Nice was nice!

My apologies for being a little late- it's Tuesday morning here in France.... I was (am still) super sick yesterday and came home and just crashed. There has been a lot going on in my life and this "rhume" (in my case- a REALLY bad cold, possibly flu-ish...) is a manifestation of my stress and a way for my body to say- whoa let's just take a break (but of course I can't because university has just started!)

On that note: University has finally started, I'm excited but at the same time I love just hanging out and enjoying being in France- I'm also terrified about lectures, as at this moment I only understand a small percentage of what is being said.... but I like my classes, so that's good. First of all, I'm taking two manitory classes- one called French Society (Societe Française) that is only five weeks long and the other is the SLM- Suivi Language et Methologie class- both of these combined are essentially a continuation of the Intensive Language Program that we had for two weeks. And they will both net me a credit for taking a mandatory class that I need for my French minor. But it is really frustrating because we were not told very much information about these classes (what levels we were in, that there was a meeting we needed to attend to sign up....) and as a result it was sort of a mess last week- very disorganized and just stressful.
My favorite class this semester I think will be my Geographie: Landscape class.... (Okay don't judge me, but it's in English, but if it were taught in French it still would be my favorite class...) It's Tuesday evening at the Bron campus (gag me...) which is 45 minutes by tram outside of Lyon. On the first day- my friends and I were sitting in the front row of the class- the prof. started his intro (in French) then said he was switching to English- we were really confused- really, really confused- until the other students produced their emploi du temps that had a completely different title for this class (have I mentioned the lack of organization here is just ridiculous???). Anyway, we loved the Professor (he is a specialist in U.S. State Capitals- didn't know that was a thing....) and the class is very interesting. We decided that it would be nice to have a class taught in English- and to make up for the two hours of not listening to French we can just watch an extra French movie... haha. That's how it works right?
My other classes are taught in French and will be a lot more rigorous: I'm taking two art history classes that are basically the same class (same prof., same assignments....) but one is   Photographie and the other is about paintings (again we were told they were both photography classes that had different focuses, structures... I wonder sometimes how things get done here...) Then I have a French linguistics class, (even though I really don't enjoy linguistics at all, hopefully it will help with my pronunciation and listening, plus since I have already taken ling. it seems more manageable...) My schedule is really nice too- my society french class ends after October, so I won't have classes on Mondays starting in November, Tuesday and Wednesday I have six hours of class each day (that's icky, but I don't start until 12 and 2.... so it's sort of doable...) then I don't have class on Thursdays or Fridays... Four day weekend! whoohoo! One or two of those days will be homework days, but it is nice to be able to have a good option for traveling a bit on the weekends :)

Speaking of traveling, I just went to Nice this last weekend.
The rumors are true everyone- Nice is nice.
haha.
 But in all seriousness- I did have a nice time. I went with my friends Monica, Kristy and Charley and just had a blast! We left super, super early in the morning on Saturday (we originally were planning to leave Friday mid-morning, but we had that meeting we had to go to....). The train ride was about 4.5 hours- we mostly slept because we were so tired. When we got to Nice, we had one hour to find our hostel and get back on another train to go to Grasse for the day. We didn't remember the name or location of the hostel (even though it was slightly a disaster, it was a great learning lesson: never travel without knowing were you are going to be staying- the name of the place and how to get there...) we ended up finding a wifi place, finding the name in the conformation email and grabbing a taxi because we didn't know where the street was- turns out it was just a five minute walk from the train station- but again we didn't know which direction, the street name, etc.

We made it back to the station right on time to hop a train to Grasse- the perfumerie capital of France.
Kristy had gone once before and loved it and wanted to go again- it was a great place and I thank you Kristy for wanting to go again! We got to have a little tour of the Fragonard factory and see how they make perfumes- and they told us about the Noses- the highly, highly trained and gifted people who sit at the "organ" of scents and create new combinations of perfumes. We spent more than an hour in the gift shop sampling the different perfumes. We strolled around the small streets of Grasse in the afternoon and decided to take the train back to Nice for dinner. However we missed the 6:38 train and didn't want to wait for another hour (we took a bus down to the train station and we didn't want to hang out there with nothing to do or see) so we continued on the bus to Cannes. I love that we were able to just roll with what was in front of us and not have solid plans to get back to- plus being flexible in general. It was so nice to see the little towns and the countryside from the bus. Once we got to Cannes we walked around for a bit and found a cute little restaurant- the waitress looked like a movie star! After dinner we went back to the beach and grabbed some crepes and ate on the sand over looking the Mediterranean and the fancy sailboats in the cove. Cannes was beautiful, but it was definitely for a much older, wealthier clientele and the fancy vibe was a little intimidating- it felt sort of like a France version of Beverly Hills.
Later that night we hopped a train back to Nice- and we decided to go out and explore the city a little bit. The weather was great and it was lovely just to sit on the Quai overlooking the ocean.
The next morning we woke up on the early side and headed over to Vieux Nice, where Kristy's host mom told us about a huge flower market that happens everyday- it was Amazing. Boothe's and Boothe's of flowers, dried fruit, fresh fruits and vegetables. After seeing the flowers, we walked over to the stony beach- which actually was quite comfortable and it was nice not having sand everywhere when the wind picked up. The only thing I didn't like about the rocks was it made getting in an out of the water very difficult and painful (we saw many people were Crocs- so next time I will grab a pair just to project my feet!). I loved swimming in the water though- so clear and had a nice gray teal color. Beautiful. And it was warm too! We spent the day going back and forth from the water to our towels for sunbathing. It was a glorious way to spend Sunday afternoon if you ask me.
In the afternoon we packed up our sunbathing camp and grabbed some crepes before walking through the town to catch our train back to Lyon.
Nice was beautiful- many of the buildings were brightly painted (terracotta with teal shutters for example!), the whole city looked exotic and different from what I have seen before. Overall I had a great weekend and love to spend it in a beautiful place with great friends!
Now, back to reality- I have school in an hour!

Beacoup de bisous!
Sasha