-- I've seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin' different oceans meetin' cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go 'round --
Jimmy Buffett, One Particular Harbor

Bon soir! It is 12:25AM here in Cannes, Fr, and 6:25PM on Cape Cod, MA, USA. How is the USA? France is great. Here is the experience in a little more detail. The school is enclosed within walls, with classrooms and dorms lining the walls. My room is on a corner of the complex, so we (a triple) have an octagonal room, not to mention the biggest room. Somehow I get lucky...most times. Knock on wood. It has 4 windows, compared to everyone else's 2 or 1, and they open wide. The decor of the room is all 1970s orange, which sort of brings me back to the house of Red Foreman. The walls are a dull orange, along with the bed covers, and the huge blinds on the windows are yellow with orange trace. The flimsy chairs at the one desk in the room are also orange! Also, like the vast majority of houses in Europe, there is a sink in our room, and not where the toilet is. The toilet is crammed in a little closet near the showers. And there is only one for the floor of boys I'm on! I think separating the toilet and sink are smart because in actuality, if we could choose, would we really want to brush our teeth where we sit on the toilet? It just seems to make more sense this way.

The "we" includes myself, Scottie (from St. Mike's!), and Micah. Scottie is cool, and just happens to be right behind me in the alphabet so we got placed in the same room, which is cool becuase it makes things work a lttle smoother because we already know eachother. Micah is a real nice kid from Chicago, a White Sox fan. We talk baseball a lot. We all get a long and live well in the same space. The group as a whole (40 odd kids) are from all over the USA. I've met kids from Washington State, Southern California, Kentucky, New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, Colorado. You learn a lot talking about where people are from, and I've noticed a few things in the process. First off, I've noticed the New England is very different from the rest of the country. There are kids here who have never been to NE, and have no idea what it's like, and the same for me and their region. Talking to kids from all over has made me realize how lucky I am to have grown up in the cozy, tucked away region of New England. Another thing I noticed was that when asked where I go to school, upon hearing St Michael's in Vermont, some look perplexed as if they haven't heard the word Vermont since 3rd grade when they learned the capitals of all the states. Others look like they want to say, "Vermont...? What state is that in?" I just laugh.

My typical day here begins at 8:20 when my alarm goes off. Breakfast from 830 to 9. Class begins at 9, and goes until noon with a 15 minute break. Then lunch is at noon, and goes until one. It is a sit-down meal served to us. And they don't rush it at all. They let us take our time, talk to friends, enjoy it. In the US, lunch at school for me consists of throwing some food down and getting on my way asap. Here it is as if life stops at lunch time..which it does. In town, most shops close up from noon to 2pm. It gets frustrating because this includes the post office! Ok, back to my day...after lunch, if we don't have an informal meeting to go to on housing or academic in Paris, we have the rest of the day to ourselves. Most days I go straight to the beach, which is a 20 second walk from campus. After an hour or so of laying out but mostly swimming, I'll take a walk into "Vielle port" which is the old town of Cannes, not all five-star hotels. Sit down at a cafe, or check out an abbey, or the mega yachts docked on the wharf. Take Nantuckey harbor on a Fourth of July weekend and double the number of HUGE yachts.

Time for me to head out...au revoir.