Cannes, Part Deux

Bonjour!

Translation of that subject, you ask? I don't speak French. In the slightest. At all. Hardly a word. My approach of speaking in Spanish with a French accent has failed miserably. However, I have been named most willing to make a total ass out of herself in order to try to speak French by the bulk of the people on my program. Which I have chosen to take as a compliment.

Cannes has been fairly entertaining, but I am tres excited to get to Paris. We are living in dorms here and I think we may all recall my slight distaste for the dorm life in beautiful Ann Arbor. It's not much better in a foreign country. Cliques have formed rapidly, alcohol is hidden in all the rooms, and gossip is the way to bond during breakfast. I seem to have a habit of becoming the one who hangs out with all the different cliques and the one in whom people confide, so I often shrug my shoulders knowingly during the gossip talks as people surmise about who is hooking up with who and pretend to be older and wiser. There is one girl on my program who is 26 and we like to sit and talk about how old we are, and how we never thought we would live in dorms again, and is it possible that 19 is so drastically different from 23 or are do we just think it is? Deep thoughts, I know. We have a cafeteria which yesterday served, I kid you not, a slice of turkey lunchmeat for dinner. With fried balls of mashed potatoes. I mean, we are in France, at the very least give us a baguette with that turkey, ya know? The ladies in the cafeteria yell at you if you sit at the wrong table or use a glass instead of a bowl (that's right, a bowl) to drink your coffee in the morning. In short, I feel great about no longer living in a French version of Markley Hall.

France is in the midst of the biannual sales which I have really been enjoying because apparently, people here are tall and believe in rational prices for jeans. It's been thrilling. I bought, and I believe the Ogle side of the fam will be proud at the size of this bargain, two pairs of really nice pants that are really long for the low cost of 10 euro. That is two pairs of pants, for 10 euro. Let's take a moment to breathe in the glory of it all. Here in the land of the tall however, they have small feet. I have learned one other phrase in French which is "Do you have women's shoes in size 42". I also have learned to understand the answer, which is "Non" barely able to be spoken as the sales person laughs at the thought of someone wearing a size 42 shoe, which is an 11 in the glorious United States. You may recall that I had similar problems in Italy, so I was emotionally prepared when one sales person told me (via my friend who speaks French) that I had no chance of finding size 42 shoes in Cannes, but I might in Paris where they have abnormally large feet. So there's hope for me yet.

Anyway, I believe that is the highlight of my little life in France thus far. I just made a blog http://jaimlefromage.blogspot.com/ so that if you felt really passionate about the goings on of my life, you could keep really up to date (although I haven't actually written anything on it). I'm also trying to upload photos to it but I seem to be completely technologically inept so it may be awhile.

I miss you all and would love to hear how life in the States (or Korea, or Japan, or Chile) is going.

Love,
Alice