photos, part III

why hello again! i woke up at 5:33 this morning and told my body that this was NOT OKAY, and i succeeded in falling back asleep until 10. i am amazing, and hopefully getting back on east coast time. more photos!


this photo has no significant value except i think it is pretty. for our second field trip we went to antibes for the afternoon - a small town on the coast of france like nice, about 20 minutes away by train. antibes is a walled city, which was pretty cool, and the main attractions for our group were (a) sand beaches (nice's beaches are made of pebbles, which the girls didn't like so much) and (b) the picasso museum. the picasso museum, though, was closed on thursdays (completely logical, right?), and we were in antibes on a thursday. bummer. while gerard and i were feeling bad about ourselves for not knowing when the museum was open and planning accordingly (the girls were at the beach, clearly), i saw this doorway with what i think is an orange tree outside.


during the weekend that we were in france we flew on a little propeller plane to corsica (which the french spell and pronounce "corse," and i'm kind of confused about why we call it something different, but oh well). corsica was beautiful, and as i was telling kelly at dinner tonight, i think the most beautiful thing i saw all trip was the view out the plane window of corsica appearing through the clouds and mist - this bright green, mountainous island. it was like something out of a movie. we stayed in ajaccio, the largest city in corsica and the town where napoleon was born. this is a picture from the port at ajaccio.


a picture taken from the port - the buildings you can see are part of ajaccio, and behind the city is the mountainous part of corsica, which seems largely uninhabited. corsica is, apparently, a really popular destination for hikers.


on saturday we took a little boat ride to another part of corsica (about 4 miles away by boat) where they have bigger beaches. it was near the town of porticcio, which is directly across a bay from ajaccio. the kids loved going to the beach there, and they tried to get tan while gerard and i rented an umbrella to prevent skin cancer. mom, i know you are proud. this is a picture of all 10 of the girls who went on the trip.


a photo of the beach where we spent the afternoon in porticcio. i'm realizing, upon closer inspection, that there are topless women in this photo, which i guess i'd become so used to by this point that i didn't think about when i took the photo. so my apologies if this offends you, and you can squint really hard if you see it, instead, as a bonus to this photograph. what you're supposed to be appreciating here are the beautiful beautiful mountains in the background.


another view of the coastline, this time in ajaccio. doesn't this look like i'm the only person for miles? well, behind me is the city. sorry to burst that bubble that i/we were living in...


the streets in ajaccio.


back to nice. we took an afternoon field trip to the museum of modern and contemporary art (MAMAC) in nice, which was a really nicely put together museum, and the kids liked it a lot because it was more recent (and thus cool) art. i liked it for somewhat the same reason. this is a sculpture outside the museum, with a large bulletin board behind it advertising the museum. i like this poster because it has a little word play in it. the french pronounce the city of nice as "neese," not the way americans would pronounce it if we didn't know any better. whoever made this poster realized that english speakers would find this play on pronunciation humorous.


for our third field trip we took a bus to eze, another a city on the coastline about 30 minutes from nice. eze is the medieval city i mentioned in an earlier post, and it also had a perfume factory. this is gerard and three of the girls outside the perfumerie.


and this is the view of part of the old village of eze, as gerard and i hiked up to the top to see the view.


on our last day in nice, the kids had french classes in the morning, as usual, and then they got certificates indicating that they'd completed a two week course. this is a couple of the girls with their certificates, looking pretty giddy that class is over.


and this is gerard and i, minutes after the previous picture was taken. gerard is holding one of the girls' certificates and he tried to make me hold one too, but i stayed firmly against it, seeing as i had not taken the class. to get back at me for not holding one, he put the certificate between us. while this picture was being taken i was thinking "gerard! stop being dorky!" for an old guy, though, the dork factor was minimal. in fact, i would say he was cooler than me in general, since he could speak the language, knew french customs, knew interesting places to visit. it was really wonderful being on the trip with someone who was such a good guide. as another teacher put it before we departed, "gerard is going because he speaks french. claire is going because she speaks girl." so true, so true...

that's the last of the pictures i'm going to post, but if i see you in the next several months i have many more that i can show you - or email you if i won't be seeing you. i really enjoyed keeping this blog, and thanks so much to everyone who commented or emailed - it was really really wonderful to have a connection to people i know and love while in a country where i didn't speak the language and the culture was totally different. so merci beaucoup! au revoir!