En ville

May 28-30

I’ll probably lump a lot of days together at times, so try to keep up. :\

I’ve definitely not had the fire under my ass to wake up the past few days, but I have enjoyed and looked forward to class every day so far. I get up my usual hour and a half early like I do at UGA, but that means 9:00 am here and I am so loving sleeping in. I think I’ll go to the café across the street every other day for breakfast—the amazing cappuccinos and crowds of UGA kids are quite a draw, but I’m blowing through my spending money! The lady at the café is starting to recognize me, I think, and is always extra friendly when I ask for extra napkins or spoons in French.

Oh, on an extra fun and earth-friendly note, I’ve survived fifteen days so far without drying my hair. When I put my usual leave-in conditioners in it, it turns out fine! I’mma definitely stop drying my hair so much in the States and make Al Gore proud. :P

Nate’s class is intense and laid-back at the same time. We take turns reading the best reviews (gonna brag real quick: all of my reviews have been marked “read”!) about each film and then discussing them as a class. I love hearing how everyone attaches to a different part of the movie—amateur acting, insufferable editing, an innovative directorial technique… Nate also has this amazing way of touching on everything I want to talk about, like what I’m thinking but what I haven’t found words for yet. I hope a bit more experience (OK a lot more) will bring me that skill.

I’m slightly worried about my upcoming reading of my “Death Proof” review. I brought it up in Charley’s class, since I’m going to write about watching my worst movie (Death Proof) and best movie (Diving Bell) in the same day and what that taught me about my tastes in film. Everyone acts really nice when you say you don’t like something; maybe they’re worried they made a mistake in liking it, or maybe they just don’t want to cross you. So I got a few nervous laughs the first time my frustration with Tarantino came up, and I really don’t want to fight people later but you never know what will happen when you have this strong a hate… :P

I’m loving all the writing we’re doing! The stress is definitely on with due dates every other day (and actual class for only two weeks), but I seriously could write ten pages every day. Allison’s first pep talk on good grammar=so awesome! There need to be more teachers who inspire people to write well, which has me leaning toward major #1 (English) again, but…

The film industry seems like so much fun! On Monday we had Nate’s friend and Athens Cine collaborator, James Bond (that seriously is his name and he loves it, drives a hot sports car…), over to visit. He is one of the leading projectionists in the world and designs screens for events like Sony’s private screening of Spider-Man 3 in digital, Chicago’s outdoor movies at the park (his set-up can withstand 100 mph winds in the windy city!), and of course our beloved Cine on West Hancock. I definitely do not know much about film technology, but he was so excited about what he does and explaining it to us that I understood a lot and enjoyed it! Another friend of Nate’s, David Blake, visited today (Wednesday) to tell us about his experience distributing two social awareness documentaries at Cannes. He told us exactly what it has been like for him, but it was so refreshing to hear something encouraging for once, instead “Yeah, you’ll probably be a waiter for awhile unless you know five millionaires.” And he was a really funny Brit, saying things like “I won a bet with my friend and now he has to walk down the Croisette starkers.”

Afternoons at JLP are very relaxed—we have to work around our essay-writing meetings with Charley, but otherwise we have free rein to go wherever we want to once we’ve done our work. The first night here I enjoyed cooking some dinner (pre-cooked raviolis secured at Petit Casino, the only real grocery store/not bodega that was open on the day-after-Sunday holiday) and just reading my travel guide/writing a bit/getting to sleep really early. I hear there was a wild party, but thankfully I didn’t hear it through my earplugs! There’s plenty of fun to be had over the next week and a half, but the Cannes-itis hit me like a TGV that night and I had. to. sleep.

On Tuesday I took Allison’s directions to SPAR, the super-big grocery store beyond the JLP bridge, with Tolu and Amanda and we got crazy groceries for the upcoming weeks. I had been thinking that I’d save money this way, and I definitely can if I live off what I have now (a heap of delicious food), but I have to admit that I love grocery shopping too damned much. I’ll probably go there every other day! After some more mad hot cooking, I trekked off to the beach at sunset with the semi-embarrassing aim to watch some guys throw up. Adam Speas, Jonathan, Chris, and Brian were attempting the “4 Liter Challenge” (the metric scale equivalent of the “Gallon Challenge”, where you try to drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up), and thankfully it went down at the beach. I actually could not watch the guys as they eventually had to vomit into the Med—despite all the hype I did feel a little like I was watching an episode of Jackass and therefore felt kind of dumb. But yeah, it was hella funny. Kaison (who turned 20 that day!) took some mad paparazzi pictures—“nono, throw up over here where I can see you!”—and Freeman took a video that will probably find its way to YouTube. We all (including the contestants) have probably not laughed as hard in our lives.

This afternoon, Samantha, Tolu, Kaison, Jonathan, and Adam and I all went to Grasse to see the perfume factory there. Grasse, the infamous setting of Perfume: Story of a Murderer, is the perfume capital of the world since it can grow so many different and potent types of flowers, and since the flowers don’t bloom until July we skipped the fields in favor of the old factory and museum at the best perfumerie, Fragonard. We followed my ghetto sense of direction up one small hill until we hopped a bus to the centre ville, and we twisted and turned up about six hillside boulevards before the nice bus driver dropped us off right at Fragonard’s door. We ambled through two floors of the museum, gaping at the displays of old perfume bottles and fading labels. When we eventually reached the start of the guided tour, the attendant told us there were no more English language tours, so we decided to just go along with the French tour. There were signs in French and English all along the path through the old factory, and I was shocked by how much of the French tour guide’s presentation I understood.

A few fun tidbits about perfume: it takes two tons of jasmine flowers to distill one liter of jasmine essence! Jasmine does not respond to the high temperatures that other flowers can be distilled at, so they gather its essence by pressing it between layer after layer of glass and using a special technique to rinse the essence off each glass plate! A “nose,” or master perfumer, must be able to recognize over 3000 scents (most humans can readily distinguish only 200), and they have to give up smoking, drinking, and going to sleep too late to keep their olfactory sense in top condition!

Samantha sadly got a headache from all of the scents, but I hope she had fun ambling in the gardens outside while the rest of us spent the rest of regular office hours pawing through the factory shop. I used a 10% off tourist brochure coupon to get one amazing, light scent, the top-selling Belle de Nuit, and another cheap bottle of eau de toilette that smells just like walking through Cannes! Now every time I want to remember my days in the Riviera, I can splash on “Riviera Bleu” and smell like it! :D

After looking through an alleyway of tempting cafes and kitchen shops, we decided to walk back down the hillside to the train. Thankfully we allotted an hour to the task, because I had not realized just how many winding streets the bus had carried us over! I loved having the time to take in the old city, however, and I have an impressive photo album of all of the houses I’d like to own once I make it big as a… film critic? English teacher? Lifelong student (at this rate)?!