There's treasure everywhere!

Oh, I'm so glad I went on the weekend excursion! It was awful for my hopes of improving in French, because 90% of my fellow participants were Americans. The remaining 10% were from Canada (English-speaking, of course), Venezuela (also English), Colombia (Spanish), Swedish (English), Greece (French) and Japan (French). Breaking the weekend down into days isn't elegant, but it's easier to summarize!

Friday - Left campus around 1:30pm aboard a gigantic tour bus. Throughout the trip I was very impressed with our driver's skill. One would certainly not guess looking at "Geezelle" that she was an adept tour bus conductrice - I couldn't believe some of the corners she maneuvered around, the bridges we squeezed through and the narrow streets we barreled down. Most of the Americans I met were from Swarthmore or Calvin. There's a girl from Heritage there, but none of them knew her. We arrived rather late into Nice - the bus took a mountainous route and it was totally worth it - the scenery was absolutely incredible! I took a few haphazard pictures through the bus windows; I need to peruse my camera memory card to find good ones to post... I took almost 300. In Nice, we had a communal dinner at "Le Strasbourg." It wasn't too great, but it filled me up. I went out with five guys and a girl to explore the streets of Nice.

Our hotel was about a half-mile from the beach, so we headed straight for it, and then went to the Marche aux Fleurs, a crowded avenue running along the boardwalk (called the Quai des Etats-Unis) with more flower vendors, street merchants and cafes than you can count. The rest of the group was intent on becoming very intoxicated, but the memory of my previous Friday night was still fresh in my mind, so I satisfied myself with an Orangina (like Fanta, except with a splash of semi-real orange juice) and some pseudo-sour patch candies. I loved the beach and Mediterranean. There was a full moon and it illuminated the entire Baie des Anges. I rolled up my jeans and stood in the tide for almost 15 minutes. We made our way back to the hotel and arrived at 1:06am... 6 minutes after the close of the KFC right next to the hotel. ARGH. I had such a craving for American food, too!

Saturday - What a busy day! I woke up early in order to go on a morning trip to St. Paul de Vence. It's a little commune, nestled amidst medieval fortifications, perched on a hill about 25 minutes from Nice. Artists have retreated there to seek solitude for a couple centuries and it was instantly clear why. I've never seen such tiny winding streets before! They were practically minuscule and the surrounding views, once you went to the top of the fortifcations, beautiful. You just feel protected and shielded from everything around you, but the sea is still very visible, even on a cloudy day. I had lunch at the Atmosphere Cafe in Nice. It was not very good, mostly because every course was somehow ruined: unidentifiable vegetables, overcooked salmon, and a hair in my ice cream. Ugh.

The trip to Monaco in the afternoon fixed everything, though. I loved the oceanography museum MarineLand in Monte Carlo! The royal family's favored harpoons were prominently displayed in the historical section of the museum (the zoo part was also very interesting, but the Italians were horribly rude and I had to calm down a British fellow who was getting especially irate at one bumbling Italian who had barged in front of him while he was videotaping), along with a 1911 picture of Prince/King Albert sitting down in his boat while his Irish captain Patrick O'Leary (I'm just making that name up, I don't remember it) aimed the harpoon gun at a whale less than 20 feet from the boat. Impressive photography! We went to the casino afterwards, and I gambled... in the slots room that I snuck into. You had to be 21 to even approach the tables, I was told, and I didn't want to tempt fate by ending up in a Monaco prison (do those even exist? the whole country is only 2 square kilometers!). I changed five euros into goofy 50-cent tokens, quickly lost almost every spin but walked out with three jangling in my pocket as souvenirs. The cars outside were a comfortable sight. I've never seen so many Bentleys and Ferraris in one place!

We returned to Nice rather late, and I had another mediocre dinner with the group from Calvin. Most of them were tired and headed to bed after dinner, but I stayed out with a few. We went to an Irish pub that closed at... midnight?! Argh. Then, we found a cafe (I don't think it has a name, it was just two wacky symbols) and waited 30 minutes for drinks. We paid as soon as possible, because we were worried we'd never see the waiter again, and headed to the Metal Cafe where other kids from the group were. Unfortunately, that closed at 2am, right when we arrived, so we walked a short ways and went to L'Escalier. I hate to continue the trend of negativity, but it too was pretty mediocre! Its only attraction? Open until 5am. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign... if you have to keep your club open until 5am to make money, you might want to re-think your business plan! We didn't stay that late, though, and left for the hotel around 3:45am. Because it was raining out, a "bathtub party" was planned and then executed jn a 5th floor room. It sounds really exotic, but it was relatively simple: put on a bathing suit, go in a bathroom, crowd around a full bathtub and struggle for control of the shower nozzle, thus soaking the entire bathroom (and its occupants!) in the process. Luckily that was our last night in the hotel... I knew it was time to head to my room when I fell asleep during the blackjack and Indian poker afterwards. Before I collapsed I looked at the time... 4:42am.

