I love the sea!!

This week was pretty normal. Classes, homework and other activities quickly filled up my week and now I don't know where the time went!

On Tuesday I decided to do my homework on the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the bright sunshine was making the water glisten, it was perfect! Also, since it is now October, there is hardly anyone on the beach. I prefer this to the crowds on the beach when we first got here! The warm sun, the sound of the waves, not enough sleep the night before and 50 pages of reading quickly put me to sleep and I had a nice nap on the beach. I have recently fallen back into my habit of staying up late. I’m a night owl and am often very productive at night but it makes for a very difficult morning! It normally works out at CSB/SJU because I have been able to avoid early morning classes but I don’t have a choice here. At the last minute, I learned that there was room in the phonetics class that was starting Tuesday. There is enough money in the study abroad budget for all of us to take the phonetics class without paying-normally it costs 43 euros but our director figured it out that there was enough money for us to take phonetics if we wanted. Originally I wasn’t going to be able to take it until November because all the October sessions were filled but then they added another class on Tuesday afternoon. It is a one hour class, once a week for four weeks. I really had no idea what to expect and was excited to see what the class was going to be like. I walked into class and sat down at the desk the teacher told me to sit at. A few minutes later when everyone else had arrived (there are only 6 people in the class), she told us to open up our desks. Inside where personal recording systems equipped with a headphone and microphone combo that made us all look like pilots and the tape/recording device. We all put the headphone/micro combo on and the teacher did the same. When she talked we could all hear her. She started our tapes and read some phrases and we repeated them. With our big headphones on, we couldn’t hear anyone but the prof and our own voice. Once we had gone through several pages of exercises, the teacher rewound the tapes and we listened to them so we could hear the difference between the prof and ourselves in terms of pronunciation. She would listen into our tapes and stop it if we were saying something wrong and have us repeat it until we got it right. Then we did some tongue twister type sentences one at a time without the headsets. It was a very good hour!
Wednesday was a full day with grammar and cinema. Another person joined our class so we are up to an astounding 4 people in the class! I have really been enjoying this class! It is cool to learn about the techniques and history and then apply it to some video clips! I never realized how much thought and work went into each scene of a movie and am starting to see that cinema is an art form!
Today I had a quiz in grammar and I think it went well. After lunch and checking emails, I had 3.5 hours until my next class. I had been itching to spend some time at this rockier beach that I run by but have never stopped at. So I took the opportunity of sun+open period of time+simple homework to go check it out. It is almost exactly a 15 minute walk from the college but it doesn’t seem that long due to the fact that you are walking along the sea the whole way. Once I arrived I checked out my options and planted myself atop a large rock and did my grammar homework. Once the homework was completed, I ditched the flip flops and walked around on the rocks and watched the waves and sailors in the distance. It was beautiful, peaceful and exactly what I was looking for! I have no doubt that I will go back there soon (and probably pretty often for the rest of the semester)! After spending some time on the beach, I headed back towards the college and continued on the Leader Price (got some snacks for the train ride tomorrow) and the post office to replenish my stamp stock.

Then I hurriedly read a reading for senior seminar and went to French civilization which was at a later time today because the art history class took a trip to a museum in Nice and needed extra time.

I also got my package from Emily today (my bday present :))...when we have mail, our name gets put on the electronic message board and then we can pick it up in the office just to the right of the board.

Another excited thing I did today was fill out my absentee voting ballot!!

The pictures just don't do it justice!

Tomorrow I leave on a group excursion to Lyon and Annecy, I’m really excited!