Little Miss Sunshine

PHRASE OF THE DAY
J'en ai marre: I'm fed up.

BACKSTREET'S BACK...ALRIGHT!!

I'm baaack!! And my computer's baaack!! And I'm laying on my baaack!!

It's been too long! How've you been? Good?
That's good.

. . .

The kids? The kids are good?
That's good.

Look, this is awkward for me too. Let's just embrace the temporary separation, and jump right back into things, 'kay?

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So how long has it been since I first went to Eze? Honestly, I couldn't even tell you. Well, unless I went back through my previous entries to see where I wrote about it, but, as the teacher, I reserve the right to tell you to look it up on your own time.

A little bit about Eze (as I assume you've never heard of the place outside of this blog):

*20-30 minute bus ride from the Nice port

*VERY small medieval town up in the mountains overlooking the water

*Main attractions: castle, perfumery, grocery store, bus stop

*The castle--> def. : "a fortress woven with narrowly winding cobblestone paths along which small rooms and chambers have been converted into art galleries, shops, and cafés."

*There was a garden on the top of the castle with a 360˚ view of the surrounding landscape.

PHOTO MONTAGE!!! (beautiful, right?)

But, wait. You think this trip to Eze is over?? Oh, my naïve friend. You have no idea. See, because I was alone, and there's always always always a greater propensity to do stupid stupid things when you're alone, I decided to partake in the well-known "Chemin Frederic Nietzsche," a path that Nietzsche enjoyed walking when he lived in the area a long long time ago. (while he was writing Zarathustra, I might add . . . )

Avid reader, let me save you the trouble. If you don't have proper hiking attire, a walking stick, and a can-do spirit, DO NOT, and I repeat because some of you weren't listening, DO NOT choose this activity. I cannot stress this enough. Take a moment to remember what Nietzsche wrote about. Chew it over with a Twix. This is not Henry David Thoreau's favorite path. This is the path of the man who argued vehemently that there was no God. Do you realize, avid reader what you're getting yourself into?? Probably not! Because this is the sign:

"Look, Jeff! The bus station/beach is right over there!
Oh this way'll be much faster."

There should be a little mini-sign underneath that says:

"Hey! You, looking at the sign. Are you serious?? I'm sorry, do you not remember riding the bus up the mountain? I do. Are you having trouble putting 2 and 2 together? Let me give you a minute...

Okay, here's a hint, you're walking to the BEACH. From here. From the mountain. You're walking down a mountain. To get to the beach. In flip flops.
No view is worth that. Turn around."

Well, as is obvious, that sign wasn't there. So I did what any old Jeff would do. I traversed the mountain. In my sandals. The views were pleasant.

Somewhere . . . a sad hippie has lost his drums.

By the end, I discovered walking backwards was less painful on my toes.

So that . . . that was fun.

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So, if I remember correctly, that was on a Thursday. Then, that Saturday, I went to Eze. Again.

Buuut! (before I'm labeled "lame" and "depressing") This time I had company! Six other girls from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and England came with me! And since I had visited the area two days earlier, they immediately deemed me the expert on EVERYTHING Eze-related. So, as the pathways are woven somewhat randomly in the castle, every time we came to a fork they would just stare at me til I decided which way was best. You know, for us locals.

PHOTO MONTAGEEE #2 !!!

Favorite picture of the day: we tried valiantly to get
a jumping picture with the camera timer.

I told you there would be a lot of pictures. Didn't I? Didn't I tell you that?

Well, at any rate, I will stop here. Take some time. Absorb these images. Commit them to memory. I'll come back later to write about Cannes and Antibes. Well, mostly just Antibes. There's not really anything special about Cannes. Really, the only interesting thing about Cannes is that, contrary to popular belief, there's not really anything interesting about Cannes.

Also I just discovered Muammar Gaddafi is dead. See how informed I am?

Amitiés :)

The Librarian

The library closes in 30 minutes. "World's Fastest Blog Post" . . . GO!

1. Helen and I went to Cannes this past Saturday . . . kind of an "on the fly" situation. We discovered there's really not much to do in Cannes. Just a lot of stores, a beach, and movie star things painted on the sides of buildings. Other than that? Meh.

2. Still haven't heard from the Apple store people about my computer. Thus why my blog posts have been few and far between. And why there have been no pictures. I'm going to call tomorrow. Be prepared though. When I get my computer back, you will be on picture OVERLOAD. I'm warning you in advance.

3. Helen's been feeling REAL crappy these past few weeks so we took her by the hospital last night to find out what's going on. Still waiting to hear back. Feel better, Helen!!

4. Blackberry also stopped working this week. Just started back today. Seriously, everything electronic I touch dies. Thanks, Mom.

5. Oh! I won 2 tickets to see Jukebox the Ghost next week in Marseille!!! WHAT! I'm SOO freaking excited, it's not even funny. They wrote on their facebook page that they were giving away free tickets, so I requested to go to Marseille. Then their manager sent me a facebook message saying I would have 2 free tickets under my name at will call!! WHAAAT??? Now...who to take.

