Oh la la! C’était
vraiment un jour fantastique!
Well, it started with me waking up at around 4 :30
because I’m still not at all used to the time difference here. So that was a
bummer. But I was wide awake and starving by breakfast time. Breakfast here is pretty
simple: a little buffet style table with mostly bread (mMMm…), fruit, yogurt,
cereal, etc. There is a hot chocolate machine which is bomb-diggity—we drink
the hot chocolate and coffee out of bowls by the way. And I tried some tropical
juice this morning that was good but way too sweet.
We had to take a French placement test today that had both
written and oral parts. We’ll find out tomorrow what level we’re getting placed
in. Something cool here though is that you can move up levels throughout the semester,
so you get credit for whichever class level you end up in at the end.
After that we had some downtime. Hung out in the Foyer with
my roommate and met up with some other students from our group. Got a Coca for
1.80 euros. Then, got lunch which was salad and noodles with some beef thing
and some rice that sort of resembled cous-cous. And bread. Played some ping
pong!
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| Photo of some of the dorms at the College. |
Then we met up for a tour of Cannes which was awesome but
incredibly tiring. Learned some incredible stuff though and got an AMAZING view
from this building on a hill (I forget the name). However I do remember is was
built by the Romans when they originally invaded. It’s in some of the pictures
and it was gorgeous.
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| Cannes! |
From there we learned a lot about the two islands off the
coast of Cannes, les îles de Lérins. We also learned about how it was a total
fishing city that no one really knew about until the 19th century
when a Lord who wasn’t allowed into Italy due to a cholera epidemic ended up
there and started building hotels. It still wasn’t well known until… can you
guess it? The Cannes Film Festival. It was supposed to start in 1939 but was
postponed because of the war. The first official one was in 1946.
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| Cannes avec le Mediterranean! |
The tour then lasted about three or four hours after that!
We walked down to le Suquet which is a little street filled with shops and
restaurants that’s kind of dead during the day but comes alive at night. From
there we went to la Rue de la Croisette, which is the most famous street there.
It runs right along the port. Also we went to the City Hall (the Hotel de
Ville—which is actually where I had been dropped off by the bus after my
flight). Following that we saw Le Palais du Festival where at the moment there
is a music festival taking place. It’s a huge place and is where the film festival
will be. Finally we went to la Rue des Antibes which is where there are lots of
commercial shops and restaurants. We broke off from there to do some shopping
for things we’ve realized we forgot—some of us needed towels or flip flops,
etc. I was hoping to find a better pillow because the beds are really comfy
here besides those. The main store we went to was called Monoprix. It’s pretty
reasonable prices for Europe but things are definitely more expensive here.
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| Pathway up to where we got the view. One thing to not is all of the awesome colors on the buildings! Very typical of Southern France. |
After that we ran into some people while walking back who
had stopped at an Artisan Boulangerie. We stopped too because we were starving
and I got a yummy chocolate croissant. I almost bought a baguette for .95 euros
to carry around and eat but I’ve literally had bread with every single meal
here (which I’m not complaining about it’s awesome but I felt I should branch
out). The walk back to the Collège took probably 30-45 minutes from there. We
all but passed out when we got back. Got dinner because we were still super
hungry. Now we’ve all just been chilling in our rooms. One thing I can say is
that I’ve been hungry like all the time. It’s probably a combination of things.
For one I’m not sure if I’m fighting off a cold or if it’s allergies or what
but I’m recuperating from whatever it is. But also the portions are definitely
not as big here—even the plates and cups are much smaller. Also, I’ve eaten a
lot of carbs today and then spent 4 and a half hours on my feet walking around.
But c’est la vie! N’est-ce pas?
Still getting acclimated for sure. However, everyone in the
AIFS group is really awesome and I feel like I’ve already bonded with a lot of
people. AND there is also a group of Americans here from Texas who all seem
pretty cool.
I’m trying to stay up late so I don’t wake up at 4:30 again…
Alors… À bientôt!
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| C'est fantastique! <3 |
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