It's been awhile since I last sat down to update you all on my semester in France. I have been here about 5 weeks now and I cannot believe how fast the time has gone...even though most of the time has been spent inside just hanging around. It is hopefully going to start warming up here shortly and then we can go outside more often which will be nice since that is part of why I wanted to study on the riviera and not Caen or Rennes or somewhere.
We have about a week left until the seminars start and then I will be learning all about Cinema and French Society as well as possibly Art History just to fill up some more time and get me more credits. There has also been a change in the school schedule this semester. We were originally supposed to have off the last week in March for spring break so Jesse and I planned a splendid little trip to the U.K. but then the school informed us that the dates had changed and for some reason no one had ever told AIFS which means that we will now have to spend money to change it, miss a week of school or just cancel all together. It was ok'd for us to miss school though obviously they would rather us be in class and will not affect anything overall besides the fact that we will not get to learn that weeks worth. We will be now getting a two week spring break!! I will be going with Jesse for the first week and then coming back and just relaxing for a few days before Brittany and I go off and have some fun or our own for 4 days.
I took part in the programs trip to Florence, Italy this past weekend and it was a blast. We got to miss classes on Friday in order to leave bright and early for Italy. We stopped in Pisa shortly after lunch time in order to take the famous holding up the tower pictures. It was a pretty little city but besides the tower there was really nothing to see.
When we arrived in Florence we first went up to the top of a hill so that we could see a panoramic view of the city at night. It was absolutely breathtaking. There was a copy of Michaelangelo's David up there so I got pictures of the statue at night which is a picture a lot of people don't get since they only see it in the museum. We then went to check into the hotel before going out for dinner and crashing so that we had enough energy for the walking tour of the city the next day.
On Saturday we had the most amazing breakfast followed by a 3 hour walking tour of the city which included all of the most important sites. We had two hours for lunch during which we had some pizza at a small pizzeria. Afterward we went to a museum where we got to see the "Birth of Venus" as well as many other amazing Botticcelli paintings. The rest of the afternoon was ours to do with as we liked so we went shopping for souvenirs as well as shoes and other things. Then that night we went to Dante's which was an amazing restaurant with the best fettuccine alfredo I have ever tasted.
Sunday we got to see the original David which was very impressive and much larger than I was expecting. We sat there and stared at his butt for a good half hour before we moved on to see other things in the museum...which quite honestly was not much. Then we went walking looking for somewhere to eat lunch at 10:30am on a Sunday before we had to be back at the hotel to load the bus at noon. We ended up finding this little bistro which had great food.
The ride home seemed to go a lot faster than the ride to Italy because we were all sleeping for the majority of the 7-ish hours. We got back around 6:30 and promptly ordered a pizza to split. The rest of the night was spent just relaxing and watching movies.
Overall it was a wonderful week. More confessions to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment