Author Archives: annabduffy

May 27 2009
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Juan-Les-Pins

Laundering

About to spend the day washing sheets of the Juan-Les-Pins guest apartment (in addition to washing some of my own clothes for the first time since I’ve been here).

Hope to also get some sun by the pool and write some postcards (and maybe a better blog post) this afternoon as well.
A tout a l’heure!
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May 26 2009
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Cannes Film Festival, UGA Students, University of Georgia

More Cannes Blogs

Click on the following links to check out blogs from some of our students over here.  

I love looking at these although I tend to find myself getting jealous of their fun adventures…….which really makes no sense since I am here in France with them.  I think seeing their experiences through posts and pictures vividly reminds me of (and makes me miss) the camaraderie I shared with my fellow classmates when I attended this program as a student back in the good ol’ days of college.
*P.S. — If any students see this and want me to add their blog to this list just let me know.  I only posted the ones I knew about…  🙂
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May 25 2009
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France, Reflections, Travel

I booked my hotel in Paris the other day

The only reason I am devoting an entire post to this is because:

 (a) I am spending more money on this 3-night, post-Cannes program hotel stay than I ever have on a hotel visit in my life.  Granted, in my past hotel-booking experience it has often been with the mindset of: “Can I cram fourteen of my other friends into this standard ‘double’ room conspicuously enough after a night of one too many games of beer pong or bar shots in (fill-in-the-blank) college town?”  In those such cases the rate usually ends up being no more than $10/person, so my Parisian booking this time around is certainly a shock to my poor credit card’s system.
(b) The hotel was chosen from a long list of potential venues after some meticulous Google-searching on my part.  I reviewed the list thoroughly and repeatedly, considering factors such as location and decor with price being very low on the list of considerations because, ‘Hey, when in Rome (er, Paris), right?’  Besides, by the time this Parisian getaway takes place I will have been housed in the south of France on UGA’s dime for more than a month…so to justify my frivolity once more, I guess I just feel like I can finally ‘splurge’ a little. 
The hotel is called HOTEL A LA VILLA DES ARTISTES.  The aspect I liked most about this hotel is the uniqueness of each “Arty” room as shown in the website’s pictures and descriptions:
”  The “Arty” Rooms have been entirely renovated and dedicated to 
the modern arts. Each room has its own special atmosphere of different 
artistic periods such as Fauvism, Cubism or Surrealism.  ” 
The location of this place is also ideal because it is situated just south of the gorgeous Luxembourg Gardens directly adjacent to the iconic Latin Quarter, the arrondissement in which I spent most of my time during my 4-month period of studying at the Sorbonne back in college.  Four years have passed since my semester-long stint in Paris and I cannot WAIT to get back to my old stomping grounds.  Paris is, after all, my absolute favorite city in the world.  
It was also my first love.  No really.  I fell in love with that city when I lived there.  Returning to school in Athens, GA after my time abroad in Paris if ever I saw photos of the city on tv or in books my heart and stomach would drop as if I was seeing an ex-boyfriend with a new girl.  Call me creepy or weird, but Paris has this lasting affect on people – it certainly has with me.  Ha – sidenote – a actually read not too long ago about a woman “legally” (in the loosest sense of the word, I’m sure) married the Eiffel Tower, changing her last name to ‘Eiffel’ and all.  I wouldn’t take my obsession with the city that far, but apparently this woman did.  Anyway, that’s neither here nor there…
Now that I have this glorious place booked I am left with the task of trying to figure out who I can show Dan, a European newbie, all that Paris has to offer in a mere three days.  I’m up for the challenge…
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May 23 2009
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Cannes, France, Observations, UGA Students

French Hospitals

I have been absent from my blog, my email, and normal life as we know it for the past few days as I was spending some (unexpected) quality time getting to know the French medical system — particularly the hospitals.  My observations are as follows:

– The exterior of a French hospital may appear to be a rundown “Jefferson’s”-esque apartment complex from the ’70s, but this is misleading because the interior has definitely “moved on up to the Eastside” and is far more in line with our ‘American standards.’
– If you are a visitor accompanying a patient in their room for the night the bed you are issued by the nurses might turn out to be a stretcher…like the one on wheels used in ambulances.  If you enjoy sleeping on a permanent incline and if you don’t mind lying on a surface where a dead body may have preceded you then THIS is the bed for you!