7 minutes left.

6. My sociolinguistics teacher is crazy. And not in a good way. Not in the way that my theatre professor is crazy. No. We've been reading a case study where researchers were studying the different ways people in New York pronounce the letter /r/. So the past 2 classes she's had me stand up in front of the class and say "fourth floor" over and over again because I'm an Anglophone and no one else can do it. Then she wanted me to pronounce it like an English person would. So I did. And she turned to the class and said how horrible my English accent was! Well, yes. I'm not from England. Thankfully a super awesome girl in the back told the prof she studied in England and that it wasn't actually that bad. Thank you, super awesome girl in the back. Thank you.

Librarian is kicking me out.

Stupid computer.

The Fly

There I was. Cowering in the doorway with my bag of reasonably priced groceries tucked unceremoniously under my arm. Trembling. Staring. Not yet fully comprehending the magnitude of the security breach. The horror that had overtaken my room.

I knew something had to be done. And fast. So I threw the groceries down onto my bed, and I just started swatting and clapping and smacking and squishing and pounding and flapping and whacking and mushing. Throwing caution to the wind. Like an angry baboon with territorial issues. (My neighbors probably think I'm mentally unstable. Or that I participate in tribal war dances.)

But I didn't care. It was as if something primal had come over me. It started out as a simple measure to rid my room of this infestation, and manifested into something much much more than that. I started calculating my moves to maximize deaths per swat. I had mapped out coordinates and pinpointed 4 or 5 popular "resting locations" where striking was most lucrative.

I knew I was out of control when I stopped wiping my hands before killing again.

On this day, I straight up murdered upwards of 50 gnats.

It was gnat genocide. It was gnatocide.

Moral of the story: Don't leave your window open, even if the blind is closed.

The Luck of the Irish

Felix felicis. I'm officially the luckiest girl in the world.
They're going to repair my computer. For free.

I didn't believe it when the guy told me. Honestly I'm still kind of in shock.

So I decided it would be smart to take part of the FORTUNE I'm saving and purchase a hard case. Methinks that's a good idea.

Thus, I won't have a computer for a couple of days. (Right now I'm using one of the computers in the student library--it's nauseatingly frustrating.)

Qll the keys qre in different plqces qnd I cqnmt for the life of ,e re,e,ber zhere to find everything1

Every word is an uphill battle to not sound like an idiot.

Also I counted 9 bug bites on the top of my right foot. Sorry if that's gross, but it's pretty much ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT right now.

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Obviously I cannot upload my photos from Eze at the moment seeing as I have no computer, so I'll have to continue postponing that . . . post. I know, you're all really torn up about it.

This weekend I think some friends of mine are going to travel around to a few nearby areas like Cannes, St. Tropez, and maybe even Grasse. So that could lend itself to being super duper fun.

I apologize for the lack of interesting stories today. My mom told me over skype that she could tell when I was sad because my blog posts were funnier. So I guess you can just take this to mean everything is okay right now?

I'll be sure to give myself a paper cut before my next post.

Until then (although now I'm not really looking forward to it),

Amitiés :)

Zoolander

My computer fell off my bed last night. Now the screen is messed up. I'm miserable.

Found an Apple Store on the other side of the airport. Going tomorrow with Helen. Hopefully they can fix it. Hopefully it won't be too expensive.

Remember that scene from Zoolander where they look for the files "inside" the computer by smashing it to pieces? That's how I feel. Sort of.

(Eze was really fun yesterday, but more info about that will have to come later. As I am sad. And my computer is screwy.)

Eat, Pray, Love

PHRASE OF THE DAY

J'ai la tête qui tourne: I'm dizzy (literally "I have the head who turns.")

Fact:

Linguistics is a girl major. No matter where you go.

Also, I had NO idea that this week had already gone by. Seriously. It's not even like I was that busy; that's totally not what I'm implying.

This is NOT what I mean:

"Oh em gee! It's Saturday already?? Oh where did the week goooo?? hahaha (sigh) I guess I'm just so busy with all my new friends and suitors that I just lost track of time and have neglected to inform the interested public of my constant whereabouts. Oh they must all be so bored without knowing where I am at all times, but when you have this whole new life and all new friends, it's hard to keep track of the old ones! Hahahahaha xoxo"

Ew. Gross. No.

THIS is what I mean:

"Oh, god, it's Saturday already?? Wha . . . what happened to the week? Seriously! I mean, I know I've been going to class, and I slept through half of Friday, but this still doesn't even make sense . . . I'm so confused. Plus, I've been working on this blog post for a week now, but I keep falling asleep before I can finish it. Also I just ate part of a package of dry noodles. Didn't feel like cooking them. Now my teeth hurt."

So I apologize for being semi MIA this week. I hope you'll understand.

But enough of that. This past weekend was pretty busy even though I didn't ever wind up actually traveling outside Nice (which was my original plan); but I still made the most of a Plan B scenario. And somehow I managed to take more pictures than I know what to do with. Lots of sorting and sifting has occurred.

