Pics again!


Me in front of Nîmes arena











Now inside the arena: LA CORRIDA!!!









Few corrida's scenes ...






























Back to Lyon, le defilé de la danse, a big dance parade in Lyon main street for the dance biennale ...


















With ma' girls! Eszter, me, Manuela & Melinda











Alex, on a random night: "let's go out tonight!"
Others: "where?"
A.: "Well, let's just walk around and find a nice place ..."

Anyone surprised where we ended up?!?!?! And then they say it's not an addiction!!!!


Last weekend: 5 friends and I found about 100 french people (of course completely strangers!) going to a weekend d'intégration on a campsite on the seaside, close to Montpellier ... so we joined them!!! One of the craziest weekends since here, very high schoolish, very childish and very very fun!!! Took a bus at 7 in the morning, wore bracelets that said if you were single, in a relationship or in a relationship but still available! Started drinking veeeeery early under the rain in the smallest bungalow to share with 8 people, walked on the beach under rain and wind, ate grape from a vineyard, coctkail, dinner and started partying at 9 until god knows when!!! Spoke more french in one night than in my entire life, met all sorts of people, danced danced and danced again, smoked hookah (noooooo surprising!), learnt french drunken songs, and finally passed out on the couch of the cold small bungalow.... really cool times!

And finally one of the ugliest pictures of me taken in Montpellier, but I think it says it all;)

There we go, slides of life "Alex in France Fall2006"!

Here are some random pictures, since the time I left Parma from France, about a month ago!


Raul and I at Milan train station! Such a random meeting!










The view on the Rhône from my dad's house








At a park, hanging at night with my friends
















The weirdest, ugliest statue inside the Fac (university)!!!















With my friend Eszter, hanging out at the Fac

















This was a strange awkward night! Football match: Italy-France, in a French pub, a FULL pub, of course full of people cheering for France and Eszter and I being the only one yelling for Italy...yeah, I had to leave the pub before the end of the match to get out alive!!!

This was in Marseille! During my 14 hours journey from Italy to Nîmes (long but way too confortable! the view this time wasn't the slums outside Mumbai or flooded villages, but the beautiful Côte d'Azur!), I had a hour stop in Marseille, and since I'd never been there before I took a walk there












Marseille, for its position on the Mediterrenean, is a city with a lot of immigrants, which makes it also the center for french rap (which I'm getting addicted to!). Walking around I heard some loud rap in the street, I went to see what it was all about and saw a group of kids breakdancing in the middle of the sidewalk!

Then Nîmes! We had to hitchike from the hostel to the city center for the festival, and met this very super nice guys, who happened to be (guess what?) french rappers!!!



















Voilà Nîmes by day! A beautiful little town in the south of France!



















More pictures to come in the next days;) Stay tuned

Wow! I've just talked on skype so much and it was beautiful!!!

I was planning tonight to write on this thing but than i got on skype to talk to Stephanie in Spain. Her phone was off so I called Hector and talked for ages...wonderful! Then Steph of course (and we set dates for me to come there!!! so excited!), then Sarah Lake was on Skype and man, so great to here from some of my best best friends, what's up with their lives and just hear their voices!!!

I'll update my blog soon. I went to Nimes last weekend to a spanish festival, hitchike and met some french rappers;) so cool!!! We hanged out with them all night, danced in the street, drank sangria, and then partied at the youth hostel...the next day we did some sightseeing, a picnic with a background of mexican mariachi, and then the corrida in the arena!
then on sunday I went to the dance defile in Lyon which was beautiful and very very artistic!!! After that followed a brazilian night at La Marquise, a club which is a boat on the Rhone, one of the rivers in Lyon. And as I was dancing Samba in a boat in France I felt real happiness again...I really like being here! I've already met some people that I really like, and of course living with my dad and stepmom is great, they treat me like a princess and I feel so spoiled! It's nice after a while living on your own, and especially all this comfort after India! Yesterday I went to the movie theatre to see a film with my dad (the wind that shakes the Barley, winner at Cannes festival), and on the way back we saw a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk. And I just realized that about a month ago I was living in India, and at night there were rivers of people sleeping on the sidewalk and it somehow felt normal...how strange! How this world can be contradictory...

