The end of a long summer

Let’s see. I’m leaving tomorrow. I am ready to come home. Sure, it’s been nice here, but I am ready to do a lot of things again (drive my car!), and I miss everyone back home. Here’s a summary of the things that have happened since I last updated:

There haven’t been as many excursions for us since the majority of the group left. Last Thursday we went to go see Pirates of the Caribbean here. I was going to go see it anyway, so if they pay for me instead all the more reason to go. I would love to have some popcorn with a movie though. The theaters here just have vending machines (well, there’s one theater I haven’t been to, and I doubt it is any different). It was a good film, got a bit long in places, and the more I think about it the more I realize absolutely nothing was resolved. So I guess Disney has my money to go see the next one too.

Last Saturday I went to St. Tropez. Frankly, I was disappointed. I’ve been to lot nicer small towns, and I didn’t really see the appeal of it. I guess since I was not there to shop there just wasn’t much to do. They took us to the market, but I didn’t really want to buy anything. It is nice to say I’ve been there. And the beach I went to was all right, but I think I prefer the beach that is right across the street to the one there.

Monday night we went out onto a boat to watch fireworks. It was amazing. There is a fireworks festival going on, so every week there is one pyrotechnical expert that makes a fireworks display. Monday it was a guy from Spain, and the fireworks were better than any I have ever seen in my lifetime.

Wednesday I went scuba diving. Yes, scuba diving. Apparently I swam right by an octopus and didn’t see it though. Shucks. But I saw a lot of other fascinating sea creatures. So this is how it worked: they had an instructor for all of us newbies, and we went down with them. The woman I was with literally held my hand the entire way and every couple of minutes checked to make sure everything was all right. When I first went down, there was just a lot of sea grass on the ground. We swam just a little bit, and there was a huge cliff that someone else said was about 100 feet of a drop. On this cliff there was a lot of sea life, fish, coral, star fish, etc. It was pretty awesome. If only I could have taken a camera with me, but I know that would not have worked. I also see now that scuba diving is a lot different from just regular swimming. You don’t have to be a strong swimmer or even like swimming to like scuba diving. It’s just a completely different experience. Also, I went snorkeling/swimming after diving, and I was surprised how much buoyancy the wet suit gives a person. I couldn’t swim down at all with it on. But then I changed out and just went in my bathing suit and I felt like I had more control of where I was swimming.

Yesterday I went into town for one last time. It was fine. I finally walked down to the Palais de Festival and saw where people have their handprints. It was nice. Oh, and of course, the last week here, I find Dr. Pepper. What the luck. Oh well. We also had our final farewell dinner last night. It was much better food than I have ever gotten at the school.

Today I am packing. I was a little worried at first, but I think I can get all of my stuff in my suitcases. I’m also having to improvise a bit due to the stuff with London. Apparently no electronics and no liquids are allowed in carry on bags right now. We’ll see if all of my stuff survives the journey.

Au revoir, mes amis

A lot of people are leaving today and tomorrow. There will be a lot of people coming in also, but it is a bit sad due to the fact that a lot of the people I have been spending time with are leaving. But I will make it through :-). It is a bit amazing how quickly four weeks in France has gone by, but I also feel like Spain was an eternity ago. Here’s a couple of pictures: One with some of my class, and then another with a group of friends that are out of here.

I have done a lot since the last time I wrote. It actually feels like I have done more of nothing than of something, but when I go through my pictures I realize I have done a lot more than I thought I had.

First up is Antibes. It is a little town not far from Cannes. We went there, and just walked around basically. Before going there, we went to some glass blowing place in Biot, but I think SDC is a better place to see it done… Back to Antibes. I got a delicious crepe while I was there. Yum. And I also went into this little English bookstore. I walk in, say “Bonjour” and the owner says “Hello” with a very british accent. It was a cute store. All of the books were marked in pounds instead of euros… Antibes was a cool town to walk through, but really there wasn’t much to do there.

Next is Monaco. It was cool. The bus went down to about water level along the coast to get into a parking garage, and then you walk up 3 or 4 flights of stairs to get into the city. I liked it. We only went to the older part of town (ie tourist trap central) but it was still pretty. And they had a medieval festival going on! So, lots of good pictures ops. They had a park that was just gorgeous there, and they also had a very cool aquarium. I have to stay, they had a nice selection of fish. There was this one that I think had fins that made it look like a crab to predators. Pic below. After Monaco, we went to a small village called Eze. The only way to get there was to walk up a ton of stairs, but it was pretty enough to be worth it. We didn’t have much time to actually see some of the tourist attractions there, but it was still pretty.

