put it on the table. He is now in a battle against the person next to him. How you win the battle is to be the first person to say a word (no numbers or Proper nouns). this word must start with the same letter that the number starts with. For example: if a 5 (Five) is flipped over then you must be the first person to say something that starts with an "F". and no words can ever be repeated during the game. So if you win the battle you get the card. If you were the Dealer who won, then you keep the deck and you flip over the next card and are now in a battle with the next person (traveling around the table clockwise). you keep being the dealer until someone else wins the battle of words. and then they get that card that they won on and the deck transfers to them. they are now the new dealer, and will battle the next person in line. It is a really fun game and if you try it, you will find it is a lot harder to think of words than you might think. we came up with stuff like; tumbleweed, squirrel, flag.... The object is to get as many cards as you can, and the game ends when the deck is out. you can use multiple decks to get the game to last longer, and you can even use Uno cards if that's all you can find. but try it out and tell me what you think. you understand why it's called Turrets? you wind up yelling out the most random of words, and you studder a lot trying to think of stuff to say.

well i hope all is well, can't wait to hear from you guys!

So wait! the election already happened???

hey, so yeah i guess a lot has been going on in the States since i left. I mean wow, now it looks like we are going to have Obama take over the white house... (I did actually get a text from a friend ia 5am with the announcement. moment of excitement, and then straight back to sleep.) i know a lot of you think that it's going to get crazy! But let's just see how these next 4 years go. ok, that's all i will say on that.

so i had a fairly mild week. i finally bought an umbrella!!! only after we had like 2 weeks of rain. very unusual for this area. and i got downpourred on going to class monday. so i knew it was probably time to cave in and spend the 10 euros. very good investment. i had to use my umbrella the next two day to get to class. but now we have returned to the bright and blue skies that i love. it really was the first weekend of great weather we have had in a while.

so i went on a jog this morning, Sunday, for a few hours. i walked some too. ok a good bit of it, but still it was good excersice. the path i took was awesome. i had never been to this area before, just heard about it. on the edge of town there is a little river. and there is a great running/biking cross cuntry type trail that follows it for a few miles thru the woods. it was very refreashing to hear the sounds of the rushing water and all the birds and such. a good time back in nature. and when the trail dead ended i took to some streets. i stumbled upon this cool neighborhood. and i took one of the roads that went up the side of a little mountian/ big hill. and man was this street just stright up the whole way. it was great though, because once i reached the top it offered some really extraordinary views. views of the city and of the famous Mont Saint Victoire. I also got to check out some really cool houses. in which i was totally jealous of the simplistic lifestyle of the mountain-side Frenchies. so lucky. but then again so am I. so, yeah, it was a pretty good run. i think i will go again soon.

oh yeah, and after church i got to see some NFL on the cable at a friends apartment. it was pretty fun hanging out with the guys for a few hours. I got to brag on my home state a little. Thanks Falcons. i got to watch the end of the New England game and the Titans (wow 9-0!), and the first half of the Steelers game (man were they showing up for that half). so it fun, and i got dropped off at my dorm which is always a bonus.

so i would say it was a good week. classes are going good, and getting better every week. I am still definitely enjoying every moment. and i hope all is going well for "y'all"

marseilles and the rest of my break

well i am back in class now. i was ready for it too.

so i went to Marseilles on Thursday. if you don't know already, i am studying about 20 miles outside of this city. Marseilles is the 2nd largest city in France. I just caught a bus from here to there, it was 13 euros round trip. not too bad. i went for a bit of "faire du shopping". so, after i got off the bus i ran into some random French kids my age, and they helped me to find the shopping area of town. I had some good conversation with them. they told be about the mall, so i checked that out. it was a very chique mall, but still much smaller than thos in america. it was nice to see something that resembled the USA though. well, i didn't buy anything in the mall, so i went to the strip outside. there i found all of the same shops that i had just seen plus like 100 more. there were small particular clothes shops, and bigger ones too. it is crazy to be walking and pass by a gucci shop right next to a versachi one. but those were a little outta my price range. so i kept searching. eventually i found a couple pairs of pants, a couple light-weight jackets, a hat, and some shoes. so now i have got a little french style. all in all it was 150 euros. i now its a lot, by i have been dying bacause i look so american. and plus i haven't gotten new clothes in like a year.

