31 March, 2001

It is really great here. The picture above is from our trip mentioned a couple of updates ago to a ski area near Cannes called Auron. The weather here is very unpredictable -- sunny one moment, hail the next.

Our address is in Capbreton but we are actually just next to downtown Hossegor. However, after three days we still can't find the mailbox, so we can't definitively say what our address is. It's a small town, so I expect that we will receive anything sent to that address just fine.

You can probably tell from the disjointed nature of my writing that I am a little fatigued from three days of driving.

Here are some random notes accumulated since our last update:

1) window shopping here is called window licking.

2) offspring are called rejects.

3) It is really funny to hear Sean Connery say: "Je m'appelle Bond, James Bond."

4) The invention of fluorescent colors, especially orange, has not gone unnoticed by the producers of French television.

5) As spring has come upon us it is more clear than ever that the French taken as a whole clearly care more about their dogs than about their sidewalks.

6) One doesn't properly appreciate the frequent strikes here until one gets to the end of a long drive expecting to pay a $20 toll and finds that the attendent has left a note saying that he is on strike that day, so you needn't pay.

7) A story from the fall that I forgot to mention: Gia and I went clothes shopping in a giant chain store called Gemo. It appeared that they just had one set of dressing rooms for both genders, so we both went in and tried some clothes on. I didn't notice anything unusual, but after about an hour I noticed the men's dressing room at the other end of the store, about 1/20th of the size. I felt very embarrassed. The women I'd passed going in and out seemed to think nothing of it.

8) A couple of days before the Seattle earthquake, we had one of our own in Cannes. I was sitting on an office chair, with wheels, talking to Gia, who was standing. I heard a noise like a bunch of papers shifting, and Gia stumbled. I didn't feel anything, I guess because the building moved sideways so the wheels just rolled slightly. Gia said "Did you feel that?" and I said no... I thought she had hallucinated something. Then, we were watching TV later and it was on the news.

Finally I would like to say that since I last wrote, we have managed to improve our financial situation greatly. It is a tremendous relief to both of us, and we expect that it will get better and better in the future.

From here down is another story about the bad attitude of France Telecom. You needn't read it if you've already heard enough about them:

I was going to put a long story here, but I realized it was far too boring. Basically I didn't pay a bill through a miscommunication by France Telecom, called them to ask about it, was told I would be called back if there was a problem, and then our phone was disconnected for a week with no warning. Very frustrating. It has propelled me into the cellular age.

So it has been a tremendous relief to move out of Cannes. It is as if a giant cloud has lifted from us. We have gone from the worst place we have ever lived to the nicest.

Oops, just remembered one more story. We were driving to Hossegor in the truck three days ago, and there was a point where I (Andrew) needed to drive on a sidewalk for a bit to make a right hand turn without waiting for a line of cars to move. We joked that we were becoming French, since we could drive on the sidewalk at all, and that we would know we have really adapted when we can drive on the sidewalk without having a complex about it.

So that reminds me of a story an English friend just told us. I think she was working as a guide in South America (if you read this Alison, and it's all wrong, I apologize). She said that the Americans would all follow the rules. The English would ask politely if it was okay to break the rules, and the French just ignored the rules completely. We read in a book here that the French believe that rules are made to be broken. It is true, but it is hard to understand until you see it in action. I (Gia) will miss Alison dearly. I became very close to her while in Cannes.

So THAT reminds me of what Fred said... I may have written this before, but it will be better this time. He got some parking tickets, some time in the past. We were talking one day about parking (can you tell I'm obsessed with it), and he said that "I got a few tickets, but they weren't my fault." So I asked him what he meant, and he said that he didn't have a choice. He had to park illegally because he needed to get home and there were no legal spots left. So he didn't pay the tickets.

I said that Americans just don't think that way. It's always wrong to park illegally. Even if you have to do it, you don't just walk away thinking it wasn't your fault. I'm not sure I can explain this properly. I asked Fred and he said "A rule is there to make your life simpler. When it stops making your life simpler, you stop following it."

It feels like the police, etc. treat one as an adult here, whereas in the U.S. it feels like they're treating you as a wayward child.

So what am I trying to say? The French, in my limited experience, do not, at a deep level, take rules to be the absolutes that Americans do. This is something that I love about France.