And then we come to the perched villages. The first village was called Gourdon. It was very tiny, and very pretty. Not much to do there, but I haven’t gotten sick of the small yet old villages yet so it’s all good. Then we went to Saint Paul de Vence, which is larger, and still very pretty. I was stupid there, and took my sunglasses off to put my hair into a ponytail, and left my sunglasses. Au revoir! I did go back to try to find them, but it was of no use. I just hope they serve someone else just as well as they did me. Oh, on this trip, I think I should mention, there were 15-20 people signed up to go. But how many were there that went? 4! I think they tried to cancel the huge tourist bus for us, but couldn’t, so there were 4 of us on a tourist bus that could probably hold 70. Wow.

Last night was the farewell dinner. We went to a karaoke bar in town. To be honest, I was bored the entire time. There was a couple in the restaurant that had a cute little poodle, and it kept looking up at its owners as if it was saying “can we leave yet?” Then it would just lay down, and put it paws under it’s head. When I saw that, I just thought, wow, I feel just like that dog. But it was good to see everyone before they all leave.

And now I might be off into town. However, it is starting to look like it might rain. Very odd though, it hasn’t rained here since my first week. But we need some rain to make it a bit more humid **cough cough sarcasm**. I hope everyone is well, and I will hopefully see you in a few weeks.

So Busy

I’m surrounded by so many people here that want to go home and it is starting to get to me (that among other things). But I’ve still been trying to stay afloat and I do enjoy it here. Europe

is just one of those places where you can drive two hours away and find a completely different place.

This past week I’ve gone to several places. Let’s see.. last Tuesday I was supposed to go to a place called Grasse, but the bus never showed. So, I went back to class. Then Wednesday I went to an island just off the coast of Cannes called Ile St. Marguerite. It is basically a place people go to in order to spend the day on a different beach, so there isn’t much there. But the thing that is there is, in my opinion, pretty interesting. There is a building there that used to be a prison (sort of like an Alcatraz of centuries ago), and it is where the Man in the Iron Mask spent some time in jail. So now I can say I’ve stood in the room where the Man in the Iron Mask was kept. Cool, huh? The majority of the prison was also a museum dedicated to artifacts that have been found from shipwrecks around here. That was about it.

Thursday the bus to Grasse arrived. Grasse is considered to be the perfume capital of the world (they told us that about 20% of all perfume is made there, and I think they are the home of Chanel 5). When we arrived, we went to a little museum area where they tell you the history of perfume, and then we actually mixed our own perfume. All of the ingredients where in French or had a different name, so we didn’t actually know what we were putting in. Well, it turns out one of the scents was cedar, and I put way too much of that in mine. So if I ever where it I will smell like a cedar tree :-). After we mixed our perfume, we walked around the city a bit. It is really high up, so there were a few amazing views. Then we went to Fraggonard which is still a functioning perfumerie. We had a mini-tour where we saw the process behind making perfume (it actually reminds me of making wine). So that was pretty cool. I enjoyed Grasse overall.

Friday was Bastille Day. I thought everything might be closed, but I was wrong. I went into town to buy a fan, but all the places I found that sold them were sold out. So, I went to go see La Retour de Superman (version Francaise). I think I followed it pretty well. Sometimes I even forgot it was dubbed. But I would like to see it again, en anglais, after I have seen the ones it is supposed to follow again. Oh, and then today I noticed that in the school, they have a board with local activities, and they post what movies are playing there. There is a theater, I think a couple of blocks from the one I went to, that was playing Superman Returns in its original version. Oh the luck :-). I was told that theaters here don’t play original versions. But it Pirates of the Caribbean comes here, I’ll definitely see that one in English. It’s just wittier that way.

Saturday I went with a couple of people to an open air market in Cannes, and then to Ventimiglia, Italia. I did not like the market we went to in Cannes. Some of the vendors were okay, but there seemed to be a lot of them that shout out to you, which I just don’t like. And then at one point I was walking with the other people, and this man at least 30 years my senior bumps my arm. I don’t look at him, just keep walking, and he says “Bonjour, ca va?” and I say “Oui,” very quickly and walk away from him. Then for the next ten minutes or so he continues to follow us/staring at us. I definitely stayed with my group after that little encounter, but they didn’t think it was that big of a deal. But I’m telling you, he was very creepy, and definitely following us for a while even though no one else thought so.

