Submitted by Meghan Desmond on the 2022 winter session program in France sponsored by the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy…
During my first week in France, we had class at the Campus de Luminy which is in the beautiful Calanques of Marseille. The Calanques are a mountain like rugged terrain along the coast. One day after our physics class, we hiked to the Calanques de Sujiton which is a swimming and cliff jumping spot on the Mediterranean. The hiking path was directly off the University campus which was fascinating to me that students were able to hike to see a natural wonder right off their university campus. It made me realize how lucky they are to have such a beautiful landscape around their university instead of just flat land, commercial buildings, and parking lots like most areas surrounding college campuses.
We decided to swim in the Mediterranean Sea that day despite it being 50 degrees outside which some of us considered warm since we are from the northeast. The locals however stopped to take videos of us and most likely thought we were crazy for wanting to swim in such cold weather, but they probably do not realize that this isn’t something we get to do every day in the United States. Hopefully, some of these photos from our hike will capture the beauty we got to see of the Calanques.
