Communicating with French students from around the world and exploring Mediterranean culture during study abroad in France.
– Jesselyn Dillon, SPC Student, France Program, June/July 2019
My two weeks in Nice with SPC was full of new experiences. We spent the time learning French in a school whose teachers spoke very limited English. While this was challenging, it gave us an opportunity to learn French as it is spoken and not only by learning from a textbook.
There were several times when the class and the teacher engaged in interesting exchanges. We discussed how and why things are translated or not translated, how some words and phases that we use in English don’t exist in French, and how some words can have multiple meanings in different contexts in French.
My favorite part of the trip was experiencing so many different languages with students from Japan, Korea, Sweden, Germany and more. With very little English being spoken among us, we had to resort to communicating with gestures, pictures, and Google translate.
My roommate at the homestay was a Japanese student who spoke almost no English and was just starting French. My homestay host was a French woman who spoke no Japanese and very little English. Dinners at her home resulted in a three-way Google translate conversation between English, French and Japanese!
After classes each day we had the later part of the afternoon and evening to ourselves to explore Nice. The architecture and history were amazing! A few of my favorites were Old Town, Notre Dame de Nice and the Cimez monastery and gardens.
Most days I spent hours after class wandering with no real objective, just meandering to see what I could see. I ended up at the Old Town market to shop for gifts and crepes for dinner, or the rocky beach and clear blue Mediterranean water, or local shops on the side streets away from the tourist center trying local foods at every stop.
Nice was a Roman territory before belonging to the French so there is a large Italian influence and every corner has an Italian restaurant and gelato shop. We also took weekend trips as a group to Monaco, Cannes and Île Sainte-Marguerite. Being a James Bond fan, I was very excited to see the Casino Royal in Monaco and I loved the prison on Île Sainte-Marguerite where the man in the iron mask was held.
– Jesselyn Dillon, SPC Student, France Program, June/July 2019
Thank you for sharing Jesselyn!
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