Today my friend Corey and I went out and previewed part of the course for the half marathon later this month.  We did the big hill that leads to Cassis.  Its gonna be a tough course!  Bottom to top of the main part of the hill took us 26 minutes, so i'm not sure of the distance but it felt like a pretty long hill...  All in all we ran for just over  an hour today and I felt great!  My previous longest run was only about 45 minutes so I was definitely excited about being able to run as long as we did today.  I'm excited for the race, I think it will be very fun!  On the way back down the hill we noticed painted-over Nike signs in the road, so from the looks of it it will probably be an exciting race.
In other news, I think I'll be going to Aix en Provence today, a town about 20 km north of here.  A couple of the Spanish guys have a car so we might go with them for the evening and spend the day there tomorrow.  I'll give you all a full report of how it goes when we get back!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I last wrote!  I was sick all week last week and didn't really get around to doing much of anything.  Really, I went to class and ate but that's about it.  I stayed home most nights and slept a lot but I'm glad I did as I'm feeling 100% again now.  Saturday night I actually went out for the first time again.  I went to a costume party at a French person's house.  It was a lot of fun, though they spoke French most of the time.  I felt it was helping though because I could understand a few things here and there.  On Sunday I went to the beach near my residence for Red Bull Flugtag.  It was pretty fun!  We watched that for a little while, then went swimming for a while.  After that we all went to a cafe for some coffee (called cafe in french...).  It was a very nice Sunday.  Both yesterday and today I've had class so they have been pretty busy days for me.  Tomorrow and Thursday are my days off though!  Tomorrow I'll be doing my grocery shopping, laundry, and definitely spend some time on Rosetta Stone (just got it, its so fun!).  Hope all is well with everyone at home and its been great getting comments and emails from you all.  Talk to you soon,
Chris

I just heard about this race yesterday from a friend of mine and I think I'll do it!  There is a race from downtown Marseille to Cassis, a small town 20.3 kilometers away (to be exact).  It looks like a really cool race and it goes right past my residence!  Here's what Runner's World has to say about it: 
"If you want a Tour de France experience in a running event, then this is the race for you. Fantastic organisation, messages chalked onto the road, vocal and highly enthusiastic supporters, samba dancers and television coverage all help you to feel as though you're in the bike race's peleton. Perhaps the only problem is that it's more like one of the Tour's mountain stages than the prologue. There's just one hill, but it goes on for five miles, so don't expect a fast time for the 20.3K run. As the race starts and finishes by the sea, the long uphill is followed by a downhill, and that's tough on the legs too! You need to apply early though, as the tough course doesn't stop the 13,000 limit being reached months before the race." 
Sounds like fun to me!  This year is the 30th anniversary edition so it should be really good!  It's ranked in the top 50 races worldwide too. 
I better start training : /  I have just over a month to prepare as the race is on the 25th of October.  I think I can do it...  Here's a link to the website if you want to check it out: http://www.marseille-cassis.com/

In other news, I started classes today.  I only had one, but it was a really good one - Social Entrepreneurship.  I think it will be a really cool class.  My teacher seems really good and very smart (she got her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics).  It's not like a normal class where the teacher lectures the whole time either.  We broke up into groups today and will be working on a semester-long project where we basically develop a social-based company.  My group will be working on a sort of recycling company - more to tell as time goes on but I think it will be pretty good!  So each week one of the teams lectures to the class on an issue for about 45 minutes then we break out into groups and work on our projects.  I'm really excited, I think it will be a lot of fun.
Well that's all the news for today, I'm headed downtown soon here so I need to go take a shower.  Au revoir!

Hands down.  It was the International Dinner.  Every semester they organize a dinner in the residence where I live and all the international students at my school prepare a traditional dish from their respective home country.  It was some of the most amazing food I've ever tasted.  First off I tried Turkish food - incredible.  Then the Lithuanians made this chocolate fudge dish that was equally out of this world.  The Polish people made a soup that was probably the best I've ever tasted (apparently it takes 2 days to prepare...)  The Belgians made chocolate mousse.  Need I say more about that?  It was incredible.  I unfortunately can't really describe any of this food because it was all so different from anything I've ever tasted.  It just shows me how much I've been missing out on my entire life.  
Anyway, it was a fantastic evening.  I'm still not really hungry and it's 1:30 pm the day after...

