Why Am I in France?

Today in my French class we had a really interesting discussion about the future that turned into discussions about language and culture and assimilation. It came up in conversation that I was a huge fan of music in Spanish (iTunes Latino ALL DAY ERRY DAY). My teacher asked if I spoke Spanish, and I explained that I had studied it for four years but had been speaking it for almost my entire life. "Pour quoi tu es en France?!" "Pour le Festival." "Ah, d'accord. C'est une question stupide."

Much more than her asking me a stupid question, I had given her a stupid answer. I didn't mean to give that answer. It's not correct. I chose France because of the Festival. I am in France for a whole lot more than that.

A lot of people and our teachers think the sole reason anyone comes to Cannes is to work at the Festival, and for nothing more. Like we clap our hands over our ears and go "LALALALALA NOT ABSORBING ANYTHING ABOUT FRANCE LALALA" for 3 months until the Festival starts. Obviously this is not the case, and it's very sad to be thought of that way, and it is from my frustration and wish that I had expressed myself better in class today that I write this blog post. I hope it serves as a better explanation for why I'm here than my idiotic 9AM durrrrr-for-the-festival?-response.

I chose to study abroad because I wanted to have an adventure, to go somewhere where they didn't speak English, where it would be a challenge, where it would be beautiful and fun. Why I chose Cannes over, say, Madrid or Barcelona or somewhere in South America WAS because of the Festival, because obviously it held an opportunity far more relevant to my area of study than anywhere else. Also I love Europe, and I'd been to Cannes before and knew it was a place I enjoyed. I knew it was beautiful and safe there and on the sea, warm and remote and restful. I have difficulty with large cities for an extended period of time, I find it very overwhelming, thus Cannes was an obvious choice.

That is why I came to Cannes. It fit my needs for a study abroad location perfectly. Why not learn French? Almost all of my close friends at home speak it, I used to take French lessons and was good at pronunciation, it was something I wanted to do. French is beautiful and romantic! And I'm smart enough to learn another language. Why not? I'll never be as good as some of my friends, but I'm pretty good at it. I worked at it hard to be able to come here and I continue to work at it hard. When I came here I balked at the amount of time we spent learning French, but now it's just part of the routine. Practicing, always, 3 hours a day. You come to the College to learn French and that is what you have to do to live in Cannes. I enjoy it now. I enjoy French. I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy this skill that I've acquired and can continue to use as my life progresses, if for nothing else than to stimulate my mind.

It is true that I have no desire to permanently live in France, but that in no way means I don't care about it or feel a connection to it or appreciate it. A girl in my class brought up the notion of how working in the cinema leads to a life of traveling, and that she liked the idea of living somewhere new for 3 months out of every year. I agree with that wholeheartedly. That is a life I would be content with. Having a home base, somewhere permanent to go back to, preferably in California, which in my opinion is one of the best damn places on Earth to live, but then also traveling extensively with your productions. Maybe even to France! Where you can use all that French you learned at the College! Obviously I'll be back. Especially when my films are opening the Festival in a few years and winning the Palm d'Or. Just kidding. Not really.


The moral of this story is, I didn't just come to France to work at the Festival. That was a supremely wonderful added bonus to this location. I came abroad to have an adventure. I chose Cannes out of all the other places to have adventures because of the Festival and it's location and climate. The adventure includes learning another language, visiting places, having fun, making new friends, new connections, the challenge of survival alone in a foreign culture. That is why I came here, why I chose here, and what I'm getting out of being here. I hope no one for a second thinks that I don't appreciate being here or don't realize the opportunity I've been given. I came to France to study abroad in France, which I did, and am doing, and it has been a marvelous hot mess of an experience.

I couldn't ask for anything more.

Weekend in Provence!

Hey all you beautiful people! Wanna hear about the best excursion we've had since we've been here? Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the tale of AIFS IN PROVENCE!!

After a three hour bus ride from Cannes, we arrived in Arles. Arles is famous because it has a lot of Roman ruins, and also Van Gogh lived there and painted it extensively. We just learned about it in Art History, so that was exciting and relevant. I am now strongly of the opinion that you should take Art History before you go to Europe. Things are more special and exciting and you just appreciate it all more. Shoutout to Trisha who had just finished AP Art History at Los Altos before Eurotour and was my tour guide and explained why everything was special...I get it now. :) 

"All Night Cafe at Arles," anyone??

