Danny's life in France

isabelle thought it was about time that i cut my hair. so she made me meet her at 9am yesterday morning to take me to the place where she gets her hair cut. and, well, i got my hair cut. after that, she and i went out for breakfast (coffee and croissant). i then went back home and slept, read, slept, read, all this in the midst of a HOT day. today, i got up and ranya and i made maccaroni and cheese and cream of wheat for breakfast. then it was more homework time. then ankica, ranya and i all went to snacksomos for some dinner. on the way there, ranya had a run-in with someone whose umbrella she lost 6 months ago. see, the thing is, the umbrella wasn't his in the first place...it was his friend's! he had borrowed it from him. when ranya told the guy that she had lost it, he told her no big deal. now, 6 months later, he wants it back because he says his friend wants it back. ranya called the friend and he told her that it was no big deal - they weren't friends anymore. however, the guy that she got it off of says that his friend needs it back. what a tool. and what's even worse - he told ranya that he wanted the umbrella back PRONTO and it's a longchamp umbrella - at nearly $70!! what a prick this guy is. so ankica and i stook up for ranya and just told him to go...well, yeah. and in other news, i've been watching the wicked weather back home. even though there are lots of tornados, be thankful!! i miss them - we don't have them here. but on july 9 i'll be home, thank goodness...

yesterday i got up and i don't remember what else. but i DO remember that i went to sit down at a café to have a drink and read some for frieda's class when all of the sudden i realized that i had left without my wallet. that means no money. i was 55 cents short. the guy wasn't too happy when i told him that that was all i had and that i would have to bring him the rest later. i mean, it's not like i do it to him (or in general) all the time. so i ran home, changed into some jeans because the wind had kinda picked up and i knew that isabelle and i would be sitting outside somewhere having dinner, and then came back into town to give the waiter his money. he seemed a bit surprised that i came back. isabelle and i then went to Fly, a Lowes slash Office Max Furniture store and picked out a desk for her computer. after going to dinner, i went home and got up at 7am this morning to be at her place bright and early to go get the desk. since she doesn't have a car nor a drivers license, i drove the delivery truck (they rent one out). man was i nervous since it was a big vehicle!! but we got it all inside ok, the rental truck back ok, and then spent the next 6-7 hours putting the damned thing together! but at least it's up now. now that i'm back home, i took a shower and am getting ready to go to jackie's and sara's for some drinks (not too many, though) since jackie is going back to indiana TOMORROW!! how lucky is she?!?

yesterday i slept in, got up, showered and then went into town. stevie and i went to have a drink to catch up a bit since we hadn't seen each other for quite sometime. we realized how much work we have left to do here in france AND to prepare for law school. i had a splitting headache for the rest of the evening. however, it was a nice day. summer is definitely here. but i miss good old indiana thunderstorms. you all might be saying how much you hate 'em but believe me, you'd miss them if you spent a year away from home! today, i got up and got a call from kristin asking if i wanted to go to the beach in marseille. so i went. it was her, me, gena, justin, stevie's mom and one of stevie's friends from indiana that's here visiting. it was kinda cool. i mean, the sun was out but on the beach there was a bit of a breeze. it was still nice, though. i went into the water twice. it was so clear! the beach had a nice steep drop off and you were almost immediately over your head, but you could see down to the bottom where the sand was. that way you could see what was right underneath you. after coming back, i ran home to shower and then went to our end of the year dinner for the program. blah blah blah. we all pitched in 5 euros to get our secretary, our on-site director, jeanine feral and frieda (the resident director) gifts. liz suggested we get them all gift certifficates to the spa here in aix. i didn't want my name going on anything to frieda, but i did anyway, just for the group's sake. and i finally figured out why she doesn't like me. i'm too french!! frienda, who studied in paris and is basically french, doesn't like the french language or the culture!! then why the F is she teaching french, then? it makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. anyway, i found out that the bitch doesn't like me because i have too many french mannerisms. well, tough shit. she's going to dock my grade for being in france and speaking as they do and acting as they do (in some aspects). well, piss on her. she's going to get an earful just as soon as i get my final grade from her so she can't give me a bad grade for telling her just how unprofessional she really is. whew. on that note, i'm going to bed.

so i got up wednesday morning and left for cannes. cody and i were on the same train and with the same host family, too. when we got there we went and had a drink while we waited for the others to get to cannes. once we found our host families, we set off for the houses to get all settled in. then all of the students got together to watch a movie on the beach. they showed low-class movies to the low-class people. then for the next two days i was on the beach with jessie, rachael and cody. it was soooooooooooooo nice!! we even went out to this little island (had to take a boat out there with a glass bottom in it). but there were TONS of jellyfish swiming around everywhere. i tried to snorkel, but couldn't really get into it. however, i did buy the material to snorkel because it was $9! can't beat that!! i didn't really see any famous people. i did, however, see lots of rich hotels, the famous red carpet, TONS of luxury boats and cars, etc. oh, get this! so caitlin and erin got a flyer on the street to go to the screening of a film called 'suicide trip.' so we went. they warned us that the film wasn't done yet but they wanted to bring it to cannes to get young people's opinions. it talks about 3 young guys who had rough times in society and did a bunch of drugs. well, you can just imagine where the story goes from there. but it talks about all the youth violence in the US. they then had us take notes as we watched it, fill out a questionnaire and then they video taped our reactions to the movie. they even fed us and gave us t-shirts, too! it was really cool. and it was at the hilton, one of the more upper-scale hotels in cannes. but the thing about the cannes film festival is that it used to be a time where the stars would come out and interact with and appreciate their fans. not anymore. the stars stay hidden and hidden well. so they suck their fans for the money and fame and glory but don't really come out and thank them. celebrities are just asses. that's what i learned this past week. hence the reason i didn't care to go see any of their films, even though i DID have a badge to get me into certain events. i preferred to spend it on the beach. and we couldn't have asked for better beach weather. anyway, in other news, isabelle had a big picnic at her mom's yesterday. so we went there and ate TONS of good food, drank and just had an overall good time. i ended up staying the night and coming home this morning. i had a REALLY REALLY good time. cedric and jean-claude were so drink that they just jumped onto the wall of the house (outside) and started climbing it! for no particular reason!! jean-claude got up so high that we had to go get a ladder to get him down. isabelle and i just sat behind and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. now that i'm back, i just took a shower, unpacked and am now writing this long post to my website. i think i'm going to go take a nap since isabelle and i didn't sleep much last night - we sat up most of the night reformatting jean-claude hard drive on his computer. it was a long process but it's finally done. and he's got windows xp now. ok, i'm going now.

