Monaco

Ok, similar to our trip to Italy we took another Friday afternoon to go to Monaco. It was absolutely stunning and one of my favorite places. There really are no words for it. We spent time at the castle, and we walked down the gardens to the port. Of course, we went to Monte-Carlo also but didn't think to dress nice enough to go in and lose a couple euro to say we gambled. Oh well! Like I said there are really no words for this place so voila some pictures!

What we saw when we got off the train!

In front of Monte-Carlo

Another beautiful view of the port

Cannon balls by the castle!

Enjoying the gorgeous view with beautiful friends. 

Fail

So it turns out I fail at blogging. Surprise. Like I said I kind of expected it because I've never been able to keep a journal in my life. Also, this program is crazy time consuming! So when I don't need to be studying I really want to spend time with my new friends to explore more cities. I think what Ill do is make separate posts and pretend I'm writing them right after it happened. So yeah, that'll probably easiest. Ill start with talking about why the program is so time consuming.

On an average day, I spend 8:30-11:30 at my internship in the hospital. Then I have a 2 hour lunch break which I eat either on the beach across from the hospital with my friends. Classes are then from 1:30 to 3:30 or 4:30 usually but it changes with the day. There have been a lot of days where we have other things to do with the program after classes. For example the other night we went to get a specialty nicois dinner for the 5 of us that had birthdays during the trip. We did tours of different things we had learned about in class too, for example something called Carrefoure Saint-Jeunes, which is a free clinic for adolescents to receive health care for free and anonymously. They mostly do STD screenings, provide contraception and perform abortions. If we don't have something scheduled with the program my friends and I go downtown for a few hours before I go back home for dinner, hanging out with my family and tons of studying and homework. The workload isn't exactly horrible - just a lot of reading and preparing presentations, but its hard to balance working and seeing the city and learning about the culture, which is also a part of why we are here. So yeah! Enjoy all the updates everyone and I apologize again :)

Hanging between classes and dinner at the Palais Justice

Looking all official in our scrubs in the Blok Operatoire

Birthday friends with the cake!

Everyone in the program at our birthday dinner!

I can finally say Ive been to Italy!

So Friday was a very fun day in Ventimille, Italy and Menton, France. We meant to stop at other cities like Villefranche but we accidentally spent way too much time in the first two cities...whoops! It's okay, its only a 10 Euro train ticket for roundtrip and you can get off and on in any city as many times as you want for the day, so we will probably do it again to spend time in other cities. But anyways on Fridays theres a little market in Ventimille and so we spent time looking around there. We of course had gelato. (I may or may not have had it twice within a 4 hour timespan :p) And I also found some cute things (not to be named because I know my family reads this blog) to bring back to the US. This is the beach where I FINALLY learned how to skip rocks thanks to my genius teacher friend Caitlin. This beach will forever be in my heart because I've tried to learn for years :) Check that off my bucket list. Speaking of bucket lists, I have plans with someone to try parasailing sometime this trip as long as it doesn't cost a million euro! Yay! Pictures from Italy to come in another post, thanks for being patient :)

On another note, FOOD. I've had so much in the last two days its crazy! Today is mothers day in France. Yesterday we had a celebration with my host mom and dad and grandma, and the son and daughter of my  host mom with their respective spouses and daughters. My host mom's son is exactly like my Uncle Dave it is seriously insane. Always messing with the kids, messing with the cake, making American jokes to me, andddd they look a lot alike! Well anyways I'm going to try and list what we ate: First we had cantaloupe, pizza (way better than papa murphys let me tell ya), and really yummy thinly sliced ham. Then we had two different types of potatoes and a local dish called polente (like Italian pollenta). Thenn was the actual main meal: beef. and more beef. and more beef. We had two pieces each the size of a piece of paper and 2 inches thick. I've never seen so much meat on one grill before. It was left really really red but I realized I actually like it better than how much we cook it in the states. Then we had the cheese and bread (I didn't mention that we went through 6 baguettes, the bread you take to clean each plate each 'round' for example the olive oil type stuff oozing out of the pizza). I originally took my 2 favorites, but I didn't notice there were new more fancy special ones out for the celebration and by the time everyone had convinced me to try their favorites I ended up eating 6 different cheeses all about the size of a playing card. Whoa. I can't even start about the cakes. There were 2, one raspberry and one chocolate and ether was also a raspberry taste pie type thing. Needless to say, our meal was literally from 12 to 5 pm and I hardly ate dinner at 9 with my friends when I met up with them in the city. It doesn't stop though. Today we celebrated with my host grandma's brother (I think, the family relations here are crazy confusing), my moms brother, and one of the grandkids again. It was exactly the same amount of food but I don't feel like listing it all here. Amazing. I think I gained 4 pounds in the last 2 days. And I never want to eat ever again. The end.