The first stop was a "typical Provencal market" which was amazing. We just walked through and drooled over all the food and spices and fake purses and jewelry. I bought a very lovely pendant, and there was some debate as to whether or not it would make sense to buy this goat a lady was selling. (We also ran into another group from AIFS that is studying in Grenoble, who we met up with in Paris and went on the dinner cruise with and tried to go out with and awkwardly failed. One of the girls from their group (who was in a walking boot) drunkenly wandered into A'brielle's room in Paris and fell asleep and they found her there in the morning. This is one of our AIFS in Cannes Classic Tales. So it was cool to seem but but also kind of awkward, is what I'm trying to say.) 

We continued on to the ruins of an ampitheater, which had lots and lots of places to take stupid photos. It of course reminded us of a place where they would go on America's Next Top Model to do a photoshoot and have to portray various goddesses, but of course they would have to be stupid goddesses that Tyra made up, like "the Goddess of Fierceness." Obviously we had to do our own photoshoot. 

A'brielle and I lounging and being goddesses of fierceness.

Following the ampitheater we visited a bullfighting ring (where they don't actually kill bulls anymore, but some places still do, which I didn't realized and is super fucked up) which is a terribly well-preserved Roman coliseum (not THE Coliseum, but one of them). We stayed there for about 10 minutes before managing to get lost in Arles trying to find the All Night Cafe that Van Gogh painted. Obviously we did, eventually (see photo above) but succeeded in making us all late to the next place by come back 20 minutes late. Woooo!! Next stop: the aquaduct.

How sick is this??

It had been very hot and sunny in Arles, to the point where we were lamenting bringing only warm clothes. We drove for about an hour and a half, at which point the weather began to take a turn for the worse. We got to the aquaduct and started walking around. It's huge and really amazing and beautiful, and I hope from the picture you get a sense of how immense and impressive it is. It had at this point begun to rain a little, and the wind picked up, starting a little sandstorm on the path. Not ones to resist an opportunity to look ridiculous, here is a picture of how Karnig and I handled this turn of events.

WORRKKKKK.

It began to rain harder as we explored the aquaduct and the surrounding area, but it was a beautiful walk and the rain smelled so good, with all the trees...here is the view from the bridge across the river:

Following our adventures at the aquaduct, we were shuttled onto the Chateuneuf du Pape, which is an incredibly famous winery, where we had a fancy wine tasting!! Ooh la la. (Apparently people in Paris actually do say "ooh la la" which I had been wondering about since being here. No one wears berets, but everyone does carry around baguettes. Just clearing up some stereotypes here.)

The wine-tasting was a thoroughly entertaining experience. The guy who was leading it and explaining it was a very tall, heavy, and SASSY man, who was hysterical and taught us how to do legitimate wine tasting and how to, you know, actually appreciate wine. I learned to hold it by the stem to keep the wine cool, and how to stare at it to see if it was shiny or not and how to turn the glass to see the "tears" or how much alcohol and sugar is in it. I learned that you are to take the first sniff for 3 seconds, appreciate it, then swirl it around for a while to "open the bouquet" smell it again, and then "smell it with your mouth" where you take a little sip and basically gargle it...and then of course you just drink it. Or spit it out. But we're college students and one does not just spit out wine. Especially really good, expensive wine, which is quite a novelty to us, "Oh wow, it's so smooth, it doesn't burn going down like the 1€ wine from Leader Price!!" Needless to say, everyone really appreciated the experience. The only funny part about it though is where you say what you think it smells like. You can say anything you want, because it's your olfactory senses that determine it, and your sense memory, but there are kind of things you're supposed to smell. However when asked to name more than like 3 things and shout them out (wood? chocolate?), Karnig and I were rather taken with our newfound wine connoisseur noses.

Hmmm yes, quite, scents of chocolate and baby powder and Chanel No.5...

After we finished up at the winery and the winery's little museum, we got on the bus and headed for our final destination of the day: Avignon.

Avignon's City Hall

Our hotel in Avignon had these wonderfully huge rooms, which we were quite taken with. However we only had a few minutes to change and get back downstairs for dinner, because we were going out to a restaurant!! Hooray!! AIFS sometimes takes us out to this big fancy 3-course meals, and this was no exception of wonderfulness. It's just exciting to get to eat cuisine when you've been eating chicken paninis at the College every night.

I don't think we had enough wine.

