Buonojourno, Firenze

Salut tout le monde. Went to Florence this weekend with my group and had a splendid time. We got to visit all of the sites, including the Duomo which is always cool. We also made a pit-stop in Pisa and I got to take a touristy picture of myself holding up the leaning tower. I have to say, the Italians just seem to get this culture stuff right. They are all incredibly beatiful, wear great shoes, are nice, and eat good food. Gotta love it. We were lucky that the weather was nice for our full day in the city; it rained the next day, but we were only there in the morning, so it wasn't problem.

I climbed the Duomo and proved, once again, that I am in fact afraid of heights. However, I did get a cool pic at the top of it which I will post soon ( I feel like I keep saying that, but seriously, it's gonna happen and when it does, oh get excited.) We also went into another church (can't remember the name at the moment) and checked out its coolness. As part of the trip, we got admission into the Ufizzi Gallery and the Academia one (aka where the David is) and it was all cool and jazzy like that. Even though I've seen it before, I can't help but be amazed at how perfectly the David is, everymuscle is right on, it's really incredible. I was also amazed at how influential the Medici's were to the Golden Age of Florence. Obviously? you always know that kind of stuff, but to hear about it and see what a strong influence they had over the city (and, in effect the rest of the world) you are so impressed by it. Our tour guide told us that the last Medici was a woman who never had any children and before she died, she willed all of the Medici's possessions to the city, which is why it can be appreciated now. I really felt that that kind of giving is so profound; the way it alows you to keep giving even after you and your family are gone.

So yes, italy was great. I got a bit sick on the bus ride, but that basically is just another way of proving that I am, indeed, a Rose (was there ever really a need to question?).

Tomorrow we are going bowling. This is going to be exciting, who knew that the French bowled?

Theatre

We went to a play at the Palais de Festival the other night. The play was conducted entirely in French, and I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty hard to understand. But I got the gist and even laughed a couple of times, so all in all I think it was succesful. Just gotta keep listening to the stuff and speaking it as much as possible. We are going to another play in the beginning of March which is Danse (whoops, there's some random french spellings for ya) and music around the world. I think it will be easier to enjoy than a play that is 100% based on the dialogue (no set change, nothing visiual to help).

We are off to Florence tomorrow for the weekend and I think everyone is very excited! I can't believe we are already going on one of our excursions, time is just flying by so fast!

We had out second cooking class this week and it was delicieuse. I made crepes and now my hand is really tired form swirling the giant pan. I think it is going to be difficult not to get large and in charge here what with all the food, fortunately, we will be starting kickboxing at the college, taught by Elaina from Minnesota. Apparently she's makes the class really intense, so I'm excited. It is tonight in about45 minutes. yay.

I will try to download pictures, but it is really difficult with the computer access that I have available. Still, I want everyone to see where I live and who I'm with!

Carnaval de Nice

On Sunday we went to Nice for the Carnaval and had such a blast. First of all Nice est un très beau ville et la mèr est bleu comme je ne sais pas. (the city is beautiful and the sea is blue like I can't describe) Apparently the blueness of the water is because the beaches are rocky. There is no sand to muck it up. Anyway...the Carnaval was a ton of fun. There were so many people everywhere and everyone was in a really great mood. THe big event was the silly string--everyone was running around silly stringing each other. It didn't matter if you knew the person, or if you were young or old. You could be standing there with your can of silly string and suddenly get stringed by a random person. THere were silly string wars all over the place. We then found a stand that was doing free face painting and all got our faces painted. I just asked the woman to do whatever and she painted roses on my face! Quel suprise! Aussi, il y a 'Big Heads' in the parade and giant floats with people in costume. All in all very fun!
I don't have much time alors il faut que je partir.
Oh yeah, nothing is open on SUnday and Monday!
I'm going to the theatre tonight.

En général

Yes, the boots are flat, yes even old ladies wear them and yes, I am in fact, studying (a little). I have French class every morning for three hours, with my very French teacher, Annick. Annick doesn't really speak English and anyway, all of the classes are seulement en français. Because the collège is for international students, French is the only langue that everyone speaks, although it's true that most everyone speaks English as well. I am planning on taking an art history class en français as well.

