Wed, Oct 5th

From the moment I left lovely Chicago, encountered airline strikes in Switzerland and arrived jet-lagged and blissfully happy in Paris, I knew this year was not going to be a run-of-the mill adventure. Oh no. This year is going to be a fabulous, nutella filled, bare-foot, sunny sand Mediterranean adventure- the kind of stories you tell your grandkids someday.

In any case, it was exactly a week ago that my French roommate, Richard, picked me up from the train station in Cannes. My arms were trembling as I rode the escalator up to the station, I don’t know if it was sheer exhaustion from traveling alone for more than 32 hours with over 100kg of luggage or if it was apprehension about meeting my new roommate- probably both. I happened to look up just at the moment when the top of the escalator came into view, and there he was. The 27-year-old Frenchie that I knew only through his unbelievably considerate emails and a photo sent the day before I left. The connection was instant. He wasn’t smiling but his eyes were crinkled on the sides- I now know the look he gave me was one that is familiar on his face. I am sure I flashed a smile, as I am wont to do, and voila, the start of a friendship. I will have to ask him someday what he thought when he saw me… I knew immediately that I was going to happy with him as my roommate.

I have since learned, after meeting the other assistants, that I am beyond lucky to have found a nice, clean and considerate person to live with, who likes to cook and is not charging me my entire salary to stay here. Most of my fellow assistants are paying at least half-over what I am paying for studio aparts that are farther away from town and lacking the French language component. I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming- I really do live in a gorgeous, newly renovated, chic apartment, in Cannes, with a cute French boy, five minutes from the Mediterranean ocean. La vie est belle...