Vacation!!! We wrapped up our last couple days of classes with our Gtown professors, which was kind of sad, because our group really liked our prof, Prof Sobanet. We definitely are gonna keep in contact with him, cause he's a great guy, and will be the head of the French department this year, even though he is the youngest and most junior member of the department, however that happened. We also took the first part of our placement test on Thursday, though we had to start over during the middle of the test because the power went off in the whole city during the test, and as we were using the computers for the exam, we were kinda outta luck. However, it actually helped us a bit, because the directions weren't really clear on how to do certain things, so we really got a dry run. We have our oral exam next Monday to place us into one of the nine levels at the Institut.
Saturday, we went to Chambord (pic above), a hunting retreat house built in the 16th century by the famous Renaissance king, Francois I, and redecorated by Louis XIV. This one was probably my favorite so far, and it was huge compared to all the other chateaux we had seen! Definitely some cool experiences and trips! After that, we were officially on vaca!!!
Sunday, a group of five of us left by train to Nice in Southern France on the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera). We had a 4.5 hour ride to Marseille on a double-decker train (and ya, we were on top!) and then a two hour trip to Nice, all the while checking the score on the American game against Brazil, and slowly sinking into disappointment once we lost...
However, we've had an awesome time so far in Nice. We got up this morning and went meandering around the city, along the beach a bit, and up a hill that was an old Greek acropolis and Roman fort, and later a chateaux, with some beautiful views (more pics to come later!) The water here is soooooooo blue and sooooooo clear, it's incredible and really beautiful! We went to the beach in the afternoon and went swimming for a while, but not for too long, because it started to cool off in the afternoon and actually rained a bit :( We plan to head to Monaco and Monte Carlo tomorrow, and hopefully hit the beach again with some better weather and more sunshine! After that, we'll be heading to Paris til Sunday, meeting up with some other Gtown students-it's gonna be a lot of fun to be in the city of lights!
Tchao/Peace!
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