But after that encounter, Ventimiglia was good. It is basically the first stop of the train in Italy. The beach there was rocky, but it was cool anyway. The people I went with had gone to Monaco the previous day, and while they were in Monaco they went to a market and bought cherries from a vendor, and then stayed to talk to him for a little bit. I am telling this because as soon as we start walking on the beach in Ventimiglia, there he is. Apparently he lives in Ventimiglia and works in Monaco. Small world, eh? Besides the beach we also went around shopping (I found a fan! And about 20 euros cheaper than I would have been able to find in Cannes!), and we also ate lunch and dinner there. I had Pizza and Ravioli, respectively. Yum.

And finally we get to Sunday. Sunday we went to the Gorges du Verdon, which is basically considered the Grand Canyon of Europe. It isn’t as spectacular, supposedly, but it is still very impressive. To get there, we took a lot of winding mountain roads that seemed very dangerous. There were several times our big bus had to stop in order to get by some vehicles. But the mountains were gorgeous. After we went to the Gorges, we went to the lake at the end of the Gorges. The lake was pretty, very blue. We arrived, and there were some people that needed to change. So we went up to the restrooms. I was standing outside, and it started to rain. I thought, oh, this is just a summer storm, it’ll be over in a couple of minutes, and there aren’t even clouds. Nope. It continued to rain. And to pour. I decided with a few other students to go back up to the bus. It was locked, and there was no bus driver to be seen. There were stores across the street, so I went up there and ran into some other people. They were standing outside of a café area that sort of had a roof, but there was still a lot of rain coming down. After about 15 or more minutes, the bus driver got back, and we all got onto the bus. Good times. Needless to say, we decided to come back to the school instead of going up into the village. But it was gorgeous, and very much worth seeing.

Today I had my first test. I think it went all right. And now I am just hanging out. I don’t have any plans right now. I think I like it that way too. It leaves my options open for reading, or watching a movie. It looks like clouds are rolling in, so that takes away the option of the beach. But that’s okay. So, I’ll update again sometime :-).

A Weekend Trip

Cannes in going well. I feel like I have time to just relax here. My classes are more intense, which hopefully means that I will also learn more while I am here. That is still in the future, though.

Last week I just got settled here, figuring out where things are. I took a city tour on Wednesday which was a bit helpful, but not really. We took a petit train through the shopping district of the city (those things exist everywhere here!). But I did find out where the best sort of grocery store is. It’s still a lot more expensive that what I am used to, but it will do.

This last weekend we went around Provence to Avignon, Arles, Les Baux, and Chateauneuf du Pape (not necessarily in that order). The only two really worthy of mention are Avignon and Les Baux. Avignon had a huge palace that was used by the popes when they were in France. It was massive and cool, but when the popes left, the building was used as a military school and it was stripped. So that means there were no artifacts from that time period, and that some of the rooms had even been changed drastically. But it was still neat to be there. Oh, and they had some awesome street performers!

Les Baux was a little tourist village on the top of a plateau, but the thing that made it unique was that there were castle ruins on the top of the plateau too. Visitors are allowed to go explore the ruins. I have to say it was pretty cool. And the view from the top was amazing! The village actually reminded me of being in Disney World… It was fun though. I spent too much money on souvenirs there.

Arles had a big roman coliseum where bull fights are held today, and at Chateauneuf de Pape we tasted wine. That was about it. Our hotel was right outside of Les Baux, and it was a pretty nice hotel as well.

Now I am back in Cannes. I tried to go out for the football (translated to soccer) game last night, but every place was so crowded I just came back to the school to watch it. It is sad that France lost though. In the end I sort of think they deserved to lose… They were getting very violent. One guy head-butted an Italian in the chest. I think he just wanted to go out of the game with a bang. Weird, huh? Anyway, congrats Italy.

Today I’ve just been taking it easy. I am sort of exhausted. I think I might go down to the beach after dinner. I like being able to say that :-). Not the dinner part, the beach part. The food here isn’t very good. They give us unrecognizable meat products. I am eating way too much bread for that reason. So a nice swim will do me good.

Moving on to France.

