A jam-packed weekend!

Last Saturday, like usual, I had sports for two hours at 8am, and after that I had a two hour DS de mathématiques (math test). It sounds pretty rough, but it turned out to be not so bad. Most of my teachers let me use my notes for tests and quizzes, and Saturday was no different. I didn't have enough time to finish the whole test, but I managed to do two out of the three exercises, and of what I completed, I think it was right. It feels nice to finally be understanding some things. Sometimes it feels like I've been here for two months and I should be flying through everything, but when I sit down and think about it, two months really isn't a long time to learn a whole new language. For the most part, however, I feel like I'm making steady progress in my classes.

Saturday evening, I went a football (soccer) match with Greg, my host brother! Marseilles team is Olympic Marseille, or L'OM, and they're supposed to be really good! Greg told me that last year they were national champions and they generally place in the top three. Football is really big in France, especially in Marseille. The stadium is called the Vélodrome, and it's truly amazing! It's huge! The actuel game itself was really fun. It reminded me a lot of the high school basketball games back home. There are a whole bunch of chants and songs that the fans sing (some of which aren't all that nice, but it's all in good fun) for different occasions like when there's a corner kick, or a penalty kick, or if the ref mad a bad call. There was so much team spirit and it really reminded me of the atmosphere at the basketball games back home.

The game itself was great! L'OM scored in the first half which left the score 1-0 at halftime. Unfortunately Lance (the other team) scored in the second half and l'OM couldn't pull it together by the end. In regular season games, they don't go into overtime or penalty kicks, so it was just a tie. Everyone seemed really disappointed, but I had a great time!

The Vélodrome

Greg et moi au match de foot!

Sunday, I spent the day with Beatrice (an AFS volunteer in Marseille) and Emma (my best friend, who is also an exchange student in Marseille from Sweden). I haven't had so much fun in a really long time! Beatrice is just the nicest person, and it was really easy to talk to her. She took us to a little town to the east of Marseille called Cassis. It was a cute little fishing village that had a completely Italian market in it. We went to the market and got to try awesome samples of everything! I even got a head start on my Christmas shopping :). 

Emma et moi à Cassis!

One of the meat stands at the market

After a nice morning exploring the shops, enjoying the views and wandering through the market, we returned to Marseille for lunch and discussion. It was really nice to just talk about things with Beatrice and Emma. Like I said, Beatrice was really easy to talk to and even though it was all in French, we had some really deep and interesting conversations. 

Marseille is split up into 111 quartiers (neighborhoods) and after a wonderful meal that ended with a chocolate banana tarte that was to-die-for, we visited the eighth quartier where a teeny tiny fishing town called Les Goudes was. The views were amazing! Les Goudes is basically at the end of the world, or at least the road (the road literally stops in the town and you can only get around by car or boat). It's at the base of the mountains surrounding Marseille, and if we hadn't been wearing ballerina flats, and the wind hadn't been blowing at 55mph, we would have hiked to the top! We're definitely going to take another day trip back. 

All in all, it was a really awesome weekend! I'm hoping that this coming weekend will be just as good. I'm going to an AFS get together and I'm really excited to see everyone :)

There are many more pictures from the weekend on my flickr! Check it out :)