Les Petites Excursions

Normally I hate planned activities – I don’t know what it is, but something about them just kind of makes my skin crawl a bit. But the college has actually had some really interesting ones around town the past couple of weeks!

The first one was grabbing dinner at a restaurant called La Piazza down along la croisette – the section of town down along the coast, near the Palais. Best part is that it was being paid for by the college! I am a big fan of food in general, but free food in particular is tough to beat!

It doesn’t take that long to walk down to la croisette, so my roommate and I left around 20 minutes before we were told to arrive, figuring that if anything we’d be early. My roommate was going to bring her umbrella, too, but right as we were closing the door we figured that since it was barely sprinkling, it wouldn’t really be necessary.

Oh how young and naïve we were.

We ran into some fellow AIFS people on our way into town and started following them since we couldn’t remember exactly where on la croisette the restaurant was. We knew that it had a green awning, but that was about it.

So these guys start going a slightly different route than we’d been planning on, but we figure that they know what they’re doing and that if we got lost, we’d all get lost together.

We made it to la croisette, but somehow we lost the guys we were following even though they were directly in front of us (still trying to figure that one out!). We figured that we just had to go to the left for a while before we’d land upon familiar territory, and that then we’d just wander around til we found that green awning. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but by this point the rain had picked up – a lot. I’ve mentioned before that I love rain, and I still do, but this was a bit much even for me!

So by the time we finally arrived at the restaurant, we were slightly late (I’m punctual almost to a fault, so to me this was the worst part!) and sopping wet! Fortunately we were there just in time to order, and I had a wonderful marguerite pizza and some chocolate mousse that turned me into Someone Who Takes Pictures of Food.

A couple days later we went to le Musée de la Castre for a guided tour. There’s a tower connected to the museum that is supposed to have an amazing 360-degree view of Cannes, but it was closed the day we went because of the rain. Definitely a reason to go back!

We did, however, get to see a bunch of old (and creepy!) masks and artifacts, as well as some landscapes of Cannes and a really interesting but kind of poorly-lit collection of old musical instruments.

We also got to go on a tour of the médiathèque (library) that’s about a 5 minute walk from the college. It’s in this gorgeous old château, and there are still fireplaces in the walls and the like.

My favorite part, though, was the smell – it had that classic library smell that I can’t quite explain but that I love and find super comforting. That made it probably the homiest part of France I’ve found so far.

The first floor is all books, including the children’s section, which I was particularly curious to see given my time helping with Story Time back home. It’s a tiny room, pretty crowded, and the books are arranged like records or CDs – in these sort of bins that you have to shuffle through – which really surprised me.

The second floor is where the music and movies are. Like the children’s room, the music room is totally arranged in bins you shuffle through – not a shelf in sight. The fellow working in the room was pretty excited when he realized we were American and was asking us if we knew any French music. One guy mentioned the song “Formidable” by Stromae, and the fellow working found the album and was proudly playing that song in what seemed like a split second.

The movie room has a pretty solid and wide-ranging collection, from France to the US to other countries around the world. It’s attached to a screening room that is sort of like a little mini-theatre, rows of plush and comfy seats and all. We can use this room pretty much whenever, so I’m definitely planning on going back and taking advantage of their Billy Wilder section at some point!

We all watched The Intouchables, because I am beginning to get the impression that if you haven’t seen that movie you’re not welcome in France. The DVD only had French subtitles, but being able to read the dialogue in addition to hearing it helped a lot. I had a bit of a leg up, too, since I saw it maybe a year ago (thanks to Uncle Ted and Aunt Rebecca for the recommendation!) with English subtitles, so I knew where it was going and remembered the general outline. I was still pleasantly surprised by how much I was able to pick up, though!

Another day AIFS hosted a Provençal specialties food party in the foyer downstairs, which basically just involved eating these really good tomato-y things on little pieces of toast (like bruschetta, only not) and these little candies that I had to have a few of because I couldn’t decide if they were bland or delicious. Aude also taught my roommate and me how to make a drink – I can’t remember the name, unfortunately – consisting of water and some sort of almond-y syrup, which was very…interesting. It kind of made me feel like I was drinking a cookie, and it made my roommate wish she could put it in hot chocolate.

