People and classes

• Cestlavie's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Cannes

Trip Start Aug 27, 2006 Previous
Entry Trip End Dec 16, 2006 Next
Entry

  Cannes, France
Friday, October 6, 2006

I'm really enjoying being at this international college and getting to know students from all kinds of walks of life. Last night at dinner I met Alex, who has three passports. He was born in France, and his parents are Dutch, but they've lived in Belgium for most of his life because of his dad's job. This morning I had breakfast with Sheila, who lives in a suburb outside of Berlin and has several French friends, so she wanted to learn the language to communicate with them better. Then at lunch I just met Victoria and Yvonne, who are friends from Norway. It's so fun to hear everyone's stories--most of the international students here are between their high school and college years, or should I say "university" as it's pretty much always called here. As the two Norwegian girls explained it, most universities in Europe don't let you take a semester off to study somewhere else--that's why they do it between high school and college. So I'm considering myself very lucky to have this opportunity

01 our uniform

! Every time I tell a European that yes, I am getting credit at my home university for taking the classes here, their teeth just fall out.

In my French language class, there is quite a mix of people too. There are four Swiss girls and a Swiss guy, but they all come from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, so they want to improve their French. My teacher speaks all three languages very well--French, German, and English--which comes in handy when we can't quite think of a word. But chances are, if I pronounce the English word with a French accent, it's usually right or super close and she'll correct me. I crack up every time I hear a French speaker pronounce my name, because let me tell you it is darn near impossible for the French, because they don't do the H sound at the beginning of a word or the TH sound. So it usually comes out something like eh-ZAIR, with the R rolled at the end too. On the subject of accents, there are also two British guys in my class, and I can definitely hear it in their French. This is kind of weird because it reminds me that I most definitely have an American accent when I speak French. Another funny thing is the international students here who have learned English in their countries--they speak with a British accent too because that's how they're taught in school.

Besides French every morning from 9 to noon, I also started my art history class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It's in English, which is both refreshing and helpful--I don't think I'd be able to understand the subtle differences between paintings that are examples of naturalism and those that are of realism if it was in French. We get to see the paintings on slides, so they're big enough to appreciate details and color, and there are three trips to Nice planned to visit museums

02 the work counter, 5 on each side

.

Then I have my cooking class at a real French cooking school (about a 15 minute bus ride from the College) on Wednesday afternoons. The first one was a couple days ago, and it lasted from 3 till 8, which includes time to sit down and eat what we've made. There are ten of us, each working with a partner, one across from the other all the way down a long island. Gille, the head chef, has been teaching the fine art of French cuisine for 35 years. First we made a salad, with artichokes, carrots, red peppers, mushrooms, and beets. Then we spent the rest of the class making a tarte aux pommes, or apple tart. Everything is in grams, and there's a scale instead of measuring cups, but it was a lot of fun making and shaping the dough. Then we peeled and cut tons of apples, because not only do you have to cook some of the apples to make kind of like an applesauce for the filling, but then there are thin slices of apples arranged on top. Everything was delicious, especially since we'd all worked so hard. Wednesday is officially my new favorite day of the week!

French word du jour: émincer, which means to cut in thin slices. I love how there are words in French that mean an entire phrase in English. Like there's no direct translation of a verb that means to cut in thin slices, we have to say that whole phrase to get the meaning across.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

03 Gille, chef and teacher extraordinaire	04 market in Vieux Nice	05 lots of grapes	06 lots of veggies
07 mid-morning snack	08 the 3 apples and 1 pear I bought for a euro	09 olive barrels--a specialty of Nice	10 socca for lunch
11 the beach in Nice	12 the coastline

Slideshow Print this entry Share Cannes hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry