"What I did over my spring vacation"

I spent my spring break in France. One of my best friends recently moved there, so I was able to go and spend a week visiting her. We spent five nights in the city that she lives in, Aix-en-Provence. It's a small city in the south with beautiful buildings and statues. I'm not sure what the people who live there actually do, but it seemed to me like their lives consisted of sitting at outdoor cafes, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. (I don't say that like it's a bad thing.) No one there ever seemed stressed out or in a rush.

My friend has been living there for about a month and a half, so she knew a couple of people who she introduced me to. For the most part, her French friends are men in their mid to late 20s. They were really nice to me, and with my barely comprehendible French skills and their basic English skills, I was able to get by in a conversation with them most of the time.

One thing that I thought was interesting was that more than once, I was asked by a person that I had just moments before met and could barely understand, "Barack or Hilary?" I thought it was interesting for a few reasons. I had always heard that people in other countries knew more about American politics than most Americans did. And for the week, at least, it was true for me! While I was there, I wasn't watching the news because I couldn't understand it, and I only had access to the Internet twice. I got my updates on the recent primaries from random French accquaintences of my friend. These people knew who each and every state had chosen up to that point in the race.

I also thought that it was interesting how open they were about their political leanings. I guess that sort of thing varies from person to person, but in the United States, I don't think that I've ever had someone I just met ask me which candidate I supported. I suppose I wouldn't mind if they did, but it's just not something that I think happens a lot here. Finally, no one asked me at all about the Republicans. Literally everyone who asked me about politics asked me the same question, "Barack or Hillary?" I thought about telling someone that I was going to vote Republican, just to get their response, but I decided that my very poor French skills were not really conducive to using sarcasm and then having to explain myself.

My friend and I also spent a day in Nice, which was absolutely gorgeous. I wish the weather had been just slightly warmer so we could have gone to the beach. Instead, we got our lunch at a huge outdoor market (cheese, baguette, fresh strawberries, wine) and walked to the top of a hill (mountain? I don't really know...) overlooking the city and the beach and ate our lunch there.

>
After that, Carnival de Nice was beginning for the day, so we went and watched that for a while. It was basically a parade and a giant silly-string fight. We got into an epic battle with some little kids, spraying silly string and tossing confetti at each other (I'm still pulling the pieces of confetti out of my purse.) It was cool how informal the parade was. People could just cross the street and walk in between the floats. There were no barricades at all and the people on the floats were not at all immune to getting sprayed with tons of silly string. You could move around the crowd without knocking people over. The floats all looked older and more worn down. The whole thing was really different (and more fun) than something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York. It was probably even less formal than the last Red Sox parade we had here in Boston (although that one was a lot of fun, too.)

And of course, what's a trip to France without a visit to Paris? Unfortunately, we only got to spend two nights there, but we saw a lot. I'm going to post pictures some time soon.

It's really nice to be back here and be around people who I can understand. I've been back since Saturday night and I still catch myself almost saying "Bonjour" and "Bonsoir" and more than once when I've bumped into people accidentally, I've said, "Excuzez-moi!" Language is really something that I used to take for granted in my every day life, but a week of not being able to clearly communicate with anyone besides my friend and her roommate, who is from North (or was it South?) Carolina, I definitely see how important it is. I couldn't even watch TV for a week!

For me, one good thing came out of not being able to talk to most people. I wrote, and wanted to write a lot more than I usually do. Probably because I felt like I had no other way to say the things I was thinking. Hopefully that's something that will stick with me!

I'm going to try and post my pictures sometime tomorrow or later this week. Au revoir!