Later that night, after we had digested and appropriately spent time in the room listening to music loudly and getting ready aka laying on the giant beds, Jenn, Karnig, A'brielle, Kylie, Hailie, and myself made an attempt to go out. We found a club online that was close, and around 11:45 we made our way down to the lobby to leave. The concierge stopped us however, and informed us that he was about to lock the doors, and they would be locked until 7AM. "But we can just ring the bell and you'll let us in, right?" we asked, and he was like, "No, I'm leaving. You won't be able to get back in if you don't come back in the next 20 minutes." Our initial moment of disappointment of having our evening plans ruined was quickly replaced by panic and concern...people from our group were already out! And they didn't know! And they wouldn't be able to get back in until 7AM and they'd have to sleep on the stoop or something! So we asked the guy if we could run and try to find people to tell them, and he said sure. We went to the bar next door and no one was there, and in despair we called Aude, who is one of our RD's, whom I have told you stories about. Sandrine is the brains and Aude is the brawn of the operation, she's younger, and she is wonderful and badass and chain-smokes and has this great gravelly voice and accent. Kylie called Aude, and explained our predicament. When Kylie hung up, she started laughing informed us that Aude was going to call down and "speak with" that man. Fast forward 10 minutes, Aude calls Kylie back and just says, "He is a very stupid man. You will be able to come back in. Whenever you want to. And if you can't, you will call me, and I will speak with him. I told him I would tell his boss and Sandrine was very angry at him...he will let you in." What I wouldn't have given to see that conversation go down. 

We ended up not going to the club because it cost 10 euros and no one was there. You know what you can spend 10 euros on instead? KEBABS. Once we came back, we were in fact let in, and we smiled at the guy as we came back in a manner of smiling that's like flipping someone off.  HOPE YOU HAVE FUN GETTING FIRED, BITCH. His boss had told Sandrine when we checked in that we'd be able to come and go 24/7 and it wasn't a problem so long as we were quiet. Aude told us later he was stupid and mean and selfish and trying to scare us, and Aude Does Not Take That Shit. We lament that when we get back to America we won't be able to call Aude and have her bitch out whoever's giving us trouble. My impression of her voice is getting very good, "Kahhrneeeg, quel homme!!" Aude is also probably the only teacher figure that will ever offer your friend a cigarette and light it for them. So much love.

 

In the morning we walked over to the Palais des Papes, which is the former Pope Palace (I guess there also used to be two popes and this is where one of them lived? I don't know. I'm sorry this isn't more historically accurate. FORGIVE ME.)

We went on a tour that basically descended into us exploring on our own the vast medievalness that is the Palais des Papes. It contained lots of frescos and some paintings, and many statues of dead cardinals. But mostly it was huge and open with lots of white stone.

The kind of statues one finds within the Palais des Papes.

After we concluded our visit at the Palais, we left Avignon for "les Baux de Provence" which is a medieval village, stopping however, to see the "Carrieres de lumieres."

It used to be a quarry, but now it's just amazingness.

I cannot really explain to you the nature of the "Carrieres de lumieres," other than that it's probably one of the coolest places/things you'll ever see in your entire life. What it is technically is images projected on the walls of this quarry-cave set to music, but it is truly an experience. We were all grumbling before we went but after leaving it was easily everyone's favorite part. You can't really explain it, other than pure...wow.

This picture doesn't even nearly sort-of do it justice,
but other people took better ones which I will find.

The village of les Baux de Provence is situated in an unbelievably gorgeous area, as everything is all limestone and little trees.

The village itself is up on a hill, with ruins of a castle on top and many little shops and restaurants along the way. They have trebuchets, and apparently sort of a Ren Faire thing at certain times of year. The view is absolutely breathtaking too.

You can kind of see the catapult off to the right.

The stunning view from the top of the hills.

On the way back down we stopped for crepes and paninis and ice cream (I doubt anyone left the village without having at least two of any given one.) and touristy shopping before rushing to meet the bus and begin our 3 hour journey home. Kylie, Jenn, and I made a friend though.

We named her Carmel Freckles.

Provence was just a blast, and being in the countryside was just the calm and relaxing and beautiful thing everyone here has seemed to be needing as of late. Everything I could have hoped for and more. Much love. <3

Tales from Cannes

It's been so long since I have regaled you guys with stories from my French class and tales of my everyday Cannes life, which for the most part is actually really unexciting, but sometimes ridiculous stuff happens, and that's why you get this blog today! I know you're probably like, but Michaela, you went to Provence over the weekend! Maybe you should write about that or something else exciting! And my answer to you is -- NO. YOU GET TO HEAR STORIES ABOUT MY BORING LIFE TODAY.

