Last Blog?

I'm not sure yet if this will be the last blog? becasue this is the end the upcoming last week of the semester but   i don't know if we will have to blog about the last week we are here too. I got to see the west wing! aka the forbidden part of my house. my computer suddenly stopped working and i went upstairs to find come becuase i could hear he was up there from the music. so themystery is solved! except that there are like hundreds and hundreds more horse statues and pictures, and all sorts of creepy like charcoal portraits of come, margerite, and marie de laide. and there is a sclae up there! it has been like directly above me all semester, how weird it that. but it is still like trashed up there, it is seriously ridiculous. but then come disappeared into another level that i didnt know existed and i am still in the dark about that one. seeing that it took me a semester to get up to the first secret floor i doubt im going to get to see the top in a week.

abby came with us to the versailles meeting today (my friend fromknitting) but i think we were both disappointed in how much like class it was. yesterday we went to knitting in public. we were the first oness there i think? or maybe we just didnt see the big group buy she brought romain while she and i knitted for a while he read. then we found the big group. our group didnt have neough intererst so we joined with the "knitspirit group" (stupid name) because they said on their blog that knitspirit herself would make little kits for everyone who came. but then their group was like not very friendly and we tried to wait them out becuase i was sure she wouldnt want to carry all those packs back, but evidently she did becuase she never gave us any, she just like showed them off and then she even gave some to strangers! they had some needles in it and some yarn that looked like shoelaces kind of, and a little pattern. the thing i wanted most was the bag becuase it was red and snapped shut and had a great handle, it was just, SO GREAT! but anyway she didnt give us any and i didnt want any of her stupid bags anyway becuase the yarn was ugly. so we left. then we went to this little flea market kind of thing and walked around for a bit. i have made so much progress on my sweater! there are only 46 more rows until the body is done! i started the lace part too, the first row of it today but then i was too tired to do anymore without screwing up after the slave drive that was this morning. 

i finally bought some honey too, but it is not the right kind. even the honey specialty store saidt hat ivy honey did not exist so i bought some white lavender honey. i think it will be good anyway but im bummed i didnt find the right stuff after all. i was teasing with john that iw as just going to put an ivy honey label on it, but i guess honey actually tastes a little like what kind of flowers it was made form? oh well, lost cause. but this means souvenir shopping is over. i hope everything i bought is going to fit. i cannot wait to start packing! I am going to be home in less than 200 hours!

bordeaux

so i am rather unimpressed by the city of bordeaux itself. there is like NOTHING to do there. but I found a tour of the vineyards that was not to expensive and it was really fun. basically they gave us a lot of wines to taste starting from the youngest to oldest to teach us how to taste the different levels of tannins in a wine and how they get better if you dont drink a bottle of wine until 3 years after you buy it, and an hour after you open it. I also found the castle where I am totally going to get married, provided the economy is still bad enough for castles to be as affordable as they apparently are right now, when I get married. Other than that I have been making so much progress on my sweater. I am thinking about taking enxt weekend off from travelling becuase i already have plans with abby and kind of want to try to go to the beach. although, i gues i could just hang out with abby and go to the beach the last weekend I am here because it seems like that is going to be pretty hard to get out of town during just with getting everything packed up and everything. 

this is the first time i have just really not wanted to blog. it just feels like there is so much to cover. This week was rather uneventful, but the weekend was great. Friday I got up at the crack of dawn and went to Normandy. There I did a tour of the normandy beachs (the tour that john and I were supopsed to do when he was here. i feel so bad because he would have loved it). as soon as i arrived i was starving so i sat down in the first restaurant and ordered a plate of eggs and some bread, and they brought me out FIVE EGGS. these people a few tables down were british and they were just aghast by how many eggs were on my plate. it was so delicious. so then after getting downtown i found my tour which was like a van with these two other couples. By the end of the day i was like in love with the other people on my tour, they were so nice and friendly. and i learned so much, like i wasnt even particularly interested in the history of it until i learned it all. our guide was really sweet she knew literally everything. One of the other guys though, who had broken his ankle falling down the steps in the louvre, knew even more, like he knew everything she knew and then like, how to shoot the gun we were looking at, or the angle of incline of the cliffs. he was great, so nice. the tour was american themed so we went to omaha beach, gold beach? and the american cemetary. then i went to the british cemetary by myself before the tour even left. when we got back i got some salted caramel flavored gelato after dinner. i got to the train station early, my train didnt leave until 8:07 and i went back to the breakfast place to see if i could buy a newspaper and the same british couple was there, they heard me counting my money in english and they started talking to me and they said they couldnt believe how many egg i had been served and that they had thought i was french! which is great, except that i mean they dont speak any french so how would they know. then i was waiting by the track reading my french newspaper and these people from atlanta came up to me and like, as though they were speaking to a deaf child were like, "PARIS, FRANCE, HERE? like pointing to the track and like making train noises and i accidently responded in french then he went over back to his atlanta family and was like yea she says its here...and they kept being like no i think shes wrong, etc, until the mom was like shes not deaf she just cant understand you! lol, so then i went over and in english explained to them like the sign that said they were in the right place and how to compost their tickets. Then when I was walking away one of them said "wow you speak english so well for someone french, thanks!" lol.