Lastly, a group of us went to Break the Floor, which is apparently one of the most prestigious breakdance competitions in the world! I can’t say that I have a history with breakdancing, but who am I to say no to a free ticket to something arts-related?

It was held in the grand auditorium of the Palais des Festivals, and this was my first time actually walking up the stairs and entering the building – I got chills. Really really cool moment!

So I wasn’t always entirely sure what was happening, but I learned that French and hip-hop/breakdancing is quite the interesting combination. It seems like it should be such a contrast, and it kind of is, but they’re all so into it – it’s very difficult to fully explain.

Unless I’m missing some element, two breakdancers (or b-boys?) are called out onto the stage and each take a couple turns dancing for a minute, and the panel of esteemed breakdance judges points at who they think won. I ended up being pretty good at guessing who would win, so I think being a breakdance competition judge might be my new back-up after writing. (It’s like how when I was in middle school my PE teacher would pretty regularly ask me who I thought would win various professional football or wrestling matches, and, knowing nothing about the teams or really even about the sports, I would just pick the name I liked better or had heard about more recently. Somehow I left middle school with a perfect track record and convinced Mr. B that I was a sports prodigy.)

The emcee liked to do that skipping/running thing around the stage a lot, and he would give a lot of commentary in English during the dancing. Some of his favorite phrases (and bear in mind his heavy French accent!) included “Ohhh fresh!”, “Represent <insert country name here>!”, “Ye-ye-yeah! On the bass!”, “Woo woo woo! Styling!“, and something that always sounded like “He’s got a date!” but may have been “Musicalité” or “Flexibilité”? Basically, I got a huge kick out of him.

The dancing was pretty incredible, too – lots of spinning and robot-y things and popping and locking. Rather impressive, and I definitely winced a couple times at some of the head-spinning. That can’t be pleasant.

Also not too pleasant was the little bug I came down with as soon as I got back. I was pretty much knocked out for a few days, but I’m nearly all recovered and am ready and excited to go to Florence this weekend!

France: Land of Pastries and Turtlenecks!

(Sorry this is later than I meant it to be – I had some trouble getting my photos to upload!)

I’ve been in France for a little over a week now, and I’ve got to say – I think I picked a pretty solid place to study abroad!

One brief and early flight took us from London to Nice, where my mind was kind of blown when I realized that pretty much all of the signs in the airport were in French. Seems obvious, but considering how little sleep I had gotten it was pretty boggling. Another big “whoa” moment came when a gentleman walked by me and said “Excusez-moi.” It’s the little things.

We were met by the AIFS Cannes resident director, Sandrine, who is so welcoming and warm, and her wonderful assistant director, Aude, and we hopped on a bus and headed to Cannes!

One thing that I think is nice is that Sandrine and Aude already knew all of our names after just a day or two – they must have been studying our ID pictures before we all arrived, or else they just have incredible super-memories. It really gives the program a more personal and homey touch, which is much appreciated. I’ve had classes about the size of this group where the professor never even made any attempt to learn our names, so it’s a nice touch.

My roommate and I are on the “4^th “ floor – sort of. We’re kind of tucked away in this little alcove that’s actually a touch below the third floor. Our room is nice! The only thing that’s sort of a bummer is that while most other rooms have stunning views of the sea, we look out at a roof – but past the roof there are some cute buildings, so it helps to make up for it.

I have a meal plan with the college, so I’ve got breakfast, lunch, and dinner covered in the cafeteria (though I definitely plan on taking advantage of the restaurants nearby, as well!). Lunch is kind of interesting since we are brought food instead of going through a buffet like at breakfast and dinner. Because of this, the vegetarians have a special reserved table – we get a special green tablecloth and everything! It’s quite exciting.

