Stuck on You

Alright, in the spirit of getting at least 5 blogs up every month I now feel the 'need' to get Episode 2 of the critically acclaimed "Saga of the Beard" live-action comic series up. Episode 3 is also ready, but you'll just have to wait for that. View Episode 1, The Key to the Beard, before reading Episode 2 if you haven't already.

Click to see full sized version

In the meantime, you may have also noticed that I went through the trouble of allowing Google to advertize the crap out of my blog. It's a lot of real-estate, so why not fill it up? I figured that the few of you who read this thing might not care if I tried to use it to make a quick buck, and so far I haven't seen a dime. Hopefully the critically acclaimed Saga of the Beard will bring in some big money, but until then, I'll just have to live off peanuts.

In the meantime I kind of want to see if I can influence the advertisements by writing a bit more about BEARDS. I like beards, beards are great, beard trimmers and beard combs among many other things are simply wonderful. If a man has a beard it's a beautiful thing. If a woman has a beard, it's kind of odd. But beards beards beards are beard beard mustache beard. With mustache beard mustache beard and trim your beard your beard is bearded there's something in your beard.

That should put up some interesting ads.

St Marguerite

Sometimes it's nice to get out of the city for a day, especially when you're headed to a place like this.

My Sunday (yesterday) was spent on an island off the coast of France with three friends going to school here in Nice. They're tourism majors (yes that's a major here) from all over France and are just fun in general. If nothing else they push my French like crazy. In fact, most of the French slang I know (if not all of it) can be attributed to these lovely ladies.

Charlie's Frogs

St Marguerite is an island right off the coast of Cannes (famous for its film festival) and is home to a huge star fort and thick forests. The fort was once used as the state prison, and was home to many including the famed man in the iron mask who stayed there for 11 years. We had to take a ferry to get there, and as you can see it had a sweet French flag on the back.

Of course I thought to myself, this would be a perfect picture to BE in! I just need to get over there and get one of the girls to take my picture as I look very French next to the flying colors. So I handed my camera off, got over there, and what happens? The stupid flag stops moving! The wind died literally as I sat down and didn't start up again until the boat was moving... I was upset at the flag...
We started with lunch on a closed dock, but were rudely interrupted by a seagull that had the guts to walk right up and snag some lunch meat from Audrie. This resulted in much screaming (from the girls) and plenty of laughter (from me). It turned into quite the debacle as the seagull stood just out of bottle's reach and would occasionally try to waddle back into theft-range.


Eventually other gulls in the watter began calling out and we were soon surrounded by a number of them. Since I hate seagulls I thought it would be funny to get their hopes up with orange rind only to watch them spit it out in disgust. As I hooked a piece or two over my head and into the water the girls watched (Melanie scolded me) as the seagulls fought over worthless scraps. It was in this moment that Gimpgull made his move, using the commotion as cover he dove in for a piece of bread, which startled all of us, terrified Audrie, and left us laughing for a while as we marveled at the bird's cunning.

Turned out he couldn't fly, thus "Gimpgull," we felt bad for him as we left and he tried to make it to our crumbs before the other birds pushed him away. The rest of the trip was far less depressing though as the fort was a-mazing.





The village on top was cool too, it looked like it was straight out of a movie scene.





We went from there on an 8km loop around the edge of the island, stopping every twenty feet in wonder over some newly discovered view. I took over 400 photos in the four hours we were there (and had to somehow choose 120 of them to post on Facebook). Remember you can see full sized versions if you click on them here.



If you want to see more photos you can click on the links on the right-hand side of the page. And for those of you waiting for The Saga of the Beard episode 2, it's ready to be posted, I just need to feel the need =)

The Key to the Beard

Here's Episode 1 of the Saga of the Beard, "The Key to the Beard." This is a comic chronicling the amazingness of Noah and my beards, consider this a series of blogs about Noah =)

Click to see full-sized!

