Medieval town = medieval times

Okay, it's about damn time that I wrote a post about all the crap I've had to deal with in France because of their ridiculous bureaucratic notions. Before I start, though, a list of things that suck about France:
1) They kill so many trees. Seriously. They are so old-fashioned in the fact that they want paper versions of EVERYTHING. And they loooove their photocopies. Every single time I've had to submit a form, I've had to include so many freaking copies of things. Kill me now. No, scratch that, kill the trees now. (Yeah I know, I'm hilarious)
2) If you ever know you're going to have to wait on a line, get there an hour before you originally intended to. Because no matter what kind of service it is, you will have to wait. Forever. Because the French are notoriously SLOW at EVERYTHING.
3) The post office sucks. Also really slow. But since the French just can't live without paper everything, you still have to use the post office all the time. Which also sucks.
4) Eating out here is completely opposite of the US. You know how in the States, waiters are always (or at least supposed to be) super attentive and refilling your glass and all that jazz? Well, here they have more of a laissez-faire attitude. Their idea is, leave the customer alone until they're frantically waving their hands in the air in an attempt to get the check so they can make it to whatever pre-scheduled thing they're late for. That's my perception anyway. I mean, okay, I admit that it's nice to let people eat in peace and take their time, whatever, but I WANT MY FREAKING WATER DAMN IT. And if I have something to go to? Well then it just seems like they ignore you even more. Basically, whenever you want something at a restaurant, you have to actually flag down a waiter and ask for it. Kind of annoying.
5) This one isn't really something that sucks, but it can be slightly inconvenient: at grocery stores, they don't give you bags. You have to bring your own reusable ones. And if you forget your bags and end up buying a ton of stuff, you have to buy bags. Which is very good for the environment and all, but not so good for when you actually do forget your bags.

Okay, now that I'm done ranting about general things in France, here's my story.

Phone
You already read about the phone problem I had when I first got here. I actually had ANOTHER phone problem when I switched providers. Originally, I had a prepaid sim card with La Poste Mobile, which is a pretty standard prepaid plan. However, I heard about another provider called Free Mobile, which was supposed to have a pretty good deal--unlimited calling and texting within France, and also unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada, for only 20 euros a month! So of course I signed up for it.

This is how the process is supposed to go: you sign up for Free Mobile online, and 2 days after you sign up you receive your new sim card. 2 days after that, if you choose to keep the same number from your old provider, they deactivate the old sim card and you can activate your new one whenever.

This is how things actually happened for me: I signed up, did not receive the sim card 2 days later, but they deactivated my old one 2 days after that anyway. I called them about a week later and they said they sent the sim card, but I never got it. So it got lost in the mail. They said they'd send a new one, which I did get, finally, 2 days after I called. So I went about 2 weeks without a working sim card. 2 WEEKS WITHOUT A PHONE. FREAKING RIDICULOUS. Don't trust the French postal service, guys. It is major fail.

Internet
Now it's time to hear about my internet problems. I opened an account with SFR, one of the major internet/phone companies in France, at the beginning of October (according to them, it was October 10th). Okay, you need to understand that subscribing to internet in France is not at all like it is in the States. In the wonderful, lovely United States of America, you can just go to the store and buy your own router, and set up wifi yourself at home. Here, you have to sign up for internet FIRST, and then they SHIP you your router. And they don't even ship it to your house. They ship it to this like...outpost of theirs, which in my case was called Cartridge World. They also have to activate your DSL line remotely.

A couple of days after signing up for internet, I got a text from SFR saying my DSL line was activated. Not too long after that, I got another text saying that my router had been delivered. So I picked it up, brought it home, and attempted to set up internet. While I was trying to install internet, it said that my DSL line was not activated. I, of course, was dumbfounded, because they had told me it was. So I went back to the store, complained, and the guy called SFR. He talked to them and told me that they would call me within 48 hours to talk through the problem with me. They didn't. So I called them a day or two after that, and they told me that someone else would call me within 48 hours. Starting to see a pattern here? So they did call me this time, except I was at work, so I couldn't pick up. This game of phone tag continued for probably about a week.