Surprises

Ok a report of the surprises I've had from the first week in France:
1. I am about a foot taller than almost everyone here, especially the women.
2. My hair stands out. A lot. Apparently it means I'm from Ireland because everybody asks me. I'm not even a little Irish.
3. It rains a lot and it's hotter right now in Wisconsin than here.
4. The airport is really small and the landing strip is literally a little pavement and the mediterranean sea, separated by a few boulders. When we landed all I could see out my window was water and I almost had a heart attack.
5. The hospital that I work at, 'Lenval', is apparently where Brad Pitt and Angelina had their baby.
6. My host mom just called what I've been calling the mountain that we live on a 'colline' translating to hill. hahaha ok then whats a mountain?!? (can't wait to go hiking!)
7. French people don't drink water the way Americans do. It's been difficult to drink enough water and not feel dehydrated, especially since I'm really used to having so much every day coming off the tennis season. And a lot of the water is carbonated? I'm not really sure if thats the right word for it but yeah, its called 'l'eau gazeux'.
8. My name is really hard for people. As far as I know my housemate last year from Nantes, Kari, never had a problem with it so I wasn't expecting that either. I get a lot of Kles-ay or klee-say.

Trending: new talent - catching famous balls! ;)

Welp, if you haven't seen my Facebook status yet, looks like Roland Garros is a no go (for this year anyways). BUTTTTT I went to the Nice Open last friday, which was fantabulous! First I saw the Bryan Brothers play, which was fantastic doubles. And since of course they are so dominant they finished early so I headed to another court where I could watch some other doubles. That part was cool because I was actually so close to the court that I could hear them planning the next point at the wall between each point, sweet right? Then came Gilles Simon verses Almagro which was another blowout for Almagro. But it was still really fun to see because Gilles is from Nice so he had a lot of loud French fans there that was entertainment for sure. And after that match I could've seen Monfils play but no, he had to lose to some american bryan baker. Who the heck is bryan baker?!? Well anyways that got rained out which was probably good for my mental state because I would have just sat there and pouted that I wasn't 30 feet away from Monfils at the moment because of this Baker dude. Whatevs.

So the title of this post...yes I caught yet another ball from an awesome famous person! After the match, Mike Bryan stood up to take balls from the ball boy to hit into the crowd - I obviously immediately stood up and since I'm about a foot taller than everyone here in France, Mike looked me straight in the eye, pointed to me and hit one right into my hands :) Obviously because I'm awesome and he knows it. Yeahhhh that's what's up.

So I know people have been wanting pictures of Nice and such and they will come! Theres lots so for now Ill add a few more of the tennis ones that I have and you'll see the city later. Ok soon, not later, soon I promise!

First toss...Bob on the left and Mike on the right

I kept telling myself 'this is real life'. I was so close to them! 

The entertaining 'gillou' fans! What it would be like to see a French player at the French Open I can't even imagine...

Almagro on the left and Gilles Simon on the right for the toss

This is where my seat was...no zoom! 28 euros? Id say what a bargain :)

Cannes Film Festival

Yesterday some of my new friends and I took the train to Cannes to see the city and the scene around the film festival. I was expecting a lot more people around, especially since it was the last weekend of the festival but it was nice that we could walk easily on the beach and such. But yeah, nothing like the crowds of Summerfest like I was expecting. We hung out on the beach a little while enjoying the weather and people watching and just learning more about each other and talking about school, home, etc. which included an argument with someone that went to michigan about how much better the badgers are...just like with friends at hope ;) I had really awesome ice cream and we saw some apparently super famous people that none of us recognized - haha we stopped asking who they were after one man literally laughed in our face saying it was the biggest italian star actress of the moment. We were obvious american tourists, but it was still really fun! We returned to Nice for dinner and more ice cream...I had an Irish hard cider with bruschetta which was amazing. It was overall a really nice day! Okay so I'm a little too lazy and have way too much work to take the time to get pictures up, but they will come soon, maybe even later today if I can get my work done fast enough. (This program is a little hard to balance play and work since there is so much to see and do yet so so much homework! :/)

I should be a Packer receiver

I leave today!!!! Whoa, leaving for the airport in the hour. Super excited, a few things that I can't find like my camera case but I'll find it eventually. Dad made pork chops for lunch so I'm about to go eat that...yummm. But basically I wanted to post to brag to the world that I caught about a 25 yard pass from Jordy Nelson last night. No one is as cool as me right now. Yep. Well next post will be from France!