On a side note, I was introducing myself to another person sequestered at Veggie Island the other day, and between the loud cafeteria and my generally soft voice, she misheard my name as Dre. I guess it’s time to retire G-Jo and G-Dawg and make this my new rapper name?

There was also one great moment at the cafeteria the other night when a staff member wheeled out a cart of éclairs for dessert, and once people realized what was going on, they literally jumped up from their chairs and stampeded/swarmed after her. It was like a wave of people chasing her. It felt like a scene from a movie, so when you actually see it happening it’s kind of a “Wait. People really do this?” moment.

I’ve got a 3 hour French class every morning from 9 to noon, which, despite being far too early for my liking, is really enjoyable and goes by quickly. We had to take a placement test to determine what level our class would be – there are something like 15 different levels you can be in, so it’s a just bit more thorough than Chapman’s 101, 102, 201, etc. system. Most of it was multiple choice, which was pretty hit or miss. There were definitely a lot of words I had never seen before, so that was helpful. I much preferred the writing section since you have control over what you want to say and how you say it, so you can conveniently skip over any words you’re forgetting.

I ended up being placed towards the top of the range I was expecting to be in, so the class feels like a good mixture of review and new material. We’re also given the chance to move up levels throughout our semester.

My professor’s name is Christel, and she is pretty much fantastic. She’s very easy to talk to, and she keeps everything light and fun.

The class is structured totally differently than every other French class I’ve been in, which took a bit of getting used to, but I actually like it a lot better. Everything is said in French, and for the most part it’s more like a discussion than, say, learning sentence structure out of a textbook. In just the first week we’ve talked about everything from pizza to marriage and civil unions to one girl’s fake ID. Since we don’t know a lot of the more complex words that go along with these topics, she teaches us what we want to say, so we’re learning vocab specific/relevant to us, in a sense.

It’s also nice that the class is small – about 14 people or so, I think. Most of us are from the AIFS group, but there’s also a girl our age from Norway and a woman from Poland, so it’s been really interesting getting to learn about some of the various cultural differences.

Because class is so early, I’ve been getting up around 7:30ish every morning. This also means that I’ve been getting tired a lot earlier, so I’ve consistently been going to bed well before midnight, which hasn’t been the case since probably sometime in high school. It’s a very strange feeling, but seeing as I definitely have some distinct “grandmotherly” tendencies, there’s kind of an “of course” factor to it, as well.

For the time being, I’m just taking the French class, but we also signed up for seminars that will be starting towards the end of the month. I’ll be taking French Civilization and French Art: 19^th and 20^th Century, both in English. The person explaining what the classes were described the Civilization one as sort of an overview of French customs and the like (and I think some history is in there, as well?), so hopefully this will make it harder for me to accidentally commit some horrible faux-pas! I’m excited for the art history one because there are several museum trips planned, and I’m sort of a museum junkie. These will each be just one afternoon out of the week, so I’ll still have most of my afternoons free!

The past few afternoons I’ve been going on walks into town just to wander around and take it all in. It takes maybe 15, 20 minutes to walk from the college to the center of town, and it’s an absolutely gorgeous area – all of the buildings have their own unique details and are all painted different pastel colors. For some reason it reminds me of ice cream. It’s been kind of drizzly lately, so I haven’t gotten to take as many pictures as I would have liked (though I love the rain, so it’s a fair trade-off!), but more will be coming!

 

I’ve walked by the Palais des Festivals several times – it hosts the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s really really exciting to be able to just casually pass by the home of such a prestigious event (at which I’ll be working this year!). There’s a red carpet out on the stairs year-round, and there are also some tourist-y touches, like a path of celebrity handprints and signatures à la Grauman’s and several cardboard cutouts with holes for faces, so you can be Cameron Diaz posing with the other Charlie’s Angels or Catherine Zeta-Jones posing by Antonio Banderas/Zorro, etc.

One time when I was walking by they were setting up for some sort of event – full red carpet, setting up lights, extra security, the whole shebang. I haven’t been able to find what it was for, but it was sort of like a tiny little preview of what the end of my semester might look like!