1. *SATURDAY*

Saturday stuck (somewhat) to our Plan A schedule. Well, it tried, at least. ‘A’ for effort, Saturday.

-At about noon, Helen and I left the dorms for Vieux Nice (Old Nice) to find the elusive open-air markets we'd heard so much about. Apparently they set up these huge markets everyday from 7-1 (except Monday). Flowers, vegetables, fruits, preserves, books, posters, etc, etc, etc.

EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

It's incredible.

And totally not what I've come to find is the "French" way of operating a business.

--SIDE NOTE--

On the way there, an older American/Canadian touristy couple got on the bus with their city maps and fanny packs. They were confused where to put their bus passes in the machine, so I showed them. Then, afterward, the woman walked up to me and started shouting "Chagall?! Chagall?!" while pointing at her map. At first I thought she was choking. Then I realized she was looking for the Chagall museum. But, as I am not French, I had no idea. Thankfully another lady near us was able to help. But what we should take away from this story is that she thought I was French, and it was funny and awesome.

When we finally found the market, we made a bee line (b line?) for Thérésa's socca stand (pretty famous I think). Socca is a flat breadlike thing made out of chickpeas, lots of olive oil, salt, and probably other things. But, for our purposes here, these are the most important ingredients.

Google-image search "socca" & you will see Thérésa.
That's how famous she is.

It was really salty, and mushier than I thought it was going to be. But also delicious.

Veggie market (left), Book market (right)

They had many leather bound books.
They smelled of rich mahogany . . . and musk.

Vieux Nice is adorable.

-A woman asked Helen and me (in English) how to get to some store thing in Place Masséna. We helped her, and she commented on how great Helen's English was. It was good to get that kind of positive affirmation.

-Then, that night, we went out to a fancy shmancy restaurant for dinner. Playing it very French, we didn't end up getting seated until well after 10pm. But it was DELICIOUS, and TOTALLY worth it.

Yeah, I got my own pizza.

2. *SUNDAY*

So, yeah, we were out really late on Saturday night . . . thus, precipitating the necessity of a Plan B. Since Helen didn't feel like going out (or really, being awake), our plans to travel to Eze sort of fell through. Twas a bummer.

But! Have no fear! Plan B is here!

So I decided to take a bus up to the Matisse Museum over in a part of Nice called Cimiez (my new favorite part of Nice). It's very neighborhoody, and the buildings are all SO different, it kind of just looks like everyone got to draw their own house.

"I like blue. Let's paint the shutters blue."

"Oh yeah? Well, I preferr black and yellow polka dots!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

(Maybe less angry)

The greatest part about this trip though? I went for the Matisse Museum, but found SO MUCH MORE.

Turns out, there's an archeology museum, ancient Roman bath ruins, a giant park, a monastery, some gardens, and a huge cemetery in addition to the museum! Such a great time.

a. So first I went to the archeology museum. It was really lame. Needs revamping.

b. Then, I went out to the bath ruins. They were awesome.

The weather was less than perfect. Eventually a guard came and told me I needed to come back inside because of the storms.

This was the main cold bath. On the left side there are 2 of the hot bath areas,
and the lavatories are in the foreground. Look how informed I am.

Backside. Stuck my hand through a fence to get this money shot.

c. Then I wandered around the park for a bit. Even though it was drizzly out, there were still people all in the park: older couples playing bocce ball, preschoolers enjoying a birthday party, 20-somethings playing volleyball. It was so great.

Then I wandered into a more secluded part of the park, and over a big stone wall, I saw this:

Naturally, I had to see what it was.

d. This was the monastery. It was breathtaking. I wasn't sure if you were allowed to take pictures on the inside. So, obviously, I snuck a quick one (but it didn't really come out that well.)

Say what you want about Catholics,
but these buildings are spectacular.

e. Theeeen, I looked around the outside of the monastery and found a HUGE cemetery wrapped around the back looking off the mountain. WHAT.

As I was the only one there, I took advantage of this time and took a MILLION pictures (even some with my timer so I could be in them).

Cemetery Montage! (is this morbid?)

I'm not doing these pictures justice by making them so tiny. If you click on them, they get bigger. (I mean, if you're interested.)

f. I FINALLY left the cemetery, after about an hour of frolicking amongst the dead, and headed over to the gardens on the OTHER side of the monastery.

Garden montage!

Not as awesome as the "Cemetery montage," I know.

 g. Finally I made it to the Matisse Museum, but I was so tired and hungry, that I rushed through it and went home.

Matisssssse

Who knew there was so much to do in Cimiez?

(Also a sketchy woman walked slowly up to me and said she thought I was her daughter. No . . . I'm not your daughter . . . hahaha . . . let go of my arm.)

3. I also went to Eze this Thursday by myself, but since I'm leaving to go (again) in 2 minutes with actual people, I figured I would combine those trips into 1 post . . . later.

Sooooo until next time . . . whenever that may be.

Amitiés :)