Finally, they called me while I was home, and they had me do some tests with the router. They determined that it was not a problem with the router, but a problem with the DSL line. They told me a technician would call me. And the game of phone tag recommenced. After they failed to reach me several times, I called them, and they had me do the same exact test. Again. Very frustrating. Then they said they would send a technician from SFR, and he came, and he determined that it wasn't a problem with the DSL line, but with the actual phone line. Yeah. So now they had to contact France Telecom (the phone operating company) to fix the problem.

They called me a few times, again, while I was at work, and after that I didn't hear from them for a while. So I called them again. And I found out that in their file, it said my problem was resolved. Of course I told them that the problem was, in fact, not resolved, and they said they would relaunch it. Then I decided to go to the SFR store (not where I signed up for internet because I signed up at a place that offered multiple internet options, but the actual store of SFR) in town and asked them about it. They called and found out that my file had been closed because they couldn't reach me. What kind of service is that?! You don't close a file if you can't reach someone, you keep trying until you reach them! Idiots. So they reopened my file, and I told them specifically when I was available for calls, so he said they would call me either last Monday or last Wednesday. They called me Monday, but NOT at the time that I specified. Then I got a call a few days ago saying that they were going to send a technician from France Telecom. So he arrived this morning, and within half an hour he had fixed the problem. Apparently the phone line had been deconnected in the entrance of my building, which is why it hadn't been working. STUPID. SO STUPID. Anyway, to sum it all up, I finally have a legit internet connection now, and if you are my friend and you're reading this, tell me when you're free to video chat!!! =)

Oh, one more thing. You're probably wondering how I got online during this whole debacle. Well, one of my friends here has "connections" and got me a username and password for Freewifi (same parent company as Free Mobile), one of the networks available at my house, so I've been using that. Hehe. Oh yeah, there's no such thing as "free" wifi in France. Except at McDonald's. For all other "public" wifi networks, you actually need to have a username and password for the networks, meaning you need to be subscribed to an internet plan. Fucking. Ridiculous. I've also been using internet on my phone, since my Free Mobile plan includes 3 gigabytes worth of 3G. And I have also been mooching off of friends, mostly Natalie, who is kind enough to let me go over to her place several times a week to use her internet. So thank you to everyone who has let me use their internet in the past 2 months! Yeah, 2 months. Can you believe it? Anyway, I'm just so relieved now that I have internet. Time to go hassle SFR to give me my money back for the first two months.

Paris

Okay, so kind of backtracking a little bit here (well, more like a lot), but when my mom was still here, alllll the way back in the beginning of October, we went to Paris for 2 days before she left to go back the States. I just wanted to write my posts about Vacances de la Toussaint first because so much more happened during them.

Anyway, so on October 1st, we took the train up to Paris, and since we got there in the late afternoon, we couldn't do very much. So of course we did the most touristy things possible, which meant seeing: L'Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

The next day was jam-packed with as much sightseeing as humanly possible in an 8 hour period, since I was taking the train back to Nimes around 4 pm. I think I'll just provide a photographic list.

Jardin des Tuileries

Louvre

Glass pyramid at Louvre

Pont des Arts

Notre Dame

Palais & Jardin du Luxembourg

Sacre Coeur

Sacre Coeur interior

Champs-Elysees

It was a short trip, but hey, I saw all the important sights! Plus, I'll definitely be going back at some point. I did enjoy Paris...I can definitely see the charm, but it'd be nice to see it with people my age too, and spend more time exploring the lesser known parts. =) 

Vacances de la Toussaint: Johannesburg

My very first day in South Africa, since there was the whole bankrupt airline disaster, was actually spent in Johannesburg. Roxanne took me to this giant flea market behind the mall, which was filled with all sorts of fun odds and ends.

It was HUGE!

There were also a ton of food vendors, and while we had a tough time deciding where to get lunch, we ended up getting Indian food.

I was very tempted to get this paella...kind of regret not getting it.

I also bought Roxanne a birthday present there (two shot glasses with a mini bottle of South African liqueur). There was also an antiques section, which was pretty cool, and I ended up buying my sister a gift there as well! Just in case she's reading this, I'm not going to say what it is. Anyway, so our day was mostly spent there; once we finished browsing we went back to Roxanne's house and I kind of passed out on her bed because I was so tired from so much traveling. Then that night we flew to Cape Town.

