December and January in Aix

So school wise, I had a ton of exams waiting for me in early January, which meant that early December was just for finishing up classes and trying not to freeze! Luke came to visit me during my last week before break, and so I showed him around Aix, including the adorable Christmas market they set up here.

Each craftsman sets up a little booth and they sell everything from hand painted ornaments to cookies to art. The Christmas markets are a big deal in Europe, and pretty much every major city has one.





Luke and I then embarked on a journey to Brussels in Belgium, where it was not just snowing a lit bit, but snowing a lot! And apparently, it doesn't snow in Belgium... ever. So I guess Europe had it out for me this winter, because I've been snowed on more in the past 2 months than I have been in the past 5 years. We stayed close to the Hotel de Ville [or, City Hall as we know it english] and it looked like this...
We wandered around a lot in Brussels [it's got a rather small centre ville, which is nice, easy to see everything rather quickly and easily] but it was so so cold! It didn't snow during our sightseeing days, but it did on the day we were supposed to fly out, which resulted in us having to spend the night in Brussels' airport.

Anyway, here's a nice photo of the snow...



Anyway, I could go on for ages about Brussels, it's one of my new favorite cities, I could totally live there. And contrary to the popular notion that everyone speaks English, I actually spoke and used my French more in Brussels than I do in a given day in France. Go figure.




So after Brussels, Luke and I returned to the UK for Christmas. And a blizzard struck. Literally as we drove from the airport. So, apparently in the UK, people don't use chains on their tires, so there were all these cars abandoned at the bottoms of hills. It doesn't make any sense to me. Oh, and people salt their driveways with table salt. teehee. Anyway, this was the blizzard...

Christmas with Luke's family was pretty cool, it was very english, complete with christmas pudding, a turkey cooked with bacon, and followed by like 4 more days of intense eating [christmas just never ends there!]

After Christmas [and it's subsequent 50 billion days] was done, Luke and I rang in the new year in London, which is a lot cooler than it sounds, given the sheer amount of people with the same mission!
That being said, Bonne Année!

After New Years, I was in the UK until January 4th, and returned to a finals period lasting 3 weeks. During which, some of my teachers just decided to give us a second final. Just because. I think they get tired of having exams for so long too, it's just plain ridiculous!

So I got snowed on in Belgium, England, and finally France. In Aix-en-Provence, it never snows. It's kind of like San Diego in a way, except it generally gets a bit colder in the winter. But this has been a freakishly cold winter in Aix, with many days hovering around 1 or 2 degrees celcius [so mid 30s farenheight] and it DID actually snow here! enough to make a tiny snowman! How crazy!

Anyway, that's pretty much the very quick story of how things have been, the next few months should be pretty interesting, there's a lot of travel planned!