We'll always have Cannes...

As some of you readers may know, Cannes holds a special place in my heart. It's the first place I lived in France (as a student back in 1993), the place where I met and fell in love with the Duke, and the place where I shed so many of my smalltown American ideologies. I may have been a fish out of water with no gold shoes, but Cannes was an amazing eye-opener for me, in so many ways.

With 2000 dollars worth of French francs in my pocket, having just cut off all of my hair (think Jane Mancini in Melrose Place), I was ready to take on the world, starting with France. I wasn't prepared for the yachts, the glitz, or the other European students wearing Gucci and arriving on their private jets.

Oh the naïveté, but it didn't matter, I was in France, people!

Had I really known what Cannes was like before I left, I probably would have chosen Grenoble, which was the other option. Somehow I missed the part in the guidebook that said it was the playground of the rich and famous, and so I set off to study, in my own clueless, Beverly Hillbilly fashion.

Between the beach, the bars, the wine-tastings, and the flirting with the waiters at the Carlton after hours, there wasn't much studying going on. Although I'm sure that the education I got out of the classroom was worth every penny of my hard-earned scholarship.

There are certain memories that stand out in high definition- walking home along the port at 5am and hearing the news from one of the yacht's radios that Kurt Cobain had just died, tasting ravioli so beautiful I thought I would die at a little restaurant called Chez Max, and walking up the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival on the Duke's arm.

One of the 'perks' of studying at the International College de Cannes was that we all got passes to the Film Festival, which allowed us access to as many films as we wanted to see, and the chance to walk up the red carpet. Formal dress required, of course. I die in shame with embarrassement now, thinking about it, but at the time, for just that 5 minutes, I felt the love of my adoring fans....

So, every year around this time, when they release the new film festival poster and are about ready to release the official selection of this year's films (on April 15), I get a little nostalgic. While a year in Cannes was enough for this hick from the sticks, I love remembering how back then, even I felt like a rock star. What more could a girl ask for on her first year abroad?