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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