But anywyas, so much to say!!! I finally set my class schedule: French as a Foreign Language, International Marketing, Corporate Finance, Survey methods and practices, Negotiation technics, Sales prevision and commercial costs management, and Marketing and Commercial Planning. We'll see how it goes! I have fridays free which is megatop (french slang;), but for example tomorrow (which is my first day) i have class from 8 am until 7 pm with no breaks!!! not even for lunch!!!
Oh well...I'm excited about next weekend. My friend Eszter (from Hungary...by the way, cool to talk with an hungarian during all the caos that is happening over there right now!) and I met some people from the BDE (bureau des étudiants), kind of like the student government, the equivalent of MSA at Mizzou. They are organizing a trip to Montpellier (south of France) this weekend and we're going!!! Finally all french people and only 3 foreigners!!! I'm very excited and I know we'll have a blust.

I'll put up some pictures soon. Yesterday I put some of my pictures from India on my desk and I miss those people so much! I can't wait to meet everybody again!!!

Until then, I'll just enjoy life here, it's beautiful and I really feel lucky and loved...à bientot!

Wonderful to be in Europe!

I had a week off in between prep classes and the real thing, so I took a ride from my dad and came to Parma for few days...how convenient! I'm in Italy until tomorrow morning, when at 6 I have a train to Nice. In Nice I will buy a ticket to Marseille and then Nimes, where I will meet my new friends that I met in Lyon (who are from everywhere as usual!) to enjoy La Feria of Nimes, a spanish festival with corridas, music in the streets, dances, tapas and sangria...that takes place in the South of France!!! We'll see, I'm excited to get to know my new crowd a bit better, and what better way than to make a trip together and sharing rooms and most likely a tent in the auberge de jeuness (youth hostel) in Nimes? We'll be back on Saturday night, so that on Sunday we can relax and attend the big défilé for la Biennale de la Dance à Lyon, where dance teams from all over the world come every two years in Lyon, which is in fact one of the world capitals for dancing. Maybe with my dad and stepmom we'll go to one of the shows, if there are still seats available!

In Parma this time I didn't really do much. My mom is in Sicily with friends enjoying the warm southern weather. My sister works during the day and we have good chats at night. Some of my friends are on holiday in Sardinia, others on books studying a lot, Davide is working the night shifts this weekend...so I'm just really taking some healthy rest and doing all kind of administrative stuff. This morning I was even at the Parma police for the first time...the nicest police officers in the world so far! I was thinking some scary thoughts this morning: I have already been to the police in Parma, in Columbia (more than once!), to court in India, let's see what happens in Lyon! Oh, but I was already at the police station in Paris, one summer with Ivana, my Montenegrian friend!!! But anyways, I'm not a criminal yet! I just had to do redo my Italian ID that got stolen with everything else at Soco (a nightclub in Columbia) and they didn't accept the police report from Missouri..stupid bureaucracy!

Oh, and let's talk of bureaucracy...I thought that India was hectic and disorganized, but France is almost at the same level! At least if you really need something in India you can always bribe people and get it without many troubles (and let's say that Italy is half way between the Indian and French system), but in France, just to enroll in classes I had to go through so much! And I still don't know for sure which class I will be taking, and most start on Monday!!! Ah, it's a good patience training for sure!! I miss StarMU so much, so easy and clear, and in February you already know which class, classroom, professor and schedule you will take! Instead in Lyon I got this humongous book with all the available classes (luckily only the business ones, but it's quandmeme 400 pages long!). It took me probably 3 hours to understand how to read it (and I'm not exaggerating!), and it's not like a class is each Monday and Wednesday from 2 to 4, but most likely only on Monday, one Monday every three, from 8 am to 2pm, and some sporadic Thursdays at different times!!! So you can't just block the entire week for one Thursday a month, and you gotta figure out which other class happens on Thursday at the same time but maybe on different Thursdays of the month, and even if once or twice they are at the same time to find some compromises. It's a mess!!! And even when you try to ask people they are: -on a way to some important meeting, -on lunch break for a couple of hours, -or "how could I know? It's too soon, the professor is coming next week!".
But I've chosen some kick ass classes! Somehow, by being very Italian and very able, I enrolled in classes in the Master program, both first and second year master...I know they will be a bit hard but they sound so interesting! Such as Negotiation Techniques, Sales Previsions and so...can't wait to start! We'll see how disorganized it can be!! (right now I'm really talking with some irony...it messes me up a bit but I got used quickly!). In fact, also during prep classes, many times professors wouldn't come, or once we were supposed to be in class on Saturday morning, we got up to go and the University was closed...ahhh!!! The funniest thing was our Accounting professor...accounting itself is already a bit confusing, and of course the French accounting is a bit different than the American one, confusing my mind even more! And we had an accounting schedule to follow for the entire week, but the professor diverged all the time mixing accounting with philosophy, religion, history and architecture, and diverging even more and even more often talking about French politics (which is a hot topic nowadays, waiting for the 2007 elections) and French social problems...it made me smile and brought pleasant déjà vus...

