Bonjour from France!
It’s the end of the second week, and I’m already in LOVE with this country and the study abroad experience in general.
Saying goodbye to my friends and family was sad and everything, but it wasn’t as rough as I thought it would be. In the end, there wasn’t enough time to have a huge emotional goodbye scene with everyone. I will confess to getting a little teary when I got through security at the airport and lost sight of my mom, but please don’t tell anyone about that because it’s embarrassing. The flight was cramped, but the when you fly British Airways you get a complementary mini bottle of wine, even in economy class. So that helped.
I met up with the rest of the study abroad group at Heathrow, where we sat around the airport and moaned about how exhausted we were. And then, after a six-hour layover and another two-hour flight, we were in Nice, France on the French Riviera! It was amazing. And beautiful. It was raining, but still gorgeous.
My host family picked me up at the airport, and they kept apologizing for how “ugly” everything was, but to me, everything looked amazing. They have palm trees here, just like in Florida or California. Only this is France, so that makes these palm trees très chic.
When I woke up the next morning the sky was still grey, but it had stopped raining. We all had lunch together at the home of Madame Eades, our Resident Director here in France. It’s her job to make sure that we adjust well and help us with acclimating and taking advantage of the culture and all that stuff. Afterwards, we walked about three blocks south, and there was the Mediterranean up close and personal.
Yours truly and fellow Maryland-in-Nice student, Evan. In the background you can see St. Paul de Vence, an awesome medieval city full of amazing art and an entire shop devoted to olive oil.
The morning of Day Two, the weather cleared up and I understood why my host mother kept insisting that the sea looked ugly. That morning, the sun was shining and it must have been 65 degrees (I don’t know exactly what the temperature was because they use Celsius here, so I really never understand exactly how warm or cold it is until I go outside. Of course, I’m too lazy to bother converting Celsius into Fahrenheit.) In any case, it was beautiful outside. The sea was so calm, and the most amazing color. I’m a Maryland girl, so to me the beach is Ocean City, where the water is that muddy sort of brackish, greenish-blue. But here, it’s totally different. It turns out that the Cote d’Azur is not just a pretty name. The water really is the most beautiful shade of crystal clear azure.
The next week was spent taking a French class to review for our placement exam, then exploring the city in the afternoons. The placement test helped determine what level of French we have to take at the University here. I placed right in the middle, which is great because now I can get the credits I need without being too stressed out (I hope).
DISCLAIMER: Stereotyping ahead. Nothing negative, though.
One of the first things I noticed is that the French are always impeccably dressed. They do not go to the grocery store in sweats and they do not shlub around campus in Uggs and leggings and a hoodie with their hair still in last night’s Snooki poof and eyeliner down to their cheekbones. Not that we would do that in College Park, of course, because we stay classy. But I hear that’s done on some campuses.
Of course, we’ve also been exploring the nightlife. In Nice, most of the bars and pubs and the like are centered in “Vieux Nice,” aka, the old part of the city. It’s extreeeemely expensive to go out at night here unless you research specials ahead of time, but there are about a hundred different options, which is definitely an improvement over the limited possibilities offered in College Park.
We’ve also taken a few day trips. We visited the Fondation Maeght, which is a modern art gallery and sculpture garden. I was never a huge fan of modern art, but they had some really amazing stuff there. And a lot of sculptures involving very large forks. I don’t really know what that was about. We also visited Antibes, although we foolishly went on a Sunday so all the museums (the Napoleon Museum, the Picasso Museum and the Absinthe Museum- yes, it’s all about the green stuff) were closed.
I feel like I’ve done 10,000 new things in the past two weeks, when in reality, I’ve just gotten my feet wet. Actually, I haven’t even gotten my feet wet because it’s been too cold to actually go in the water. Fortunately, I have four months to explore and get to know every little nook and cranny of this amazing city. I can already tell that my French has improved, because I’m starting to realize just how much I don’t know. But for now, that’s all I have to say. Check back next month, when I’ll discuss the French school system, French food (yum!) and whatever else happens to come my way.