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| Obligatory Pisa photo |
This entry has to start with an apology.
It’s been over two months since I’ve written anything about my adventures. It seems a little odd to go into detail about
the last two weeks of my trip to Florence because it feels like so long ago
that I was there! Needless to say the trip only got better; the Italian MTV
awards were attended, a trip to the beach and Pisa thrown in, and lots more
gelato eating (in the interest of equality and fair testing I took it upon
myself to visit as many gelaterie as possible).
I’ve really missed Florence, to the extent that I bought myself a vat of
Illy ground espresso recently to try and keep up my Italian lifestyle. |
| MTV Awards with Sarah |
The main reason I never wrote after that is
because as I sat, blissfully unaware, on my flight home from Zurich, somewhere
in the south of France my application hadn’t been processed in its completion.
So I arrived home to a blind panic about a potential loss of a place at my
chosen university for the first semester of third year. It took two weeks to
sort it out and it’s all fine now- I have my official letter of acceptance,
which is nice and exciting.
Since Florence I have not stopped. Several
trips to Wimbledon, followed by three weeks in a primary school helping with
their summer production, and a week in Scotland. And the weekends were totally
packed out. I’ve spent every weekend in London, seeing friends and partaking in various highly cultural activities; Les Mis and the Proms featured in the schedule. So the summer has been wonderful.
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| Proms with Rosie |
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| Buckingham Palace |
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| Men's Semi Finals Day |
For anyone that’s interested (and I’m
presuming that you all are, having read this far), Aix is a city in the South
of France, which is paired with Bath. It resembles it in many respects; the
shopping areas are almost identical, there are Roman Baths there, and they are
both my kind of places through and through.
And both universities are outside of the city centres. The very centre
of the city is a huge main street called Cours Mirabeau, which links the old
city to the new city; at one end you have churches and lots of Roman
architecture, and at the other you have the Rotonde (it’s a big roundabout with
a fountain on it) which neighbours possibly the biggest Apple Store I have even
seen in my life. It lies in the shadow of Monte Sainte-Victoire, a pyramid
shaped mountain which changes colour in the evenings according to the time of
year. It was the main focus of Cezanne’s many paintings, and I’m definitely
going to be climbing it at some point over the next few months. That should tell
you quite a lot about it’s size!
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| La Rotonde |
Anyway, enough of Guide Book Georgie. I only spent two nights in Aix, with the main goal of finding accommodation there. There are five main reasons why the trip was such a good idea, even if it was brief:
1)
Practicing the route I’ll be
taking. As I have come to realise, I
have a knack for booking flights that are destined to be delayed and getting
unbelievably lost in airports. It’s a skill. It doesn’t help that there are
virtually no direct flights from Manchester to anywhere in Europe. Rather
unluckily, my flight to Marseille takes me through Paris Charles de Gaulle,
which with no air conditioning and half of France being in there at any one
time is not fun. However, I’ve been told by a very helpful air steward that there
are seven flights from CDG to Marseille every day, so even if I miss the
following five after mine, I have the possibility of making it down to the
south coast. I also had the joy of getting up at 5.30am and then having to sit
on the tarmac at Manchester for almost two hours, so I could even practice my
drastic airport sprint through Paris. Let's hope nobody ever has to see that again.
2)
I had the opportunity to get my
head back into French mode. Unbelievably, it seems that I am more comfortable
speaking in Italian these days than I am in French. I think that is probably
due to spending June in Florence; it was really intensive and massively
helpful. Hopefully after a few weeks in Aix I’ll feel more confident again; and
I’m there for just under six months (ski holiday in France definitely counts) which
should be plenty of time to sort my French out!
3)
I could get acclimatised. It
was around 32 degrees in Aix this week, which meant that I
realized that it’s much hotter that I thought it would be. I can now
efficiently plan my packing to exclude the piles of jumpers I would usually
select for Autumn term in Bath. That also means that I need a new wardrobe. I have virtually nothing in my room anymore apart from jumpers and leggings. Yay shopping!
4)
I had an interesting insight
into the property rental market in Aix. Luckily I’ve found a fabulous apartment
for myself and Claire, which is a two minute walk from our department and only
a 10-15 minute walk from the town centre. We’re going to be living with a
French lady and her daughter, which will hopefully mean constant immersion in
French. However, it also gives Claire and I the potential target market of many
French teenagers who want to improve their English language capabilities-
kerching! But it was a long process before we got that apartment. I was
searching for over three weeks for somewhere to live, but obviously with the
rental market, it’s very much arrive there and go and visit places to get
something there and then. I went to see two other apartments before we found
ours. The first one was all fine and dandy, really clean and tidy and in a
residential area with a boulangerie and shops nearby. Until we realised that one
of the two rooms that were available was a studio around the corner. I can only
describe that studio as a human cage. I walked into it and realised there was
no bed. The landlady then presented me with a ladder, which I preceded to
ascend. I popped my head up and saw a mattress on a rather rickety looking
mezzanine. If I had laid on that mattress, my nose would have been less than 4
inches from the ceiling. No thanks!
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| Cours Mirabeau at night... |
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| ... and in the 32 degree heat. |
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| My department- certainly beats 1WN! |
5)
I got to suss out the area of
Aix. By that, I mean I managed to find the best places to eat, drink and most
importantly, get ice cream. There are several Italian gelaterias but they get
you to use Italian words in the middle of French sentences. I’ll have to get
used to that I think, my brain almost exploded when I had to try and make sense
of this first time round. I've made note of all the most important buildings in Aix. A bagel emporium, an Irish pub for birthday celebrations, and several places with reasonable happy hour prices (including free tapas). Safe to say I have my priorities sorted.
Now I’m off to Portugal for a week with my family. I feel
like I haven’t seen them properly since Easter because of how busy we’ve all
been, and it seems only right to spend at least some time with them before I take on Europe for a year and a half. They gave me a gorgeous early birthday today, which despite a lengthy power cut, caused by northern hurricane season, included a large roast dinner and a very handy personalised iPod nano.
So Aix is looking promising. I’m very excited to get there and start really improving on my French. Unfortunately there are no students there at the moment so it makes little sense heading there for good yet.
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| Keep the gelato coming! |
Let’s just hope 6 months is enough to get the French that I produce close to that in France! Either way, let the adfrenchure begin!
Georgie’s Language Blunders
It was bound to happen at some point. I
have to introduce a section of my ridiculous language mistakes. I’m including
the best ones from Florence too, because I didn’t have chance to write about
the last two weeks there in my last blog.
i)
In a lesson towards the end of
my time in Florence, we were discussing attributes of our friends and what kind
of friend we are. I tried to explain to my teacher that I am a jealous person.
Instead, I told her that I have a serious bout of jaundice. Needless to say,
she laughed in my face for several minutes. Totally understandable.
ii)
I went to a sandwich shop and
instead of asking for basil, apparently I asked for a basilica on my sandwich.
For any of you unfamiliar with the term, it means a large cathedral. Good one
George.
