Its been a while...

Sooooo extremely sorry that I haven't been keeping you guys updated with our european travels! Since the last time I wrote, we have been to Barcelona, Paris and Italy. I guess you could say we have a lot of catching up to do. 

Barcelona~ GREATEST CITY EVER! I know I haven't been to every city in the world to compare it to other but this place blows every city out of the water. The only bad thing I can say was the you would think it would be on the warmer side of the weather spectrum being in Spain and everything, but it was FREEZING. Nobody was prepared for the winter weather even though we went in February. Whatever it was still amazing. We went to a FC Barcelona game vs. Seville. I literally have millions of pictures of Messi just school people with no effort. The night life is another awesome but scary part of the city. Barcelona is rated #4 in the world for night life so you could say the boys and I were more than pumped to go out. So we got ready, left the hotel at 12am, somehow met english girls studying abroad (one of whom I found out lives the next town over from my home town) ((small world)) and headed out to this club called Opium. Oh and to top it off, it was pouring out. Long story short, we got soaking wet from massive lines trying to get into the club (even after cutting the line a few times), couldn't get into the club due to over capacity and ended up going to a club that I have no idea what the name is. The club we got into was huge too and the girls said Opium was 5 times bigger and better. Needless to say we were very exhausted come Sunday because we got a total of 12 hours of sleep from Thursday till Sunday. I LOVE BARCELONA!

Paris~ We knew Paris would be awesome for the architecture and atmosphere but not so much for the night life like Barcelona. First off, Wentworth put us in a children hostel. (like middle schoolers) So you can understand our frustration when we were told that the hostel gate closed at 1am. If you guessed that we would have problems in this hostel you were RIGHT. Each night we would have to fight with the guard at like 4am to let us in to sleep. We also got "shhht" a lot. Place suckkedddd! The red light district was fun though. The last night we found ourselves in the red light district in an Irish bar with Northeastern girls listening,  no screaming Shipping up to Boston! Everyone else in the club was watching us in fright, probably thinking we were going to start some type of riot because we were THAT excited!

Italy~ Last week was our spring break. Unfortunately our "week" break really means from Thursday till Monday. But my parents and Ty and Travs family both met us in Rome. It was awesome because coincidentally our hotels were a 5 minute walk from each other. We were able to eat dinner the nights we stayed in Rome together. Both sets of parents will now not shut up about how awesome the other couple is. After 2 days in Rome my parents and I then went to Florence. Tuscany was a beautiful place but the city of Florence got boring quick. So the second day we decided to take a train to Pisa and climb the tower. Let me tell you...the Leaning tower really means when you climb up the however many stairs the tower has in it, you are REALLY leaning from side to side. I thought it would have been harder to walk up it rather than down. But its quite difficult to walk down. From Pisa we fought off the gypsies on the train and managed to get to Venice. Venice is the coolest city. Its unlike anywhere else in the world. We arrived by train and got a water taxi to the front steps of our hotel. If you don't already know, my mom is a big church person. So needless to say we went to mass on Sunday. This was probably the first Sunday, ever, that I was excited because we went to the Saint Marco Basilica. This church is one of the most gorgeous buildings I have ever seen. Pictures don't even do justice. You really have to get to Venice to understand. The rest of my time in the city, we roamed around and just got lost. SO LOST! One common, random theme that kept showing up everywhere was masks. I finally had to ask someone why and found out that every February they have a week of a Venetian Carnival where everyone walks around in extravagant masks. Its creepy but hey I wouldn't not participate if I were around. 

Next weekend Ty, Trav, Nick, Lee and I are going to Portugal! I will try to update after the weekend and tell some good stories that happen because we all know there will be something funny or stupid one of does. I will also try to update facebook photos because I have way too many photos for the other site.

Until next time mes amies. 

