pictures!

here are my pictures from the trip! one album is all black and white photos from my 35mm camera and the other is all color photos from my digital camera. some of the pictures are out of chronological order, but they all came from either paris, nice, or monaco. enjoy!

black and white photos

color photos

im home!

just wanted to let everyone know that i made it home safe and sound last night. from start to finish, i traveled for about 26 hours! all of my flights were on time, even after a half hour bomb scare at charles de gaulle airport in paris (someone left a backpack by the train--not a bomb though!). not too jet-lagged yet! i have presents for everyone, so see you all soon!

Winding down

Hey everyone! Its been a busy couple of days--we had thunder and pouring rain here last night, followed by france losing to italy 2-0 in eurocup. Today I went to school, then our group spent the rest of the afternoon in monaco (only 15 min away by train). What a fabulous country!! It is super clean and very ritzy--we hiked up a hill to the prada, valentino, hermes, and gucci stores, then went to the monte carlo in monte carlo. A prada ad was being shot in front while we were there, but I loved seeing a ferrari, a rolls- royce, a bentley, and a maserati parked less than 20 feet away from each other in the valet parking. I took pictures of course. We made our way back to nice and had an amazing dinner at a nicoise resto near my part of town. Vero managed our money well enough to make it so that we could each have a three part, 26€ meal--i started with an assortment of vegetable beignets, then followed with roasted rabbit, ratatouille, and pasta. My host mom made fantastic ratatouille the other night for dinner, but this ratatouille was good too. I had a lemon tarte for dessert, so perfect! I can't even begin to describe how much I loved the rabbit--it fell off the bone before I even cut into it and was like butter! Tomorrow I have school, and the afternoon/evening plans are up in the air. I'm hearing rumors of shopping, but I can't think of many more things to get before I head home, so we will see what happens. Friday is my last day of school and my last dinner with my family, then a chauffer is picking me up at 4:30 am on saturday to take me and a few others to the airport for our 6:30 am flight to paris. I leave from paris at 1:30 pm and land in london at 1:45 (gotta love the time change), then I leave for la at 5:00 pm. My plane is supposed to be in around 8:15 pm at lax saturday night. I've had so much fun here and have made some fantastic new friends, but I'm excited to come home and develop my pictures (I've got three rolls of black and white film shot up in addition to 150+ pictures on my digital camera) and see everyone! It feels like I haven't been home in ages, yet I can't believe the end of my trip is here already. Ill post pictures here once I get them uploaded and everything. In 72 hours ill be back on pacific standard time!

xoxo b

ps--don/judy/ally: have fun and stay safe on your trip! we will swap pictures when you get back :)
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happy fathers day!

happy father's day to grandpa, russ, john, and don!! have a fun day!! xoxoxo
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pictures!

the picture of the boats is from antibes and the picture with the blue lights is of downtown nice, about 5 minutes from my house. the brioche was at monoprix in paris, and the rest is self explanatory :)

finally on a real computer

im in a cyber cafe by my house right now, so a quick update since its 1 euro for every 15 minutes.

-we went to vence the other day (not provence or venice), hiked more than expected, and went to a church that henri matisse designed. pretty neat.

-i started school on tuesday, its fun. i start at 8:45 am and go until 12:45 pm. i have two classes, grammar and conversation, with a 15 minute break in between. there are 7 people in my class: a lady from russia, a girl from croatia, a boy from denmark, and a girl from sweden, then rachel and chelsea and i from chapman. i have a test tomorrow and supposedly am getting moved up to another class level with everyone next week.

-went to the beach and the modern art museum in nice yesterday after school--it was wayyyy cool! the modern art museums here are so awesome.

-my host mom made this cool dinner last night...i forgot what its called, but its basically a table top grill that has little trays under it. she put chicken and steak on the top level to cook, then put slices of a gruyere-like cheese in the trays on the bottom to melt. she also baked potatoes to go with it. to serve, she peeled the potatoes and we all took a potato with some meat and then poured the melted cheese from the tray over the mixture...it was soooo so yummy. the grill was made by t-fal so it cant be that hard to find.

-we went to the fragonard fragrance museum in a town called eze today...it rained then was extremely hot. the weather has been so wacky--there have been rumors of thunderstorms for a few days but it has yet to happen.

-tonight we are going to thor to watch the germany vs. croatia euro cup match...it should be a good game! afterward we are going to a pizza place for dinner.

we are going to take a few day trips this weekend since it ended up being next to impossible to take the train to italy like we thought we were going to do since there is a train strike this week. we are planning on going to the beach, taking a trip to aix-en-provence (the real one) and possibly st. tropez if time permits.

ciao ciao!

Oops

Nevermind, we are actually going to the town of vence today, not provence :( provence is 2 hours away by train and vence is only an hour by bus. Apparently the trains here are on strike anyway. Bummer!!!
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