B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L

So, it’s been a while since I last wrote, I’m already in Nice, France! Lets recap on my missed blog days.

Also, I dont like uploading pics on my blogs anymore. You can find pics now at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34074144@N05/

Dec 31st

Woke up, got out of bed, drag my feet across the

Emily wasn’t feeling to well, so she stayed in the Hostel and after telling me several times to go and explore and that she would be fine I left. We made a game plan the other day to explore the main sites to go including Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, House of Parliament, etc. I got to Buckingham Palace just fine. I stood with the rest of the crowd outside the gates for one hour in the cold to see the changing the guards. When the time came around nothing happened! lol. Apparently, they changed the date of the changing of the guards.

I left Buckingham and started walking towards the House of Parliament. The streets are crazy. The entire city is tourist infested. I found Big Ben, House of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. The intricacy in the building’s details was stunning. After admiring the architectural details, I tried to find Chinatown to get Chinese food for lunch. As I walked down streets with my incomplete map, I instead ended up in Covenant Garden. I wish I had the money to spend. The area was surrounded by cute boutiques. I had to use my entire will power to avoid spending and ran for it.

The next thing I knew after walking around aimlessly, I was in the middle of Trafalgar Square. I made my way to the National Portrait gallery to take a quick glance inside. I liked the Tudors exhibit, because the paintings and background history on each person was interesting. I didn’t stay there for too long, because I was really hungry and needed to eat. I just kept wandering around till somehow I turned to one street and ended up in Chinatown. I had a steam pork bun hoping that it would taste like Siopao (a Filipino dish), it didn’t, but it was alright. After a long day of getting lost, I hurried back to the Hostel to see how Emily was doing. She felt great after her nap and was ready to celebrate New Years.

Happy New Year!!!

Emily and I went to Chinatown/Soho/Picadilly Square to celebrate the New Year. It was great! Most of the clubs required you to have a ticket to their event, so we just kept walking around the area to find a nice place to celebrate. We ended up walking down Soho… lol, it was a street of strip clubs and trannys, so we quickly walked back out of there. We ended up staying at this club in Chinatown and met some nice Swiss people. We danced till 11:30ish, then walked towards Picadilly Square for the countdown. It was amazing! There were so many people from different places, speaking different languages. One funny thing that happened was, as Emily and I were walking around this guy stops Emily and says, “Hey! You look familiar! You look like my next girlfriend.” Emily and I just waked on, but chuckled to ourselves. Picadilly Square was like a mini Time Square with the big screens and we counted down there. Not too long after Emily and I went back to the Hostel and passed out.

Jan 1st

On our last day to London, Emily and I just visited all of the place Emily missed yesterday. We got lost from time to time, but always managed to find our way around. We ran into this parade and followed it for a while. Emily and I loved the drum line. They had so much charisma and spunk. One of our goals that day was to eat a giant hot dog from one of the vendors in Westminster Bridge. The hot dog was a giant disappointment. It was just like eating a giant British breakfast sausage… which is…bleh. We walked around all day long and into the night. We tried to go to Hamstead Heath for an amazing view of London, but instead we got lost and headed back to St. Paul’s. Getting back though, we decided to take the double decker bus- BEST CHOICE EVER! You just sit there and get a great view of London all for a small fee. It was pretty scary though, cause it looked like the bus would either kill pedestrians or hit parked cars. I highly suggest taking a bus around London. After a long day, Emily and I packed our stuff to leave the next day, then we passed out.

Jan 2nd

Woke up early and lugged my suitcase to Gatwick Airport. I would never ever want to lug around several suit cases around Europe. Next time I don’t have to move my entire life here, I will just travel with a travel bag. I was still tired from exploring the day before so I passed out during the plane ride. I woke up when we were alerted that we were hovering over Nice. O-M-G! This place is beautiful! The plane flew right along the coast and I got a great view of coast. When we landed I stayed in the airport for a while to wait for Emily’s plane. I read a good chunk of this new book I’m reading, I’m with the Brand. It’s a pretty interesting book. When Emily got here we had another fun time of lugging our suitcase to our next destination.

We got on the bus that took us from Nice to Juan les Pin. It was horrible. It was a small bus where tons of people already had their suitcases everywhere. We didn’t know where to get off, but luckily with Emily’s kick ass French speaking skills she got an idea after talking to a local. We got off at the right stop and walked to our apartment.

Our apartment is on the fifth floor with no elevator! At least I’ll be able to exercise every time I go out and come back. When we got in, we found a cute apartment. It’s small, but the view compensates for it. We have a balcony that overlooks the beach, clubs, and boutiques. This place will probably be crazy come around tourist time. After dropping off our stuff we decided to hit a grocery store to stock up on some food and disinfectants.

