Study Abroad Week 7: Nice Carnaval!

 My favourite float.  I didn't get to record it the first time, when it actually breathed its hot, steamy fire breath at us, into our faces.  It was almost like a real dragon- I even just got to touch it! AWESOME
 

This is how I felt about being there

So yesterday we went to the Nice Carnaval with CEA.  Or at least, a rather small subset of us did.  It's been raining all week, and it was raining most of yesterday, too.  Bit of a bummer for our main objective in being there in the first place- to attend the Nice Flower Parade on the Promenade des Anglais along the shoreline.  Luckily, it stopped raining RIGHT as we got to our seats in the bleachers, and recommenced only after all of us had descended the bleachers.  Fortune much?  But I digress.

Gorgeous floats and costumes in this parade, don't you think?
  

But wait, there's more!

We'd passed through Nice briefly before by bus about a month ago during our excursion to Grasse, Eze, and Monaco, but we didn't really see much besides the market.  Now we actually got down and explored a bit.  We took the train to the Nice Ville train station, and walked along the main shopping avenue in front of it and to the Nice town centre, where we were to meet in about two hours to get our tickets for admission to our seats for the parade from Silvija (in case you've been wondering, that's actually pronounced Sylvie).  Our group hung out with Silvija and grabbed some food from a cafe due to the rain, then we went to a couple shops along the shopping street, though we only darted into two small shops and then worldwide chain stores like Zara, Sephora, and H&M.

The parade was wonderful.  As I mentioned already, it had been raining the entire day, but it stopped exactly for the duration of the parade.  There were so many beautiful floats, and everything was so festive! ...even if the music STILL wasn't French.  Latin American, but nope.  No French music.  Unless you count a French-Spanish cover of Frankie J's "Obsesión."  I guess it's something at this point.  The rest of the music, if lyrical, was either in Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese.  The people on the floats kept throwing mimosa flowers and shooting streamers into the bleachers.  I nearly caught some a few times, but each time the old man in front of me jumped up and grabbed them, in two cases quite literally from my grasp.  Sometime during the middle of the parade another old gentleman saw me nearly catch a shoot and miss (as in, my fingers touched it and as I grabbed the stem I knocked it down to rows below us), so he broke his catch and handed it to me and to the two girls sitting beside me.  It was adorable and touching, and the language barrier was completely transcended.

Left: Offering the others the blossoms.  Right: The three of us smiling.  I am in the centre.

The entire experience was great, plus it's a good thing we went to Nice then and there, since after spring break I have to go to Nice every day for a week for my genetics lab.  That's right folks, the labs at SKEMA Business School don't actually happen on campus because....actually good question.  I'm guessing they're poorly equipped or lacking or something.  But anyway, I have to go every day for a week right after spring break ends, for my genetics lab.  Nine to five each day is the schedule.  It shall be oh so fun to go right from the airport to Nice University, where I've never been before.  With my carry-ons, no less. Yay.

More floats, and the dreaded dragon

Au revoir!

Study Abroad Week 6: Aix-en-Provence and Sainte Roseline's body

So-called Atlanteans supporting the balcony of a house with a beautiful façade

Well.  I remember reading about incorruptible saints, and how common relics of saints were in Europe during the middle and dark ages.  The e-mail for this particular CEA excursion just said that we would be going to Aix-en-Provence, then to a vineyard and seeing the Chapelle Sainte-Roseline next to it, where Saint Roseline's bones were kept as relics.  It wasn't until we were leaving Aix to head to the vineyard that the program coordinator, Kristin, told us that we would be seeing her body, and that the reliquary held her eyes.

As French a meal as you can ask for, except for ordering a croque monsieur/madame

I've read a lot about the history of the Catholic church, so I tried to recall this saint as they gave her story. I could not until they mentioned that a miracle where bread held in her apron turned into rose, then I remembered her from my bulky encyclopedia of saints.  I remember thinking her body had been found preserved from the heavy organic material in the soil, but then thought I was mixing her up with Saint Bernadette or someone else, until Kristin mentioned that her body had been exhumed and found preserved some centuries after her death.  But then she mentioned the eyes.  When Rosaline was exhumed, her eyes were wide open and glassy, almost lifelike.  I do not know how much of that to believe, as whenever I read about incorruptible saints, it always says that their bodies are perfectly preserved and do not decay, looking almost asleep, leading you to envision a body as though freshly dead. But when I was older and had access to the internet I googled these incorruptible saints and they all look like Rosaline- merely mummified, much like the Iceman, bog bodies, or Ginger.  Their bodies are all quite well preserved, but always they are never "as though sleeping."  The most beautiful examples of incorruptible saints- Bernadette and Silvan- are all covered in wax to appear as though asleep, or their body parts are made of wax.  This is, again, much like preserved bodies in museums- they are either treated to remain in appearance the way they were with found, or represented in a way meant to show them as they appeared when alive.  Some books I read as a child do mention that the bodies are only very well-mummified, as the book I had on Saint Bernadette contained a lengthy section on how her body was found a mummy, and the lengthy process of keeping it routinely preserved and making the wax mask that covers her face and creates her hands.  It was fascinating, and a souvenir my aunt had brought me back from the site at Lourdes.  As far as I know, "incorruptibility" is just not used anymore, and Roseline wasn't on any list of so-called incorruptible saints, although she was on lists of preserved and/or naturally mummified saints (as were any "incorruptible" saints).

