First week on the French Riviera

I arrived in France with my dad on the 29 of June and saw the beautiful city of Nice for the first time. The beach runs all across the city--from the airport all the way to the old city. We spent the night in a nice hotel on the coast and familiarized ourselves with the area and nearby walking streets. Definitely ate some excellent french cuisine.

My program here began the next day on the 30th...or so I thought. My dad and stepmom, Esta, went with me to the Carrefour (grocery/anything-you-could-possibly-need-ever store) to pick up some essentials and food for my apartment. Unlike Salamanca where I lived in an open residence with students walking in and out of my living areas, my apartment in France is all to myself. It's bittersweet. On one hand, I have complete privacy, my own fridge, and own bathroom, but on the other hand, it can get quite lonely sometimes.

Abroadco is much less structured than API. Whereas my on-site director in Spain, Maria, had only one job--working for API--the program director here, Christiane, lives in a city an hour away (Grasse), has another job teaching at a school there, and neither plans nor explains anything to us. Lucky for me, Nice is a city with great public transportation and very easy to navigate.

On July 1, I went to take my placement test at L'universite (Faculte des lettres). Despite not having had the directions via bus (and another bus) explained to us, me and the rest of the abroadco-ers found the school with time to spare. The test placed me in niveau B1 or Group 6, which is a pretty advanced level. Surprisingly, many people who have come here speak practically no French.

The first few days of class were pretty chill. We had no excursions planned because the universite coordinators wanted to give us a chance to become accustomed to the city. However, most of my time was spent at the beach after school--a 2 minute bus ride on the 22.

Then, Alex Goodman came to visit on Friday, which motivated me to get a move on things to do in Nice. On Friday night, I showed Alex the clubs in Vieux Nice on Rue de la Prefecture. We went to bed semi-early because we couldn't find my friends in Wayne's--a hang out place. On Saturday, the university planned a free tour of the city and the chateau, so Alex and I went to that before hitting the beach. That night, we went bowling to celebrate the fourth of July. What better way than with an American pasttime? On Sunday, we woke up early and met up with Jared, a guy from my group, to visit the Matisse museum north of where I live. The museum was nothing spectacular, but it awoke memories from my childhood when I saw a painting that my mom had in my first house. After that, we strolled down to the Promenade des Anglais--the main street that goes along the beach--and watched the last 50 meters of le Tour de France. And yes, Lance was sporting his signature yellow, thank-you-very-much. :] We went to the beach for a little bit after that, and then went back to my apartment to rinse off and relax a little.

Today, I let Alex sleep in while I was in class in the morning. She met me at the school and then we sat on the beach during the break in between my class and my first atelier, an elective of spoken french. In the class, we learned how to text in French, which is surprisingly more intricate and complicated than one would think. It was very interesting. After class, Jared, Alex and I went to the Chagall museum, which wasn't free, but it did have excellent audio guide explanations included with our student price. Who knew that Chagall was so fond of biblical references?

Well, that's been my journey so far here. Tomorrow there are optional salsa classes that I signed up for. Hopefully, those dance classes in Salamanca served me well.

Enjoy! I'll be home in 23 days :)

-Michelle