Luckily, there is a supermarket just 2 min walk away from us. We bought ingredients to make pasta with ground beef pasta sauce. As I cooked, Emily cleaned. Emily’s thorough cleaning sparkled the place and I felt much better. Then in the middle of making dinner, someone knocked on our door. We met two very nice Canadian girls who were scared, since the lights in their apartment just went out. We invited them to dinner and gave them a solution to their problem (flip the master switch off and on). They didn’t come back up so we went down to greet them with some food (they told us their dinner was soup and it was their first time in Nice, so felt it would be nice to help them out). They enjoyed our pasta and we talked for a good while. When it was getting late, Emily and I went back up to our apartment and went to sleep.

Jan 3rd - Camille the Explorer. Today was a long day of exploring and getting my apartment together. I will post up before and after pictures later. Emily, myself and our new Canadian friends went to Nice’s equivalent of a Wal-Mart- Carrefure. First we stopped by cell phone store. I have a cell phone again! But, it’s French and I will only accept sms messages (text messages) because the phone rates are way too expensive, unless you’d like to call me cause incoming calls are free. We then headed for Carrefure. Big advice- DON’T GO FOOD SHOPPING ON SATURDAY! Everyone was crazy and the store was packed. People do not care if you are in their way. They will ram their shopping carts at you to get their food. The store was huge! It was like a giant Wal-Mart. Just going up and down the aisles wore me down. When we finished it was in the late afternoon. When we got back we had dinner with our Canadian friends Amanda and Natalya. I made dinner again! I made breaded chicken. It was yummy! We also had bread, cheese, and wine – La vie Francais. I’m really excited to be here.

Jan 4th – Looking for an internet cafe was our main goal. I haven’t left my mom any message and I’m thinking that she’s probably freaking out. Emily and I walked up and down streets and finally found a small shop. I checked my email and chuckled when I saw my mom’s freaked out message. I reassured her that I was fine and went on to leave messages for several people. Emily and I spent an hour at the internet café and spent some good euros for it. Funny thing though is that we were right next to a laundry shop that we found out later offered free wifi- quelle domage.

We headed back to the apartment and made lunch and waited for our third roommate, Patricia, to come. When she arrived, she was out of breath from trying to lug her giant suit case five floors up. We helped her in and got acquainted. She’s from Madrid and is also studying at CERAM as an Erasmus (exchange student within European countries). As she got settled, Emily made dinner and I cleaned up and tried to write my blog. After we ate dinner, we ended up hosting a little get together reunion for Patricia and her friends from around here. We met her other Spanish friends and just hang out and talk. Jordy kept making fun of our Orange Juice because it tasted nasty and had pulp. We spent the night trying to learn how to speak Spanish.

Jan 5th

Orientation Day

Lucky us, because of our new Spanish friends we got a ride to school on our first day. Good thing too, because I would’ve been lost. Ceram is closer to the mountains, making it really cold up there. But, the view is nice. It was just really weird living in Juan les Pin and seeing the palm trees, nice weather, and the beach then heading up 30 minutes north to see snow on the ground. The campus is small, which I like because then I won’t have to sprint from one end of the campus to the next like in Maryland. Orientation was as expected long and boring. They gave us an intro to the short history of the school and what they’re trying to accomplish. Then they shuffled us around for tours and paperwork. The great thing was that all the international students had our meet and greet. There are people from all different places. There were lots of kids from Canada, some from San Francisco, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Scotland, etc. Everyone was excited and really friendly. The funniest thing for me that day was seeing how some of the kids were uber excited to get internet access. Being facebook deprived was the worst thing ever for these kids.

The orientation took up the entire day and by the time we were done we were spent. Emily, Amanda, Natalya, and I went home together and on our way home we had the biggest craving for Crepes. We stopped by this cute shop and colorful crepe shop. The crepes were de-freaking-licious. We figured that we’d have to learn how to make them before we leave the country. I can’t wait to learn how to make them and make them for my family!

We headed back to the apartment to rest for a while, because there was a gathering at a pub close to where we live for the international students. When we got to the pub, most of the students were there mingling. I met a lot of great people. Everyone was really nice and trying to speak French. We stayed there for a good while, but most people had seminars the next day so everyone left pretty early. Luckily for me, I didn’t sign up for a seminar, because I was really tired and planning to sleep in then go exploring with Amanda and Natalya. I was sad that Emily on the other hand couldn’t join us and had to go her seminar. I hope she has a good time.

Scarred for the rest of my life

I slept for nine hours straight! I didn’t know I was so tired, till I hit the bed and closed my eyes. Emily was the first one to wake (she didn’t want to miss breakfast), and luckily she woke me up so I wouldn’t miss breakfast. Being late for breakfast I learned is not a good thing. I ended up with just a sausage, beans, tomato, and a croissant. Apparently, if you get there much earlier you have more choices.

