That vacation went on a very long time, perhaps too much so, but I had fun. I spent the first few days in Nice, a town on the Mediterranean and near Italy. After that, I took the train to Avignon (the town with that annoying song), where I stayed for about five days. Finally, I took the train again to Paris where I stayed with the family of a friend my mom met in college. So, I ventured into the land where the sidewalk is as good a parking space as any, and (like the no smoking signs), stop lights are more of a suggestion.
The first thing that I noticed was that a long of women have dyed red hair. Not like here where there is a few you might see if you are looking hard in a day - I swear about 1 in every 25 women have unnatural red hair. Don’t get me wrong, red hair looks fine, but it was like watching a bunch of punk kids trying to be unique, only to realize that so is everyone else. It was kind of depressing.
I started to become very uncomfortable when we rented a car in Avingnon. You see, gas is much more expensive in Europe, and they have to make compensations. Cars are much smaller and generally use stick shifts to increase gas mileage. My parents aren’t used to stick shifts though, and so riding in the car was, shall we say, less that smooth. Another thing about driving in Europe are the traffic circles. I know they sound like a bad sequel to Signs, but they are actually very efficient. But if you don’t know what your doing, they can also be very uncomfortable. Put those two together, and you have a very unhappy rider.
Something that I didn’t want to know about France related to an amphitheater in Nimes where we drove to one day. It dates back to Roman times, and is apparently the most preserved of it’s kind. But it’s still in use - yes for concerts and speeches and the like, but some of the things they do pay homage to it’s origin. They kill bulls in there! The SPCA would never allow that here, but it’s alright there. I really don’t appreciate the animal rights that we do have here (even if it doesn’t matter to the large majority of animals that are literally living off street corners).
The television is very strange there. First of all, the commercials are all in between shows. You have about 45 minutes of a show, then a big block of ads. Also, almost all of the shows that I saw were originally made in English. The French see so much more from other cultures and places than we do. Then again, if Canada (where a lot of TV shows are made) all spoke French, we would get a lot of that influence as well. But if Canada all spoke French, I would be typing in French right now, and those keyboards are weird so it’s better this way.
But while in Avignon, I found something wonderful. A place unlike any other, a place where your dreams and wishes can be granted - that is if you just robbed a bank and have several million Euros in you pocket. I present to you, Fnac. Fnac (to pronouce it, say the whole thing as one syllable, then draw out the F for a bit longer) is a wonderful place not unlike Circuit City or Media Play, but much larger. It was a nice thing to remind me of home, with it’s malls and stores with overkill posters. While I’m ashamed to admit it, it was about this time that I started to miss my life in the comfortable half of our capitalistic society. I spent many a minute in that store. So now, I’ll bring it to all of you. Fnac.com.
Meet Super Noel and his, cd…player…thing. 
Ah, I love Fnac.
As we were driving to our friends house outside of Paris from the train station, I’m pretty sure we passed by the French Apple headquarters. They had this big black cube on a podium with the Apple logo on all the sides. Ok, so no one cares, but I thought it was kind of cool.
In France, wine is very common, as you might already know. So it isn’t uncommon for teenagers living in France to occasionally get some. Or their friends kids to get some, as it may be. I got a few small glasses of wine while I was there, and it’s actually not that bad. I must say that I’ve developed quite a taste for Gewurztraminer. I don’t understand why people spend so much money on alcohol however, when for every bottle of wine they buy, they could get like five bottles of 7up and orange juice, which is better than any wine I’ve ever had. Our friends kids must think of us as the people that came over to their house, ate all of their food, and got drunk every night.
I missed my cats while in Paris, but our friends had a cat of their own. Her name was Guinness, and yes, as in the beer. I’ll post a picture as soon as we get our film developed. We also found some cereal there - Cruesli.
That’s real 65% cocoa in there.
In the US, we have to pretend that cereal is healthy for people to buy it. You have imitation chocolate that “tastes just like chocolate chip cookies!”. In France, they just come out and give you chocolate cereal.
Ok, I’m through all of the boring stuff and can get onto my first interesting subject. I had Simon email me with the results of the West Side Story auditions while I was away, but I had to phone line to connect to the internet at the apartment we were renting. So I had to call my grandma, have her check my email, and call me back with what he said. I got in! I have the part of Mouthpiece, but the only thing I know about him as of right now is that he’s one of the Jets. While on the phone though, I had though that my grandma has said “mouseteeth”. Mouthpiece, mouseteeth, they sound alike, but for the next day or so that’s who I thought I was.
I told Mr. Small that I would be gone until next Monday, and he said that if I got in, I would only be missing readthroughs last week, but I ended up missing blocking and dancing, and I hope I don’t have trouble catching back up.
While walking through the streets of Paris, I saw a certain poster, advertising a certain exposition of a certain Japanese animators work, a certain animator who could possibly be called, “Miyazaki”. There was an exposition of Miyazaki’s (and Moebius’, but that’s not who I’m worried about) work, as in there were real pictures that he drew and cells from his movies that I came within an inch of within the first two hours on the opening day of a major exposition on the undesputed anime god! I practically fainted when I saw that poster. Ah, THAT was worth going to France for. There was also a gift shop, so I got a coin, a catalogue of the exposition and a poster.
I still like the name Spirited Away better.
