I am hesitant to do this but...

Can I complain just a little bit? Before I do though, please know that I feel very fortunate to be here and to have this opportunity. I realize that nothing is perfect and that life is what we make it and that we choose our attitude and all that stuff... That said, there has been something that has been bothering me that I just need to vent. Last week it bugged, this week it's driving me freaking crazy! Here it is...

There is this Swiss girl in my class that is constantly flirting with the prof and it's SUPER distracting and is really getting on my nerves! She's one of those people who has to be the center of attention at all times, so if she's not flirting grotesquely with the prof, she's in a LOUD side conversation with other students (ask my students how happy I am about loud side conversations...); both behaviors are completely annoying to me. First of all, I just think it's rude. Second, I feel like I paid as much as she did and would like to learn the dang adverbs lesson and not feel like I need to excuse myself from the room so that they can have a little more privacy, you know?

Ok, I'm done compaining for now. It all comes down to classroom management and perhaps I'm being too judgemental? It felt good to get that out there though.

On a lighter note, today is the Summer Solstice (the longest day of sunlight of the year) so I'm going to spend the day in Villefrance sur mer, go to school, and then go into Old Nice this evening with Celine to see all the musicians performing in the streets for the Fete de la Musique. I did a lesson about this fete with my students so I am super excited to experience it first hand!

Cool things I did this week:

Rather than listing everything I've done, I've decided to just list the top 10 things I did this week, in no particular order:

1. Went to school everyday. I really look forward to the time I get to spend in class. My prof, Mickael, is way cool and has a great way of getting almost everyone speaking. I relearned some old grammar concepts as well as new ones I've never been introduced to (or at least don't remember being introduced to).
2. Learned the verb Mentir (to lie) and have been using it often when people ask my age ;)
3. Collected 4 random phone numbers and learned that I need to be plus mechant (meaner) to unwanted advances from men. But geesh these guys are forward! But for some reason they seem to be willing to leave me alone after they give me their phone numbers... Really? Like I'd ever call them? But whatever... I'm working on reserving my "Bonjours" for nice little old ladies and not every schmuck I pass on the streets.
4. Explained to my class what a s'more, meatloaf and shepherd's pie consists of... all are foods they have never heard of and couldn't imagine being good. It made for a funny discussion among my class which is full of Germans, Swiss, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish students.
5. Went on an amazing hike from Beaulieu sur mer and all around St. Jean Cap Ferrat with Celine as my guide. It was so amazingly beautiful but the best way for me to describe it is going to be to post pics because my words could never do it justice.
6. Learned the verb Deviner (to guess) when we played Pictionary with my class. As with the s'mores, no one had ever heard of it so the prof had me explain it... I then proceded to kick everyone's butt at it :) The prof made the loser spend the last 10 minutes of class explaining a grammar concept to the class completely in French. I think I may use a similar strategy with my students when I get home...
7. Went to the Chagall Museum. It was wonderful! This particular museum is a collection of 17 different paintings he did of certain stories from the Bible. Since Chagall has Jewish heritage it was interesting to see how he combined the two traditions of Christianity and Judaism and was able to illustrate their common origins very respectfully.
8. Laid out topless on the beach all by myself. I went through quite the self-pep-talk to gather up the nerve to do it. Surprisingly, wearing my ipod gave me the confidence to not give a shit and to pretend like I was in my own little world. It's something I've always be curious about trying, so I figured "When in Nice..." :)
9. Watched La Patient Anglais in French with French subtitles with Celine. It was very helpful to have the French subtitles... sometimes I wish I could have them when I'm listening to Celine tell me a story. I get so hung up on what tense of avoir she is using and what that translates to mean that I end up missing the rest of the story. I feel I'm getting better, but I'm still not where I ultimately want to be.
10. Discovered that it's cheaper to buy wine in France than it is to buy orange juice or milk. I looked and looked and couldn't find a bottle that was more than €8... the majority of them are €2-3 which is completely in my price range :)

So that's my week in a nutshell. I've been here 1 full week and have 2 more to go... Until next time!!

I finally posted pics!

