C'est Nice

Hey all,
SO! The weekend! An exciting one! Well, sort of, anyway. The wee kiddies complained a lot of the time, but whatever. Here's how it went down:

Friday is somewhat fuzzy... not because of any deviant behaivior, but thinking back on it, I don't believe I did all that much. I was supposed to take people bike riding, but nobody showed up for the activity... it wasn't MY activity, so I wasn't heartbroken or nothing, but it did leave a big gaping hole in my afternoon. I feel like I've been running into a lot of those gaping holes in the afternoon lately, which is neither good nor bad really... it's been leaving me a good chunk of time to write with (mostly letters thus far, but I did eke out a page of fiction yesterday... i'm getting ahead of myself). Anyway, Friday wasn't really anything special, so far as I can remember... if I do remember something, I'll be sure to retroactively edit it. Anyway.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early... slightly brighter and earlier for me, as I had acceuil duty (a fancy-shmancy way of saying door guard) from 8-9 AM. The people who run the front door don't work on the weekend, so when the kids have free time, the RAs have to supervise the back gate, which we can open with a code. Anyway, after my hour of acceuil (pronounced, for those who care, "ah-koi") I took a page from my own book and went back to sleep for a couple hours, waking just in time for our group excursion to scenic... CANNES! The glitz! The glamour! The copious amounts of british tourists! Yes, indeed, the annual spring capital of the film world bustles plenty in the summer, replete with a sand beach and more expensive designer stores than you can shake a stick at. Among my favorite sightings in the shop windows: Chanel had a heavy wool sweater and tall, fur boots on sale in the middle of summer; Hugo Boss advertised a chemise en lin (linen shirt) for--wait for it--444 euros. For this afternoon excursion, I was assigned with fellow RA Anne to supervise the kiddies who were going to hang at the Beach. Of course, about five minutes after we stepped onto the warm, comfortable sand, we lost sight of almost everyone--I guess it's important to note that the kids were not required to stay with an RA on this trip... it was free time in Cannes--and, accepting our grim defeat, laid out our towels and took naps. Well, at least, for a few minutes, we did. Then, the prospect of being able to wade into water without causing my feet tremendous discomfort became too enticing to resist.

So... to help you understand exactly what happened, I've drawn this diagram. The Cannes beach, signified by that rust colored spot over in the corner there, is, as I've said many-a-time before, sandy. But, another interesting aspect of this beach is the weird outcropping of rock that's a good fifty yards from the beach, signified by the large rock shaped thing in the middle. My plan, having surveyed the above-water characteristics of the beach, was to swim out to the rock, clamber over the rocks, swim off the far side of the rock, and then make a big circle around back to the beach. The first three steps of my plan worked perfectly (signified by the first three arrows in the diagram). It was just when I was making my big circle back around to the beach, that my knee hit something... there were huge bolders in the water, almost at the surface. I started to clamber over them, but they looked like they went on for quite a while. Now, where a normal person would have said to themselves, "gee, it looks pretty rocky here, and those rocks are probably covered with sharp sea life... let me go around," I said to myself, "crap, i have to climb over these rocks." So, climb I did. To be honest, it didn't feel like I was hurting my feet as much as I apparently was, but by the time I got back to the beach, I was definitely bleeding in a couple of places. What happened was, there was a submerged sea wall that connected the end of the beach to the little rock-island, I imagine to keep the sand from beach from escaping into the ocean-at-large.

Anyway, so I rinsed my cuts, and then it started to rain, so Anne and I headed inland, to see what Cannes had to offer.

Listen, hombres, it looks like I'm going to have to stop the story here, because I have a staff meeting in half an hour, and I still haven't showered... and that's not a good way to promote harmony in the workingplace.

A la prochaine!

Charlie.