Okay, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. A lot has happened. I have now changed locations from Spain to France. Let’s see… I think the last thing I wrote about was the Valley of the Fallen. Well, since then I have also been to Barcelona, Toledo (again) along with a few more museums. Here are the highlights:

Barcelona: It was good. I would like to go back, but not in the “I’m with a group” sense. And Barcelona was the only time so far that people have looked at me like they are thinking about pick-pocketing me. But those times were when I was with the group, it was obvious we were American, and I was one of the ones that stood outside the store while the others went in to look at clothes. I have enough clothes, I don’t need any more to haul around :-)… In Barcelona we went around the gothic quarter (really pretty, but all the cathedrals looked the same to me), saw the open air market "Las Ramblas", saw Gaudí stuff, and went to the beach. I think I like Gaudí’s natural form of architecture. Everything is inspired by nature, and it just looks different. I think I might write my paper over modern monuments, such as La Sagrada Familia and El Valle de los Caidos. But I know nothing about architecture, I’d probably just write about how these places are already huge tourist attractions.

Toledo: I was able to go into the Cathedral this time. It’s so beautiful. And I bought jewelry :-). I don’t think the other students liked the city as much as I do. Their loss… They left really early, and probably didn’t even see the roman bridge, nor the fantastic view that the city has.

Other things I did in Madrid before I left were: take a ride on the teleferico, visit the Egyptian temple, and hop on the Madrid Vision busses. The teleferico was interesting. Take a cable car over a small part of the city and into a park. I saw a prostitute as I was going over one of the roads. Muy interesante. I thought she was just trying to hitch a ride by going topless, not that she was working. Silly me, I didn’t realize that until later. The same day as that I walked over to the Egyptian temple. It’s pretty fascinating. It sounds like there was this temple in Egypt, and it was going to be demolished to make a market or something. Instead, it was taken apart in pieces and sent to Spain, and has been there since the 60s, I believe. It was pretty cool. Literally, it had air conditioning :-). And when they reassembled it that put in lighting, and projectors, so there were projections against some walls. It was small, but very cool. Then, my second to last day there I went on the Madrid Vision bus. I just rode around and saw a little more of the city. The first bus I was on ran into a fence lining the road. The second bus stopped working altogether. The third bus functioned just fine. So, that’s that story.

My classes in Madrid were just too easy, I have to say. I think I did more today in my first French class than I did in four weeks in Madrid. Hmm. But I hope that the pace here will be slower as well. More time to get to know the area I am in. I have signed up to do a lot of excursions, so maybe they will be good, and then I can take a couple of weekends and go to Italy or Monaco, and then have a few weekends here.

I flew to Paris from Madrid on Saturday. I thought mi madre de casa said she was going to accompany me to the airport, but she only meant she would help me carry my bags down to the street. That works. The flight was uneventful. When I checked in the lady seemed mad at me for having an overweight bag… I said I could pay, but then she didn’t make me. It was interesting.

When I got to Paris, I got a taxi. The driver was fluent in Spanish, so we ended up speaking some sort of Fragnol (Francais, espanol). I got to my hotel, which seemed to be in a ghetto-ish area, but the room was really nice. I decided to leave to go to the Eiffel tower, at about 7 o’clock, and started walking. I kept my eyes open for a taxi, but never saw one. Found a payphone in a nicer area, called the mother, then kept walking. I saw a taxi at about 8, but he wouldn’t take me. I think he was headed home and would just take me where I was going if it was on his way. So I kept walking until I came to the next bus stop. I got on the bus, and rode for a while until a stop when everyone else got off. I figured if there were a lot of people there, there would also be taxis. Nope. I continued walking for until a little before nine when I encountered a taxi that would take me. When I got to the Eiffel tower, I took the boat tour. It was cool. I sat by a group from Spain, and I was able to talk with them a bit. About five minutes before the tour was over, all hell broke loose in the city. France had beaten Brasil in the World Cup games. It was madness. When I got back, I tried to get a taxi, but it was madness as well. There is supposed to be a line of people, but that line demolished pretty quickly. It was a free for all. It wasn’t chaos, but it wasn’t organized either. I think taxis turned me down because my hotel was so far away, or they didn’t know where it was. Finally a taxi came, and the guy insisted on knowing if I was first in line. There was no line. So I said yes. He kept saying “are you sure?” And I kept saying yes, that everyone I had seen there before me was already gone, which was true, I think. This driver was very interesting. He had a very negative view of his fellow people, especially the ones out celebrating the victory of France. And he cussed a lot (of course in French). I got back to the hotel, showered, went to bed.