When we got back from Cape Town, it was Thursday and I wasn't leaving for Europe until Saturday, so we had a couple days to kill. On Friday, we walked to the Chinatown in Johannesburg, which took about an hour, and half of it was uphill, which Roxanne failed to tell me. Yeah. But it turned out that the Chinatown there is pretty legit! I got to eat some spicy cold noodles (liang mian), which were soooo good. The restaurant we ate at was also a Sichuanese restaurant, which was awesome, since my family is from Sichuan!

Deeeeelicious!

The restaurant! It's called Cheng Du Xiao Chi

I've been in a Chinese food withdrawal ever since I got to Europe, so I was very glad we went. We also got desserts and bubble tea afterwards...leading to SUCH a food coma, and feeling like we were about to burst. So it was actually a good thing that it was an hour-long walk back...anyway, that night we ended up going out to a couple bars (and had pizza for dinner at one), which were pretty crowded, but nothing that exciting happened. What's funny is that the two bars were called Jolly Roger and Jolly Cool, haha. No relation though! Totally separate businesses. The thing about Johannesburg is, though, that EVERYTHING is ridiculously far away, so her co-workers had to drive us there...and we had to take a cab back. Yeah.

The next day, we had lunch at a popular (and rather nice) restaurant called Moyo, which served traditional South African food, which I had never tried before! We had springbok shank, pap (a kind of corn mush), and this other thing called nhopi dovi which is another kind of mush that's pumpkin with groundnut sauce. It basically tastes like pumpkin-flavored peanut butter. I know it sounds weird, but it is SO FREAKING GOOD. Yeah. We also got two free drinks because they were testing out a new candy-flavored vodka they were planning to introduce soon. So that was cool, haha.

Our meal! The orange stuff is nhopi dovi and the beige one is pap.

Modeling one of our free drinks

My dessert! Baklava of some kind...

Roxanne's dessert, forgot what it was called lol

After lunch we walked around the mall that the restaurant was in, and then went back. Then I packed and started making a birthday cake for Roxanne, but we discovered that my flight actually left an hour earlier than we thought, so we had to book it to the airport. I said my goodbyes to Roxanne, very sad to leave, but not TOO sad because...she is visiting me in France from the 17th to the 21st!!!!! YAYYYYY!!!!

Vacances de la Toussaint: Cape Town!!

I left our hotel in Marseille completely in the dark (literally) at around 4 am on November 3rd to walk to the train station, where I had to catch the shuttle to the airport. I successfully made it to the airport, and the next 30 hours of my life was spent traveling. Funnn. This was my itinerary:
6:55 am - Depart Marseille
8:05 am - Arrive Milan
11:15 am - Depart Milan
12:30 pm - Arrive Rome
5:40 pm - Depart Rome
9:45 pm - Arrive Cairo
11:00 pm - Depart Cairo
7:05 am - Arrive Johannesburg

I finally arrived in Johannesburg, exhausted, looking exactly like I'd been traveling for the past 30 hours, and also overjoyed to see my wonderful, awesome friend Roxanne, who was my former college apartment-mate. She's currently interning in Johannesburg for an environmental engineering consulting company. I chose to visit her in Johannesburg because: 1) I had never ever been to Africa and really wanted to go, and 2) When else would I know somebody in Africa? So yes, I went all the way to the southern hemisphere for a week. And it started off...well, quite terribly. Basically, Roxanne and I were supposed to fly to Cape Town not long after my arrival in Johannesburg, so after she met me we went to go check in for our next flight (which was supposed to be around noon). We got to the departures area and were looking for the check-in counters for our airline. We couldn't find them, so we asked a few police officers. They looked at us like we were crazy, and this is the dialogue that followed...

Police: 1time (the airline)? They're bankrupt, you didn't hear?
Us: *nervous laugh* ...you're kidding right?
Police: No, they went bankrupt, it was all over the news!
Us: Oh...crap.

