Vieux Port de Marseille
  Bonjour à tous!

   I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. The closer I come to finishing up here, it seems the less free time I have. But I have another entry for you!

  This past weekend, I took a trip to visit my French penpal in France's second biggest city, where he goes to business school. All I'd known about Marseille before I got there was that it was the setting of a few films I'd seen, like the Count of Monte Cristo and Marcel Pagnol's Marius and Fanny, as well as the warning of safety my host mom gave me before I left. Marseille is a port town famous for it's murders, drugs and organized crime, making it the most dangerous city in France. The wealthy have an entirely fenced in district, where they hide from the crime and reality around them. My friend Simon has witnessed someone's credit card get snatched out of their hand and his roommate has had a knife held to him a few times. Needless to say the French are surprised when you say you actually liked visiting Marseille.



  In spite of the madness, Marseille is still a Mediterranean town, and beautiful in it's own right. Life goes on, and families flock to the Vieux Port, the Old Port, on a Saturday afternoon for a café or to promenade next to the boats that no one seems to be using. At night, the port is for the young, with bustling bars and outdoor terraces because it would be a sin to sit inside when the weather is so nice.



View from Notre Dame de la Garde

   Mostly because of Simon's adorable five year old sister (who drew me a picture of a snowflake and sang Frozen songs with me!), we rode the little tourist's train up to Notre Dame de la Garde, the Catholic church that stands on a hill and looks over the city. In the distance, you can see the islands off the coast, most famous of them the Chateau d'If, formerly a prison and an important setting in Alexander Dumas', the Count of Monte Cristo.

   What I loved about visiting Simon and his family in Marseille is that I experienced a different cultural French life than I have in Montpellier. I have learned more French slang than I have from my sixty year old host mom, to no fault of her own. For example: the French word d'accord means okay, in agreement, but the young will tend to say d'ac, a shortened version.



   After dinner in a Pakistani restaurant, where I taught him and his family the meaning of the word "food baby", Simon and I went back to the Vieux Port where we drank on a terrace with his friends and enjoyed the mid-spring evening. They introduced me to a incredibly delicious cherry flavored beer, called Kir, that miraculously and thankfully didn't taste like beer at all. We bonded over TV shows, music, traveling and more, forever alternating between French and English. When they spoke amongst themselves, I was proud that I could mostly understand them. However, there were still plenty of times where I awkwardly, fake laughed because I had no idea what they were laughing about. I've perfected the art of the fake laugh and look of comprehension over these past two months, because sometimes, after the fifth time you've asked someone to explain something, it's necessary to admit defeat.
   At midnight, led by Simon, they erupted in a chorus of Happy Birthday for me. I blew out the flame from a lighter as my candle. This has been my third year that I've been away from home for my birthday, and while I miss being with my family, I am lucky to always find a group of new friends to celebrate with.
  The next day, after a Moroccan lunch, I said goodbye to Simon and his family. It is one of the many goodbyes I am going to have to make when I finish my program here, and I realized I am completely unprepared to leave. It's one thing to say goodbye to your friends and family back home. It's another to say goodbye to people you don't know when you'll see again.