The Beginning of Cannes Classes 101

There has been a major change in my routine recently: I have classes now and can't completely waste away my day on the beach.  That would be unfortunate, except that the professors here are all awesome.  Mine is a stereotypical French woman named Giselle: she wears lots of colored tights, scarfs, and big jewelry.  She has no problem correcting our mistakes, that's for sure, but if you get the answer correct she's an expert at positive reinforcement with her cries of "tres TRES TRES bien!!!" and very animated guestures which threaten to launch the chalk out of her hand and into a student's face.

My French skills are getting infinitely better thanks to a combination of class and the nearby downtown stores (and by stores I really only mean the creperies and patisserie/boulangeries).  As you can imagine, I'm now a pro at saying "I would like a Nutella banana crepe... with extra Nutella, please" and "can I please have a chocolate croissant? that one over there... no, to the left, a smidge further left, YEAH that one!  oh, and could you perhaps insert a little extra chocolate into the middle?  Thank you sooooooo much!"  The cheese and bread are also delicious, and I've been consuming them pretty much nonstop.

We're right on the beach, which is wonderful to go to each day after class and play frisbee on.  It's not quite warm enough yet to swim, but it's getting close.  It's really easy to motivate yourself on runs because you are jogging past palm trees on a boardwalk by the Mediterranean Sea... DROP! (you'll just have to imagine the 'drop' hand motion that I'm making as I write this).  I took a long run up to one of the nearby mountains on Friday, and at the summit there was this gorgeous view of all of Cannes.  One of Napoleon's chateaus was at the base and the sea was a brilliant shade of blue.  I sat on a rock and looked out at the view.  In silence.  For a good half hour.  Then I realized I had spent 30 minutes, in silence, sitting on an uncomfortable rock, and I decided it would probably be a good idea to get up and run back to school.