Nice is Nice...wow, I'm losing my touch

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Well, I guess since it’s my third week in Nice, I should maybe right a blog entry about living here, huh? I arrived late on a Sunday night. Luckily, before I left London, I phoned my French host (thankfully, she also speaks English, which I discovered is a rare occurence with the French hosts) to let her know when I arrived. Thank goodness I did that because the school had given her the wrong time and she was going to be at her country house by the time I arrived. I thought I would be okay since I had the address, but she then asked, “Do you have the code to get into the building?” “Um, no.” “And I guess I’ll need to leave the key for you.” “Um, yes.”

So with the code and address in hand (and, hopefully, the key when I got inside the building), I arrived in Nice and took a bus to the train station. I then checked out a map to see where I needed to go. Score! My host family literally lives two blocks from the train station! The key was where she said it would be and Catherine (the host) wrote me a nice note. Well, in the note she neglected to tell me which flat it was, so I was that creepy person at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night trying everyone’s lock. Luckily, a guy came out of his place after my third attempt (probably wondering what the heck I was doing) and pointed me to the correct flat. The flat is very cute. My guess is it’s quite large for city centre standards and has super high ceilings. At first, I freaked out when I only saw a beday in the bathroom, but then I rationaled the situation, and discovered the other tiny room (totally away from the bathroom) with a single toilet in it. Totally makes sense, huh?...you go to the bathroom in one room and then you cross the apartment to wash your hands in another room.

Due to the ridiculous number of French holidays, I didn’t have school on my first Monday and went on a school field trip instead (isn’t that fantastic? A field trip at 26 years old!). We went to a little village about 10 minutes away called Villefranche Sur Mer. I had a chance to meet some of the students and we were given a tour of the village in French (so I totally understood all of it 😉. It was on this day that I realized I’m old. In my program, there are approximately 20+ teenaged girls from Ireland. Looking at them and looking at me, it’s very evident that we’re in different generations. For one, I wasn’t wearing a mini-skirt that barely covered my butt. For two, I wasn’t wearing leggings (seriously, leggings are back?!?...the capri style with lace on the bottoms...some things should NEVER come back onto fashion scene). And for three, I wasn’t wearing a little tiny tank with a little tiny bikini underneath. Now, this was the first day. However, this description appears to be a 17 years old’s standard uniform. I was lucky enough to be put into a class with 8 of them (can you sense the sarcasm?) and they literally wear the above EVERY day. I really do wonder if there’s a wardrobe code out there that I just don’t know about!

Anyway, I digress. I was placed in a beginner-intermediate french program, which has basically been a good review of what I learned in junior high and high school. I naively thought that it would all come back to me in the first week and I could be on my merry way and quickly become fluent, but it’s been much harder than that. Basically, this is a refresher course, and I’m going to have to keep it up when I get back home to get anything out of it. Regardless, I’m living in Nice for the month...nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Nice really is a beautiful city. I know many of you have been here already, but if you haven’t you really should come. There are miles of beach (albeit with rocks, but it is nice to not have to get sand out of every crevice at the end of the beach day) and the architecture is fabulous (I really love the fancy iron wrought balconies and the pastel coloured buildings). The old city is a cool little maze of restaurants and stores (as well as numerous markets throughout the week). And the food is amazing...being so close to the Italian border, Nice has the best of French and Italian food. It’s so tough resisting those French bakeries and Italian ice cream shops! Oh, plus, guess what area of town I live in? Little Arabia (I’ve named it that). Guess what’s right across the street from me? That’s right, a Middle Eastern bakery with baklava and Turkish Delight. Pure evil, I tell you. Pure evil!

I’ll write another post about my last weekend (I visited the neighbouring cities, Cannes and Monaco, and a small town called St. Paul de Vence), but here are a few more thoughts...

• Seriously, eveyone has a dog and smokes. The stereotype is true. There is crap all over the streets and you cannot walk a block without getting smoke blown in your face at least twice. No exaggeration there.
  
• They love tea drinkers here. Why? Because they can absolutely rip them off. Four of us went for drinks: one ordered a Diet Coke, one ordered a beer, one ordered a wine, and I ordered a tea. From MOST expensive to least expensive: Diet Coke ($4.50 CND), Tea ($4 CND), beer ($3.00 CND), and wine ($2.50 CND). That would be completely reversed in Canada! How crazy is that?!? But, seriously, tea is always double the price of coffee here. Makes sense? Yeah, I don’t think so either.
  
• Speaking of tea, just in case you were wondering, one CANNOT go to a “Salon du The” (that’s Tea Salon for you Anglophones) to have a tea...unless you’re eating. If you just want a tea, you have to go a bar. Hmmm....okay, then.
  

I have more; I just can’t think of them right now. I will write more about french living in another blog. If any of you have traveled/lived in France, you have to read “A Life in the Merde”. Most of my thoughts are echoed in this book. It’s a hilarious narrative of a Brit living in France and the crap (no pun intended) he goes through.

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