Next morning, train to Cannes. Why do I have so much luggage? Unpacking it I see that I need it all, but it is so much. A nice lady in the Cannes train station helped me by carrying one of my bags up the stairs. It is better than having to leave one at the bottom of the stairs, I think. The taxi line at the train station was long, too, but it wasn’t as disorganized. I got to the school, went through a mini-orientation (which I found out I didn’t need since I’m through a separate program). In the brochure the school made a big deal about not bringing more than you can carry, because you have to go up so many stairs. Well, they have brute guys that carry your bags up the stairs for you. The liars! :-). I was actually very relieved. My big bag would have been quite a burden. I carried my smaller one up though, and it still weighed a lot.

I got unpacked. I think everything is still with me. I liked not having the jet lag that everyone else had. My roommate didn’t arrive until about 9 pm. I don’t think there will be any problems, but I’ve felt terrible because I am a little sick with a cough, and it feels like I’m coughing up my lungs every night. I’ve apologized, but I still feel bad about it.

Yesterday was my placement exam. I think it must have gone well. I’m in an upper intermediate class. And I get credit for the level I’m at by the time I leave here. I guess we get advanced. There are a lot of people here that it sounds like they come to the college here every year. One older lady, from Florida, comes here to learn French, and to avoid the hurricane season. Her son is apparently here, too, and he’s staying for a year. And just talking to other people, it sounds like if I would have come here independently I could have paid a lot less than I did. But since I came through an American organization, it is more expensive. Oh well, such is life.

I know this has been a long post, but I haven’t written anything in a while. So if you have any questions, let me know, hehe. Happy 4th!

A quick week overview...

Wow, a lot has happened this past week. Here is a quick description of my week:

Monday - Classes in the morning and afternoon. I guess not much happened Monday.

Tuesday - Classes in the morning, and then the Royal Palace in the afternoon. I'd been there before, but I didn't really remember much of the inside. It was neat to go back again.



Wednesday - Classes in the morning. Archaeological Museum immediately afterwards. Then as a class we went to Plaza de Colon to watch the football game. For you americans out there :-P, that is soccer. Spain won! 4-0, yay! It was quite a mess in the plaza, but it wasn't as busy as I thought it would be there. And I got a free lemon flavored Font Vella (Water).





Thursday - Classes in the morning (as always). Then a big surprise... I had class with a group from Tennessee that was going to Toledo in the afternoon, and I was able to tag along!! I was so excited. I love Toledo. And the group that I am with is actually talking about going for class. I can stand to go back. The cathedral was closed for Corpus Christi, and I really want to go back inside. But everything else there was so beautiful... And about the last hour there it looked like a storm was brewing, it was so cool. It started pouring right after we got on the bus to go back to Madrid. And one of the things that I thought was cool was that while we were walking around, we went around a corner, and low and behold there was the store that I had stopped at 3 years ago when I was in Toledo. I was so shocked, I had to take a picture of it!



Friday - Classes in the morning, nap, and then I went to the Natural Science Museum. It was pretty neat looking in there. Oh, and they had an alien.




Saturday - El Escorial and the Valley of the fallen. I wasn't very impressed with the Escorial. I guess the thing I liked the best about it was that we went through tiny rooms that weren't very impressive, and then walked downstairs into a Cathedral. And it was neat seeing all of the tombs... that place must be haunted. And for the Valley of the Fallen, that was what made the trip worthwhile. The history of Spain in the last 100 years is interesting in my opinion. I won't go into all of the details, but from 1939 to 1975 Spain was under the rule of Francisco Franco, a fallangista dictator. He basically kept Spain in a time capsule... not even kissing was allowed in public. Well, the government wouldn't let him be buried in the Escorial with the rest of Spain's royalty, so he built this grand cross within 20 minutes of where the Escorial is so that he could be buried there. He claimed that it was a memorial for all of the people who had died in the Spanish Civil War when he was trying to take power... but I think I agree with my teacher's opinion that it was just built for him to be buried there. One of the creepy things is that he took 40,000 soldiers that died in that war and put them in the walls in his tomb. Their names aren't even etched anywhere in this massive building... It's just wrong. But it is interesting. And it seems like everyone else that was with us on the trip only thought it was a big memorial, not a massive tomb that screamed "Look at me!" Oh, and one of the even crazier things was that people had left flowers on Franco's tomb with letters saying things like "You set such a great example and I try to live by it.." It sort of seems to me that there is going to be some sort of uprising in Spain sometime soon to try to get rid of the monarchy again, but hopefully they won't try to get a dictator in. But really, from what I know, the monarchy still exists, but most things within the government are democratic. Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about. And I've gone too far into the topic again.... Oh, and last night we also went out to Hard Rock Cafe. Yay for French fries!