Anyways, I did a little French exam as well to be placed in a class and I did really well. My French is getting better through social life, speaking French all the time with my international friends, but I'm sure that once I will be learning in French and meet real French people the learning process will go even faster!

Stephanie is safe in Seville and each time I hear from her it makes me sooooo happy! I even told her I feel as my own daughter left for Spain! Once I have my definitive class schedule I can really plan when to go see her, and hopefully I will be there during the Womex festival, an international music festival where Adi (one of my Indian friends) is even holding a conference! So most likely Marsha and Marjolein (part of my crowd in India) will be there as well!!! Yeahy, traveling! Can't wait to see all these beautiful faces again!

Until then, busy printing my Indian photos and writing a thank you letter for Boeing which gave a nice scholarship this year...let's hope they will keep being nice!

Baci!
Ale

Voilà, je suis en France!

I've been slacking off writing my blog but
first: I left India and somehow life seems normal and usual in a confortable country
second: not much time to write, and a little veil of lazyness after my indian rush
third: i'm making an effort to try to think in french and i haven't been thinking/speaking in english in a while and it feels weird now!
fourth: french keybord messes me up! they have to be unique in everything, even keybords!

But no excuse now, a little update about myself for those "two cats" (italian expression that means few people) who still want to read my blog even if i prevent everybody, it won't be as exciting anymore!!!

My trip to Goa was amazing, spiced up by two scooters racks (luckly i wasn't in any of them but my friends were and they scared me to death!), the boys had to bribe the police while us girls had an amazing scooter ride around the green and fertile Goan countryside, a weirdo who was trying to sell us coconuuuuuuuuuuuut (exactly like that!) and when we refused he threatened us to set our scooters on fire! violent monsonic rains, old hippies, wild ocean, two stops in the cosmopolitan Mumbai with girls in miniskirt and clean streets with no animals, missing the train to jaipur (and almost missing my flight back to London!), and almost missed my bus to delhi cause i was burning cds with photos!
On my flight from Delhi i fell asleep before taking off and woke up in London...very nice! In Heathrow I had a "Love Actually" moment when I saw Landon again...man, I missed him a lot! We had a really great time there, a lot of sightseeing and a lot of beer! The last night we "slept" in Heathrow before he took off to AIESEC International Congress in Poland and I to Italy. My 4 days in Italy were super (c'est un peu franglais ça?;), got spoiled by mommy and sister, went out every single night with my crazy friends and came home always veeeeery late! Davide got a new car that he loves more than a woman and wants to be with "her" all the time, so we were driving around a lot, just chatting and having a good time without doing much...it was amazing! it feels great when u have people with whom u're just confortable like that.
then my train to Lyon. I had to stop in Milan and i knew that Raul (my friend from Madrid) was there at some point. I texted him and we ended up having a half hour chat in Milan train station...how random!
and right now I'm in Lyon, settled here until the end of December. this time getting spoiled by dad and stepmom;) i've already started a week of prep-classes, very easy but in french! my french improves every day, it's impressive and it gives a great feeling...learning always gives me such a pleasure! i already made some friends, met a lot of new people, all the étrangers who study business in Lyon...from everywhere, of course! I miss my friends a lot, but each time I go somewhere I feel like I'm more or less in the same kind of international environment...it's nice, i feel confortable in it and somehow relationships seem to form much faster. I already went out clubbing on Saturday night...fun fun! Lyon is such a beautiful city....sooooooo beautiful! It's famous for its night illumination, and walking around at night it's really an experience. It's funny, I haven't met any "real" french yet....or let's say "white french" of my age...of course my parents' friends but they don't count. In the club french guys are much more "aggressive" than americans: I kind of missed the times in Generic when I was walking around to see if anybody was even talking to me and nobody would!!! French guys talk to u all the time, which is great to meet people and hear some good french with some argot and verlan (such a crazy slang with backwards words!), but gotta be careful not to give expectations and mostly phone number! But so far, as I said, no white french. Only algerians and tunisians, who probably have never even been in algeria or tunisia before...a very interesting phenomenon! But I'm too tired right now to talk about immigration! I've got a little french test tomorrow to be placed into a french class of my level, and of course i'm very ambitious and i wanna do well!
Gotta be fresh for the morning...hope to hear from my readers more;) keep in touch people, tell me also what's up with u all!

Au revoir!!!