Today was my 3rd day in Nice and I already feel like I've been here much longer!  I'm getting better at navigating the city and have made my way home from different places twice now without getting lost.  Today we took a walking tour with some students who were here last semester and are staying for the rest of the year. They were very helpful and we visited a lot of places that are useful to know: the bank, the post office, a big mall, a department store, and a cell phone store (yay I finally have a cell phone!).

We also had our first day of prep class, which is the class we have to introduce us to the Universite de Nice and to prepare us for our placement exam which is a week from today. The view from our classroom included both the snowy mountains and the pebbly beach with bright blue water -- c'etait tres tes beau!  Our teacher was also very nice and I was able to follow along with all that she was saying.

Tomorrow we are taking a bus tour that will show us more of the city. We are also in charge of taking the bus to class on our own, which is a little scary, so I'm meeting some of my friends before hand to go together.

So far, the language barrier hasn't really been too much of a problem. My host mother and I communicate pretty well. We've only had to pull out our handy French-English dictionary a couple times; I didn't know the word "noisette" (hazelnut) or "tisane" (herb tea). And if you could not tell from those two words, I am very happy with the food here. Mme. Huguette is a very good cook and today she bought me Nutella and vanilla yogurt for snacks! She also made crepes for dessert hier soir and I had them with strawberry jam. Mmmmm.

The thing that I am stressing the most about currently is that everything is a little more expensive than I would have hoped, especially with the exchange rate. But I guess if that is my biggest problem, things are going well!

Here are some pictures from my first couple of days:

ma chambre

la plage

Some of my group-mates made up a very fun game of getting close to the water and then screaming and running away when the waves crashed. Naturally, we were not seen as American tourists by the French couple near us trying to have a nice, quiet, romantic time at the beach. 

backround: said French couple

moi!

After our first day of meeting/greeting/attempting to absorb trop d'information, some of us ate at a restaurant/cafe and split a bottle of wine to celebrate. Didn't get carded! Woo! (I would hope so -- the drinking age is 16). 

Sorry it took a little bit to update this, I've been very busy! More to come as the week progresses!