Am I really here?

In Cannes there are 300 days of sun, unfortunately our first day here was one of the sixty-five days without sun. In fact, it was thunder storming the entire afternoon and night, not allowing us to go out and explore the town. However, it did allow me unpack and organize everything in my 3^rd floor room. For those of you who don’t know: The 3^rd floor in France is equivalent to the 4^th floor in America and there are no elevators. The day I can walk up the stairs and not be out of breath will be a great day, and I better have outstanding legs by the time I leave in June.

The rain also gave me time to shower… Now let me tell you about this shower. Using a communal shower is not as bad as I thought it would be in terms of cleanliness and what not. The first problem is that the hot water is on the right and the cold water is on the left, it took me a couple of minutes in a freezing cold shower to figure this out. The other problem is that the lights in the bathroom are on a motion sensor and there is nothing scarier than the lights shutting off in the middle of your shower, in a foreign country while there is thunder and lightening outside. I felt like I was in a Hitchcock movie. Lucky for me I remembered that the lights were motion activated and just opened the door to my shower stall, waved my hand around, and there was light! My friends were thankful I was the first to shower, figure it out, and warn them.

These lovely motion sensor lights are located at the College International de Cannes, a university that specializes in French as a foreign language, offers a small selection of seminars and is my home for the next 4 months. Our campus is right across the road from the beach and the Mediterranean Sea and I can actually see and hear the waves crashing from the courtyard area. 

On our second day in Cannes we took advantage of our location and walked all along the sea to the center of town. The city of Cannes is filled with: beachfront restaurants, fancy looking people, high-end stores, beautiful hotels and large yachts and sailboats. On our walk we passed the Palais des Festivals and the famous red steps that will be filled with celebrities in a few months. We have a meeting on the Film Festival next week, so fingers crossed I will be able to get a fantastic internship.

The rest of the week consisted of getting accustomed to where everything is, going out to eat, finding some bars and starting our French class. After our placement exam on Monday morning we climbed up to the Notre-Dame de l’Esperance for a beautiful view of the entire city and the sea. Tuesday we found out the results of our placement exam and had our first language class. I actually placed higher than I expected (yay!) and the three-hour classes every morning have been going by quickly and are actually quite entertaining. For example, yesterday the Japanese students in my class had to describe Americans (in French) and this is what they thought of us:

      -Blue eyes

      -Long noses

      -Big boobs

      -Obama

      -Brad Pitt

      -Hamburgers

      -Beer

      -Guns

I was, and still am, speechless.

Our seminars don’t start until the 18^th but I will be taking a French Civilization class and an Art History class. I’m so excited to start these, especially because the Art History class includes many trips to museums all over the region. It is still unreal to me that this is where I am going to be living for the next four months and that after months of planning and stressing I am finally here and having the time of my life.

Tomorrow we are heading to Monaco and Eze so expect a post about those in the next couple of days!