"Excuse me? Do you have a fire?"

I have officially made it through the last week of intensive courses, and I am still alive! I am so happy to be done with those. This week, however, we enter the real world of university life in France.

I think I spent an overall good last week though. On Wednesday I went with my friend Lyndsy to the local Aix couchsurfers weekly meeting. For those of you who don't know what couchsurfing is, in short, it's an online organization/community of travelers around the world. Couchsurfing connects travelers around the world with each other so that they can meet local people who can show them around the city and/or put them up in their homes for a few days. I joined CS this summer and so far, it's been great! The CS meeting was at Woohoo's, a cool little bar that has a downstairs that looks like a cave. I met tons of awesome people. We met Christopher, one of the main guys who runs the local Aix CS group and organizes the weekly meetings. We also met a bunch of other local French people from Aix, a girl from South Africa named Ruby, Brigitta from Germany, and some guy (didn't catch his name) from Turkey. We all chilled for a couple of hours and just drank and talked. It was awesome. And of course I got to speak French all night, which was great! Brigitta ended up walking home with me and we talked about tons of things, from politics to just things like what it feels like to live in a foreign country. Brigitta is German and she is living in Aix working as a German assistant at one of the local high schools. It was really cool to meet people from all over the world and I can't wait until next week's meeting!

For our last day of class on Friday, our teachers had us watch the movie "Le premier jour du reste de ta vie" (The first day of the rest of your life). It was SUCH a good movie and I would recommend everyone see it, even if you can only get it with English subtitles. So good! There were so many really hilarious parts but at the end, we were pretty much all crying...
 Then, during our "petite pause", the guys that run the cafeteria, an old Provençal man who we all wished could be our grandfather and his son brought us out a special surprise of pastries, coffee, fruits, and juice to celebrate the American's last day! It was so cute and so nice of them to do that! We all said "merci" like a million times and then chowed down on the food. Mmm, so good!

Last night we all decided to have a party and go out to celebrate the end of our intensive courses and to celebrate our last weekend before the university starts. I brought my speakers (these really nice, awesome speakers that I won from the program office) with and a special playlist on my ipod and we partied it up at my friends' apartment. After a couple hours we were, well, a little tipsy, and then headed up to their French neighbors' apartment to party it up with some French people. Everyone was really nice (except for the guy who kept wanting to talk to us about American stereotypes, which was kind of annoying) but we met this cute little French girl named Pascaline, who is, I must say, just beyond adorable! After a couple hours there, we all decided to head out to a club. We ended up walking around the streets for a while as Pascaline ran into like 100 people she knew. Then we somehow ended up talking to these 3 REALLY cute French boys who told me and my friend that we spoke French like natives. I was so proud of myself! Then we ended up running into another French friend and we all talked for a while and finally around 2am, we ended up at the club. We danced for about 2 hours. Everytime an American song came on we were just so excited! French people really like American music though, we hear it a lot. And of course, Paula and I heard our song "We No Speak Americano", which is probably one of the most popular club songs here right now, along with "Alors on danse", which I recommend you all listen to on youtube!
After dancing for a couple of hours, we decided to step outside and think about heading home (since it was now 4am). Instead, we ended up meeting two other French guys who introduced us to their friends and we all talked for a while. They were really cool. Then Dijana and I got cravings for "un coca", so we walked over to a small food stand next door. I walked up to the guy and asked for "un coca, s'il vous plaît" and in the process of getting my money out, I dropped my American ID. This super cute French boy next to me picked it up and handed it to me and then looked at me and asked (in French) if I was French. I replied no that I wasn't, and then after a couple of awkward seconds the guy looked at me and was like "mais si!!" ("but yes!!") and I was like, no really, Im not French. He smiled at me and then my friend Dijana walked up and started talking to me in English. It took him a minute but he finally was like "ahh, américain?" and I was like "oui". And we preceded to have an entire conversation in French of him insisting that I spoke like I was French (which made me so happy!!) and then him flirting with me and asking me all sorts of cutsy questions about where Im from and pretending to have heard of "Wisconsin" before. It was one of the highlights of my night. I got mistaken for a French person twice in one night and also had several other French people tell me I spoke really well! I was so unbelievably proud of myself! Even Ingy boo tells me (since now I have a cell phone and we call each other every day) that my French has already improved since my being here. I am just so unbelievably happy, I swear I could cry! This week has been such a turnaround from the last, very stressful couple of weeks. I know that next week is going to be just as tough, if not tougher though.

So since I didn't get home until 5 am this morning, I ended up sleeping until 1pm and then I met my friend Ashley so we could walk around the city for the "Journées du Patrimonie" (Days of Patirmony) which is like a national holiday type thing where all sorts of places such as the town halls, cathedrals, etc, are all open to the public to come in and see. We went to two cathedrals, inside one of which we sat and watched a baptism, and then we went to one of the local art museums which was having an exhibit on Matisse's jazz collection. It was pretty cool. Then we ended up finding this really nice little café that had, get this, BAGELS! And not just bagels, but GOOD bagels, and they had all sorts of yummy bagel sandwichs. Everything was New York themed, so I ordered a "Chinatown" bagel sandwich and a smoothie. So delicious! Then we decided to get some food shopping done (since you have to food shop here like every couple of days) and we found this amazing little "jardinerie" (fruit/veggie shop thingy) where we got tons of really amazing fresh fruits and veggies for suuuper cheap. I got a quarter of a watermelon, an avocado, some roma lettuce, some "reines de" something little fruit thingys, and some nectarines all for only about 4 euros. It was great! Tomorrow we are going to the "Musée Granet" which is having an exhibit of Alechinsky, a Belgian abstract expressionism artist who is displaying his art in the museum as well as putting on an exhibit where people are allowed to watch him at work in a studio there. I am very excited!

Well I am off for now. I am catching drinks with my friend who is going to introduce me to one of the French guys she met at her school, who wants to meet some American students! Im excited to get to practice my French again with more native speakers!

I will be updating again this week about how my classes go! Im sure that post won't be quite as happy as this one though...

a bientôt,
Doogie