Unfortunately, no longer having the teacher I had at the beginning, Claude (I'm now on my third one) no one has been yelling at us or making fun of us with nearly as much gusto as he could muster. My current teacher, Anique, whose name I have probably misspelled (desolée), however, is much like the girl form of Claude, and was recently explaining to us about Marseilles, and all the reasons it's stupid. Obviously. As with all places and groups, there are stereotypes, and she took it upon ourselves to impart the following knowledge, ACCORDING TO HER:

- People in Marseilles have a stupid accent* and sound like idiots. They also exaggerate everything, such as the size of a fish they have caught, or, it is implied, other things as well, and hate everyone who isn't from Marseilles. But everyone hates them back. So it's whatever.  (*If you speak some French I shall explain it thusly, instead of "pain" or "bain" they pronounce it "paigne" or "baigne"and also pronounce the "e" hard at the end of words such as "jaune")


- The stereotype of people in Nice/Cannes is that nobody works and all they do is play bocci ball all day and drink pastis. Also that it is full of slutty younger girls that border on prostitutes and dirty old men who stare and sit around whistling at them. I will not negate any of these claims.


"Valeria, je m'endors! Où est-ce l'énergie mexicaine??" (Valeria, I'm falling asleep. Where's some of that Mexican energy??) #ShitFrenchTeachersSay

IN OTHER NEWS:

- You know that tumblr Accidental Chinese Hipsters? I'm going to start one called "Accidental French Steampunks" because truly...it's a thing. Especially in the south of France. Everyone here always looks a hot mess.  Today I saw a woman wearing a black under-bust corset over her purple blouse and bloomers tucked into her black boots covered in buckles. And a big coat.

Now for a Story from Room 100:

Last night, Jenn, Molly, and I all decided to go to bed on the early side, when what should we hear but a KNOCK at our window/door to the balcony! Now. This wouldn't be weird if we didn't have, oh I don't know, THE ONLY BALCONY AT THE COLLEGE AND ALSO ARE A WHOLE STORY UP? Jenn and Molly opened the door, only to find two drunk Mexican teenage girls from the high school that's on a trip here. How did they get onto the balcony? No one knows. We asked what they were doing and they said, "To make new friends! We knew you were awake. We were watching you. You were on your laptop and you were talking." Molly says, "Aren't you cold?" They reply, "No, WE'VE BEEN DRINKING!! HAHAHA!! It helps with the cold!" And Jenn was like, "Yeah, clearly, well we're trying to go to bed, so I guess we'll see you later." And they shut the window and came back inside. The girls were still on our balcony.

Now, something that must be understood is that Jenn is on a crusade against the Mexican teenage boys that are currently living next door to us. They have somehow managed to get some serious speakers and like, a bass, and BLAST music at all times of day or night. They're just in there raging 24/7. You can hear it clear as day and loudly in our room. It also must be understood that they only listen to Drake. Also, one of them is learning to play guitar, and all he does all day is sing the same three lines of "Wonderwall" very badly, at the top of his lungs. We've gotten them in trouble a few times, and also these girls that were screaming in the stairwell after quiet hours. We've turned into crotchety old people, and these young'uns are making too much damn noise! Everyone just sleeps all day at the College...you can't be blasting Drake and screaming all the time! Get your shit together.

So as soon as Jenn and Molly come inside and close the door, they put on their shoes and gleefully run down to the reception to get the girls in trouble, because HOW FUCKING CREEPY WAS THAT? Especially because we were sure they came out of Drake's Number 1 Fan's window. I am still in bed pretending to be asleep because I was Not In The Mood For This Shit. They come back in with one of the men that works for the College, who goes outside to catch the girls. They weren't there, so he BARGES INTO DRAKE'S ROOM and bitches them out. He told us the girls and the boys were there, and that he sat them down and said, "I'm not bullshitting you, if you pull this stuff again we will take your cards and kick you out of the College. Onto the street into the middle of the night. I'm not bullshitting you. This is the third time we've been called up to deal with you and this is not acceptable." (Have I mentioned how glorious it is sometimes that France has no notion of political correctness?) After he told us the story, we thanked him profusely and said goodbye, and then we went to bed.

