So....so far, the classes here haven't been super fun yet--mostly a review of French I already know--but the excursions we can sign up for are amazing!!! A group of mostly high school students (and me) took the TGV high speed train yesterday to Monaco. The ride was breathtaking! I cannot emphasize enough how the color of the ocean is unlike any color you have ever seen. It is the prettiest deep blue-green and watching the waves makes time stand still. We had to hike up to the top of a hill to see the Castle of Monaco, where Prince Albert reigns. Again, two of the high school teachers who came along had to sit at the bottom of the hill as they would not have been able to make it up. Sad! I was wishing I could have taken one of you readers of my blog in their place to enjoy the view. Monaco is such a nice, clean city. All you see is luxury cars and yachts. 50 percent of its citizens are French and the rest come from all sorts of other nationalities. We walked all around the top of the hill and then went to see a huge aquarium.
Dinner with Christine, my host mother, is every night at 8pm. I rushed home at 6:30 to get my dirty clothes from the past two weeks and take them to the lavarie or laundry mat. I had two big bags of clothes and it was hard to fit them into the little washing machine. It was 3.50 Euros to run the washing machine or roughly 5 dollars. I decided to stuff them all together on cold water. Some guys came in and started smoking up the entire place while I was sitting quietly, writing a few postcards. I finally had to leave. I really didn't appreciate the Clean Air Act of Utah until now. The dryer was 50 cents every 8 minutes. Finally after 16 minutes, I took them out, still damp. I ran to the upstairs apartment and made it by 8pm.
Christine had her friend sitting there, Sylvio, a guy who drives boats on the Mediterranean Sea in Italy. He offered to take us both to a Chinese restaurant. It was a fun little walking trip. We took her dog and walked roughly a half an hour to get there. Lots of the food was based around squid and shrimp, but there were also some good dishes without seafood involved. I picked some egg rolls that they fry in front of your eyes. The dog sat on the table by us and had all the Chinese food he wanted for free! What a life. Sylvio offered to take me on his boat over the weekend. I told him that this weekend is my last, so we will see if it happens. Could be fun.
This morning, I met at the school to go to this Chocolaterie and Candy Factory. It was fun to watch the ladies making all sorts of sweets. They had all these free samples at the end of the tour from chocolate covered almonds, toffees, suckers, candied tangerines, rose jam that tasted just like a rose, candied rose petals, etc. Some of it was pretty tasty, but the prices were outragious. The jams were over 10 dollars for the smallest size and 12 suckers were 24 Euros!! I decided to buy a small pack of chocolate covered rice flakes, which were really good, but it was not worth the price. They know how to get tourists at these factories.
Class today will go from 1-6. Hopefully it will be more active than yesterday.
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2 comments:
Cuz, you're killing me! Don't tell me how beautiful the ocean is I could be enjoying with you. Then all this talk about Norwegian and Aussie girls you hang out with! My life could be perfect out there! Why didn't we plan for this a year ago!??? I have to do something like this with you before we get married. I just have to.
I am so jealous. You have no idea.
Hey Charlotte - did you see the casino in Monaco? Here's an interesting tid-bit about it: the architect was the same who designed/built the Paris Opera House (Charles Garnier)! I thought that was cool, and if you look there are a lot of similarities between the two buildings. Isn't Monaco fun?!?! It was seriously the coolest little country. I'm glad you got to check it out!
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