Sorry it's been a few days since I've written on here, i've been pretty busy!  Saturday I went to Nice with 4 other American students here.  Our train left Marseille at 7:00 am and we arrived in Nice at about 9:30.  It was really a spur of the moment trip so we really didn't have any plans at all for what to do when we got there.  It was really nice though!  The first day we spent a few hours at the beach and then found a great hotel to stay in right in the center of town.  It turned out to be really cheap to with 5 people in one room!  After that we decided to do some exploring and walked all over the city for a few hours.  It really is a nice city, its very clean.  Later on that night we went out dancing and then ended up going to a casino after that.  We did really well!  Each of us won some money playing roulette.  
The next day we walked around a bit and went to a really cool museum.  It used to be the house of a general in the military a long time ago and was filled with really cool artifacts and old paintings and such.  Very interesting!  We spent the rest of the day at the beach, then headed home that evening.  Boy did it feel good to be "home."
Monday was fairly uneventful, I did some exploring on the other side of town, went downtown for a little while, then came home and got to bed early.  Tuesday (yesterday) it rained all day.  I went to class in the morning then went on a very long excursion to a really cool supermarket called Carrefour.  Its like one of those Super Wal-Marts!  It was amazing and very cheap.  After that I came home, did my laundry for the first time in over 2 weeks, and got ready for the big football game.  Olympique Marseille was playing AC Milan in their first game of the Champions League.  Soccer is a huge deal here!  We all went to the Foyer (the bar on campus) where they had the game on a huge projector screen.  It was a really close game and we did really well, but Milan beat us 2-1.  Although we lost, it was still a ton of fun watching it.  I think i'm going to have to get tickets to one of the games as the stadium is only about 2-3 miles away from where I live.  We'll see.
The rain has stopped today so I think i'll head out and do some errands at school then go for a run.  Hope you're all doing well, au revoir!

Today about 35 of us went on a day trip to a small town about 20 miles away called Cassis.  It's a very picturesque, classic French town with super narrow streets, tall buildings, and of course a beach.  It was a lot of fun!  You can check out a few pictures i took below.  
In other news, I'm going to Nice tomorrow!  Last night we booked an overnight trip leaving tomorrow morning at 7:00 am.  It takes 2 1/2 hours by train and it was only 44 euros round trip.  Should be fun!  We'll probably head over to Monaco while we're there as it's very close by.  Stay tuned for more pictures when I get back on Monday.  Until then, au revoir!

This is the exciting news for today.  I booked a trip for 5 days in the end of October and it was only 20 euros round trip!  Ryanair is pretty cheap if you book in advance.  Other than that, today was a pretty quiet day.  I went to my usual French class this morning, got a really good sandwich (called the americano) at a sandwich shop by school, and then went home and cleaned my room for a little while.  Later on I went to the Vieux Port with a French girl I met at the bank.  She showed me all the good foods!  I got some amazing dark chocolate, some really good almond candies and some sort of cheese that I haven't tried yet.  I'm sure it will be good though!  So all in all it was yet another good day, and a little more relaxing than the others!

Today was yet another awesome day here in France.  Got up and went to school around 8:30 for my French class, but got there too early so I went to the cafe and got a fantastic croissant with a small cup of coffee to go with it.  The French drink these tiny dixie cup coffees but I rather like it as they're very strong!  I then went to the French class and learned about how to get around in Marseille - learned lots of directions and other helpful French words.  After class I went back home and got changed to go to the callanques - an absolutely beautiful area about 2 miles from campus with amazing cliffs and mountains leading right down into the Meditteranean.  Its a bit of a hike to get there, but the water is wonderful and the views are amazing.  There were probably 40 or 50 of us international students that went so it was a lot of fun!  We went swimming for a while and jumped off a few of the cliffs.  I jumped off one that was 60 ft high!  Pretty scary looking down, but it was definitely a thrill.  I got stung by a bee on my foot though so I had to head back home early to get some benadryl. I'm sure we'll be back soon!
So it was another fun day here in Marseille and tomorrow should be nice as well!

Well today marks one week in Marseille for me.  It was a great day today, got up at 8:00 to go to French class at the school.  Finished around 12:00 and headed to the beach.  Stopped along the way to get my bus pass from the metro station so that I can ride the bus unlimited times for a month.  After the beach we went grocery shopping and headed home to get ready for dinner.  We ate at a very nice restaurant at the Vieux Port (old port) in Marseille.  It was very picturesque - everybody eating outside under the awnings in the street, ancient buildings rising up on all sides, and a delicious 4 course meal.  We were there for nearly 3 hours, but it went by really quickly. 
Took a nice stroll along the port afterward and caught the bus back home. Overall, a very nice day! 

I just recently got back from a long road trip and it reminded me of yet another tip for keeping your car looking good.  When I got home i looked at the front of my car and realized I had killed an enormous amount of bugs with my front bumper.  While I really wasn't in the mood to wash them all off, I knew that if I waited it could be dangerous for my paint.  When you see bugs splattered on the front of your car, clean them off as soon as possible.  After they bake in the sun for a few days, they can be very tough to get off and some bugs can really damage your paint!  Cleaning them off early also helps to avoid needing to use strong bug/tar removal chemicals that can harm your paint.
So while it is a pain to clean your car right after getting home, don't delay because it will only get worse if you neglect it for a few days.