A couple extra random tidbits –

I’ve gone to Monoprix (basically the French version of Target) a few times now for toothpaste and notebooks and snackage and the like, and each time I’ve been there, “Time of the Season” by The Zombies has played. I have no idea if it’s part of some playlist the store plays every day or something (though it’s the only song I’ve heard more than once there), or if maybe the French just really like that one particular song?

On the topic of music, I was walking by some restaurant the other day that was blasting some super cheery and lively Happy Birthday song in English, which really amused me! They weren’t even open yet or anything.

The movie “The Intouchables” is really big here. Really really big. Every time I tell a French person (or the Norwegian girl in my class) that I’m a film student or that I like French movies, their first question is if I’ve seen that movie. No fail. Plus sometime next week the program is making an excursion to the médiathèque (library) near the college for a tour and to watch – bien sûr! – The Intouchables in one of the screening rooms. (For the record: Yes, I have seen The Intouchables, and yes, it is really good!)

  

London Calling

So, go figure, it turns out that 2 days is not nearly enough time to see all of London!

AIFS, the program through which I’m studying abroad, arranged for all of us to fly into London and stay for a couple of days before leaving for France as a group. I’ve been excited to get to Cannes and all – but come on. 2 days in London is sort of like a tease!

I flew out of San Francisco around 4:30ish Wednesday afternoon and, after a 9 or 10 hour journey (the time difference has me really confused!), landed in London around 10:30ish the next morning. So basically, unless you’re a napper (which I am not), the sleep you got on the plane was the sleep you got til the next night.

That was rough.

I’ve never really been able to sleep in public places, and while that’s usually a good thing, it’s not always that helpful when it comes to long plane/train/bus trips. So between that and the time shift making it feel really early, I only got maybe a couple hours of sleep on and off.

So going through customs with the other two AIFS girls on the plane and finding our baggage and all of that is kind of fuzzy. A lot of that day is, really. One thing that impressed me was that there was a little train that took you to the baggage area after you got off of the plane. I have no idea if that’s common or not, but I’m a fan.

We met up with a driver and another girl who had also just flown in through AIFS, and we headed off to the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington. Driving/riding on the wrong – er, left – side of the road is very very strange at first, especially when you’ve barely slept. There were a few turns around corners where I thought we were going to die for a second before I remembered where we were.

The other girl we met up with at the airport is actually going off to St. Petersburg, Russia – of the 50 or so of us in London, probably 2/5 of the group was headed there. Cannes and St. Petersburg seem like kind of unusual places to mix, but why not, I suppose!

Anyway, so after a brief welcome speech from our London tour manager, the 4 of us went to check into our rooms. Naturally, mine wasn’t ready, but one of the girls I flew with was in the room next to mine, so I went and waited there for a while, where coincidentally my roommate happened to be waiting as well.

After finally getting into my room and being able to drop my bags off, the girls from the plane and I set off towards Harrods, the largest department store in London (one of them had been before and really wanted to see it again). We managed to get a bit lost on the way despite knowing we were heading in the right direction, but to make up for it we stumbled upon the Natural History Museum. It started raining while we were in line to get in, and though I love rain, it was cold enough to make it sound a little less pleasant than normal.

The museum was incredible – their dinosaur section was particularly impressive. There was even a room with a huge animatronic T-Rex, which I was definitely not expecting and which maybe made sleep-deprived me jump a bit (or, you know, a lot).

We only got to see a tiny fraction of what was there, but most of what we saw after the dinosaurs pretty much consisted of a wide variety of taxidermy animals, which always fascinates and saddens me at the same time. We did, however, also see a group of uniformed schoolboys (early-ish elementary school?) on a field trip there, and while they were all lined up against a wall, a tourist family made their children pose in front of them for pictures.

It turns out that that museum is right by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is basically an arts museum, so we stopped in there for a spell, too. Again, we only saw a tiny portion of what was there, but there were such beautiful paintings and sculptures, many of which had people sitting around them and sketching.