    then yesterday i met up with my friend from knitting and we had such a great day. we went to the yarn store and she bought some of the cream silk that i bought for my stocking for her to make a shirt for her pacse with. i am getting kind of worried about how muppety my sweater is looking. the kidsilk haze just seems like it is thread, but to get the like airy feeling that everyone else made in theirs, i think i would have to use some thinner yarn. it just feels like it would be so fragile....but the things that were knitted up in the kidsilk haze were like, i mean they were  light and delicate but you could wear it without breaking it for sure. there is a thinner yarn that is the same blend as the yarn that i am using now at the cat'laine and i would only need 3 skeings of it but its still like nearly 8 euros a skein... plus i am kind of far along with the yarn i have now. I dunno, i wish i had a felting shaver because im hoping that just what i dont like is that it is so fuzzy and that it will seem lighter without all the fuzz. so then we went to the bon marche so she could get some needles for her pacse shirt. then we went to this place called the mosque and drank mint tea with sugar in it. it was really kind of special. it is this garden with fig trees in it and little tables and they just walk around with trays of the tea, which is so much better than you can imagine, and then if you want cookies you have to go inside. we got two different kinds of pistachio cookies, mine was more of a cake and hers was more of a doughnut. anyway, the only problem was it was really hot and we were both getting sunburned so we had to go kind of quickly. next we went to go letterboxing. the directions we had were to find one by the palais royal so we walked FOREVER to get to the palais royal, but then once we were there we realized that we were actually at the grand palais. at which point abby made me fall in love with her forever by puling a compass out of her purse so we could figure out where to go. we arrived at the palais royal (the buren columns that i am doing my project on are under renovation and like, not there at all right now...) there was an ouositde exhibit of pieces of the berlin wall which were decorated by artists, it was pretty cool. then we followed the directions to find the green box, and it was inside this hedge with people surrounding it. we were trying to think of a distraction so we could get in there without being seen but we finally just went for it, people noticed for sure. we found it and inside there was a buren column stamp for our books, but we hadnt made our stamps yet so we couldnt stamp the book :(. but there was some little extra thing in there called a hitchhiker. it was a eiffel tower stamp and if you find it you are supposed to take it and put it in the next one you find. so we drew something in the book, and took the hitchhiker, but then we couldnt figure out how to get it back in the hedge becuase the same people were still there and it looks kind of like a bomb...so heres where things get kind of sketchy...we took it. abby is going to get a stamp book, stamp the stamps, and take it back monday when different people are there. i really hope no one looks for it today! then we went grocery shopping, and i went back to her house and cooked stirfry for her and her boyfriend. it wasnt the best i have ever made it, but it was still pretty good, i was happy at least. we bought the biggest artichokes i have ever seen and cooked those too. her kitchen is like a martha stewart/ikea spawn. she has literally everything, a garlic press, a rollilng pin, a steamer, many cutting boards, great knives, several aprons. it was fantastic. romain, her boyfriend is very sweet. they were both really nervous that i was there i think, i could tell that she had like made him clean up over the day, they were really just adorable. he helped me study for my exam a little bit because i told him what my upcoming exam is on and he helped my practice the linking phrases like bien que and si bien que for example, and was correcting my oral grammaire. then he like got out this giant "le bon usage" book and started looking up rules for that for me and for accords. i dunno, it was cute. then he played games on my phone while abby and i knitted, knit? it was a really fun day. then when i got home beth had found the knitting group reportage and abby was like all over it. 

today i need to wrap up the bibliography for one of my classes but the girl i am supposed to meet with is not responding. i really need to get it done today because my like major french final is thursday, then next weekend i am going to bordeaux for a late birthday celebration so i doubt i will be able to accomplish much there. then the upcoming week, i like havent even started the project for my  last class yet so that week pretty much needs to be reserved for that. then all the sudden the whole thing is done and im 22 and graduated. what the hell.

