Day 14

July 10, 2013

We’ve gotten some sad news in the past 24 hours, but it hasn’t totally spoiled our day. Late last night Molly got word that one of her puppies had died unexpectedly. They think her two puppies must have gotten into some poisonous mushrooms, and although one of the dogs pulled through, it was still really sad to learn that one of them had died.

I didn’t mention the other sad incident in my blog post from yesterday because I wasn’t there to witness it and I didn’t know how severe it was until today. Yesterday afternoon students from Interact had planned a hike to the calanques behind Euromed. The hike is about 45 minutes down to the water and some of the students were planning on going cliff jumping. I had been at school for several hours and didn’t have the energy to go hiking afterwards. Molly had had an earlier class and decided to come back to school to go hiking/ cliff jumping with the group while I went home to rest.

As Molly explained it, there was a smaller cliff (about six feet high) and a higher cliff (2 to 3 stories high) of which students were jumping off. Our French professors had warned many of us not to jump off of the higher cliff because there had been several accidents in the past few years, but of course that didn’t stop people from wanting to do it.

As many people know, when jumping from somewhere that high you want to enter the water as straight as possible, though that’s easier said than done.

One of the UNCW girls was pretty badly injured from jumping off of the higher cliff, but no one truly knew how bad it was until today. Molly had said that it was obvious from the start that it was going to be a painful fall because you could see that she was going to hit the water slanted and not straight. The UNCW girl had developed bruises and had been walking slowly after the jump. She went to the hospital last night and they performed surgery on her lower back today. She'd fractured one of her vertebrae, but is expected to make a full recovery. Apparently it’s going to be up to her if she wants to stay in France for the remainder of the trip or go home early.

That being said, the rest of us are totally fine and I don’t want anyone to worry unnecessarily. My acrophobia keeps me from wanting to try things like cliff jumping, and the hiking and water sports that I do have minimal risks.

My classes weren’t too bad today. I had my classes back to back during the first two class periods. None of us liked getting up early, but it was nice to be done with classes before nearly 4:00 in the afternoon for a change.

Molly and I tried another new restaurant tonight with Forrest and a girl from the Florida group. Chateau Paradis (rouge) has definitely been my favorite wine so far. I’ve ordered it at least 3 or 4 times with various meals. I suppose I should try other wines, but this one is good and it’s usually one of the cheaper drinks on the menu.

I’m pretty tried from our “long week” of classes, but tomorrow we’re having a field trip to Nice, which should be fun. Molly and I will be traveling to our weekend destination on Friday. Our original plans had been to go to the French island of Corsica to enjoy the beach, go sailing, and try some other water sports. We seriously looked at plane tickets, hotels, and even some vacation rentals in Calvi, Corsica, but the cost was just too high for a weekend trip. Our new travel destination was quite cheap by comparison, though I’m determined to keep it a surprise until Friday.  ;)