You Cannes Do This
Delayed Itchy Feet
The week leading up to my first trip since our around the world trip, I started getting that anxious anticipation of packing my green backpack and setting out on another adventure. This time though, it was with 44 other teachers, students, and parents. You could consider it more of an educational village taking over a narrow streets of France.
Our first of many hurdles presented itself before we even left. The flight between Omaha and Dallas had been cancelled by American Airlines. So with some quick thinking, we rented a bus and headed directly to Chicago. Without losing stride, just several hours of sleep, we left Omaha at 5 a.m. Realizing how precious sleep would be, I tried my best to sleep, but my inability to sleep on any moving public transportation and the combination of incessant anxious chatter of students and other teachers, quality sleep was hard to come by.
Heathrow the Maze
Our flight from Chicago lead us to London Heathrow Airport, one of the busiest hubs in the world. I imagined Heathrow as a spacious, expansive airport. The reality was many corridors circling around to hidden turns. It makes you scratch your head, look over your shoulder, glance back at the boarding pass for the fifth time, and tentatively walking as if someone was waiting around the corner to scare you. I felt like a mouse in a maze. Needless to say, we ended up going through the same security line twice to the bewilderment of the security personnel and students. We, the chaperones, found it amusing, the students, not so much.
What Else Could Happen?
Who knew that New Mexican would find his way over to France wearing the same goofy ol’ clothes?
In Nice, we had taken four flights, traveled over 24 hours with a total of 43 people, with one student’s bag in Dallas, the one destination that we hadn’t visited. It would eventually arrive five days later in Paris. Another student was sick and vomiting. All part of a normal day and a half traveling with students. What more could happen? Well, it did.
The second day in France, we busted out of the confines of Nice to the ancient walled village of St. Paul de Vence. Walking through the ancient city’s southern edge was a section people could walk the fortified wall. There was a narrow section of wall that crossed over the entrance to the city, but it was closed off by a gate. Despite the iron fence, three students jumped over this prohibited zone to walk along the ledge of the wall with a twenty to twenty-five foot drop to the cobbled stone road below.
The first and third student landed safely, but unfortunately the second didn’t. The student’s feet crisscrossed when he landed, slipped, and he started sliding over the edge. Luckily, the student turned his torso and grasped the ledge, and then fell. All of us rushed to the scene as I arrived first, we called for an ambulance, and I immediately ran to find the student’s parents. Within two minutes, an ambulance was on the scene. Fortunately for everyone involved, the student’s parents were both on the trip, and France is a country known for having excellent medical care. In the end of the day, the student was very lucky despite his stupidity, even considering a shattered ankle and broken lower vertebrae, because it could have easily been much worse.
Saint Paul de Vence
A Drop For Your Thoughts
The mood of the trip immediately turned somber. The group went on to Cannes despite the circumstances, with the Cannes Film Festival starting in May. Activity around the Promenade Anglaise was busy. After the days events, I grabbed a prerequisite Magnum ice cream bar, and walked some of the back streets of Nice looking for an evasive toilet.
Walking, an older French woman sat with her head sticking out of her hotel window. A bit uncomfortably, I asked if she knew a place nearby to empty my bladder. She offered her bathroom. Relieved to say the least, I returned to the hotel’s front door when a medical student from Washington D.C. entered the hotel. She was looking for an apartment for the upcoming festival. The only issue, the medical student didn’t speak French and the French lady didn’t speak English. I jumped in and served as urine-free translator. As a result, I earned my bathroom privileges by translating for them.
Just One Toilet Away
