Hello all! It is now Thursday and I have officially been in this city for one full week. Je pense déjà que je suis Arlesiane! (I think already that I am Arlesian!) Non non, I'm just kidding. But it has been going really well. I apologize in advance for grammatial and spelling errors... as I have been speaking a lot of French... I've started to forget proper english as well. Merde.
After two nights in a much nicer hotel than I would have ever booked for myself during the backpacking thing, I moved into my new host family's house. I live in a little quartier or neighborhood called la Roquette just west from the centre ville or "downtown" of Arles. We live on a little nubbin of a street/dead endish kind of thing which is great because there aren't cars driving throught (well there really aren't cars at all...) and it's about 10 yards from the Rhone River. Pretty sweet. My host family consists of Barbara and her 5 year old daughter Pacome who is full of energy. It's actually quite wonderful for once to experience what it would be like to have a younger.. well much younger sister as I have always been the bébé of the family. Barbara also has a boyfriend, Julian who stays over a lot, as she also stays there as well and he has a petit fils (son), Artaud who is 4 years old. It's quite amusing to see the two together, they are such typically little children. Great friends until one of the starts a fight then they get mad at each other but 5 minutes later they're better. The last, and probably most evident member of their family to me especially, is their 12 year old cat, Zowie. I was quite surprised to be placed in a host family with a cat especially cause of my allergy... but... Zytrec is over the counter here and I have found it does wonders so... tout va bien.
Extremely coincidentally... my neighbor happens to be my friend, Amine, who I was introduced to one time before I came to Arles because he is friends with Sabrina, a friend of mine from Montpellier. It actually ended up being a blessing that we knew each other because when I was talking to him on facebook chat one night, telling him I was coming and he was asking me about my host family I told him who it was and when he asked Barbara about it... (two days before I arrive by the way...) she had no idea I was coming! It seemed there was a bit of a miscommunication between her and Marie-Anne Devaux (the directrice). Miraculously... because I had told Amine, he was able to alert Barbara that there was an American who was supposed to stay with her this summer and she was able to prepare, etc.
My world is small. And slowly getting smaller. My friend's friend is my neighbor... how does that happen?
As for the rest of Arles...
my classes are M-Th, 10:30-12, and 3-4:30 so I don't have to sit through 3 hours at a time, thank god. In addition, M-W we have lunch at local restaurants which our program where speaking french is absolument obligatoire (mandatory) and we get to eat some delicious local cuisine. I think my favorite part about this program is how intensive it is... we can only speak french with the professors, directors (unless we need to know a word of course and thats the only way to figure it out), our families (my host mom only says random words in English and Pacome doesn't speak any) and even together we speak French a majority of the time! At first, it felt strange to have conversations between one another but since we were all doing it, now it feels normal and I can easily switch back and forth between the two languages. I've also had a wonderful time getting to know my new friend Laura (she reads this and will probably mention later that she saw me post her name) but she askes me how to say things in english and she helps me with my french expressions so it's been absolutely wonderful spending time with her.
When we're not in class, I've loved laying in the park, hoping to get some color (ha), having an apero (essentially happy hour, n'importe quoi on boit), spending time with my petite soeur or little sister, or talking with Barbara and Julian. They've been extremely welcoming and helpful so it's been truly wonderful thus far living with a host family. There haven't been a lot of opportunities to go out here since the town is rather small. There is a possiblity this weekend of going to Montpellier which... I would just love to do since I miss it there quite a lot but we'll see.
Miss you all!
Bisous,
Mo
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