– Your single room will be very nicely accommodated with a patient’s bed, window, desk, chair, and private bathroom with accompanying shower (i.e. a drain in the floor next to the toilet with a handheld shower thing mounted on the wall).  However, be prepared when you ask for the accessories needed to shower -like a towel, some soap, and shampoo- as this hospital is not a hotel and does not have such things.  Instead you will be issued a hospital bedsheet for drying, some gauze dressings to wash your face, and a mystery murky fluid in a dixie cup that may or may not be turpentine and molasses with which to wash yourself.   Use on private parts at your own risk.
– Nurses changing the IV’s of a patient are not concerned with the IV fluid OR the patient’s blood splattering onto the bed, floor, or visitor’s feet below.  Once finished, their concern level does not waiver from the aforementioned when it comes to to cleaning up said splatterings, thus leaving the visitor to clean off the blood from their own feet with a towl…I mean sheet.
– As a guest of a patient, you can occasionally be served food (pending the patient you are
 with is temporarily not allowed to eat per doctor’s orders).  This is good.  You may, however, be given a beet salad for your lunch.  This is bad.  The only halfway decent thing about a beet salad is that for one brief moment it will remind you of Dwight Schrute from “The Office.”  Then the smell and appearance of the beets will once again overtake any remotely entertaining thought you may have had for the remainder of its presence in the room. 
*These are key observations that I have been fortunate enough to note firsthand, so I felt it essential to share with any and all of you who may find themselves one day in a French Hospital.  Now back to my regular updating of this blog…
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May 20 2009
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Cannes Film Festival, Guest Speakers, Red Carpet, UGA Students, Visitors

Slacking

I promise to finish writing about the last few days.  I have seen three new movies that I am dying to tell you about among many other things.  So I will include all of this when I finish posting later tonight (afternoon – your time).

For now, though, I’m going to take a break from this blogging business to take care of some REAL business over here.  I have to:
– Get back in touch with film critic, Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune), about speaking with our students this Friday evening.  And since it seems like our good fortune has run out at the Hotel Victoria (their hospitality for our “free” meetings lasted only so long) I must book another place for us to meet with our guest speakers.  Luckily, I found a super swanky hotel right across the street from the Victoria that looks like it’ll work.  Need to get back in touch with the manager there and book a time/menu for us on Friday (they’re charging us in food/drinks instead of a base price….which I can appreciate).
– I also have two friends in town who arrived via train last night.  They have backpacked through 5 countries in the past week.  That makes me tired to think about.  So now they’re shacking at my place in Juan-Les-Pins to slow down their pace for a few days of R&R on the beach.  I think I may join them for a couple hours this afternoon.
– While sunning in the sand today I also need to jot some ideas down for my next article on athensexchange.com since I have left them hanging since last week.  I feel really bad, but the business of Cannes has consumed my life and left little time for solid, reflective writing.  I will give it my best effort later today, though.
– Tonight is the red carpet premiere of the in-competition Tarantino film, “Inglorious Basterds,” starring Brad Pitt.  The Croisette is going to be CROWDED tonight because everyone will want a glimpse of Brangelina.  Most of our students are going to beg the hardest they’ve begged so far for a ticket to tonight’s screening, I know.  While I would love to be in there with Brangey and ‘tino, I think the chaos would be more than I could handle in heels.  Instead I think my visiting friends and I will don some long-sleeve tees and flops to observe the red carpet from afar and then hit up the laid-back movie on the beach with a make-shift picnic on a blanket.  That is much more my speed these days.
– Then hopefully tonight I can muster up enough energy to finish posting about the last few days.  I’ll channel “The Little Engine That Could” as much as humanly possible (“…I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..”).
Until tonight, mes amis…   A bientot!
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