It's been so long that I don't even know where to start. After a busy week of orientation, I spent Friday through Monday in the South of France with Sarah Lawrence. It was an amazing trip; we saw many beautiful sights, visited many beautiful cities, and ate some pretty darn amazing food. The trip was exhausting though. Our leader was Madame Mole, an art history professor for the Sarah Lawrence program in Paris. She was from the south of France herself, and was energetic to the extreme. I don't think I saw her sleep a wink the entire trip. She tended to dress all in black, her white hair contrasting with her stark costume. She would walk fast, pointing out interesting architecture to those few who kept up with her, and although what she said was often interesting, I think people started tuning her out after the first two days.
Madam Mole planned the trip schedule, which often included visiting 3 cities in one day, and an art museum in each one. We visited Montpellier, Nimes, Aix-en-Provence, Cassis, Marseille, Villeneuve les Avignon, and Avignon. The schedule was often so packed that we had little or no free time to explore the cities ourselves, although there are quite a few that I would like to go back to. The only other thing that bothered me about the trip was how much it felt like we were a middle school group going on a field trip. We were constantly being told to stay out of the road and watch out for cars, not to touch the paintings in the musuems, to guard our purses, and other things of that sort. It felt as though they didn't trust us to act as the adults that we are, and I was not the only one who was frustrated and slightly insulted by this.
That having been said, it was a fantastic trip. I've uploaded a few photos of my room here and of several cities in the South. Enjoy!