We had our first cours de cuisine and it was some of the best food I've ever had. There was vegetable soup, salmon, chicken, tomatos proveçal, potatoes, tarte aux pommes, and because it was one of the girls bday, this amazing tower of profiterols that the class in the afternoon made. It was so amazing- if we had bought it, it probably would have cost as much as the whole class has!

On Sunday, we are going to the Carnaval de Nice, which should be really cool.

Les Soldes

En France during the winter and the summer there is one month of sales in the entire country. These are called les soldes and the purporse is to get rid of last seasons merchandise to make room for the new stuff. Some of the people in my group have been really enjoying les soldes, especially my friend Maryann, who has being buying clothes left and right. I have been saved by this for two reasons: 1. French people are much smaller than my large American self and 2. I am a cheap Rose. I did however purchase the coolest pair of boots to stick my jeans into. They were way en solde and cost me about 44 Euros. I will post pictures later. Everyone here wears their pants tucked into tall boots, so it's a must-have for the European look.

Monaco

Went to Monaco and Eze yesterday. Monaco was very nice, we went to the area of town where the palace is whiwh was very nice. Our guide, Aude said that whenever the flag above the palace is up, then the prince is in residence and sure enough, the prince was there! We didn't see him, bien sur, but the idea of royalty so close--how exciting. We also watched the changing of the guard in front of the royal palace which was pretty cool. Aude told us that there is almost no crime in Monaco and that there are cameras everywhere in the city. It's no surprise that everyone in Monaco looked nice and happy--they were all rich and safe!
We also went to the aquarium there whiwh was awesome. Then we went to Monte Carlo, ahich was just ok.
Then, we hopped on the bus to the city of eze which is built into the rock. Very coo, amazing views. must go, i'm running out of time in the internet café.

echange langue

I am at the medithèque right now. Essentially, it is a library that also has DVDs and videos. La seule diffèrence est que c'est dans un maison très grand et vieux (the only difference is that it's in a really old big building) once owed by Rothchild. Cool. We can use the internet for free here, so I imagine that I will get very used to the mediathèque. Last night we had the echange langue, which is a program that brings french students who are trying to learn english together with english speakers who are trying to learn french. I met a few cool french girls and a bunch of us are going to get together again. It was nice to be able to use the French like that-- I think I did ok, too! Tomorrow we are going to Monaco as part of the trip. So far, I would definitely give AIFS high marks on their programming--everything has been awesome and helpful. They are taking us to a french restaurant next week and then we are going to go to the Carnaval de Nice on the weekend.
On Wednesday I am going to have my first cooking class. Thus far it is the only thing that I will have to pay extra for, but I think it is going to be worth it. They took us to the school and we met the chef who is going to be teaching us. He was very nice. He made us hors d'ouvres whiwh we incredible! Alors, I have to go, my time is up.
à bientot!

Mon Anniversaire

Oh yeah, my 21st birthday is tomorrow. All gifts can be sent to:
AIFS c/o Katie Rose
1, rue du Dr. Pascale
06400 Cannes, France

PS. I'm just kidding

The Collège International de Cannes

This is our little group in front of the Palais de Cannes, where the film festival is held.

So I'm here at the collège and it's really nice. I didn't realize that it is a language school for foreigners, so everyone' common language is (or soon will be) French. This also means that the whole point of the school is to improve your French language skills, so everything is conducted en français. I had my language test yesterday and did fairly well. We are doing review today in our class and I got a little homework. All the profs are French and mine is no exception. She is very chic and speaks all in french, but slow enough so we can understand her quite well.

I have met a few people who are really cool: Jo (short for Josephine) from Holland, Andrew from Ecuador, Johnny from England and Emily from Scotland. They are all very cool and quite well travelled (no surprise there).

Right now I'm sitting in the "Cyberdrome" which is like an internet café at the school. En fait, I am sitting next to Preston and Emily, two of the people from my program who are from SoCal (Chappy) and New York (University of Toronto), respectively. There will be free internet access at the Mediatheque down the street which I'm sure I will start using once we get our cards and go there on Thursday.