New places, New food, New risks

NEW is our theme of the past week and a half. I mean i guess you could say that new is the theme of the entire trip but there are somethings that have started to become an every day type of activity. For instance, waking up at 8am even when our first class begins at 2pm. Kababs... not sure what kind of animal they skin it from but the boys are going to have major with drawls when coming back to America. Daily adventures to the supermarket because nothing stays fresh after two days. AND frequent parades and spontaneous drum lines throughout the city. (BOSTON why don't we have these!???) Sorry I got off track, back to this past week:

Last Saturday night we attended our very first rugby game! The boys have a new crush... its our teacher's girlfriend. "She's the perfect woman- long legs, cute face and loved rugby, AND suggested the hot dog in a baguette!"- Tyler. (He said all about her after saying about 3 words to her) Montpellier has a very good rugby team. They also have perfectly shaped bums. (I have pictures for proof) But most importantly their cheers are the best! ---> ICI, ICI C'EST MONTPELLIER! translation: HERE, HERE IT'S MONTPELLIER! creative right... hahaha but in all seriousness we had a blast! for anyone who comes to france, you have to go to a rugby game.

Another new event that happened was Mardi Gras last tuesday night. THAT was an interesting night. We were all in studio working on our projects until we heard the sweet sound of drums, loud music and chants of crazy people in the streets. Naturally we grabbed our cameras and sprinted down the 4 flights of stairs in our building. If theres one thing I learned about the French holiday of Fat Tuesday, it is NOTHING like the american tradition of girls flaunting their upper-halves to be dowsed in colorful beads. Instead of beads there were homeless people pushing shopping carts with pandas being hung from nooses through a crowd of crazy teens dressed up in rags and lipstick smudged across their faces. This night ended with a few wannabe fireworks and everything being burned in front of a government building. Incase you were wondering, the laws over here are more of guidelines that no one actually follows. I think the only time I've seen a police car, there have been 2 officers in the front and 2 in the back. That would be one squished backseat if they had to arrest anyone.

The other crazy adventure we have encountered this past week was going to the coast to visit Séte and La Grande Motte. We started off our day at 9am with hardly any breakfast (Ty picked us up some croissants) and headed a good 40 mins to the coast. Our day was pretty packed because we went from a hill top to a sea boat within 2 hours! We got to taste test france's finest seafood. No matter how weird it seemed to decapitate a shrimp and fork a snail out of its shell we all said YOLO and ate most of what was on our plates. Soon after we took our boat ride around the lagoon where we learned way more than we'll ever need to know about oyster harvesting. From Séte we drove up to La Grande Motte. This place was filled with 60's architecture and was a little more classy than the jersey shore (pre-sandy). Other than the ugly architecture it was fun to touch the Mediterranean sea!

This past weekend however was the worst, we planned on trying to get all our studio work done for Saturday and go hiking on Sunday! So even though we said we would do this, everyone who knows us, knows we didn't make it to go hiking on Sunday. We went to studio Saturday and spent our day on Facebook or watching tv shows or Face-timing. So when Sunday came we had more work than expected to do AND to top off what would have been a bad day in studio 9 of us got food poisoning from the sea food tasting that we all said YOLO to! We know it was food poisoning because Mrs. Lombardi said if #1 is coming out of your #2 area its definitely food poisoning. S/O to Mrs. Lombardi!

I think thats enough for this weeks blogs! Everyone has survived the poisoning if you were worried.
I would end this blog with nick's new french vocabulary but he is now focusing on spanish due to the fact that we are going to Barcelona on Thursday! Until next time loves...

Greetings from your French Friez!

Bon soir! - Good Evening! (We have been trying to speak more french to each other sooo this greeting seemed appropriate)

We have successfully survived our first week of school... sorry for those of you that have been in school for a whole month. This week has been an educational one to say the least. We've been to a couple of local bars, most importantly, The Australian Bar. Wednesday nights here are BUMPIN! Everyone got into the bar besides Travis and Matt. They decided it would be fun to buy more beer on the walk to the bar and that was the last time we saw them for the night. Apparently they met 3 different groups of girls and guys and made friends! They ended up coming home at 5am from a club down town. Meanwhile at the australian bar, we learned that AMERICA wins in music, because they play all our music! OLAY so yes we were all the best at the cotton eyed joe when that played. We also learned not to drink two bottles of wine before we go out because Thursday morning Travis almost got killed by a bottle of Advil from my laziness to walk over to give it to him.

