Category Archives: UGA Students

Jun 01 2009
Leave a comment
Travel, UGA Students, Visitors

"Travel Weekend"

Having been given the Friday off from class creating a 3-day weekend students ventured whimsically to places like London, Amsterdam, Venice, and Avignon.  Meanwhile Dan and I used this time to take quick train trips to Golfe Juan, Monaco, and Antibes – each enjoyable in their own right.  I’ve already written about our first day of lounging (topless!) on the beaches of Golfe Juan and I planned to write about our Monaco experience this morning, but considering my camera’s juice is completely dissipated at the moment I guess I’ll just give you a little taste and divulge the full details with accompanying pictures later.

Monaco was fantastic.  I don’t know if I’ve even visited a place where everything down to the sidewalks is so ornate.  The remnants of the Grand Prix race from a week ago are still intact in the streets.  We walked around for about five hours exploring the winding streets of the world’s second smallest principality (Vatican City holds the title of smallest).  We documented every square inch with 300 pictures or so.  I promise to only post a miniscule portion of those.
Yesterday from noon to eight we journeyed through the tiny, old streets of neighboring Antibes.  I’d spent a day there before when I was here three years ago – lunching with ladies from my program and snapping goofy model-esque picture poses atop a scenic overlook by the sea.  This trip with Dan, though, was somehow different.  We took more time to notice the small things – exploring many more nooks and crannies than I had previously.  The local artists in the open air market, the myriad of hats for the taking at the hidden absinthe bar, and the rocky shoreline with white crested waves crashing beneath the walled city were just some of the things we admired.  
I’ll post more in-depth stories of our adventures along with pictures later on when I get a chance.  For now we’re going to grab lunch, charge my camera battery, and head over to Cannes for an afternoon of sightseeing, shopping, and maybe a movie in one of its many theatres.  I can see out the window of our rooftop classroom now that there appears to be a threat of afternoon thunderstorms as the sky goes from a light white down to a deep purple off in the distance behind the harbored tip of Golfe Juan……hopefully we can do a quick raindance to hold off the looming showers.  
Anyway – time to run.  Will report back later.  A tout a l’heure!
Tagged , , , ,
May 30 2009
Leave a comment
France, Observations, UGA Students

To all worried family/friends…

[***I tried to post this the other day after receiving a concerned gmail message from my dad, but my internet connection failed during the posting.***]

I guess I should have clarified better in my previous “French Hospitals” post that it was NOT ME who was in the hospital last week.  I was there with a student — who is also doing fine.  All is good – just want to make sure no one is worrying because everything here is great.

Again, I am a big fan of the French medical system.  The doctors make housecalls, the over-the-counter prescriptions at the pharmacies are to die for (not to mention they cost like 3euros), the prices for hospital visits are a miniscule fraction of what they would cost in the States…..it’s incredible.  I love it.  If this is what everyone refers to as “socialism,” then vive la France because it is daggum wonderful!  A nurse has continued to come to our residence once a day every day since our student returned from the hospital to check up and make sure everything is okay.  We are in great hands!!

That is all.  🙂

Tagged
May 26 2009
Leave a comment
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…  🙂
Tagged
May 23 2009
Leave a comment
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…
Tagged
May 20 2009
Leave a comment
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!
Tagged , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →