Almost done my first week of classes!

L'Universite de Nice is interesting. It's not pretty. At all. It actually kind of looks like an underfunded inner-city high school. I guess it makes some sense since it's free for French students. That's right, French kids don't have to pay for college. Hard to comprehend.

My classes seem interesting though! All the other students are international. I'm the only American in my speaking class and I get asked a lot of questions about how things are in America and about my opinions on things. It's funny -- on the first day of class when we were going around introducing ourselves and I heard that people were from South Africa, Taiwan, Columbia, Norway, and Chile, I thought to myself "gosh, yet again everyone is interesting and foreign with cool life stories; why can't I be exciting?" (a common thought that goes through my head in diverse classes at UMD). Then, after a few minutes, when it was almost my turn to speak, I realized that I was in Nice, not America and we were talking in French, not English. Here I can be interesting!!!  I almost laughed out loud to myself. I guess it's a good sign for my French-learning that I sometimes forget what language I'm listening to.

My favorite thing to do in Nice:

Monte Carlo is not a real place.

It was fancy and fabulous and chic, but we felt a little out of place and were happy to return to Nice.  Cheap college kids + 20 euro lunches = not too happy

Yachts galore! 

Casino

Spaghetti (the cheapest thing on the menu) and water. My lunch at Cafe de Paris. Cheap tourist much? Oh well...

The bus ride from Nice to Monaco went right along the coast and was the most beautiful bus/train/plane/car ride I've ever been on. We all thought the ride there and back were the best parts! I'll  return to Monte Carlo when I'm a millionaire so I can truly appreciate it...

Today I woke up at 11:00, ate some toast with jam, some granola, coffee, and orange-grapefruit juice for breakfast (as normal), got ready and walked/bused to the center of town to meet some friends and check out the Matisse museum and some ancient Roman ruins. 

We got a little lost trying to walk there (this happens a fair amount, but walking anywhere in this city is beautiful; I don't really mind), but we finally found a bus to take and made it there all in one piece. I really enjoyed the Matisse museum, but apparently most of his famous works are at other museums, like the MOMA in New York City. The Matisse museum is in an old red building which was built right next to some Roman ruins. Yeah, you know, just some ancient Roman baths, nbd. 

Walking in and around the ruins was great. A friend of ours had been there earlier, so we had our own personal (English speaking) tour guide! There were many different bath houses for both cold and hot baths, a heating system, bathrooms, a drainage system, a road, a meeting hall and an amphitheater.  Things are so OLD here. It's one thing to see Roman artifacts in a museum, but quite another to stand in the middle of a once-bustling town square 3,000 years later. 

Here are some pictures!

Musee Matisse

Ruins

The kids who tried to get us to sneak into the amphitheater with them

No super exciting plans for tomorrow yet. We have our placement test on Monday so I need to study! 

Lunch on the beach? Je pense oui.