Vamos a la Playa ? Une Belle Journée à Cannes

So I know I haven’t finished my blogging about spring break, I’ve been procrastinating a bit. However, I feel like I haven’t posted enough about life here in CANNES and today was the most incredibly nice day so I felt I’d go a bit out of order and write a bit about it.

My roommates and I all seemed to be in a Mexican stand off as to who was going to actually physically get out of bed first. We had our standard breakfast in the cafeteria which for me consists of 3-4 pieces of bread with apricot jam and hot chocolate from a bowl.

My class was really fun today. The theme this week is food! So, today we did an exercise where we partnered up, blindfolded one person, then had them smell things and describe any memories/images that came up for them. I’m very lucky that I got to stay with the same class because when we hit the two month mark, most people changed teachers and moved up levels. However, my teacher, Giselle, who I adore, really enjoys our class and fought to keep us because she says she finds us very intelligent, open-minded, engaged, and refreshing. So, my class of 6 main people has gotten very close. And I get candy pretty much every day. At the moment, there’s Elsa and I from the AIFS group, Patrick and Jeannie from the Texas group, Hans from the Netherlands, Alexandre from Brazil, and then a new girl, Alexandra, from Germany who is here for two weeks.

Anyways, the day started out decently but then became of my favorite days in a while since it was finally warm enough to go to the beach and I didn’t have afternoon class today! And by warm enough I think it was about 70 degrees, which is funny because for me because, coming from Southern California, that’s not very warm at all.

I ended up spending a few hours there with a big group of girls. We were easily the whitest people on the beach since most of the locals in this area are of Latin decent and are just naturally darker than us. It makes us a bit jealous but we’ll keep working on it.

Anyways those few hours were pretty magical. The sand was warm. The sun was shining. The water in the Mediterranean Sea is the clearest, purest, prettiest blue. It was pretty cold to go into at first but we went in twice and got acclimated pretty fast. I got to just relax and “ne rien faire” which is something I do SO rarely back at home. And it’s something I get to do here yes, because it’s study abroad and, yes, the homework load is lighter. But it is also a cultural thing. Whereas the U.S. has a materialistic, success-driven, every second of your day needs to be useful mindset; France is a hedonistic culture where: “Le vrai bonheur, c’est les petits plaisirs de la vie,” (real happiness comes from little pleasures we take in life.) It’s why they sit and talk and eat their meals for 3 hours, or play pétanque, or spend time simply doing nothing rather than having their heads consistently wrapped up in tomorrow’s schedule. Needless to say, I enjoyed just listening to my music (mainly Zac Brown Band), talking and laughing with some of the girls, and getting a tiny bit of a tan.

I came back to my room very relaxed and proceeded to do basically nothing. Took about an hour long shower. Laid down in my room. Went on Facebook. Then I went to dinner which was carbonara so that was exciting.

I then rounded out the night by heading back to the beach with some pretty amazing young women who I am very thankful to have as friends here, and we spent a good hour and a half just talking and laughing. I think one of my favorite things we talked about was whether or not we feel/think/behave differently here than we do at home. And truth be told-I do! Which maybe sounds weird but I think I've been able to be more "authentically" me here. So it's not like I'm a "different" person so to speak, but I just think there's new sides to my personality that have been able to come out here that just... didn't have the opportunity to present themselves as much as home. And that was kind of scary at first, but is actually pretty cool.

And now here I am, blogging, and ready to go to sleep.

All in all, it wasn’t the most productive day, that’s for sure. But it’s days like these where I can sit on the sand after class, staring out at the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes, France that I’ll will definitely stand out in my memory for their peace and simplicity and for the simple joy I take in them.

Other than that, life has been much more laid back here the last week. Didn't make any travel plans so I could just enjoy life here a bit. We did get to do a cool excursion to St. Tropez last Sunday which was pretty gorgeous. We have a long weekend this weekend but I might go to Nice for a day since it's about a 1.50 euro bus ride and I'd like to do some shopping and maybe get dinner. And on top of that it's Easter weekend! So, I promise I'll wrap up the spring break post soon, then try to post a bit more about my day to day here.

À bientôt tout le monde et bisous!