on Saturday, i took a long walk all over town. i extended my knowledge of my surrounds. it was a good 3 hour walk i think. i found lots of shops and monuments i didn't know we had here. i even found a Subway and an Apple store. i bumped into a few people i know here, and i had lunch with one girl. after lunch i was back to a little walking, until i found a good place to sit and people watch. While sitting i was bombarded with 4 french girls i had never met. i guess they thought i was a good looking french guy. because they started talking to me in french really fast and asking me all these personal questions and stuff. i talked with them for a while. that was pretty fun, and then they asked for my number at the end before i said au revior. i didn't give it to them tho, because i think they might have been a bit young, but still very cute. so it made me feel like my purchases in marseilles were completely worth it.

on sunday, i had church which was good. it started porring cats and dogs while we were in service, but it was finished when we were. which was really good because i still have not bought an umbrella here. after church i went to eat with a group of about 20 if the church members. all families with little kids. so it was like 10 parents, 10 little kids (all under 9), and me. i had a great time. we had some charwarmas and tajine. and wine of course. we know the owner of this restaurant really well, so we got the whole top floor for our pleasure. and then after we ate the owner came up and played the drum for us, tunisia style. it was really cool.

after dinner i went and saw Quantum of Solice, the new James Bond film. yeah that's right! it came out here 2 weeks before y'all will get to see it. haha. it was a really action packed one. i think there was a chase scene with every possible means of being chased; car, boat, foot... I do think there was a bit less story line in this one than the old school bond movies. it was mostly blasts of action. but it was definitely good, and i will recommended it to all.

so that finished off my vacation, and like i said at the beginning i am back in school now. no more breaks for a while. but i did get to drop a couple classes, so now i don't have to wake up at 8 am except for on fridays. every other day starts at 12pm or later. isn't that nice?

oh yeah today i did change my room in the dorms. i have a moisture problem in my other one. so now i am in chambre 2124. so for any of you with my address, please note this!

i hope all is well in the "Etats Unis"=United States

Castle Weekend!

Well, there are some pictures for you. 1st) is of the castle, it was huge. like 30 rooms. there were 41 of us who stayed there for the weekend, and everyone had a bed! i slept in the tower. 2nd) is of me in front of the largest Huguenot church in France. it is in Anduze. they made it in somewhat of a rebellion to the way cathedrals were being made at the time. 3rd) is the view from my castle window!! it was an awesome sight to see the sun come over the mountain to the left and burn off the fog that lays over the village below. 4th) is a huge cave about 10 of us hiked to. it is where the protestants had their secret meeting while being persecuted in the 17oo's. it was quite a hike straight up this mountain, with little to no real trail to follow. 500 people could easily fit in here. it was quite an amazing feeling standing in this place. 5th) is from the Musee du desert. this is one of the ways the Huguenots were torchered. it is in front of a list of of pastors who parished trying to further their values in religion. it was a great history lesson.

but i did have a blast on my castle weekend. we spent two nights there. it completely made me want to keep pressing towards my dream of one day owning a castle in France. Or maybe building one in america, and creating a small French-like village to rule over. lol. but it was a lot of fun. i think the best part might have been just being with families again. there were about 6 families on the trip, parents and kids, and then there were like another 15 university students. So i already knew most of the college age students, so i really focused my attention on the rest of the gang. It was great getting to talk to moms, and dads, and watch the little kids play. the atmosphere was always a happy one for the whole weekend. I felt like i was part of all the families.

and then we also went on the excursion to the cave. now that was interesting. there is no real path to this cave. so of coarse we got lost a bit on the way up. but i was actually the one to find the cave, it was a couple hundred feet (70 meters) from where everyone else was looking. so that was some good boy scout intuition at work. it was a really cool cave. and the acustics were amazing. some of the girls sang some old hymns for us. it was just a really cool thing to see.

i hope to get to visit the castle again in the spring. you really cant beat that experience for just 30 euros.

this week i hope to go and explore marseille a little bit for the first time. i need to get some clothes shopping done there too. Aix is about 4 times more expensive for everything than the rest of France. so wish me luck on that endevor. it is about time i start looking more French.

also i am planning on going to the coast some time this week. and hiking the calanques which make up the area between marseille and cassis. not all of it, but enough. they are finger-like cliffs that jet out and lead to some of the coolest beaches, with the bluest water on the limestone rocks. so hopefully these plans will come to fruition.

