Halfway through with Cannes :(

Are you a glass-half-empty person or a glass-half-full one? Me-- I’m definitely the latter; an optimist in almost every sense of the word. So while we’ve been in Cannes for 5 days already and time is flying, we still have 5 days left!!!

As I said in my last post, we’ve been having the best time. Since I last wrote, two Estonian friends have arrived: Silver and Kadri-Ann, who I met over new years in Otepää. It has been great having them here and they’ve only added to the group dynamic that we had before; it’s been great!

In the last two days since I posted, we’ve gone boating, swimming and snorkeling in some of the most beautiful water I’ve seen (though it has been rife with jellyfish, so we’ve had to be careful!), we’ve seen Templar castles, and I’ve tried both water-skiing and tubing! I’ll be honest, I’m not the best water-skier, but I was able to stand up for maybe 10 seconds, which is FAR better than when I tried water-skiing back when I was 12. Tubing is really fun, and Antoine, our captain, revels in the fact that he can thrash us around (in a fun way), making it hard to hold onto the tube. It’s a workout, though, and I’m sore (tubing is particularly hard on the forearms, and water-skiing on the pecs). But it’s really fun to try this stuff, and worth any pain we feel later on.

I’m just tickled I have friends that I enjoy spending time with so much and who can make these cool things happen! So even though we’re half done with the trip, we still have half left!! ALL RIGHT!!!

-John

PS: In other news, one thing I’ve really enjoying doing is watching the World Cup games with my international friends. We watched the Italy-Australia thriller on Monday (much to the delight of Paolo and Daniele, my Italian friends), and on Tuesday night we all watched the France-Spain game while eating dinner, and Antoine (though telling us he didn’t care about the game) erupted with cheers when France scored each of their three goals. Yeah right, you don’t care about the game, Antoine!!

Comin’ at you live from Cannes, France!

I won’t mince words: we’re having a total blast. As I type this, I’m looking out over the Mediterranean Sea in one of the most scenic, picturesque places I could even possibly imagine. Check it out and prepare to be jealous:



So how did I get here to this amazing place? Well, let’s just say it pays to have friends with their own sweet connections. My friend Antoine, who is one of my best friends in Tallinn, is originally from a suburb near Paris, but his grandfather owns an apartment here in a small private community called Port La Galère.

We arrived on Saturday, the 24th of June, and we’ve just been having the greatest time ever since. There are 6 of us: Antoine and his fiancée Aurelie, our two crazy Italian friends Daniele and Paolo, and me and my friend Brett, from Washington, D.C.

Even though we’re only 3 days into the trip, I can safely say that this has been exactly what I’ve needed after 10 months in Tallinn. Just laughing with friends, eating and drinking great food and drink, enjoying unbelievably warm weather, and engaging in total relaxation near a beautiful pool and on the some unbelievable rock cliffs over the Mediterranean. I find myself sighing with delight pretty much ‘round the clock based on how nice it feels to be here.



What I love about planning and spending my own vacation time is that I can make it whatever I want it to be. For some, museums are the cat’s meow, and for others, time spent laying out in the sun is how vacation days are best spent. I mean, sure, I have my moments where I want to do one or the other, but this trip is purely the latter, and I’m loving it.

We’re here until July 3, so another week(!) in France before I head back to Estonia via Berlin. After a night in Berlin due to EasyJet’s incompetence (a long story, but basically they cancelled or re-routed 3 of my 4 flights on this trip…grrr), I have 12 more days in Estonia before heading through western Europe with my college roommate Steve. Even in France we’ve been working hard on planning an awesome trip and as the plan stands now it will be Tallinn to Stockholm (where we’ll hopefully meet up with my friend Maya) to Copenhagen to Amsterdam (where we’ll meet Steve’s girlfriend Danielle and her friend Meredith) to Frankfurt (where we’ll meet my Estonian friends Uve and Ilja at the World Footbag Championships to Zurich (where we’ll hopefully meet my friend Tjorven) to Milan (where we’ve arranged to stay with my Italian friend Giovanni) to Paris (where I’ll meet my friend Morgan Sarver) before flying home.

I’ll try to post more about the trip as we go along, but for the moment, I’ll say goodbye. We’re having a total blast and I’m sure that that will not change any time soon.

Later!!
-J

Explanation

Hey guys,

Sorry I've been M.I.A. for so long and haven't yet blogged about my Russia trip, but I promise, I will soon. I can't do it now, cuz I just found out I'm giving a 1.5 hour briefing on long-range wireless technologies to a delegation from Afghanistan's Parliament a week from tomorrow as part of one of the e-Governance Academy's training sessions. Crazy, right?? Definitely exciting for me, but my life will be a little stressed through June 14.

I will do my best to catch you up on my life soon. The 1 sentence version is that life has been hectic since getting back from Russia, and I've just been catching up on 2 weeks of emails and other tasks that amassed while I was away, which has resulted in my unintentional break in blogging.

I'll write more soon but in the meantime I'd love to hear from anyone who might come upon this. How is everyone doing?

-John