As someone very wise once said, "Alexa, you're the worst ever at updating your blog."

Dear Reader,

I regret to confirm that the title of this post is indeed true. I have been incredibly lax on updating the very exciting and European saga that has become my life. I left you with an epic cliffhanger, but then an entire month passed! OOPS! So lets go over those first and then I'll talk about Spring Break and Carnevale!

1. Cannes Part 1 and 2

So the weekend after Nice and Monaco, the typical group decided to visit Cannes, the closest famous city to us. It was an exciting and glamorous day, we had unexpectedly stumbled upon one of the most famous European music awards! There were tons of celebrities in the city, not that we saw any. The only ones that I really knew about anyway were The Black Eyed Peas and Shakira. While I don't really listen to BEP outside of club, Marissa has me hooked on "Loca" by Shakira and we dance around to it a lot in the apartment, so it would have been cool to see her, but we did not, shockingly. Instead we wandered up and down, taking lots and lots of photos of the area. It was VERY crowded, which made it difficult to get around, but the shopping looked really cool. We decided to just browse the first day, especially because the guys and gals had different agendas. (If you've never tried, it's pretty hard to get a group of men to agree to wander around Sephora and H&M for more then 2 minutes). Essentially, we wandered around, looked at a LOT of really ridiculous yachts and made our way back to Antibes. The next day the girls decided to go back and shop! It was a great day for that especially since I was desperately in need of some new things, for example, pants that fit. Fortunately for me, walking at least 3 miles every day, and half of it uphill, has caused me to lose some weight and I needed pants that didn't fall down every two seconds! I also got some sunglasses because the weather began getting warmer and it was necessary for me to see things during the day without going blind. I found two stores here I really like, one called Mango and the other called Six. Both have really inexpensive, cheap things. One of the other things I really liked about this part of my time in France was that it's during the period from mid-January to mid-March where it is actually ILLEGAL for stores to not have sales going on. So that was pretty cool too.

2. Alexa and Marissa find this really awesome fondue place

This one is pretty straightforward. Marissa and I woke up late, discovered that a bunch of people had gone into Nice without us (JERKS) and so we decided to up and explore Antibes a little more. It was the first time we really found anything that could be labeled as "french" food, and we got to see and understand a lot more of the layout of the place we were living. It was AMAZING. Simply, we shared pizza and fondue. But really, it was incredibly pizza, hand made and cooked in front of us in a brick fire oven, and then given fondue of beef cubes we cooked ourselves and then could dip in 4 different homemade sauces. And bread. And fries. andddd an entire bottle of wine. Everything was so delicious that we brought our friends back with us the next day! We've been back 2 more times since after that lol and have tried almost all of their different kids of fondue (one with a wine sauce for meat, one with different cheeses with bread, both of which were SO INSANELY GOOD).

3. Our first party with French people

This one was an interesting experience. Here at SKEMA club nights are supported and promoted by student organizations and the tickets are sold for a discount here on campus. The first one of these that Marissa and I decided to attend was a 'highlighter party', as we call it in the states. For those of you who don't know what that is (lookin at you Mom and Dad), everyone wears White and brings markers with which to draw on everyone else. We went to hang out at a French friend of Matt's before walking over to the club. Here we drank typical French drinks (stuff that I suppose is similar to Sambuca, but sweeter), and I spoke almost entirely in French! I was really proud of myself. It is commonly said here that there is a positive correlation between "amount of wine consumed" and "amount of French an American can speak", but that aside the French students at the party were complimenting me of my knowledge of the language. After writing many interesting (and a lot of not appropriate) phrases and pictures on people, we made our way to Juan les Pins to join the rest of the SKEMA population who decided to come. Overall it was a really fun night with lots of dancing. The best part was that the club was in Juan les Pins, which is only a 10 minute walk home! Usually going out in Antibes means Marissa and I have over a mile walk uphill home and usually takes about 25 minutes.

4. Shayna and Mike come and much ridiculousness ensues

I LOVED having Shayna and Mike here! It was amazing getting to host friends! At the same time Marissa and I were also playing 'dogsitter' for our host family because they had some family matters to attend to in Paris. So we had Shayna, Mike, and Oliver the 13 year old Westie. I absolutely ADORED having a doggie around. He's SO FLUFFY!!! But most of the weekend was spent exploring Nice and Monaco again with Shayna and Mike. The first night they were here we had a house party since we knew it would disturb anyone. After consuming quite a bit of alcohol we decided it would be a good idea to jump in the pool. Keep in mind, this was the end of January. It felt like getting stabbed all over a million times. It's pretty cool to say that I went swimming, but overall, definitely not worth it. We had a pong tournament where Shayna and Matt were paired together so obviously no one stood a chance.

The second day we went to Nice and walked around. We went to an American restaurant (don't judge ok) because we were STARVING right off the bus. The train was under construction that weekend so we had to take the bus everywhere. It was definitely one of the least American experiences ever. We were given Indian head dresses to wear (by given I mean Shayna and I took them) and we were served Popcorn as an appetizer for free because, apparently, this is what they do in America. Who knew? I got a hamburger, it tasted nothing like a burger. Overall it was a weird experience. This time we walked around some of the higher points in the city and spent some time on the beach. In the afternoon we laid out in the sun on the rocks and listened to the ocean. It was very calming and relaxing. After lying down for a while I decided to throw stones in the water and at one point I got too close and the ocean got its revenge by soaking my feet and causing me to fall on my face. AND Mike caught the whole thing on camera and subsequently called it "Alexa vs. the Ocean" Preview: Alexa loses. After that we walked up an epic hill, the name of which I forget, to get some incredible views and pictures of Nice at sunset. It was very beautiful, the orange over the clear blue of the ocean and the lights of the ferris wheel in the distance.

The next day we attempted to go to Monaco. We got to the city, went to the Aquarium, which was really cool, but that was the only thing we got to do because it was raining horribly the entire time and we were throughly soaked by the time we returned to Antibes. The Aquarium itself was huge and beautiful, with lots of tanks of sharks, eels, jellyfish, and loads of other fish. The eels really creeped me out but everything else was neato. Mike and Shayna left the next day, and they almost missed their bus to the airport! Overall it was an excellent visit

5. Grasse

The next weekend Marissa and I decided to visit Grasse, which is a city more inland into France that is known for its Perfumeries. We only visited one in particular, named Fragonard. We got to tour the facilities, which was really interesting and educational. We learned how perfumes used to be made using distillation, fats, and flowers. It used to take multiple tons of rose blooms just to make 8oz of rose essence. Crazy stuff. We also watched them make soap. They crank it out of machines into "soap sausage" and then at Fragonard they shape it into eggs and stamp them with the Fragonard logo. Apparently these eggs are super famous? They smelled nice at least. It's very nerdy of me, but I thought that the marketing strategy that Fragonard used was really cool, all of their packaging was beautifully done and they essentially had a monopoly on the center of Grasse. 

Well! I wish I could tell you all more but my class is over! Here's what we have in store for next time:

1. Dinner with host family and dimbo
2. Mimosa Festival in Biot
3. Bread, love, and chocolate festival in Antibes
4. Spring break!
5. Carnivale!

TTFN,

Alexa