as always, i hope everything is well back in the USA, and i would love to hear from you!

sorry its been so long

well i have done a little bit since i last wrote you guys.

ok, so i left you off last after i climbed the mountain. ok, yeah that was a lot of fun. so on monday last week i had my classes. starting at 8 am. fun stuff. but my afternoon one thats 4 hours long is pretty fun. we just chat in french and learn some stuff along the way. after class i had the last of my small group sessions for the month. pretty good discusion.

well tuesday is nice in the fact that classes dont start til 12, but they go until 7. (i am currently writing this on a teusday, i do get one hour of break in between classes, but thats it for the day) so in my afternoon class we had a real interesting conversation. we talked about alcohol in france. yeah like where and how to get it. the good prices and even the slang terms that you can use to appear as if you are a local. lol. but after class was over i had a fun night lined up. me and a group of like 15 guys had a guys night out. we took over the top floor of a charwarma restaurant. ate and drank and just had a good time. and then we brought out the poker chips. and the y were nice chips too, reclaimed from a casino in aruba that had closed. there were eight of us man enough to throw in the 10 euros to start. i have to say it was one of the funnest times i had playing. and i held the high chip count for the majority. i was still in for the last play. but the other guy called my "all in" bluff, and he just barely beat me. it was a bunch of fun, but ultimately the whole pot had to be donated to the cost of the meal and drinks. but it was a good night.

wednesday i had a wine tasting to go to at night. wow was it a blast. we tried 7 wines from white to the darkest red. all in two hours. there were like 25 people there. and the set up of the night was really relaxed. we would learn a bit about wine, and then taste one for like 15 mins and just chat. then we would ask questions and learn a little more, before we started that next wine. just so you know, i am in the best region of France for rosé wine. and 2003 was like the best year so far, and right now we have shifted to an even year=good year of wine timeline. so don't buy an '07, get an '06 or '08. that is if it is from france. it was a lot of fun, and totally legal for me in France. i met a few more people, and thats always good too.

Thursday was another fun night. me and some friends gathered at a house outside of town. and that felt good all on its own, just to bee in a house for once, instead of an appartment or tiny dorm room. and the mom there cooked us all a very hearty and comforting potatoe soup. it was the bomb! and then we all watch "lady in the water" by m. night shamalan. most of us had never seen it. i thought it was good. it gave the girls a good scare a couple of times. which is always good for the guys they grab onto, wink. but yeah so that was a really fun and chill night. and i was able to get a ride all the way back to my dorm, which totally beats the usual 20 min walk from down town late at night.

i had a pretty relaxing weekend after my 8am friday class was over. just took care of some errands, like going to the bank, and getting some groceries.

on Sunday i went to a movie in a French theater for the first time. they are pretty nice, but a lot less leg room. actually it was like the dollar theater but without all the dirt and sticky floors and sketchy people. it was me and 2 girls. one of which is single.lol. but yeah i made the mistake of letting them choose the movie. a total chick flick. "vicky christina barcelone". its a new woody allen movie. it was in english, and had french subtitles. so we got to learn some french while we watched. after the movie me and one of the girls , laura, the single one, just strolled around the town and explored some ares we had never been. it was nice. um, and then i had church and got to see some more friends.

ok so now i am back to monday. well i totally slept thru my 8 am class, but i think i might be dropping it anyways. my afternoon class, 4 hours long, was pretty good like always. and then it was time for a big dinner. it was American Breakfast Night!!! the best meal i have had in a while. me and 4 friends started cooking for the 15 others that would be showing up in an hour. we cooked; potatoes, bacon ( absolutely the hardest american thing to find in france), french toast, eggs. oh it was awesome. and we had freash cut fruit and syrup and oj. wow good night. after the dinner we all watched the latest 2 episodes of the office ( yes i am keeping up with this show, but its the only american thing i watch here) they were so funny, this is a good season.

so that should get you caught up to today. i might be frying some chicken with a couple friends tonight for dinner, so we will see how that goes. oh and this is our last week of school for a little bit. we get all of next week off for some crazy french holiday. awesome right? and i know for sure i will be spending a couple nights in a castle, and then i might go and explore some more of southern france; nice, cannes, ect...

well sorry this was so long, but as you can see i am still having a blst and staying busy. i hope all goes weel in the states. and p.s. what has happened to McCain, it looks like obama might take this thing.