Since we had to be back at the hotel by 6 for a meeting and still wanted to fit in Harrods, we left shortly and managed to find our way to the store. To put it simply, it’s gigantic. We mostly wandered around the food area, where they were giving away a ton of free samples. My favorite was chocolate covered coffee beans, but I was a bit less impressed by some goat cheese that would have been great if it didn’t have old spots on it.

Sidenote, but speaking of coffee, I’ve had to drink so much of it while I’ve been here just to feel vaguely awake. I’m kind of amazed that I haven’t just started bouncing down the street from the amount of it. Jet lag is a vicious, vicious thing.

Back to Harrods – this one salesman who kept talking up his admittedly delicious looking chocolate covered strawberries was so excited when he heard our American accents. He started talking about how much he loves the States and how he’s been to a bunch of them, including California, Texas, and North Carolina. He even gave us free cherries as a parting gift.

We then embarked on the long, cold walk back to the meeting, where we learned that the flight to Nice for us Cannes people would involve leaving the hotel at 3:45 AM. Which honestly is just cruel.

My hotel roommate and her two friends (also Chapman/Dodge students!) and I then headed out for dinner and dessert, and we all crashed shortly after the last bite of crème brulee. I did my best to stay awake once we were back at the hotel in an effort to find some semblance of a normal sleep schedule, but I was fast asleep by 9:30 and stayed that way til my alarm went off at 7:30 the next morning.

After breakfast everyone went on an elevated bus tour led by the chipper and very endearing Sally Strange (which just might be my new favorite name). We covered so much that it’ll be difficult to list everything, but some highlights included passing a bunch of the theatres in West End, realizing that the exterior of the Australian Embassy is also the exterior of Gringotts in the Harry Potter movies, and walking by a pond with a bunch of geese and ducks and swans and squirrels. I also learned that the people I am travelling with are not exactly used to wildlife. Half of the group had to stop to take a picture of a squirrel (who, to their credit, did seem to pose for them), and at one point a duck crossed the path in front of us and people started freaking out. As in literally gasping and jumping back and nervously wondering aloud what the duck was doing. City folk.

We also got to walk around Buckingham Palace – some sort of event was going on that involved all of the female guests wearing very British-looking hats, and Sally Strange guessed it had to do with the 50 year anniversary of Churchill’s funeral – as well as by Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and into St. Paul’s Cathedral for a coffee break.

  

Sally Strange finished the tour at a little outside marketplace, and another girl and I wandered around it for a while and listened to some great street performers (a violinist and an opera singer!) before catching the tube back to the hotel. Neither of us had taken the tube before, but we managed to figure out how to get back to the High Street Kensington station without a hitch – it required transferring trains (tubes?) and everything! I’m especially impressed because I have been known to get lost in large stores, so the fact that I navigated an unfamiliar underground railway system is quite a feat.

We went our separate ways back at the hotel, as I wanted to grab a scarf and walk through Kensington Gardens, which was just a short distance from our hotel. I ended up spending the afternoon there and (I think) covered a good bit of ground. I am thoroughly achy because of all of the walking, but it was worth it. Absolutely gorgeous.

I started off seeing Kensington Palace (but no royals – alas!) and just kind of meandered from there. It’s fairly flat, so you can kind of see what’s out there in the distance and decide that you’ll start heading towards that statue or that building or that fountain.

I came across another pond with even more birds. A goose walked with me for a few steps, and while I can’t say that I’ve been particularly fond of them after one bit me at a petting zoo when I was a kid, this one seemed well behaved and rather friendly and happy-go-lucky.

There were dogs everywhere, and they all seemed so excited and proud, whether it was about the sweater they were wearing or the stick they were fetching or the other dog they were meeting.

I think I wandered into Hyde Park, as well, where I found Princess Diana’s memorial fountain. She had a memorial playground somewhere, as well, but I didn’t end up finding it.