After breakfast, Emily and I cleaned up and headed for the Tate Modern Art Museum. We walked on the millennium bridge and took pictures with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Tate Modern Art… hmm… how can I put it in words… It… was… different. Some of the art were amazing and inspiring! Others were… weird and scarred me for the rest of my life. The Viennese Actionism exhibit, Paul McCarthy’s exhibit (not the Beatles guy), and this one video really of a woman either being killed or killing herself… not really sure, were traumatizing. I’ve never seen so many nude and masochistic images in my entire life. While walking around the museum, I lost count of how many artworks were described as ‘provocative.’ I wanted to give the museum officials a thesaurus. But, there were good exhibits. The pop art exhitibit was cool, but short. They also had a couple of pieces that were good like ‘No Woman, No Cry.’ After seeing that title, the song lyrics ended up being stuck in my head throughout the entire day. It’s still playing in my head right now. The art piece was really intricate with details. The painting was made of little pieces of beads that probably took forever to make. The artwork itself was a tribute to a racial injustice in the British court system some time ago.

For lunch, Emily and I met up with my friend Caroline’s British friend John. John was a gentleman. He was very cordial, nice, funny, and tall (lmao, inside joke). We tried to go to Wegamama’s but it was closed, so we went to Café Rouge. While we ate John gave us great suggestions of where to go including Amy Winehouse’s house. We ate and had a laugh, then headed out for more adventures. John likes sour skittles, so I got him a giant box from Sam’s Club before I left. He was very happy, I just hope the guy doesn’t eat all of it quickly. I don’t want him to kill his mouth. Lmao.

Our next stop was Hyde Park where we found a Winter Wonderland fair happening. They had a mini London Eye, little attractions like you would find in a State Fair. The nifty thing was a giant water globe people would go in and take their picture. Emily and I didn’t stay there for long cause there wasn’t anything too appealing there.

We headed for Oxford Street where London fashionitas reside. The street was filled with bright lights and tons of people. Getting through the crowd was fun. I felt sorry for bus and taxi drivers trying to avoid hitting all of the random tourists jumping in the streets. There were stores left and right and everyone had a huge sale of clearance. Shoes and clothes were calling my name. I was tempted to buy in to the signs that were 7£, but I remembered that my bags were close to hitting the limit weight for when I fly out to Nice.

When we were finally tired, we decided to go back to the Hostel to pick up our laptops and find a free wifi shop. Turns out that cafes closes pretty early here. So, instead we went to a Tesco shop to pick up food for dinner and headed back to the Hostel. Well I’m dead tired now, time for sleep.

Cheers!

Camille

Arrived in London-town today!!!

Boy, lesson learned, when someone tells you to take the dot2dot service, (taxi service that takes you from Heathrow Airport to your destination) you should listen. I spent a good ole hour in the tube getting to central London. Then to switch to another tube, I found out that there is no such thing as elevators in their public transportation system. So I lugged around 50 lbs of luggage up and down stairs. Luckily, people here are nice and helped me out.

Emily (my study buddy) and I made our way to our Hostel to drop off our things. Right after we decided to take a stroll down some streets and get lost in London. Since, we’re right next to the building we saw St. Paul’s Cathedral (didn’t go inside yet, but we will). We then made our way to the Royal Court of Justices… nothing too interesting there, but the building was beautiful. It was kind of funny cause you had to go through security and no matter how much crap we unloaded from our pockets Emily and I kept beeping. So the guards just let us through. Lmao. Then we just kept walking and walking will we made our way to WaterlooThames River. The site was amazing! From the bridge we could see the London Eye and Big Ben, where we’ll prob go later this week. and saw

After walking for a while, Emily and I decided to find a place to eat. Being really poor students, we scoured for the cheapest place. We both got paninis for 2£65, it was pretty good. We made our way back to the Hostel and passed out. We woke up to conversations in Chinese! Our other roomies in our Hostel dorm are from China studying abroad. They’re really nice and chill, they even let me borrow their UK adaptor cause my laptop battery died. Around 8pm and we got out again to look for dinner, just stopped by and picked up a sandwich. The stores are really cute and I was surprised at all the different flavor chips and sodas they offered. I picked up a Lychee soda! It tasted like lychee with fizz and more sugar. I also got roasted chicken chips. As Emily described it, “It’s like someone dropped a bullion cube in a regular bag of chips.” Lmao.

Cant wait for tomorrow! We’re going to do some more exploring and a friend’s friend will show us some things.

Cheers!

Camille