The End.

Spring Break in Strasbourg.

In case you were wondering how that went.

Barcelona and Lisbon - Spring Break 2012

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Time for the long awaited majesty that is STORIES FROM MY SPRING BREAK. As I may have told you, I spent the first half of Spring Break with my dear friend/roommate/non-romantic-life-partner Melanie Ward (her blog is here) in Barcelona and Lisbon, and then wrapped up the week in Strasbourg (which is in the Alsace region of France on the German border) with my true love Evan Revak. As usual, shenanigans will ensue.

Part One - Barcelona and Lisbon

By some grace of God, Mel and I managed to find each other at the Barcelona Airport. Which in case you were curious is like the biggest fucking airport in history. By a second grace of God, we got to our hotel, using public transportation. We were directed to take a train to one place, only to discover we were misguided, took the train back to the airport, and then took a bus.

Thankfully we had these things called "Barcelona Cards" where, essentially, you pay 10 euros a day for free unlimited public transportation. A lot of the big cities in Europe have them, and if you ever find yourself touristing there, I highly recommend it.We managed to get to our hotel, which was a Marriott (HALLELUJAH! Because you know what I am so over it's not even funny? Hostels.) and wasn't even that much more expensive.

It was a beautiful hotel, actually, with beautiful rooms and, I kid you not, a COMPLIMENTARY MINI BAR. What is this madness??? The bathroom too was beautiful and covered in mirrors (we don't have a mirror at the College where you can see anything below your shoulders UNLESS you stand on a chair). Which, as Mel pointed out, is pretty awkward if you're trying to take a shower and then you have to watch yourself bathe. Which it is. The first night we went to a fancy mall/shopping center thing near the hotel for dinner and rested for our EXCITING EARLY DAY OF EXPLORING SPAIN!! WOOO!!

Our subway adventures took us to the Placa Catalunya which is basically the center of Barcelona. It was hot and very sunny and gorgeous. As Barcelona is a gigantic fucking city, and one we knew very little about at that, we decided to do a bus tour. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm a huge proponent of bus tours if you don't have a car to explore a city. They take you to the things it's important to see, you can get off and explore, and they take you to the next thing it's important to see. Voila. This advice though sort of depends on what you're doing. It's not the "local" experience, but if you have 2 full days to see all of Barcelona and just want to see all the art and sights and landmarks, it's great. Highlights included:

La Sagrada Familia

Gaudi was an architect, that, to the best of my understanding, built Barcelona. He started this cathedral (now declared a basilica) like 150 years ago, and they're still working on it. The result is a weird combination of old and modern architecture that was really interesting.

Park Guell

This was probably my favorite place we visited in Barcelona. So beautiful and rich...somewhere I would definitely like to go back to.

"The World of Color Palace" aka Placa Espana

Our concierge told us that there was a fountain show with music and lights, "like in Las Vegas." Of course Mel and I were playing it all cool and then got into the elevator and were like THE WORLD IS A CAROUSEL OF COLORRRR!!! WONDERFUL WONDERFUL COLOORRR!! A RAINBOW OF IMAGINATION...#disneylandproblems #melandmichaelaproblems

Barcelona is part of a region of Spain called Catalonia (Catalunya) where they speak, officially, both Spanish and Catalan. I was not aware of this prior to our visit, and needless to say was really confused at the number of people not speaking Spanish. HOWEVER, turns out Catalan is really easy to understand, because it's basically Spanish and French mixed together. It is, on the other hand, impossible to figure out how to speak.

We enjoyed ourselves greatly, and in the evening decided to go out to dinner and then to IceBarcelona, which is an ice bar.

If you've never heard of ice bars before (and I had not) they are basically rooms made entirely of ice, with ice furniture and sculptures and glasses. They give you a warm coat and gloves, and you pay 12 euros to go in and have a drink and take stupid touristy pictures of yourself. WORTH IT.

We went to bed exhausted and watched some quality Spanish reality shows where they make children gamble on trivia questions, "That kid is gonna lose all his regalos!" But then as we fell asleep, there were all kinds of sirens and shit that sounded like they were coming really close to us. I get really uncomfortable and on edge when I hear sirens, and they kept coming and sounded like they were right underneath us, so I jumped out of bed and went to the window and looked outside. In my mind it was like a robbery or a fight the cops were trying to break up, because I heard what sounded like gunshots. This is how the following conversation went:

Me: Holy. Shit.