Then we freaked out for a good 5 minutes, and then went and sat in a cafe while Roxanne called her co-worker, Duncan, who had dropped her off. He ended up calling their boss, and we found out that while the airline wouldn't be able to reimburse us, the bank of the company would, because the original plane tickets were bought by the company since Roxanne didn't have a South African credit card. Then Duncan bought us new tickets for that night, and it all worked out. It was still a pretty terrible ordeal though. We thought for sure we were screwed. But, we got on a plane to Cape Town that night, and our CouchSurfing host met us at the airport. His name was Maarten, and he turned out to be a really nice guy, who had a really nice house too. We even got our own room and bathroom! Pretty sweet. Turns out that he was free most of the week since he had his own company, so he could make his own hours, meaning he could actually drive us around while we were there! Here's how we spent our time in Cape Town:

Day One
Maarten was free that day to drive us around, so he basically gave us his own tour of Cape Town. We started off with a brief walk around this old fort (very little actually remains of it) that had a great view of Hout Bay, where he lived. Then he took us to this seemingly random pier, which turned out was quite the popular hangout spot for seals!! And we didn't have to pay any annoying tourist ticket prices. It was completely free, and we got to be like 2 feet away from a seal.

Seals. SO CUTE!

After squealing over seals, we went and saw one of the many beaches in Cape Town, frolicked in the sand for a bit, and then had lunch at Ocean Basket, a popular chain in Cape Town. I tried legit fish and chips for the first time, which was pretty damn good. After that, we headed out to an ostrich farm--yes that's right, I said ostrich farm--where we got to pet ostriches, feed ostriches, sit on an ostrich, stand on ostrich eggs, and see the smallest ostrich in the world (named Tom Thumb), though not necessarily in that order.

Standing on ostrich eggs!

With Tom Thumb =D

Sitting on an ostrich

Roxanne sitting on the ostrich

Once we finished hanging out with the ostriches, Maarten took us on a very beautiful, scenic mountain drive, where we got to see some amazing views of Cape Town. After that, we headed to dinner at a restaurant called The Lookout, which was right on the harbor. It was quite nice; a nice finish to our first day in Cape Town.

Day Two
Our second day, Roxanne and I decided to tackle a hike up Table Mountain, which is one of the main tourist attractions for Cape Town. The reason it's called Table Mountain? Well, it looks like a gigantic table because it's completely flat at the top. Kind of like the place in Up! You know what I'm talking about, right? The cliffs that Paradise Falls stream down from? They're totally flat at the top, which is basically what Table Mountain looks like. So yes, we decided to climb all the way up, which is quite a feat for me, because I am not a very active person, which you should know if you are my friend. Haha. There was a sign at the bottom that said it should take about an hour. It took us two. But once we got to the top...well, it was worth it. The view was absolutely incredible. Some photos...

View from the bottom

The top!

View of the bay

Needless to say, we felt like totally awesome people once we finished the hike, so we walked around the top for a while, then took the cable car back down, and got victory ice cream. Then we headed back to Maarten's house, where we ordered pizza for dinner. After that we decided to go out for drinks at this Tahitian-themed bar called Pakalolo, which was...well, kind of a failure because no one was out, seeing as it was a Tuesday night. So it was a quiet night, but still good. You know, girls' night. =)

Day Three
On the third day in Cape Town, Maarten was free to drive us around again, so he took us to a vineyard (supposedly the oldest vineyard in South Africa) called Groot Constantia, which was pretty cool, but all we really did was walk around and take pictures.

In the vineyard!

No wine tastings or anything, unfortunately. Then he drove us to Simon's Town, where we visited a gemstone factory (pretty cool), and then saw penguins!!! Again for free, because he knew how to see them without paying.  

Penguins! =D

After seeing the penguins, Maarten drove us to Table Mountain National Park, which included Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. It was SO beautiful there, especially at Cape Point. And also really, really windy. As you can see from these photos.

Being touristy

That's the Cape of Good Hope!

Gorggggeeeeoooouuuuusssss

So windy! lol.

It was pretty cool going to the Cape of Good Hope, too, since it is the most southwestern point in Africa!

Yeah, we're awesome.

With Maarten!

After that, Maarten took us to his favorite beach in Cape Town, called Llandudno Beach. I have to admit, it was the COOLEST beach I have ever been to. It had all of these enormous boulders that formed caves and passageways, so awesome.

