Un récapitulatif fin d’un déjeuner mal documentées

So I learned something very important the night before our big Greek lunch: its very easy to forget that you promised to take pictures when you’re wrapped up in converting your cups of yogurt to grams.  So, unfortunately, the only picture I managed to remember was a picture of the table full of food before everyone dug in.

The Spread

Looks pretty delicious, right?  From the bottom to the top we have: Macedonian salad, lemon and dill chicken and rice (Jon and I pretty much made that one up, and it turned out great!), our beautiful tzatziki sauce which is next to Neelima’s dish, a traditional Indian chickpea dish, and finally, enough bread and pita to feed an arm.  I unfortunately failed to remember to put our dessert in this picture, but we had a fruit and nut tart of some sort that was delicious, and a chocolate hazelnut tart of some sort that was simply divine.

Well, thankfully, everyone loved it.  The lunch went off without a hitch.  Everyone had a great time, and even stuck around for nearly four hours just talking about all sorts of stuff.  When your table has two people from the United States, two people from Saudi Arabia, one person from Mexico, one person from India, and one person from Russia, the subjects vary greatly from alcohol, politics, movies, and food.  When everyone parted, Jon and I took a very well deserved nap, and the remainder of the evening consisted of taxes (I’m getting nine whole dollars back!) and filling out my FAFSA, which went off a lot better this year than last.  Thank goodness.

Today after class, since the weather was beautiful, Jon and I walked back down to the marina so he could jump around on all the rocks and the break water.  Needless to say, he had way to much fun reliving a little bit of his childhood.  It was fun and scary to watch him.  I guess I’m just not the dare devil I used to be.  So here are some pictures from that.

Jon and I before he started jumping around

Climbing

And jumping

And giving me funny looks

And resting

And strechting-ish.

As for the evening, it was fairly relaxed, considering we spent about 5 hours of our afternoon just walking around.  Tomorrow I’m hoping to brave the slight chill in the air for some tanning time on the beach.  I’m in desperate need of some color.  Carnival parades continue tomorrow as well, so hopefully the weather holds up for us to finally go see one.

Until next time, bonne nuit!

N’oubliez jamais votre carte mémoire

Yep, never forget your memory card.  This is of course something we learned on day one, and I will allow myself to use the “sick card” as my excuse.  This time it was me, so at least Jon got some good pictures.  You can view them when he gets to posting them later on his blog: Falcon Punch

So, all I can do is tell you about our trip to the harbour.  First of all, street signs are hard to find in France.  They’re on the corners of the buildings.  Given how short most of the cars are, and how far up they have these signs, I’m a little disconcerted by the presumed ability for drivers to see pedestrians.  But alas, we are not driving, so we just have to watch out for the crazy drivers.  At least we found our way there.  Boy did we too.  The harbour is gorgeous.  And has quite the display of wealth too.  Family sized sailboats to huge $100 million yachts.  But what I found even more exciting was the view we got when we walked all the way out to the break water.  No beach to look through, just the wall, and then water.  Beautiful, crystal clear, blue water.  Jon also decided to scare me a little by jumping around on the big rocks that make up the wall… they’re hard to explain, so you’ll have to check out his pictures on his blog. :)

After sitting on the wall for a while, catching my breath and trying not to cough, we ventured back into the city, only to find it packed full of people.  We’re a couple weeks away from Nice’s world famous Carnival, only it seems the party has started already.  There was some sort of outdoor concert going on with some artist whom I did not recognize.  Apparently he was worth standing around for though.  We ran into a candy stand where we spent probably a little more than we should have, but I got to relive some of my nostalgia, and share it with Jon, so it was worth it.  Growing up in Spain, there was this candy shop across the street from  my friend’s house, and they always had the best gummy candies.  This table was full of those same candies!  They were delicious.

Now, other than the candy, we bought some bread, some water, and a bottle of real Fanta Orange.  But that doesn’t mean serious shopping hasn’t been on my mind since we got here.  There’s an H&M like, three blocks away from where we’re staying, the biggest Sephora I’ve ever seen in my entire life just a few blocks further, nevermind all the stores with names I don’t recognize but gorgeous fashion in the windows.  The French really do have style.  My goal is, other than buying a wallet of some sort, to ward off shopping for at least another month.  Maybe after some saving and some grand sight seeing I will reward myself with a little retail therapy.

Retail therapy?  Who am I kidding?  I’m in France, not much need for therapy!