Was mostly rainy but pleasant nonetheless. I once again had some amazing couchsurfing hosts. I spoke more French in a week than I have in months here (my brain also no longer functions). I went to Nice, Monaco (during the grand prix!), and Cannes (during the film festival!) in the South of France as well as Bastia in Corsica and any other small towns there a bus could take me. I met lots of strangers. I usually hate eels but the Monaco aquarium had little ones that would pop their heads of the sand to look for food and that was pretty entertaining. Also entertaining were the myriad of stories from one of my hosts, Denis, a 58 year old French man who liked to tell me long winded accounts (all in French) about-- well, I'm not quite sure, most of them included dirty jokes I couldn't understand and which his roommates refused to translate to me. One of them involved buying a porn magazine at a service station on the German Autobahn (as all men typically do of course) and finding semi-revealing pictures of himself in it which were taken years earlier. (He showed us the magazine as proof!). He cooked amazing dinners every night which we ate on their balcony overlooking the sea and on the last night I went to a lecture on Machiavelli with him (also in French. And Italian.) Fabienne, my official host, took me swimming with her and also to the two classes she teaches-- high school English and aerobics classes for seniors. I happily participated in both. My other host, Jessica, was also amazing and fed me home cooked meals too. I had a really great time talking to her and my last night in Nice I found myself at a bar, dancing with her on a table, at 2am, to none other than "C'est La Vie" by B*Witched (dig deep, I know you know that song).
The presence of rain in the sunny, coastal resort beach towns which I visited lent itself to a different kind of holiday. Lots of getting wet (I hate umbrellas), muddy treks through a pretty deserted mountain side, and reading while sitting in weird hexagonal rope contraptions in abandoned playgrounds. I managed to get through two books: a collection of 26 of some Gabriel Garcia Marquez's greatest short stories, which were magical, and 18 of the Best American Magazine Articles of 2007, which were excellent but tended to leave me in a horrified stupor and the general state of things.
I only have a few more days of Paris to pack and say my goodbyes to the city. I'm heading back to California on Monday and then I'll be in New York from June 8th.
It's been almost 5 months in Paris and almost 10 months abroad, but I don't really have it in me for grand reflections at the moment. For now I'll say this: my shoes still fit-- maybe better than ever-- but they're wearing out a little at the heels.