On my way back to where I had entered the Gardens, I stumbled upon a little art museum called the Serpentine Gallery. They were displaying a limited time exhibit by an artist from the 60s, I believe. Some of his pieces included piles of ashes divided by bars, a suitcase that growled periodically and that gave me a good start, much to the amusement of the docent nearby, a dim light bulb in a hallway that symbolized dusk (or so said the placard accompanying it), and some chairs tipped over sideways. I guess it was very thought provoking and profound? There were a bunch of art students sketching a giant pile of crumpled up paper, and some of them seemed really into it while the others just looked confused by the whole thing. Guess which group I would be in?

It was after this that I noticed that it wasn’t as light as it had been and that it was actually pretty darn cold – walking everywhere makes you think it’s a touch warmer than it actually is. So I grabbed a quick dinner and a cookie and headed back to the hotel to rest for the evening.

Then, after a lovely wake-up call at 3 AM, it was off to the airport, where it started to snow while we were unloading our luggage from the trailer! It hasn’t snowed when I’ve been home for years now, which I’ve missed, so it was a perfect send-off before flying to the French Riviera.

Time to Say Goodbye

Goodbyes are the worst. Plain and simple. And I’ve had to say a fair number of them recently, which has been one of the less fun parts of getting ready to go abroad (in addition to getting my visa and packing. Neither of those were a picnic either).

I know I’m getting close to cliché status here, but one of the silver linings to this, though, is that it really reinforces just how great the people and places in your life are. It’s like that one overly used quote that I’m too lazy to look up – something along the lines of how lucky you are to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

“See you later” sounds better, doesn’t it? I should start using that instead.

I’ve been saying see you later to family – from my supportive parents to my sweet grandmas to my wonderfully kooky and rambunctious aunts and uncles.

  

See you later to friends, old and new – I didn’t think to get any pictures, but various visits and dinners and coffees and the like were a treat.

See you later to my cats – they’re pretty great, even though Kona licked the peanut butter off of my toast the morning I left home.

See you later to the library – I’m lucky to have spent around 6 summers helping Lindell with Story Time back home in Mariposa, and I’m so glad I got to go to one more before I left. The love she gets from the kids and parents is a testament to how much heart she puts into her work.

And on a more superficial note, see you later to most of my closet, nearly all of my books, and even a couple inches of hair!

The see you laters are also eased by the fact that I’m so excited to see what Europe has in store. My bags are packed (more like stuffed, really) and I’m all set to leave this afternoon. First stop London for a few days, then to Nice, and finally Cannes! So see you later, US – UK, see you soon!

Hold On…I’m Going to France?

T-minus one week until I leave the country!

Wait a minute. That can’t be right!

It’s finally beginning to feel real that this whole study abroad thing is actually happening. When I would tell people before where I was going and for how long I would be gone, it always felt so far off in the future – imagining it was like watching a movie in my head. Sure, I was the main character, but there was always some sort of screen or barrier between myself and the reality of it all.

Even hearing other people predicting what my semester abroad will be like helped to keep it feeling kind of separate. One friend likes to list all of the different cheeses I’ll get to try. My mom insists that I send her pictures whenever I get gelato or macarons or basically any kind of dessert. Another friend has guessed that I’ll meet a Frenchman named Javier who will ask me to eat escargot with him by the Eiffel Tower (never mind that Javier is a Spanish name and that I don’t eat meat!).

But lately I’ve been pulled inside the movie screen and actually have to start thinking about logistics – the horror! I’ve already got a fair bit checked off of my to-do list, such as taking care of my visa and getting adaptors for my chargers and the like. The hard parts have been brushing up on the language and trying to figure out packing – why don’t the movies show the heroine pouring over her old French textbook, trying to remember how speaking in the past tense works, and struggling over what to pack? How many books can I feasibly fit in my luggage without making it too heavy and impossible to carry? And which ones?

I come up with new questions each day, but as confusing and kind of stressful as they might be, they’re making my impending voyage finally seem like it’s happening. So here’s to my last week of reading as much about Cannes as I can and studying with a snoring cat on my lap!

McCoy helping me review reflexive verbs