From left to right: Sainte Roseline's body, a plaque honouring Sainte Roseline's miracle of the flowers, and the eyes of St. Roseline within the mask in the reliquary 

For Rosaline, a doctor, wanting to keep her body preserved while it was on display, embalmed her body and coated her in a thin layer of beeswax- very thin, so her body could appear is it had when in the earth, nothing as extreme as the much later Saint Bernadette's. He removed her famous eyes and placed them in a reliquary, which, although I did peer into it, I could not bring myself to look at it for longer than a glance, and it was poorly lit, so I do not know how well-preserved her eyes actually are.  I'm going to assume they're something like the Gebelein man's ("Ginger," as linked above) "perfectly preserved" skin- dessicated but clearly retaining their owner's living appearance.  For Sainte Roseline, there is a prayer bench for the faithful, so you can pray while gazing into her long-dead eyes.  Nothing like gazing into mummified eyes to inspire spirituality, right?

From left to right: Barrels of wine, a figure swimming in the rain, and bottles of the Château Sainte-Roseline

After that we went back into the winery next to the chapel and walked around for a bit, had a lovely little wine tasting session (a follow-up of sorts to the CEA "Introduction to Wine Tasting" session we'd had previously), and I bought my parents a rosé wine as a souvenir, in the vineyard's characteristic lampe de méduse bottle. There's just something Provençal wines, particularly the rosés.

Au revoir!

Study Abroad Week 4: Wine Tasting!

My favourite wine-tasting locale: the typical French cafe or brasserie.  Because why not?

 

CEA held an Introduction to Cheese and Wine Tasting session on Tuesday. About half the program as there, because due to the size of the program they broke it up into two sessions of about 15 people each.  It was interesting.  We got a little booklet explaining the principles of wine tasting, the regions of France and their respective wines, wine-making and bottling practices in France, and a little bit of information on how to distinguish the origin of a wine by the shape of its bottle.  Our region of France is apparently known for its rosés, and even with the few wines I've tasted thus far into the semester, I can understand why.  Rosés just have so much more distinction than I can detect in either red or white.  True, reds have far more character and whites are more subtle and elegant (disclaimer: not a wine taster.  Take my opinion on wines with many grains of salt), but the varieties and subtleties of rosés amazes me.  We also had a little introduction to the cheeses of France, and how to pair and balance them with wines. 

In cheeses, we had:

1. Fromage de chèvre (goat cheese); served spread on bread
2. Chausée des Moines
3. Brie
4. Cousteron
5. Compté
6. Emmental
7. Roquefort; served spread on bread
8. Saint-Félicien; served spread on bread

 So today I had a randomly selected rosé and the three B's: baguette, brie, and basil

In wines, we had a very "basic" red and rosé, and Monbazillac, a white dessert wine.  I fell in LOVE with the Monbazillac, to the point I know that is one bottle I am bringing back to the States in May. 

In the instructions for tasting wine:

• Sniff the wine, whole nose in the glass, and swirl it around the glass
• Look at the "legs" of the wine- the wine that remains on the glass after you stop swirling
• Sniff the wine and sip, swirling it in your mouth and chewing it
• Spit or swallow

The red wine I found incredibly spicy after tasting it by chewing, though simply fragrant and woody when I tasted it normally just before.  The rosé deepened its fruity flavour when I chewed it, and the Monbazillac had a very delicate taste after chewing, in contrast to its vry sweet taste before that.  With the other wines I've had this week, I've noticed that reds tend to be quite spicy.  I'm no sommalier, but I do find that these little wine tasting tips have added interest to tasting wine for me, beyond "I liked it" or "This is good but that was bad."  And I have 3 months in wine country left to develop this with local but fine and rather cheap fare!