Since the last blog, we have had a couple more lessons in French. Travis learned a very valuable lesson yesterday when he asked the teacher why some french girls at the bar laughed in his face when he said "Je suis Travis" (I am Travis-or so he thought) The teacher informed him that Travi means transvestite in French...... soooo he actually went up to a couple of girls and said I am a transvestite. Can you say AWKWARD?! but seriously, everyone was literally dying laughing. Including our teacher.

We felt like we should update so heres Nicks Newest Vocabulary:

"C'est un pour une projet d'école"- It's for a school project.

"Tu viens ici souvent" - Do you come here often?

"J'adore lampe"- I love lamp.

"Ne me touchez pas!"- Don't touch me!

On a side note: Travis is the worst at communicating with the french. He talks to people like they are Helen Keller. Very loud, very slow and in 4 words or less.

We have also reduced our bottle a night drinking to save money BECAUSE we are going to PORTUGAL for Easter! So we feel like we need to save money and stop eating baguettes so we can outshine the Portuguese. Even though we ALL know its not going to happen.

For any of you that are interested to see some pics I'm going to post up my Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlipatrice/?hide_photostream_welcome=1

I think I'm going to upload most of my pictures to Flickr rather than Facebook, because it takes less time. ANywhooo, its way past my bedtime so I'll update again soon! Miss you guys! Bon soire!!!
Love your French friezzzz! :)

FRANCCCEEE part un (1)

Bonjor mes amies! (hello my friends)

So I figured I'd try this whole blogging thing again. We'll see how long it lasts... 

The boys and I have talked about it and we figured we'd write in this blog maybe once a week about the updates in our lives overseas!

Well, we made it through the first couple of days! haha The lifestyle is a little different from the normal WIT life. As soon as we arrived in Montpellier we dropped all our luggage in our new "flats" and then our professor took us on a walk around the city. Its GORGEOUS! The "old city" is full of so many older buildings, hidden alleyways & SHOPS. After they took us for a walk they let us have the night to ourselves. We were in a little bit of a culture shock because we were starving and it was only 5:30pm. France "celebrates" their meals at certain times: the ones we know of so far are: 12-2 for lunch and 8-10 for dinner. Nick, Ty, Trav, Lee and I found a pizza place in an ally-way and it was our first interaction with a french guy who didnt understand two words of English. It took us about 30 mins to order 3 pizzas. They were very good but we found out the hard way that we DETEST one of the cheeses they pretty much put on everything... It tastes like an old shoe. Oh! and we got our wine served to us in baby bottles! After finishing dinner, we had to find our way home without a map. We got lost multiple times but somehow found our way after a half hour. 
Sunday we woke up around 12 and had a huge list of things we wanted to get done by the end of the day. We soon found out that EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays. So we walked around for about 3-1/2 hours just exploring the city! We learned how to use the "Tam" (their version of the T). Today we had our first classes, taught entirely by French people! The boys had their first french lesson and now know their numbers and about 3 french phrases :


1. Je ne sais pas.                                              Translation: "I don't know"
2. Je ne parle pas francais.                                 Translation: "I don't speak French"
3. Je voudrai une croissant, s'il vous plais!            Translation: "I would like a croissant please."

We also learned that America is stupid for not using the metric system for any type of measurements. Classes are pretty much all day, but that 2hr break for lunch is awesome and another reason America needs to step up its game! Oh and we are still dumbfounded by the fact that french women eat so many carbs and still have the skinniest of legs! #legsfodayzzz  Anywhoooo, we are still alive & trying to plan our first trip for this weekend! we are welcome to any suggestions (if anyone actually reads this blog) Bon Soir! (Goodnight!) Miss you guys but this place is so much fun. LOVE youuuu!