Well, sort of... I posted them on facebook because it was the only way I could think to do it without uploading them to a computer first. So sorry Geana :( but if you want to see them you may have to break down and get a facebook account... This is a link to the album... see if you can view it without joining facebook :)

I wrote a lot about the photos and I'd like to get to the Chagall museum this morning before school, so today's post will be short. I just want to tell you that I LOVE MY FRENCH CLASS!! My professor is younger than me but he's super nice and super cute. He does a great job getting everyone to speak while still teaching grammar, all the while speaking only in French. My students would die if I did that! He gives me extras of his worksheets because I told him I'd like to use them with my students. So watch out future students ;)

Also about my classes, I am sandwiched in between the Chinese speakers and the German speakers, so the only way to communicate with them is in French... How's that for keeping me diligent with my French speaking? :)

Okay, that's all for now... I'm off to continue having the time of my life!!

Where to begin?

It seems I've been packing so much into my days I don't know where to pick up or how much to share without boring you... I'll try to keep it brief...


Yesterday I took a double-decker bus tour and a train tour of Nice. Sure enough, it's beautiful all over! Nice boasts 400,000 years of history and has kept dang good records of nearly every year! Sort of puts 200+ years of USA history in a different perspective, but that's another story :) I was like a Chinese person in Disneyland taking pics of everything we zoomed past on the bus. I really wish I could post them on here or on facebook somehow.


Then last night I went with Celine to her concert at a church in Old Nice. She is an amazing violinist! What a treat that was! It was the final conert of the Festival de la musique sacrée... So there you go, I went to a church on a Sunday ;)


Today was my first day of school and it brought back a ton of memories from my last study abroad. I started by taking a written, listening comprehension and then conversational exam to see what class level they would place me. I was feeling confident until the conversation part of the test... That's where I need lots of work. I hope the class they put me in will be challenging but mostly helpful. I guess I will just hope for the best in my classes tomorrow. I'll keep you posted on that.

 

After school I took a train to Monaco. (Reread that sentence one more time and just listen to how cool that sounds!) It's just a 20 min train ride away and it's a beautiful little 2 square mile country. I went to an exotic cactus garden on the cliff overlooking the sea and the city. They sure did squash a whole lot of high rise buildings into that little space of a country! I also went to an aquarium but didn't stay long because they have huge tanks of tropical fish in Utah too, so I wanted to see things I can't see there, you know?

What else? Oh, I'm having a bit of trouble getting my damn credit cards to work here. All I have are big bills and many places will only accept coins or credit cards. It's becoming a gigantic pain in the butt, but on the bright side it's keeping me from spending too much on my card. But I do really need to figure out what the problem is before I run out of cash. I think it may stem from the fact that someone stole my card 5 days before I left the USA so now everything's all jacked up... but again, that's another story...

Other stuff: 

• The weather is absolutely positively perfect!!! Not too hot, not too cold. Just fabulous! 
• My room is the coolest ever! I have the most amazing view and Celine is quite a gardener so the jardin est tres belle! 
• I love my walk into town each day. I'm in a great location, not far from the beach or the train station. Getting around without a car has been no problem at all. There is a great tram and lots of busses and it's only €1 each way so it's pretty cheap. 
• I had my first sandwich nicoise yesterday with a glass of bordeaux on the promenade... it was fabulous! That was my first time trying anchovies and they actually weren't too bad. The restaurant owner/greeter/waiter was Italian (il y a beaucoup des italiens ici) and he had a crush on me. He gave me a free additional glass of wine and asked me to come back and have lunch with him on Wednesday :) Too funny! It was the first time that I've gotten a bill from a restaurant where my drink actually cost less than my food!
• Speaking of random men... I've been here for 3 days and have collected 3 random mens phone numbers... and NOT because I asked for them! Celine warned me that the men in Nice are "tres chaud" but I thought she meant good looking, like when we say a guy is "hot". But what she really meant I guess is way forward and way friendly! Of course I will never call any of them, but I think it's funny as hell that they keep trying :)
• I've noticed MANY other fellow women traveling alone. More than I ever would have imagined! I love seeing kindred traveling spirits out here :)
• Lastly (for now), everyone seems to smell really good here! Not like over-the-top Axe icky smell, more like you-smell-so-good-I-want-to-follow-you-around yummy smell. Surely it's due to the fact that Nice is known for its parfumes, but it may just cause me to break my "No parfumes" rule so I can come home smelling like heaven :)

Ok, that's enough for now. Thanks to those of you who have been following along with me... More adventures to come!