Gigantaboulder

In a cave!

Had a great view of Table Mountain in the background too =)

Being awesome again =P

Then we watched the sunset on another part of the beach. Freaking gorgeous.

Tell me you're not jealous of that.

That night we made dinner with Maarten, which was a nice, peaceful end to the day. 

Day Four
On the fourth (and final) day, Roxanne and I went...PARAGLIDING. That's right. Paragliding. It did kind of happen in a very roundabout way though. We had made a reservation, but they called us in the morning saying the wind wasn't right for paragliding, so we wouldn't be able to do it. So we settled on the idea of spending the day at the beach. When we got to the beach, however, they called again and said the wind had changed, so we COULD go. They came and picked us up, but once we got to the top of the cliff we had to wait about half an hour because the wind was, once again, being uncooperative. But FINALLY, we got to go. I actually tripped while running down the hill...not my most graceful moment. But it happened! I flew!

That's actually Roxanne, she went first.

Me in the air =D

View from the air!

Pretty. Damn. Awesome. However, I feel like I overhyped it in my mind, because when we actually did it, it wasn't nearly as exciting as I thought it'd be. The ride didn't last very long...maybe like 5 minutes. But, it was still pretty cool. And I can now say I've been paragliding! =D Then we went home, had KFC for dinner, and Maarten drove us to the airport so we could go back to Johannesburg. And that was our trip to Cape Town!

Vacances de la Toussaint: Provence and Marseille

Hey all, I know it's been a while since my last post...and that is because I still do not have a legit internet connection. Yeah. Lots of problems with France. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about my first big vacation, Vacances de la Toussaint. I stayed in Nîmes for the first few days because my sister, Jen, and her fiancé, Elihu, came to visit me! We went and explored several beautiful towns in Provence, including: Ansouis, Ménerbes, Lourmarin, and Les Baux-de-Provence. Some photos below...

View from the château at Ansouis

Another view from the château

A town we saw on our drive, called Bonnieux

Les Baux-de-Provence, so awesome!

After they left, I visited Marseille with my two friends Louise and Natalie. Louise and I left first, on Thursday, November 1st. Even before we got there, we had problems. When I met Louise at the train station, we discovered that the train tickets we bought were actually going to Montpellier, not Marseille. Apparently when Louise was buying them online she accidentally clicked the first city that popped up when she typed in "M" and we were so happy at the cheap price that we didn't even look twice! So we had to go to the ticket booth and buy new tickets. Not a huge problem, but still. It didn't get off to a good start.

The next thing that happened was a much bigger problem: the guy we were supposed to CouchSurf with in Marseille cancelled on us. So we didn't have a place to stay! Once we heard that, we freaked out for quite a bit, and when we got to Marseille we spent practically 3 hours in a McDonald's looking for a new place to stay. We wanted to CouchSurf (since it's free), but we ended up booking a hostel. Once we got that sorted out, Louise and I went to go check out Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, which is the basilica located all the way on top of a huge hill just outside of Marseille. We trekked all the way up (leaving me sweating like a pig), which took a while, but once we got to the top the view was incredible, and of course the basilica itself was very beautiful.

Ceiling of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde

View of Marseille

After that we had dinner, which was very seafood-themed (it is a port town, after all), walked around a little, and then headed back to the hostel.

The next morning, Natalie was arriving, so we asked the hostel if we could book another night for 3 people instead of 2. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough room, so we actually had to go to a hotel that they suggested, which ended up being cheaper than the hostel and was still pretty nice, so it wasn't a huge deal. Our second day in Marseille was pretty great; we had lunch at the restaurant called Bar de la Marine, which is the one in Love Actually where Colin Firth proposes to his love interest!!! We were very excited about that.

So cute!

After lunch we went on a boat tour of the Les Calanques, which are the biggest tourist attraction for Marseille. They're essentially a series of little coves in between these huuuge cliffs, and are ridiculously beautiful.

For dinner I tried bouillabaisse for the first time, and I have to admit...I'm not a huge fan. A shame, I know, since it's basically Marseille's signature dish, but it's just not for me. Then we got a drink at a bar and headed back for the night. All in all, a good trip!