Sunday - Somehow, I woke up to my cellphone alarm at 8:37am. I roused myself at the thought of the Henri Matisse museum, and hurried downstairs for the meager hotel "breakfast;" bread, butter and one tiny cup of orange juice OR hot chocolate OR hot tea. I met up with some fellow art lovers and we took Bus 17 to Cimiez, where we spent a little over an hour in the Matisee museum. I loved it. My favorite piece was "Descente du Croix" - sixteen or eighteen white ceramic tiles with some sort of black paint illustrating Jesus' removal from the cross. We had to run to catch the bus back to Nice, barely making the 12:45pm deadline in time. The bus took us to Antibes, where we waited 15 minutes or so until 2pm for the Picasso museum to open. It was also enjoyable (but I preferred Matisse... shhh!), particularly so because it was free! We lucked out and traveled during "le weekend du patrimonie," when all the museums across the country, I believe, are completely gratuit. My favorite piece was "Joie de Vivre," mostly because I eavesdropped on the tour guides explaining it. Antibes also had quaint, tiny streets, and ancient fortifications, but it lacked the allure and intimacy of St. Paul de Vence. My three scoops of ice cream, chocolate, strawberry and "straciatella," like mint chocolate chunk, were expensive... but delicious. I picked up a liter of water for a euro in a little store. As I walked out, I spotted the same water in a cooler and asked if I could just grab that instead -- nope, the water in the cooler was more expensive, because it was "colder." I laughed and contented myself with the minutely warmer, but more affordable water.

Cannes was the next stop, and I worked up the courage to go swimming. "Brr" can't even begin to express the near-Arctic temperature. However, once completely submerged and swimming vigorously, it felt more temperate, like Lake Michigan in December. I saw the "Palais des Festivals" where, I believe, many of the important film premieres are held. I walked on the permanent red-carpet and marveled at the ongoing Audi A8 show. The building itself was pretty non-descript, and would've been considered downright ugly if I hadn't been distracted by all the colorful movie posters everywhere. The bus ride back to Grenoble was quicker, but I want to completely forget the "dinner" I had at a rest-stop we stopped at. I've never had such awful food. I must have subconsciously anticipated the culinary horrors, because I bought a 100 gram Tolberone bar at the gift shop before the meal, and tore into it once I'd tasted the "food" from the cafeteria. My Orangina and the packaged, sealed yogurt were the only redeeming factors. The "steak" and its "sauce" were disgusting, along with the "carrot" garnish and accompanying "fruit cup."

The bus arrived back in Grenoble around 12:40am, but I opted to stay on instead of calling a taxi - the bus dropped me off 500 feet from my friends' apartment in Echirolles! Hooray!

I did little today - responded to an apartment lead, did some laundry, went to the first basketball practice. My body immediately felt the toll of having exercised little for the past four weeks... I gulped down water like a madman. I took the tram back, and talked with Lee, a Chinese guy also at the practice. He was quite nice and offered to teach me Chinese if I aided him with his English. Hooray! Beijing 2008, here I come! After he got off, I transferred trams and spotted two other guys on the new tram who were also at practice. I talked with one, a French fellow who looked like Carrot Top, until he got off, and then conversed with his friend Patrick from Mauritius until he had to leave. My conversation with them caught the attention of another guy on the tram, and he came over to talk to me - Ahmad from Lebanon was very nice and it turned out that he had had basketball practice that night, too, but with a different intramural team!

Some sort of verbal altercation between a young French guy in his 20s and an older-looking scraggly fellow turned into a physical confrontation. I tried, along with other passengers, to separate the two, and to calm them down. I pulled the "emergency" lever after the young guy pushed the older fellow down and started kicking him in the head. Yikes. The conductor ambled back and asked who pulled the lever (the two had since been separated, and were just slinging insults back and forth). I said it was me, and he asked if I wanted the police called. I asked the older fellow, and he said, No, so the conductor didn't blink an eye, turned off the alarm and went back to continue the conducting. I felt like an international observer. The other passengers who helped restrain the two got off and I stayed on until the end of the tram line (only two stops after mine) because the young guy kept menacing the older fellow. They went separate ways, and I assumed everything was well, so I doubled back and now am preparing to head to bed - the first day of (real) class is tomorrow!