La deuxième semaine!

Bonjour mes amis! It's hard to believe that we have already been in St. Laurent for over a week: it feels as if I have lived here all my life, but the days pass so quickly! My stay here has truly been living up to and exceeding my expectations.  Each day, whether I'm learning some new French vocab, laughing with my newfound "amies," sitting at a café, or shopping in Cannes, I am able to have a great time while appreciating the French culture.  I don't even want to start thinking about returning to the United States because I am having such a great time, so instead I'll give a recap of the past couple days.


Monday
We started off the week with a pretty regularly scheduled day consisting of class in the morning, during which we had to create a menu for an imaginary dinner party of 6 people.  We took our inspiration from the restaurants on the streets of St. Laurent, which allowed us to further our knowledge of the typical dishes in France and St. Laurent.  Our menu needed to be composed of l'apéritif (drinks before the meal), l'entrée (in France, this is like an appetizer - salad or soup), le plat principal (main dish), le fromage (cheese), le dessert, and le café. This is the menu my partner Emma and I came up with:

L'apéritif: le jus de fruits
L'entrée: la salade de chèvre avec jambon cru (goat cheese salad with raw ham)
Le plat principal: le veau avec des pommes sautées et ratatouille (veal with sautéed potatoes and ratatouille)
Le fromage: du brie
Le dessert: le crumble de banane avec sorbet à la mangue (banana crumble with mango sorbet)
Le café: café au lait

Sounds pretty good, huh? After we came up with this, we had to go to the supermarket and see how much food we would need if we were to actually prepare this meal and what it would cost.  In total, our meal had a final cost of 81,21 euros, which is about $99.  Not too bad for 6 people! I really enjoyed this exercise because it combined two of my favorite things: French and cooking! After class, we had our lunch and then had our electives.  I would usually have conversation, but since I was originally interested in the French film elective that got canceled, I was able to go see a French film with the Abbey Road Nice group, which meant that I needed to take the train to Monaco with the photography elective.  It was really nice to have a change and Monaco was absolutely stunning! I got to take a ton of pictures and I can't wait to go back this weekend! After photography, another girl from the St. Laurent group and I headed back to Nice with the Nice group for dinner.  We ate dinner with them at their residency and then got to hang out and exchange information about our respective programs. The Nice program sounds really fun, but I am still glad that I am able to be living in a homestay in order to truly immerse myself in the language.  The movie we saw was called "De rouille et d'os" (Of Rust and Bones) and starred Marion Cotillard. I really enjoyed the movie and it was also nice to spend a night in Nice!

Tuesday

Tuesday was a great day! During the morning class, we wrote postcards to our families in French, which was a really good way to practice since I had to figure out how to write what I usually would in English in French.  We then went to the post office to get "des beaux timbres" (nice stamps) for our postcards.  After lunch, we headed to St. Jean Cap Ferrat for some beautiful sights, a gorgeous beach, and a fun cooking session! I could not (and neither will you!) believe how stunning St. Jean was! I didn't really feel like going in the water during the time I had before my group had our turn to prepare the dessert, but I did put my feet in and it was amazing! The water was so clear and was the perfect temperature! For the cooking, my group made une tarte aux pommes (apple tarte), gâteau au chocolat (chocolate cake), and fruit kabobs.  It was really fun because I love to cook and bake, and we also learned some French cooking vocab in the process! After we finished the dessert, we had another hour until dinner, so we walked around St. Jean.  It was gorgeous, but there weren't too many shops so we also sat on the beach for a while and enjoyed the beautiful weather.  I'm pretty sure that after that, we were all ready and anxious to try the food we had prepared.  The meal consisted of a delicious salade niçoise, sausage curry with rice, and of course, dessert! The end results of our hard work was super yummy! The menu and setup was prepared by our amazing instructors, so thank you to them for all the work they put into the whole thing- it was by far my favorite activity so far! We then headed back to the train station, enjoying an absolutely breathtaking scenic route in the process- it made the 30 minute walk fly by! Back in St. Laurent we headed back to our homestays for a goodnight's sleep after a tiring, yet exciting day!

Well, that's all for now! À bientôt!

Monaco!

The view from St. Jean Cap Ferrat!

Me and my friends on the beach in St. Jean Cap Ferrat!