Last days

June 6-8

Apparently tequila shots night in JLP went off without a hitch. Most of my friends told me stories about falling down while dancing—later they showed me the sites of these incidents when we walked past the scene of the crime—but there was no real story to tell when Allison cancelled class. We just hit the ground running toward Nice for round two of climbing the rock castle and eating ice cream at 96 Flavors. Kaison and Mandy were patient while I got the best deal in France on my mother’s birthday present (she taught me to be a good bargain shopper), and we took a ton of pictures, stood for a long time in front of the waterfall’s mist, and helped some fellow Americans find the best flavors at the ice cream shop (I got Grand Marnier! I love that stuff!)

Was this the night we found the McDonalds in Golfe Juan? Kaison and Tolu and I were walking the beach and saw a “McDonald’s this way” sign, and since I hadn’t lead anyone wrong on the trip thus far we decided to go on a Happy Meal quest. We almost gave up twice, but after one false alarm we did see the red and gold flags and ran screaming through a few intersections to get to the fancy McDonalds not 3 but 25 minutes out of our way. As soon as we stepped back outside with my small Coke and fries it started raining, so we high-tailed it back to gloat about our fast food victory/warn everyone against ever following a McDonalds sign in France again.

Thursday was a fun/weird/emotional last day of class. We finished up a few reviews, including mine on An Old Mistress, but then we got into experience papers. It was such a strange moment, hearing about some of my experiences from another person’s point of view. I was glad to know that we were thinking some of the same things, but when someone would get to a detail that I completely missed I was grateful that my already wonderful memories got that much richer. After we finished up, Allison read her experience paper from her first trip to France with Nate’s family on the old Avignon study abroad—too weird to hear about her meeting Paul Cox for the first time when we had just met him two weeks ago. She also shared a really remarkable essay she wrote in response to an outline question on a sociology final. She hit the nail on the head when she talked afterwards about feeling inadequate, but witnessing someone else take what they love to such a perfected extent energized me to keep doing what I do.

Several of us went into Cannes for one last time to have some company/not get too emotional before the farewell dinner at 8. We hit FNAC (where I whipped out some mad French to ask where the Italian rap was), the banini stand (where Tolu and I danced with the cashier to that Nelly Furtado/Timbaland/Justin Timberlake song that’s so cool), the Palais (for some sad, faux-mopey pictures), and Monoprix. I didn’t feel at all sad about seeing Cannes sans festival or about seeing the town for my last time on the trip—it was too fun to go back and keep laughing with my friends.

The farewell dinner was spectacular. I was one of the first students to go up to the solarium, and all of us gasped at the view and wondered why we never took all the windows down before. Out on the roof a long, purple-clothed table covered in bread and wine had room for all of us to sit surrounded by friends, and I soon situated myself between some of my favorite people with a plate full of chicken, mini-quiches, and fruit salad (real food!). Reverting back to my typical self I was pretty quiet (hopefully not awkwardly so), enjoying listening to several different conversations and taking in the rooftop scene. Eventually we all got a bit more animated as everyone was taking party pictures and making so much noise one of the residents below us asked us to get off the roof (!). I chatted with Anna Eidsvik and a few others as we moseyed out—will definitely miss her as a movie buddy!—and then most of the students went their ways for the last night of partying. About a dozen of the students and I couldn’t get out on the “4L Challenge” pier because of a guard, but we sat on the rocks right next to it. As usual, one shot of vodka in my Schweppes did not get me even a bit tipsy, but I still had plenty of fun.

I felt “lost” for the first time on Friday. Without the festival or class to give me a bit of structure, I slept in until 11 and was at a loss for anything to do until I met up with Kaison and Tolu for a bit of cooking. We toyed with going to Ventimiglia for a while, but eventually we decided to get a bus out to Antibes to see Carrefour, the French Super Wal-Mart. Carrefour was a monstrous building (about 3x the size of a Super Wal-Mart), and I bought some replacement wine glasses for my room, we all tried to find a TV as big as Tolu’s TV at home (out of luck there), and one of the four huge rows of alcohol had flavored vodka samples?! I think Carrefour would have been more fun if we went more in the middle of the trip—we didn’t need any supplies and couldn’t fit much else into our luggage, so we could only look around for a few aimless hours.

I packed, wrote out my belated birthday card for my mom (the one time on the trip, outside of movie theatres, that I cried), and farted around on the internet for the rest of the night. Lots of the kids went out to the rocks even though it looked like rain, and Samantha and I didn’t feel like falling into the Med so we just got Grand Marnier crepes and ice cream. When Lauren and Lindsey cajoled us into venturing out around 11 everyone was coming back in, but then we had plenty of company to go get one last bit of junk food and have a potluck of remaining groceries in Tolu’s and Amanda’s room. We all played some iTunes and I struck up a chorus of “Damn Girl” with my JT CD, but around 12 I went to sleep so I could get up early to shower and finish packing.

Our final morning in France was wonderful. Most of the folks in Tolu’s room stayed up all night—a few of them had to take a 4:30 am shuttle to the airport, and the others wanted to see them off—so there were a lot of yawns and tired hugs when the later shuttles left. America’s Next Top Kaison left at 7:20 and made Tolu get a little misty, but we cheered up at Fournee Provencale over some amazing cappuccino. We toasted to a great trip with our orange juice, and Tolu gave me a piece of her baguette, so I felt a bit overcome. Our shuttle got to Couleurs Soleil a little bit before our 8:20 reservation time, but six of the students and I crammed in all of our luggage and took off for a seaside drive into Nice.

Our plane, originally scheduled to leave at 11:30, was delayed until 12:45, but we were glad of it when the slow check-in attendants tested Tolu (over her passport) and Jimari (over his buddy pass). We got to the terminal just before the 10:30 sign-in cutoff and sat, slept, and drank 3.60 cokes. When reminiscing about American food, I discovered that I “just wanted to eat a goddamned avocado” to the delight of my fellow travelers. The flight from Nice to JFK only took 7 hours instead of 9, and I have to say that my waiting-in-line skills served me well. I stared off into space for most of the time, which made the trip go by pretty quickly and painlessly, and the 2-year-old girl who babbled and screamed most of the flight could not make me mad because she was seriously too cute. The Cannes trip taught this loner to appreciate being inside her own brain even more, so I didn’t mind that I wasn’t sitting next to my friends and chatting; I thought up an idea that I might run with to write a screenplay and reminisced about most of the good movies I saw/looked forward to seeing again in the States.

Customs in JFK were not as awful as I thought they might be, and the flight to the ATL was still on time for a 4:30 take-off. I could use my incredibly hot red RAZR phone for the first time in a month, enjoying one voicemail from my friend Jenna amid FIVE messages from Vision Video about a late rental. I yelled my digits out to Tolu from my spot in a separate customs line, but she actually made it through the non-citizens line in time to see us off at our gate before waiting on her 6:50 flight. Delta made history with a 15-minute early arrival in Atlanta, and after all my traveling and waiting I finally saw my mom at the top of the escalator to baggage claim. We had a little snafu when I hugged her too hard and made her new surgery wound seize up (she didn’t tell me about it in time! o_O), and I wondered who on earth was picking me up and swinging me around the baggage carousel when my dad got in from parking the car. It was so great to see them both again; I gave them their gifts over some Mexican food (including avocados!) in the car, and I had not trouble staying up until midnight (6 am French time) gabbing and sharing photos with them.