Bonjour from Nice!

I am here and all is well! Sometimes I have to pinch myself to convince myself that I'm not dreaming! This city is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. I was very jet lagged yesterday but I forced myself to stay awake and stroll through the city to get my bearings. I'm so glad I did! On my stroll I found an internet shop where I was able check my email for €1 per half hour which is totally a bargain as opposed to calling home! My first discovery at the internet shop was that the French keyboards are COMPLETELY different than those in the US... surely this is due to all the accents that need to be accomodated for, but it's proven to make my typing considerably slower. Here is an illunstration of the changes, I will type the same sentence twice, the first as I'm used to typing in the US, the second after making the changes necessary to accomodate the new keyboard. Hello ,y nq,e is Zendi qnd I love Nice; Frqnce1 vs. Hello my name is Wendi and I love Nice, France! Crazy huh! Nevertheless, my posts are going to take more time to create and may not include pics for a while, but hopefully will still be worth reading :)

So I'm staying with Madame Celine Tremblay and she is such a great woman! We sat and ate breakfast this morning communicating mostly in French, except for things I really needed to be sure I was understanding fully such as bus schedules and procedures. She is a professional concert Violinist originally from Canada but who has traveled and toured all over the world. She's lived in Nice for 28 years. She was married for 16 years but recently divorced although she is still very good friends with her ex. His name is Jean-Jaques and I met him yesterday when I arrived. He greeted me and showed me around since Celine was at work practicing for her concert that is tonight. I'm so excited because she is going to take me with her to the concert. It's in Old Nice and I can hardly wait!

But first, today I'm going to take the touristy double-decker bus tour to get more familiar with the city. Celine recommeded that I bring a swimsuit with me where ever I go because you never know when you're going to want to just relax on the beach... Sounds good to me! Caio for now!

What? You're going alone?

This has been the reaction that I've received from nearly every person I've told about my trip. You're going to a foreign country all by yourself? Yes. You're going to stay with a family you've never met? Yes. Really? Yes. It's been so easy for me to simply reply "yes" to all these questions, but now that it's getting closer (9 days away) I'm beginning to doubt my naivety... Perhaps I am a little wacko to be going on such a journey alone?

I'm racking my brain to think of the friends or family members in my life who have or may make such a journey by themselves and I'm having a hard time thinking of more than 3-4 who would truly look at this trip and think "Wow! I would totally do that!" Most people think that I'm nuts. They won't go to the movies by themselves, let alone a foreign country. But I really like to be alone. I like being with my own thoughts and planning my own itinerary each day and eating at the places that I want to and going to the museums that I'm interested in and moving at the pace that I want to while in said museum. I just really like solitude.

And yes, I've done this before so I feel like I can do it again... I know what I'm getting myself into. The major difference is that I'm older now... I'm going to be surrounded by younger folks who are at this for the first time and experiencing things much differently than I am. It reminds me of this pic above. This is a pic of me and some of my dorm mates from when I was studying at Neuchatel University in Switzerland the summer of 1997. We're all eating soggy tomato-tasting watermelon and playing Phase 10... despite all our shocked faces, we really were having a great time. Anyway, the girl on the far left in the ever-so-fashionable denim overalls (whose name escapes me...) is who I think about when I see myself on this study abroad this time around. She was a thirty-something mother of two from New York who was spending her summer improving her French skills alongside the rest of us in our early twenties. She was awesome! But she definitely had a different experience than the rest of us. I can't quite say what the difference was, but she was especially studious and not nearly as homesick as the rest of us. It was like she relished the opportunity even more than we did... Which seems impossible seeing as I loved every minute of it! She just had a different perspective of life and it carried over to how she was experiencing her study abroad opportunity. I remember thinking how cool she was and admiring her for still following after her dreams even though she had a life that wasn't what one would typically think of as conducive to a study abroad.

Anyway, this time I get to be the thirty-something in the denim overalls who may be a tiny bit homesick, but who is relishing every minute of this new experience because I know I'll be safe and I know I'll be home before I know it and wishing for my next opportunity to travel abroad... So don't worry about me folks! I'll be just fine! I'm not the first to embark on a journey like this, and I most certainly won't be the last :)