Première semaine

First week in Nice complete! At the beginning of orientation last Monday, our program director warned us that at first this experience can feel like a vacation. She was right. After getting to know Nice and traveling this weekend, I really do feel like I'm just on a wonderful European vacation.

But reality has to start sometime (or does it?) and, thus, my classes start tomorrow. I am looking forward to this week though, because it's a sort of shopping period for the classes I'm going to be taking in the French university. I'm going to be trying out a Music History course, 2 or 3 French literature classes, a history of Theater class, and then a choir that I might sing in here. Other than that, I take two classes in the program with the other American students which are a writing workshop and an Art History course.

I'm a little worried about logistics because the campuses are quite confusing here. We took a tour of the main humanities campus, but I still forsee having difficulty in finding all of my classes. Luckily I have the help of the other people in my program, who are just as new to this as I am.

Back to this past week, though! Orientation consisted of various outings to get to know the city and the public transport system as well as meeting the professors that will be teaching the two program courses. It was also a great chance to get to know the group of us 10 American students. I'm getting along really well with people and I'm really glad that we seem to have a good group so far!

On Saturday we went to a small town close to Nice called Antibes, where we saw a really cool Provençal Market with all sorts of vegetables, cheese, meats, and spices. It was an awesome experience, and we had fun exploring the town. Then we went to the Picasso museum there. This was interesting enough, but the real highlight was the view of the ocean that was right next to the museum. Everything is so picturesque here that we're all just in disbelief of how beautiful it is. Photographic evidence:

Then, on Sunday we went to a wine tasting at a vineyard near Nice. The bus ride was full of amazing views because we were going up into the mountains and could see the beautiful valleys below. It was interesting to taste wine even though I know absolutely nothing about it, shout-out to friend Laura (viticulture/winemaking major in California) who would have appreciated this even more than I did. (artsy wine picture stolen from Jeremy)

This place really is too good to be true. It sounds cliché, but I really do have to pinch myself frequently; it's just not real life. More updates to come after this week of classes!