ok, well, i can't remember where i last left off, so i'll just start with some interesting things that have gone on. oh yeah, by the way, our internet is back up. we never thought he'd get it back up because the dude's out of money and was probably going to screw us all if we hadn't have said something. but last weekend we went to cannes for the day (the cannes film festival). that was really cool. but just way too many people. and the night before we all went out to a bar and just had a drink and danced to CCR. an american classic rock group. good times. ummm...all of my classes are over now. today was the last day. but i skipped classes today to do laundry and stuff to prepare for yet another trip to cannes. see, last weekend it was through the program - we didn't have to pay for it. well, we did but indirectly. tomorrow i'm leaving to spend 5 days in cannes rubbing elbows with the stars as we all will have badges to get into everything. the weather here in the south of france is finally back to what it should be - HOT!!! so i'll be spending quite a bit of time at the beach. ranya, avery, kirstin and i made mexican food tonight. it was reeaaaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy good. little tastes of home. aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd...there was a bomb in town at 330 this morning. windows busted out EVERYWHERE. don't know who did it and why. but yeah, a bomb here in small pee-dunk aix-en-provence. isn't that crazy?!?!? ok, i need to go upstairs and pack and go to bed. but now that internet is back up i'll be able to post on a daily basis again. well, not until sunday, though, since i'm going to be gone. oh, yeah, i'm leaving aix on the 24th of june. i reserved my tgv (bullet train) tickets the other day. HALLELUJAH!! i can't wait to come home. i'm having a GREAT time in france but enough's enough. i wanna go home. so with all of this in mind, nite, y'all!!

where to begin? the reason i havent posted since i left to go on break is for the fact that internet at my place has been down since i got back from break. the crooked guy running the joint said that someone tapped into his system and ordered 1500€ worth of products off of the internet. hes been saying for a week now that it should be back up and running any day because wanadoo, the isp, had to change his code. ha. the guy is so crooked that hes probably got absolutely no plans whatsoever to open the labs back up and just pocket our money for internet that we should be able to use for the next two months. were all pretty pissed about it. but oh well. well just have to wait and see. in other news, the thursday night before break i went to stevie's to watch movies to stay up all night since i had to be checked in for my flight at 605am. on the flight up to paris to meet my grandparents, it was SO INCREDIBLY turbulent and what was even worse was the fact that there was this LOUD, LOW-PITCHED grinding noise that came from the engine. i was so scared i almost filled up the in-flight burp bag!!! anyway, we landed safely and so did my grandparents. we spent a week in paris and then took the train down here to provence for a week. the weather in paris wasnt good at all. it was mostly cloudy, windy and rainy, not to mention cool. but at least we were able to see almost everything in paris. then we took the train to provence. going from the bullet train station in aix to miramas (elyane and christians house) we got lost. i had never driven in france before and what was even worse was that it was at night. i had to call elyane because somehow i ended us up at the marseille airport. she gave us directions, though. good thing i had my cell phone. in the south, we went to camargue, a place with wild horses, pink flamingos, etc. we also went into the alpilles, small hills outside of marseille. we just drove through there and enjoyed the scenery. the weather down here was great, though. then christian took us to marseille. i found some really cool beaches there so i think a couple of us are going there this friday because the weathers supposed to be nice. ummm...yeah, it was really good seeing papa and andy again. then we took the train back up to paris the night before they flew home. when they left for the airport, i got a bit homesick because i had a piece of home, something familiar and it was gone. oh well...two months more and ill be home. after they left, i went to see roman in italy. i had fun, but was exhausted from the past two weeks of break. we didnt do much, but still had fun. then that sunday i got up at six to start the trip home. three hour train ride to milan, get from train station to airport and then from there it was a good 8 hours or so. i flew from milan to marseille via paris with a 6 hour layover in paris. anyway, now that im back, ive spent the ENTIRE week at the office writing papers. now that theyre pretty much finished, im just chillin'. ummmm...went back to the hospital for a TB test. negative, of course. what else...nothing, really. just a bunch of little things but too numerous to put in one days post. but were all going to attack souheil (the crooked internet guy) if he doesnt get the internet back up and running shortly because honestly, how long does it take for wanadoo to change his 'code?' not that long. so we all think hes fibbing to us. anyway, ill post again sometime...soon, hopefully. but ive still got my cell if anyone needs to get ahold of me here in france...later