Day One...

This blog is my social experiment on myself. For one year, I am going to take finding the silver lining to a new extreme and pick one moment per day to deem as the greatest moment of my life. My goal is to do this every day, but, like most of my goals, this may be a tad unrealistic. Also, I apologize in advance to my wife Tiffany for the bastion of spelling, grammar, and syntax errors that are certain to come of this…

The greatest moment of my life occurred today on the French Riviera.

Back in March, I auditioned for Les Azuriales young artist vocal competition, and I was accepted. They paid for me and 9 other opera singers to travel to Nice, France to stay on the French Riviera for a week of rehearsals, master classes, and ultimately a competition where I am eligible to win up to 2000 euro (that’s better than $2000). All meals and accommodation are paid for. Pretty sweet gig. At worst, this is a week vacation in France that is, well, free.

However, with travel, one must travel. Flying is dumb, layovers are dumb, delays are dumb, missed connections are dumb, and having no way to contact the people who are responsible for getting you from the airport to the hotel is definitely dumb. I missed my flight to Nice from London due to a comedy of errors courtesy of American Airlines. These things are to be expected to happen on occasion, but I was met with such dismissive ambivalence from the staff that I have been permanently soured on American Airilines.

Anyway, when I got to the airport I was able to find my checked bag without issue and I proceeded to the exit. As expected, nobody was there to pick me up. I walked around looking at all the people holding signs. Lots of French names, a few hotels, tour groups… There was a sign for someone named Marvin which I must have looked at with hopeful expectance at least half a dozen times. I was truly at a loss. My plan at that point was to just wait at the airport until someone came to get me. I didn’t know what else to do. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long. I had no other plan or ideas, so I went around and looked at all the signs again… One caught my eye. Two names I have never seen before. But, at the bottom of the paper in small print read “Les Azurieles Opera.”

“Excuse me, my name is Marcus. Are you here to take people to the competition hotel?” Yes, it turns out. He was there to pick up 2 other guys that were on the flight that I got moved to, so I just hitched a ride with them.

So, the greatest moment of my life came today on the French Riviera when I found out that I would not be stranded in a foreign country with no cash or cell phone.

My day started on Monday Aug 17th, 6:00am in Edmonds. I woke up next to my beautiful queen Tiffany, and spent the morning with Blake, my little rock-star in training (subsequently speaking, leaving them is the hardest thing I ever have to do). Now, 3 eventful flights, and some amazing French cuisine later (did I mention that my food is all covered here???) it is Tuesday Aug 18th, at 10:30pm and I am ready to watch some downloaded Colbert Report before going to sleep. So, I am off to my room to attempt sleep. Hopefully, my roommate doesn’t snore.
Oh yeah… I have a roommate in a room that is about half the size of my dorm room in college. But, this is probably a story for another day.

-M

The view from my room...