Janruwary?

Blog entry #2 for the month of January:

Dear Blog, today I walked a lot. In fact, my dear bloggerific friend, I walk a lot these days. Back in the old United States of America I used to walk between classes, to my car, and occasionally to my neighbor's place (assuming they were in an adjoining building). However my entire life has changed here in France.

You see, Blog, I don't have a car here. In fact, I haven't driven a car in over four months. Kind of strange, although it's nice not to have the extra responsibility. Now I can play with fire, drink alcohol, or even go blind, and my mode of transportation remains the same. I can walk and text or talk on the phone without any question of safety; I can even use both hands to carry stuff.

Point is, I walk a lot. Like 2 hours a day are spent walking here at least. That's pretty good, except for blisters. Blisters suck, Blog my friend. I know you've never had them, you're an expression of electric charges stored (or not) in some set of memory sticks and discs somewhere in what I like to refer to as the "internets."

However Blogeroo (you mind if I call you that?) I do get blisters. Especially when I wear my Chucks. Stupid French salesman sold me shoes that were a size too small, although I guess it's my own fault for buying them.

Point IS Blog, you need to stop hassling me to check you and update you so often because I have to walk at least 30 minutes just to get to the internets to service you. I mean, I want to; this isn't the point. The difficulty lies in motivation, and McDonald's doesn't hold much of it.

All this to say, sorry I haven't updated my blog in a long time. Life is good, I'm feeling really well and having fun. I almost feel like I fit in here in Nice; I know the area and have my favorite places all picked out. And now the sun is out (as are the half-naked old ladies sadly) and the warm weather is back... at least for a while. The pictures posted in this blog aren't of any consequence to its content except to say that they were taken while I should have been writing blogs.

And assuming that anyone reads this and says "I didn't even notice you'd stopped writing blogs" then you can just go ahead and shut up. I'm sure my mom noticed at least... I hope.

FAQ

I figured that since I'm asked the following questions all the time I should answer them in one fell swoop. Consider yourselves FAQed!

You're in France?!?! (I get this about once a week)
Yes

Where are you and when did you get there?
I'm in Nice, France which is in the south near the Italian border, and I got here on September 21st.

Why are you there?
I'm teaching English to High School students who, as their teachers put it, are very nice.

When do you come back?
Mid-May, perhaps May 8th perhaps May 15th. I haven't figured it all out yet.

Why are you in France?
*sigh*

Do women over there shave?
I've only seen two hairy women and one (I'm pretty sure) was a German hippie.

Do they use deodorant?
I've actually figured this one out. I'm pretty sure most French folks use deodorant. However I've discovered that it does little-to-nothing to hinder BO. Thus the answer is yes, but unless they're wearing obscene amounts of cologne you won't be able to tell.

Do the French hate Americans?
No, but they do hate you.

What's your favorite thing about France?
Pain au chocolat, it's a pastry with chocolate in it. Delicious.

Are you fluent in French?
Depends on what you call fluent; I can have good long conversations but I won't be trading stocks any time soon.

Are you having fun?
Most of the time, yes I am. How could I not? But sometimes people get a bit too drunk and drunk company is usually poor company. Especially when you're always sober.

Do you miss home?
Is the Pope Catholic?

What do you miss about home?
Pizza Pipeline, hands down. But in close second would be family and friends. I miss New Community and my cronies at EWU a ton. I had no idea how much I loved them until I couldn't be with them.

What time is it there?
Now? 12:15am, but to figure it out just add 9 hours to your time (if you're on Pacific time). If not... well, I guess you can do the math.

Why France?
I don't know.

No seriously.
Really! I don't know. I've always wanted to come here for some reason; it's just best described as a tugging on my heart. Thus, I started learning the language in high school and never really stopped.

I'll try to update this occasionally, it seems like those questions get asked a lot. There are others, but I'll just leave it like that for now. Feel free to ask more =)