Mel: What is it?

Me: There's like...a giant fire.

Mel: WHAT?

Mel jumped out bed and joined me and we stared out the window for a long time, until finally whatever was on fire next door was out and the firetrucks left. I've never seen flames that big in real life, and I had no idea what it was. We thought the building next door had burned down or something. I had so much adrenaline I kept jerking awake as I tried to fall asleep. The next morning we went outside only to discover what, in fact, was actually on fire.

Turns out this car had caught fire and then caught the tree next to it on fire. Thank God it was only that.

We went on another bus tour (on a different route) this day for a while, which took us up to Mont Juif (Mountain of the Jews..) where the views are spectacular and the Olympic Stadium is. The Olympic Stadium itself was huge and gorgeous, but had literally THE SKETCHEST BATHROOMS EVER (I don't know how else to explain it.) The whole courtyard thing too was breathtaking and very peaceful, and we stayed there for a while taking pictures.

That evening we went to La Rambla for dinner, which is the main "happenin'" street in Barcelona. La Rambla is very energetic but also very overwhelming. It's an exciting place to be, and definitely a place to go again.

The next morning we went to the beach for a little bit, mainly just to say we'd gone, and then took the bus back to La Rambla for lunch and further exploration. I finally had from-Spain-sangria, which was a main goal of my Spain experience, and it was fabulous.

We then took the bus back to the Barcelona Airport where we had all of the excitement of getting delayed 3 hours (hooray for the air traffic controller strikes!) before we went to Lisbon. The only remarkable thing about this many hours in the airport experience was 1) A fantastically epic game of hangman. 2) Babies from various countries making friends in line. It was straight up like out of a Huggies commericial...adorable multi-ethnic babies cooing and whacking at each other. How cuuuute. Our flight to Lisbon was quick, and then we arrived at the Lisbon airport (blessedly smaller than Barcelona's) and were taken by a taxi driver to our hotel. We hit 100 kmh on this ride. I watched the speedometer. It was crazy, and he was blastic techno, and I felt like I was in a video game. It only cost 6 euros. Fuck yes.

Despite their cheap taxis, Lisbon was a more expensive city than Barcelona, but still quite pretty. In the morning we did a long tour that took us to various landmarks, including the tower, the Coach Museum, the big church (look at me remembering what all these things were called!), the old town, and the city square.

We learned that Lisbon is famous for stuff made out of cork, port wine, and for looking like San Francisco. They have cable cars (but they're yellow) and a bridge that looks strikingly similar to the Golden Gate, although much smaller. One of our taxi drivers was quite taken with the fact that I was actually from San Francisco and wanted to know how similar it was. Frankly not super similar, but the bridge was very cool to see. Lisbon is very dignified and quiet and picturesque, and a very interesting place to visit.

Ponte 25 de Abril (Portugal's take on the Golden Gate)

The Coach Museum

City Center square

However, most importantly something very very life-changing happened while we were there. Drumroll please...I SAW THE HUNGER GAMES!! IN ENGLISH!! Portugal shows all their films in the original form with Portuguese subtitles (which I guess makes sense, because dubbing in Portuguese seems like kind of a niche market) and that was really really exciting. I really enjoyed it, as a separate entity from the book. It was really concise and well done and interesting, and yes..quite. Very exciting, not overly emotional, just well done. It did make me want to read the books again though, especially Catching Fire. It better be the best movie ever made or I'm going to kill someone. With a bow and arrow. So it's fucking relevant.

The next morning, after enjoying reasonably-priced room service and figure skating on TV (where Mel determined that my future career as a figure-skating competition commentator is in the bag), we parted ways at the Lisbon airport, she to go back to Glasgow and then to head to Italy and me on the first of my flights/trains to Strasbourg.

To be continued!

The Doctor's Office Adventure

So. I've had another adventure along the lines of the Hair Dye Adventure. (See, I've stopped traveling for a while, so now you get to hear fun stories of my majestical daily life in Cannes.)