One other thing that astounded me was how different the cheeses tasted before and after tasting the different wines. I never have liked Roquefort, but it tasted decent and even delicious after the rosé and the red, and the emmental, which I loved, tasted AWFUL after I sipped some red. Brie, my favourite cheese ever, tasted lackluster and even meh after the red wine, but okay after the rose, and delicious as ever after the Monbazillac.  The other cheeses tasted great throughout, although how they tasted to me changed throughout.  I wasn't the only one, either, and the wine tasting pamphlet did have a brief mention on how different wines affect the palate. All in all, it was a wonderful experience and very good introduction to getting familiar with why I liked this wine and didn't like this one, or what it was in this wine that made it taste different from that one.  It was great!

Au revoir!

Study Abroad Week 2: Chapelle de la Garoupe & Day Trip to Italy!

Left: A view of the old Roman wall and part of the Grimaldi castle the Musée de Picasso is housed in (way in the back.)  Right: Works by Germaine Richier in the plaza of the musée.

Last Sunday, January 12, the day after the French Riviera tour I posted about, CEA had an optional excursion to the Musée de Picasso and then to a lighthouse on a hill.  The museum is one of only a few museums in the world devoted to Picasso's works, because Picasso worked in Antibes and donated his works to the museum provided it became a museum devoted to him.  The museum was interesting- built in an in old Grimaldi castle- and after getting a little bit of history on the tour it seems Picasso was a despicable man.

Left:  La Vierge folle by Germaine Richier (1946).  Middle:  Sculpture by Arman, I believe it's Composition à base octogonale en tour montée (1982).  Right: Regrettably, I cannot seem to find the artist or name of this work.

There were some works other than Picasso's in the museum, which were simply stunning.  My favourites were some statuettes whose backs look over the museum onto the street below.  Their twisted bodies are visible from the street below, and just a week prior we had been wondering what they were, and now we got to see them- bronze and brown patina sculptures by Germaine Richier.

Left: That tiny little lighthouse is where the church we walked and hiked to is at.  Yes, this photo is taken at the starting point.  Middle: A portion of the Roman road that leads from the foot of the hill to the church.  Right:  A portal into the faery world.  No, really.  It's an arch in the Roman wall leading to a small park.

After the museum we walked along the beachfront to a lighthouse on a hill.  A distant lighthouse on a hill.  I still can't believe we walked all that way.  And to make it even better, to get to the lighthouse we had to hike up a Roman road.  The road was beautiful and well-preserved, along with large portions of its wall.  But man, was it STEEP!  Once we got to the top, though, there was an old church built in the dark ages that made it all worth it.

Left: Approaching the church from the Roman road.  Another fey view, from an archway of the church entrance.  Right: A postcard of the church I made for my grandma.

After the walk to the top we had a brief lunch there, and then headed down the same road- much easier this time around!  We found a cheap little bistro by the beachfront as well, and sat down to a real meal on the French Riviera.

Left:  Crêpe creme marron (crêpe with chestnut cream) and cafe au lait.   Right:  First bite!  Yummy!

Well, that was last Sunday.  Saturday and yesterday I had more adventures, but a bit more quiet!  It's been raining all week on the Riviera, and Saturday I went to Ventimiglia, Italy with three friends: two guys in our program and my roommate.  We nearly missed the invitation due to me wking up late , but we met up with them on time...then we missed our train.  But it was okay, because we caught the next one.  

That beautiful Italian river after the rain.  Gorgeous swimming ahoy!

It was also raining in Italy, which unfortunately dampened our exploring a bit, but we did get to explore the marketplace and the portion of Ventimiglia immediately surrounding the train station.  We had an authentic Italian dinner, which was what we were all excited for, with a red wine a friend treated the rest of us to.  I bought pesto to bring back with me, as it was MUCH cheaper in Italy than in Antibes.  My friend and I were able communicate rather well with Italian speakers using our Spanish, and vice-versa.  We were also all VERY happy to note that in Italy, they were playing Italian music, as opposed to the American and Spanish-language (mostly Caribbean) music played in France.  In two weeks I've old heard French music twice.  I cannot for the life of me understand why, it's beautiful...and we're in FRANCE.  Well, mini-rant over.  

One of my little hobbies is to occasionally look up Disney songs in other languages, particularly Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and French.  I went crazy on that with Frozen when I saw it right after The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug last month.  I totally fell in love with Frozen.  And yesterday I went to see it in French.  Now I don't speak French at all, but I most definitely do not have the bulk of Frozen memorized, especially "Let It Go" in 5 languages.  NOPE.  

Au revoir!~

P.S. Psst.  I have been doing some cooking here, mostly improvisation of recipes.  I try to have my camera around it as often as possible and take notes, so if you're into cooking check out my crafting blog as well.  Thanks!