Chapter 3... Back To Marseille

Chapter 3 Back to Marseille….

Actually, I’ve been back for approximately 2 weeks and I would have sent something out sooner, however I don’t really have access to the internet. I’ll be in Marseille for a total of 3 months (the total length of my internship), and if you can remember back to one of my first emails, it took my roommates and I almost three months to get the internet. Les Francaises…and even worse, les Marseillaise. Speaking of, I was without hot water for the first week because the plumber had a “busy” schedule…sure… and Michael Jackson is an African American. Anyway, all is well in the jewel of the south. I’m living on the good part of town (so good that I have yet to find a laundry-mat) and somewhat close to the beach. This time of year the weather in Provence is a nice and consistent, 70-75 degrees, sunny, and a warm Minstral from every direction (the yearly winds that blow 3, 6, 9, or 13 days at a time…bizarre). Work is good. At the moment I’m consistently crunching data and looking to see if there is a market for a new type of office targeted toward the cosmopolitan demographics that make up Marseille. Sometimes I’m ready to jump out the window when I need to read work with excel sheets of more than 30,000 lines but then I remember that this is temporary position and that hopefully the weeks to come will bring new work and new tasks. Besides, office life is always interesting when no one speaks your native language and you don’t speak theirs with the fluency of a native Frenchmen. But everyone in the office is really understanding, especially those outside the Marseille area. After all in Marseille they really don’t speak French, they speak Marseillaise. And ever so often I can’t explain the satisfaction I fell when I hear a Frenchmen telling a Marseillaise “explique-moi en francaise”… “Tell me in French”. Ahh, the little retribution…