A Birthday Party

This day started at 8:00am, two full hours before my alarm was set to go off. It was a text from Camilla. We were planning to go to her house with some friends to celebrate my birthday with a Mexican lunch at 11:30. She was letting me know that one of her kids was sick and she wouldn't be able to do the party, which means we no longer had a location for said party.

So I hauled myself out of bed and started contacting the appropriate people. I texted Hannah and woke her up too. Then I emailed our friend Marinella, who is Italian and doesn't have a French cell phone. Since I couldn't fall back to sleep while waiting for responses to my messages, I went ahead and took a shower and took the laundry off the line.

Finally we decided to have the lunch at my house and I would just pick up the two girls at the train station. I was going to leave at 11:10. By 11 I still hadn't heard back from Marinella, which probably meant she hadn't gotten the email and would end up in Cassis all alone. Then at 11:05 I got a call from Hannah saying she'd missed her bus. So, I raced out of the house to pick up Hannah, hoping to get to the train station quick enough to find Marinella on the train as it came through and get her to get off.

On the way, I got behind every slow, massive truck within a ten mile radius. I was annoyed. Hannah later called my behavior saucy. I called it agitated and pissed off.

Anyway, I got Hannah and got back to the train in time but there was no Marinella. So we walked up and down the platform peering into the windows trying to find her. It felt a little awkward. Then the train pulled away, leaving us alone on the platform.

So we drove to Cassis. And we found Marinella sitting all alone at the train station. And then we drove back to Aubagne. We gave her the grand tour of Aubagne (which lasts about 3 minutes) and went back to the house to make tacos and guacamole.

Finally, we sat down to eat. We were so hungry! I got through one taco. The gate buzzer went off. I set off to find my host dad to tell him some painters were here. He was gone. I met the painters. I tried to figure out if they were actually painters or lunatics out to steal our stuff. They were painters. This made me glad. I left them to do their job. Then host dad got home so I didn't have to worry anymore about unknown painters.

After that everything went just fine. We ate so much it was hard to stand up and since we couldn't stand up, we decided we might as well eat some cookies since we were already at the table. Then we went on a beautiful drive through the countryside, passing terraced gardens, cherry orchards, olive trees, and even two tiny nearby towns.

All in all, after the chaos of the morning, it turned out to be a really nice day. In the end, I dropped Marinella off at the bus, Hannah at her house, and now I am in my room, about to take a nap, which in my opinion, makes any day great.