C'est Nice

Man. I left off so long ago that I’m having a hard time remembering where to pick up. It’s Monday evening now, and I haven’t written since Saturday… dear me. Much of the weekend feels like a blur, probably because I wasn’t having the best of times. Saturday… yes, let’s see. Saturday, Charlotte and I woke to find the other assistant who was currently staying in the Lycée (Joy having gone off to stay with her mom), a Yemeni “bloke” (as Charlotte put it) named Magd. He’s the Assistant d’Arabe, and seems like a nice enough guy. It’s difficult to tell, because he only speaks Arabic, French, and a smattering of English words. Charlotte and I found ourselves hard-pressed not to speak English, which was good—we speak too much English as it is—but it’s possible that we made Magd feel like the odd man out. Also, our French isn’t nearly as good as his, so I can understand his frustration.

Anyway, the three of us set off into town from the Lycée. He showed us a public staircase hidden between two houses, which reminded me strongly of San Francisco. I’m sure I’ll come to hate those stairs soon enough, but for the moment, they’re sweet. And San Franciscan. We walked down to the sea (it’s hard for me to get out of the habit of saying “river” or “ocean;” “sea” sounds so biblical) and stopped in for a café at a place called Le Queenie. I had noticed it when I was here this summer because it seems to be the only café that offered free WiFi, and so I was eager—perhaps overeager—for it to become “my place.” I didn’t have my computer, so I wasn’t able to test that, but in terms of serving a café crème, Le Queenie failed miserably. But let me set the scene first: this café obviously aspires to be a disco at night, although I have a hard time picturing it crammed with people. It’s also Anglophilic, with the Beeb playing on a large-screen TV (which I imagine is used usually for sporting events), a British radio station playing, and various pictures of famous Brits on the walls. Think extremely cheesy/trashy.

So the waiter, a fifty-ish, overweight British bloke (oh, no! it’s happening!) who looked like he might have been a police officer with a drinking problem at one point, brings me my café crème, which is what the French call a latté, and I taste it and the milk has gone bad. Of course, the drink is about 80% milk, so this was a problem. When I informed our dear waiter of the situation, he looked at me as if I’d told him he had a huge zit on his face, and that he should pop it. He did that thing salesmen or people in shops do when you present them with a problem inherent in their product: they try to convince you it’s not actually there. “I just put in a new thing of milk,” he said. What was he expecting? “Oh, dear, really? I’m sorry, I must have been imagining the foul taste of sour milk mixed with (can I be honest?) not-so-great coffee. I’m going to just chug this down real quick and order another.” Somehow, we convinced him to get us another, which, while not sour, was definitely smaller and colder.

What, you ask, could possibly follow up Le Queenie? Nothing. The rest of the afternoon was pretty straightforward. We wandered hither and thither in Nice, through the old town, etc., etc. It ended up being a pretty pointless day for me, seeing as how I knew where all this stuff was, but whatever. We got back to the Lycée, Charlotte whipped up some pasta for the three of us for lunch, which was good. She had a very bizarre way of cooking the pasta: after boiling and draining it, she poured the pasta back into the pot which was still on the hot burner, which of course started sputtering and, I think, burning on the bottom; then she added in the sauce… anyway, I wouldn’t care, except I made an offer to clean the pot, since she had cooked, and there was pasta stuck all over the bottom of the pot. I had to soak the damn thing for several hours. Which ended being not such a big deal since I went to my room and fell asleep for four hours, from four o’clock until eight. When I woke up, Magd and Charlotte were talking with this guy, Lauren (I think… it could be Laurent… you know these French, they don’t believe in consonants), a student (I think) of the school who lived in the school with his parents, who worked there. We spoke with him for a while, all in French, which for me, having just woken up, was quite difficult. He showed us his parents’ apartment, which is just one floor up from ours. It’s hard to believe that my room and their apartment are in the same building; where our hall is like a pretty standard dorm hall, their apartment felt like any upper west side place. It was strange.

Anyway, Lauren fed us more pasta, which was fine with me, as I had absolutely no energy to go anywhere in search of food at that point. The conversation was difficult to follow, even my part of it, although I prided myself on making a good attempt. To be completely, 100% honest, my motivations may not have been altruistic or linguistic; Lauren(t) has an attractive way about him. To be clear, at this point I was not aware of the fact that he was a student, but anyway, where was I? Ah yes. So, Lauren was telling us all about the Assistants from the last year, whom he befriended, and how much fun they were. He mentioned that he had a party to go to, which I missed, because later I asked him what he was doing later, and he said, “Il y a un fête.” I assumed he meant at his house, and wasn’t sure if he was inviting us or not, which led him to tell us (it seemed to me more than once) that the party was at someone’s house, and he didn’t know us that well; after this he kept invoking some sort of logic that revolved around the fact that while the Assistants change every year, he is always there… this of course, was all taking place in French, hence my inability to really wrap my brain around the situation. From there, I went to my room and passed out.

Sunday, briefly, included me returning to Le Queenie to use the free internet. Free, of course, turns out to be relative: you get one hour of internet for every drink you order. Which, granted, is better than most rates, but still. So I downloaded a program that helps you locate unprotected WiFi thingies. After bolting my tepid espresso (there was no way I was getting any milk-based drink there ever again) I roamed a little bit, looking for some free internet. Although I camped outside of an apartment complex on a corner for a little bit, it turned out that the best connection is a free connection at Florida Beach (in case you weren’t aware, the beach in Nice is divided up; Florida Beach is a bit far from the center of town, but there you are). After this realization, I felt I was on a roll, so I went to see You, Me, and Everyone We Know, which the French unsurprisingly mistranslate as Toi, Moi, et Tous les Autres, which is you, me, and all the others, not the same thing, if I do say so myself. I liked it, although parts of it were weirder/slower than others. Lots of good stuff about art and life and things like that. Lots of really great deadpan acting. I don’t know why I’d never heard of this Miranda July person before; she reminds me a lot of Rachel Griffiths (Brenda on Six Feet Under) although more slight. I don’t know. I liked it.

Anyway, that’s got to be all for now, since I’m falling asleep. Tomorrow will be about today, I guess, and the meeting of the other Assistants. Pip-pip! Cheerio!