Right when I got back from Amsterdam 4 weeks ago I got hit with another nasty, nasty illness. Once again, the extensive exposure to public transportation and lack of soap at the hostel did me in, and I was out hard for like a week. Since then, I have still been blowing my nose. After the first week of illness, I felt better but it was just my sinuses, and I let it be because I figured my body was just getting everything out. Spring break--I'm still blowing my nose like crazy, but I feel fine. Allergies, I decide. I get back to Cannes this week and I'm like, oh, I'll be fine. IT'S THURSDAY AND THIS IS STILL HAPPENING. In my frustration and general shitty-feelingness I decided to go see our Resident Director, Saint Sandrine to see if I could make an appointment with the nurse, because this was just getting ridiculous.

The nurse at the College is a short woman with red hair and big coke-bottle glasses and is all types of crazy. She promptly informed me and Sandrine that it was probably allergies. Or I had an infection. But the usual doctor that comes to the College wouldn't be getting back until Monday, so Sandrine made me an appointment with the doctor across the street (which is apparently a thing). After class at around 6:30pm tonight Sandrine (who was also coughing and sneezing and sniffling) took me to the doctor across the street. The doctor has a little suite in a building next to the pharmacy which has both a doctor chair and a desk, and was a total sweetheart. Sandrine had to translate for me, but the woman basically asked my symptoms, pushed on my face, and essentially informed me that I definitely had a sinus infection. The cold followed by the allergies had caused/aggravated it, so she prescribed me antibiotics (pills and also little packets of powder you dissolve in water). The funny thing next is that she looks at Sandrine and is like, "You're sick too!!" And Sandrine is like, no no I'm not...unless..can you develop new allergies when you're old? And the doctor taught Sandrine about allergies and prescribed HER some medication, and we went to the pharmacy together and picked up our stuff. How cute. Once we got back I thanked Sandrine profusely, and she was like, "No, actually, thank you, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone to the doctor and would have to keep suffering!" And I said I hoped she'd feel better and went to go have dinner/take my first round of meds.

So another victory here in the world of Cannes. I have successfully procured medical care for myself and medication. Yayy. OH! And the best part is...the powder packets are called "MUCOMYST" as if that wasn't literally THE GROSSEST SHIT EVER.

But yeah! There you go. Survived my first visit to a French doctor. Hallelujah.

A List of Things I'm Homesick For

2 MONTHS!! TWO MONTHS DOWN SURVIVING IN CANNES! YES! Things are going well here, but today we were all kinds of wistful in our French class talking about important American foods/holidays/people/customs. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge things you miss. So here is a list of obnoxious shit I need to do ASAP upon my arrival home--

• A serious pedicure. My feet are just a hot mess. You never realize how much you appreciate all of the 25 nail salons in downtown Los Altos until there aren't any cheap ones.

• Shopping at Forever 21. I just want to buy like a hundred things for fifty dollars.

• VANS. I want it to be summer in California so I can buy and wear a new pair of fucking VANS. Like maybe you don't understand how bad I want this.

• Popcorn. Ugh. I'm literally going through withdrawal. It's a main staple of my diet.

• Marinated tofu and fresh (non-salad fixings) vegetables. #californiaproblems

• MY CARRRRRR!!! My caaarrrrrr....When I get back I swear to God I'm just going to sit in it and cry tears of joy onto its black leather interior that has that smell in the summer.

• Matzah. I know. But have you HAD matzah with butter? And cinnamon sugar? It's Passover. I miss it.

• I AM GOING TO ROLL BONNIE AROUND ON THE FLOOR FOR LIKE 6 HOURS.

• Cranberry juice. Everything good in the world is made with cranberries. This is my life philosophy.

• Seeing movies in English!! Mel and I went to see HUNGER GAMES IN ENGLISH finally when we were in Lisbon. Thank the lord. I thought it was well done. Neat and very enjoyable. I look forward to Catching Fire. It better be the best movie ever made or someone's gonna die.
• I'm going to get a Spirit Hood. And wear it everywhere. And you're going to deal with it. Haters gonna hate.
• Cold chocolate-covered peanut-putter filled pretzels out of the freezer and Nic Cage movies. Truly an unrivaled combination of the gods.
• A haircut. Oh please please please.
• Last but not least, ease of communication. Sorry if it seems like I've dropped off the face of the earth lately! I have been traveling for basically a month and now I'm back in Cannes hardcore through May. Send me letters! Send me postcards or videos or messages or whatever you wish!! I shall send you many back. :) Here is my address again if you need it:

Michaela Stewart

c/o AIFS

College International de Cannes
1 Avenue du Dr. Pascal

06400 Cannes. France

Major ridiculous stories to come soon from Spring Break! Miss you guys!