Friday, November 17^th

Well, it was an interesting evening tonight. I finished class at Ecole Mace this afternoon and stayed around for the Mayor’s inauguration of their new multi-purpose room, which was interesting. The Mayor of Cannes spoke for a few minutes, and then everyone immediately started drinking- wine, champagne, vodka, gin- everything. And this was at 4:45 in the afternoon. What a perfect way to end my fourth week of teaching.

Earlier this afternoon, the director of Ecole Mero gave me her invitation to a theater show in Cannes tonight. I didn’t think I would go, but I showed the invitation to Richard when he got back from work, and we decided to go together. We arrived at the Mediatheque, which is a huge, old, antique house that has been converted into a massive library, to find about five other people waiting. I wondered if we were just early to the show, but it was five minutes before the start time. When they opened the door, the “theater” consisted of about thirty folding chairs for the audience with three chairs in front for the three actors. I really wanted to leave and go to the cinema, but Richard was right when he said that would be rude, so we stayed and the piece started.

If I ever said I could understand French, I was lying. It was so hard to understand the dialogue, especially since the play was very heavy in conversation and very light in visuals. I would occasionally find Richard laughing at me because he knew I understood next to nothing. About all I got was that the older gentleman was fired from his job and that he was drinking away his sorrows. Not a lot for an hour and a half long play.

In any case, it was well played, and a different way to spend the evening. When we left the library, lighting was splitting across the sky and as soon as we got in the car it started pouring rain. Thank god we took the car instead of walking! As we were eating our late dinner, I heard an odd sound outside. I jumped over to the window to see golf ball chunks of ice spewing from the sky. As you can imagine, that doesn’t happen often in Cannes. I was glad that all I had on my agenda was to read my French book in bed while sipping a cup of mint tea.