Je Suis Ici!

Hi Guys! I am here in Cannes and on an international keyboard, so bear with me. : ) The collège is great and right on the Mediterranean. We've met some people who are young that work and study here from the US, England, holland and elsewhere. I am on the computer at the cyberdrome, which only allows me 10 hours of free access, but apparently there is a place with free access that I can use. A lot of people brought their laptops, but it seems like there is no place for them to get internet anyway, so I'm glad I didn't bring mine.

My roomate's name is Allie and she is an Alpha Chi Omega from Iowa. She seems pretty cool and hopefully we will just have a low maintenance living situation. I like my room-it is on the third floor (technically 4th by american standards) and I have to walk up the flights to get there. All I can say is, I better have great legs by the end of this! Allie and I went to town to the Monoprix and got some stuff that she needed and generally just looked around. The city is very fun and i think I'm going to like it here. It is a very liveable sort of place.

That's all for now, I don't want to spend all of my minutes right away. à bientot (where's the circomflex on this keyboard?)

katie

Tour of London

Still in London today, we had a tour of the city and got to see many of the sites. While I like London, it is not really a city that I love in the way that I love say, New York (or even Paris for that matter). After our little tour ended, we got dropped off at Covent Garden and were allowed the rest of the day free. a few of us grabbed a bite to eat at a pasty shop (meat and vegetable filled dough) and then headed over to Trafalgar Square. We looked around and stopped into the National museum, which had some cool stuff. We saw some impressionist work like Cezanne, Monet, and Van Gogh. While we were at Trafalgar Square, one of the girls got approach by a man I have dubbed "the Pigeon Whisperer" but also known as a bum who makes money off of getting the Pirgeons to sit on people. he didn't charge her, but it was a pretty funny site to see her squirm with all of the pigeons on her.

After that, we hopped on the Tube and went over to the Notting Hill area of town, which had a street market and was a really cool little area. We considered going to Abbey Road after that, but after asking some people where it was, decided that it was too far and not cool enough for the work to get there. So instead we went back to our area of town, South Kensington, and visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. There was a cool exhibit of clothing and fashion trends that was exciting. Also, there was a really impressive blown-glass chandelier in the main entrance that was way cool.

When we finished there, we accidently left the museum on the wrong side and ended up close to Harrods than the Natural History Mueseum, so we stopped into Harrods to look around. I bought a pastry that was delicious. After that, we went to H&M and then finally dragged ourselves back to the hotel. Suffice it to say, my feet are tired!

Cannes tomorrow. Good times.

I Made it!

Hi everyone! I am currently in an internet cafe in South Kensington! It's hard to believe that I'm still going at this point and that I'm finally here.

I feel like I have been going so long and so much stuff has happened that I can't fit it all here. But I guess I will try. So, my flight from Sac to Phoenix was delayed, which caused me to have to run from my terminal to catch my flight. I made it and ended up sitting between two guys who had been at a conference in Las Vegas and were heading home to NY. They were perfectly pleasant, but as you can imagine, it was still tight and uncomfortable. Oh well, I made it. So, I got to JFK and claimed my baggage, went to BA and got my tickets with American figure out. As I was doing this, I spotted a girl on my program (I saw her baggage tag) and met my first friend of the trip: Kelly. She is from Utah (not mormon) and is loud, but seems pretty cool. When we got to the terminal, we saw that there were several other people from the program waiting (a couple were from Chapman who I recognized) and we all decided to go have dinner in the airport. Everyone seems really laid back and cool and we enjoyed ourselves. Once we got on the plane, we got settled in for the long haul. My seat was better this time, but I never actually slept, which is kind of annoying, but pretty characteristic. Once we arrived, we were bused to the hotel, got settled (I'm rooming w a girl form Chapman who I know) and now are looking around/having lunch. The lunch portions are much smaller--like food for normal people! Anyway, must go. My time is running low and people are waiting for me. <3