Montpellier - Week 1

You know your in France when...

I have too much luggage. Way too much luggage. When did I realize this you may ask? Well, I really knew it all along, however I was made aware when I had to carry it up to the top of the train we took to Montpellier. Oh my goodness. Anyways, we arrived in Montpellier and it was a beautiful day. It had started to rain as we left Paris and in Montpellier there were blue skies, a bit of wind, and a nice warm temperature. In other words, completely different from Wales. Each place has its own charm though, don't get me wrong. So, I get off the train and meet my host-mother and I am all at once immersed in French. She is apparently super sporty, having hiked mountains in Peru and is one of the people you see skiing up the mountain. There is a bit of an accent though: un accent du soleil :) Overall though, this first week has been super busy and it's hard to believe that barely one week ago I arrived in Paris. It feels like I've been here for months!


Our first day in Montpellier was spent touring around Place de la Comédie, which is basically the city center with all of the shops and restaurants. It was a beautiful day and I'll just let my pictures do the talking.

Place de la Comédie

Unicorn statue

Arc de Triomphe commemorating Louis XIV

La Plage

Tuesday started bright and early with a French placement exam and then most people decided to go to the beach. I was nervous it would be rocky, but nope! It was definitely sandy. The water was really cold though, which I'm told is unseasonable for this time of the year. The best thing is we were able to get there completely free by tram and bus. Tram is the main form of transportation here to get around the city. That's one thing that's very different from the US: public transportation in Europe has a bigger role in people's daily lives whereas in the US most people just have and use their own cars, the exception being major cities.

My tram to get home

Wednesday was the first day of class, in other words the end of this awesome, leisurely, sightseeing, vacation time. Class starts at 8:45 and ends at 12:45 with a thirty minute break sometime in between. For dinner we found this really cheap pizza place that serves excellent pizzas and it was interesting trying to translate the menu because school vocab doesn't really prepare you for the diversity of pizza toppings: example: épaule, which means shoulder, but refers to a cheap cut of pork.

les estivales!

Friday evening was the start of les estivales, and this is basically an evening of wine tasting. For five euros you get a wine glass and three 10 cl tastings of wine. I'm not a fan of wine ( I ended up selling my third ticket to a friend and giving another half of my glass), but it was still a surprisingly fun evening made even better by the Nutella gaufres (waffles) we got at the end. It is a tad unfortunate that we have class tomorrow (only this one time) because it would be nice to sleep in on a Saturday. I'm loving how active this trip has been so far, but it is a bit exhausting.