My Room at the College

We are studying at the International College de Cannes. It's an absolutely beautiful campus. Palm trees? Yes, indeed. Palm trees! That's the life when you life a block away from the Mediterranean Sea!

When we arrived, we were treated with such service. Two college students met us at the bus and helped us take our luggage out from the bus. Then, since I was the only one to bring two full-size suitcases, a smaller carry-on suitcase and a backpack, one of the guys helped me with my stuff. It's all about the little things in life. We then got our keys and were shown our room. The teacher from St. John's helped me find my room, and also helped with my luggage. Unfortunately for him, neither of us realized I was on the top floor of the building... After the fact, I realized I could see my room from the parking lot as you enter campus. See the room way up there with the towels? Yup, my room. I've nick-named it the "Penthouse Suite". (Notice the palm trees?!) On the main floor is the cafeteria, and above the cafeteria are more rooms.

As I've been thinking about how to describe my room, a Mastercard commercial seemed to be the perfect fit, so here goes! (Warning: I just moved in, so forgive the unorganization of my room...)

Number of steps up to the room: 72 (yes, I counted)


Number of rooms on the floor: 2
Average tempertature in the room: 400 oF
Number of people per room: 2


Number of outlets in the room: 1 (seriously, one outlet and two roommates?)
Number of times the power has died: 2 (See below)
Amout of cubic feet in my closet: 8 (and check out the hanging space...)


Number of steps to the shower: 22 steps down (Yes, the floor below)
Average running time of the shower before having to push it on again: 45 seconds

But the silver lining:
View out the only window: PRICELESS!!!

Yes, that is the Sea you can see from my room. It's beautiful. Now, if it would only cool off here, then hopefully my room would cool down. When I lay in bed at night, I drip sweat from my legs and my head. I've never known heat like this. And, one day there girls on the trip from CSB were complaining about the heat and how they wanted fans. Now, fans were provided from them from the College, however, consequently I've been trying to tough it and show I don't need it. The heat break is supposedly around the corner, so I'm hoping it'll get better.

It's a rather funny story about the power outages. We had gone on trip around Cannes the other day, and when I got back I had plugged in my computer with my power strip and converter. However, I noticed that the light on my computer charger was not lit (and it should be). So, I checked the lights and realized there was no power. I told the front desk, and later that day power was restored. So, later that night, I had plugged in my computer with my power strip and converter, but it was night time. Well, upon plugging it in, the lights went out. I was the source of the problem... So, I had to go back to the desk, and talked with the guy on duty and checked whether it was acceptable to use powerstrips. I ended up going to get my converter and power strip and he was completely overwhelmed by this power strip. While it's works just fine in the States, I now know it's not usable here. But when you only have one outlet, what are you supposed to do!? (The one outlet is of particular interest because the other students here have rooms that have been re-done complete with new paint on the walls [I have carpeted walls...] and more outlets than they know what to do with...).

So, the man at the desk talked to another guy on duty who contact Bernard, the one who fixed the power the first time around. He was so not pleased. I heard the next day that it was originally to have been his evening off, but he had already been called in to fix a problem in the cafe here on campus, and then had to fix power in the dorm as well. (Note: My room is in a seperate part of the campus. It's connected to other dorms, but it's its own tower, that's on it's own power source. I don't know if he's joking or not, but M. Villette, our teacher from CSB/SJU, tells me it's where the servants lived back in the day when the school was a hospital for sick children. It's all so interesting, really.) Further, he had to return at 2:30 that morning to fix a water pipe that burst, leaving us without water for most of the next day. Either way, I felt terrible. So, to make ammends with Bernard and the other guy who had been dealing with this earlier today as well, I bought them a beer from the cafe and proceeded to have one myself while journaling in hopes of being able to sleep that night. I felt awful! It's already getting easier to laugh at, and I know that will continue. After all, it's a good story.