Tag Archives: solo shot

May 05 2011
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Juan-Les-Pins

I’m here!

I’m alive. I’m happy. I’m jetlagged, my hair is dirty, but, damnit, I’m here.

For proof, see below image that I just took on my balcony:

I arrived yesterday (Tuesday) morning 45min earlier than scheduled (thank you, tailwind) from JFK into Nice. After a wonderfully sunny day-and-a-half on the ground here, it is now late afternoon on Wednesday and I just returned from a quick trip to Antibes to buy a new printer cartridge and four reams of paper – all of which I carried back to JLP by my lonesome. So, basically, I am She-Woman.
Namita (our French colleague) also arrived yesterday from her home in Avignon, as she does every year, to help me set everything up has at the beginning of the program. She is a native French-speaker and her negotiation skills for room rates at our student residence (where I stay) and the local apartments for professors is unparalleled. Her expertise comes in very handy in the days before the students arrive as she and I set up the housing for everyone, arrange catering for the ‘opening dinner’ we hold for the students on Monday night after they arrive, etc. She also delivers all of the 30-some-odd French cell phones we loan to our students/professors that she stores at her home in Avignon during the off-season.
Anyway, after a busy 24-hours of hitting the ground running with her in all of our planning efforts, Namita has left for the day to go stay with some friends of hers in Nice for the night. Apparently they were able to get tickets to a Classical music concert going on in Monaco tonight, so she and her friends will attend that together before she arrives back here in Juan-Les-Pins to get back to work with me tomorrow morning.
The rest of my evening looks relaxing! I can finally unpack, get everything settled in my apartment, shower (with soap & shampoo, at long last!!), BLOG, and begin the process of creating/printing the Orientation packets I will give to each student upon their arrival this weekend. Perhaps I’ll even squeeze in a little pilates on my balcony at sunset – oh la la!
For now, though, I am snacking on some Comte cheese, watching live coverage on CNN (the only English channel I get) of Obama arriving at Engine 54 in NYC (a fire station that lost 15 men on 9/11) to deliver a private speech in the wake of Bin Laden’s capture/killing. Oh, and I’m uploading some other photos to use on this blog – so, stay tuned.
I plan to work BACKWARDS from today to get you up to speed on the last 36 hours of my life. Away I go…


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May 08 2009
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Juan-Les-Pins, Reflections, Travel

One is the loneliest number

This is the first post I’ve been able to do since I’ve been here.  The internet has been down all along the coast for my past three days in France, so voila – just pretend like I posted this on Wednesday, May 6 (my true first day in the country).


One…(o’clock) is the time I got to Hartsfield-Jackson airport in ATL on Cinco de Mayo.  Three (o’nine) is the time I made it to my gate for my 3:20PM take-off.  *Note to self- Do not eat at the airport Houlihan’s for a pre-departure lunch no matter how bad you want the greasy American potato skins before you leave.  The only “skin” I will remember from this experience is making that flight by the skin of my teeth.  Never again…

One…bag made it all the way through with me on my journey to Nice (which, as you know, began in Atlanta and then connected in Paris).  It is important to note here that I was expecting two bags to meet me in Nice.  For reasons why I had to end up checking a second bag please refer back to paragraph ONE.  For future reference: if you arrive at the gate that late there will not be any more overhead compartment room on the plane and the lady at the gate will throw your bag under the plane with the other checked luggage and that lady will forget to enter your bag into the online airline/airport system of all-knowing all-important information….thus, your bag will take a detour in Paris for longer than the four hour layover you had planned.

One…day is how long your bag will spend in Paris without you.  (Lucky bastard.)

One…is the number of passports a person has in their name at any given time in their life (pending they are not a criminal with multiple identities).

One…is the number of passports that I had going into this trip.

One…is the number of passports that I left on the seat of my taxi that drove me thirty minutes from the Nice airport to my residence in Juan-Les-Pins.  (Given what I went through a mere two weeks before this trip with my passport at work involving a moment of severe ADD, a dumpster, and a really nice Mexican cleaning lady who deserves a major raise…this is not a good pattern of behavior for me and my beloved passport.) My dad will likely kill me and assuredly roll his eyes when he reads this because it will remind him of another not-too-fun story of a

One…hundred dollar bill that I haphazardly threw away (on accident) on a flight to Honolulu about five years ago with my family.  That was a Christmas present from my parents that I never saw again (and a $100 tip that some lucky stewardess got for some last-minute Christmas shopping). *Note: to any current/future employers who may be reading this – I am superbly good at organizing people, events, and figurative things…but on occasion the palpable things in my life can get a little messy.  *Note: to any current, licensed doctors who may be reading this please consider making me your poster child for ‘Adult ADD’.  It should also be noted that I will accept (nay, I desperately need) your free samples – hint hint.  Anyway, back to the situation at hand-

One…heart attack is what I nearly had when I realized my passport was gone.

One…(billion) is the number of phone calls I and the kind sweet French girl, Charlotte, and I made (combined) to the taxi company and the Nice airport trying to find and retrieve my passport.

One…crazy emotional phone call is what I made to Dan in a telephone booth on the street of Juan-Les-Pins, crying my eyes out amidst a jetlagged haze I can barely remember and will absolutely choose to forget.

One…is the number I have assigned to the angel-of-a-woman working this day at the Nice airport Air France desk — she searched the airport bathrooms for my passport, spoke to me slowly and calmly in French throughout my debacle, and ultimately arranged for my passport (which was later turned in to airport ‘Lost & Found’ by my female taxi driver, another angel I might add) to be delivered to me at my residence along with my lost luggage the following day.  Yes, this lady is #1 in my book.

One…place setting was set on the beachside restaurant dinner table at which I ate this first night in France.

One…beer and beautiful Mediterranean sunset is all it took for me to settle my nerves and remember, ‘Hey, I’m in France.  Life could be worse.’

One…minute is all it took for me to fall asleep on this neverending day/day-and-a-half that started in Atlanta on the 5th and ended in France on the 6th.  Beginning this trip in a very “me” fashion surely made today feel like a lifetime.

So in conclusion and on the bright side – I am here – in France – and I made it in ONE piece (‘one’ being a very strong, yet loosely defined word in this sense). At the end of the day, after the ups and the downs, I still know that I am a strong person and I can definitely handle this, however, the saying 100% reigns true that “ONE is the loneliest number.”  But hey, it’s only day ONE and things can only get better from here.  Tomorrow being day two is a fantastic start…

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