Samantha's Visit and London

It is so hot in Paris. it was cold for the last 3 months, like far colder than i expected and then all the sudden it started being so hot i cant even stand it. my lazy days of sleeping until noon all but two days a week are OVER becuase it is too hot to sleep with the curtains drawn, and when they are open to let the breeze in I am basically sleeping in a sunbeam from about 9 am onward. which is good because i need to find some time to work out so i can wear a bathing suit when i get back to the united states, 11 days before the fourth of july. I just looked at the weather and it says that right now, at 6 pm is feels like it is 87 degrees.  BUt ooh it looks like it is going to rain hard toinhgt and then be not so hot again for at least the next 10 days the high is 76. I am spoiled by being used to being near-ish water at least. For a while today I felt really trapped here, especially since my allergies have been driving me crazy in the hot weather. 

 So my last post was entirely inaccurate becuase evidently I got the date wrong and Samantha was not arriving until monday. sobasically i sat in the sketchiest metro waiting for hours for no reason. the worst part is that the next day samantha had to do the same thing waiting for me the next day while i waited for my class to be over. As soon as she got here we dropped off her stuff, got some food, and went over to montmartre and saw the museum of eroticism and had drink over on that side of town. we saw sacre couer, and place de tertre, which I have only recently been able to consistantly locate, and then headed home. The next day I had class and she went over to the eiffel tower. we met up later and I cannot or the life of me remember what we did. The next day at 743 we went to london. Catching the trains thus far has been easy so when it said to be a half hour early i mean im usually a half hour early anyway, but the train itself was really early in the morning so we were goign to just get there a half hour early and we did, but then we got breakfast because usually you like just get on the train then once it arrives. after wasting about 15 minutes eating I realized that the track was upstairs so we went upstairs only to realize that there was like a luggage check, customs, LOTS of stuff to do, forms to fill out. Everyone who was already there was for a later train already so we had to like cut all of them, and we made it on the train 4 minutes before it left. Our first day there we saw a lot of really touristy things like westminster and parliment andthe eye, then we went to the half price ticket booth and bought tickets to see chicago that night. which was great. i wore my new vintage find a like velour fur shirtthat has tiger stripes on it. THATS what we did the night i forgot in paris, we went to the vintage stores in the marais and then walked up and down the champs elysee. so then the next day in london we went to abbey road and some like movie museum samantha wanted to see becuase she is obsessed with the beatles. I ate fish and chips with mushy peas SO MANY TIMES. i could eat that every day i think. we went out that night to this little bar that was recommended online with a bartender who looked like rhianna and she was so nice she was like are you guys going out tonight? and we were like uhh we are out...and then she kicked us out and told us we couldnt call that being out and it was pathetic and sent us over to this place called huxton square where there was like, du monde, essentially. we went to a mexican bar where i ruined the mood by ordering 3 bowls of different kind of mexican food. then we went to this sweet club kind of thing that looked like it was in someones house with like wallpaper and wooden floors, but we didnt stay very long becuase samantha didnt like its vibe. so then we cabbed it back and had the nicest cab driver who only made us pay 10 pounds instead of 12, and reminded us not to tip him. Our hostel was so cool , it was caleld the generator and had 800 people staying there. we had a private room so it was fine. it felt like camp! there were bunk beds and free breakfast with like the best muesili ever and you had to wait in line to put it on your tray. there was also a nighclub inside which was actually really fun. you had to eat breakfast in the night club   though becuase there was not evnough dining room space which was kind of funny. then the next day we went...to buckingham palace and the tower of london and brick lane. samantha and i both bought leather jackets which is im sure why it is so hot in paris now. then the next day we went to camden market whenre i bought so much stuff, i bought these earrings and a bracelet, and a tapestry that i love but I may or may not be too old to hang in my house (becuase the day i will be 22 is now on the 10 day weather thing on weather.com).  i got to eat more delicious emxican food at camden market!!! then we took the train  home and had a casual night in paris. sunday we went to the catacombs, we had to wait in line for nearly 2 hours! i met the nicest couple in line though, he was from south caroline and she was from belgium. there were like 15 really obnoxious kids from virginia tech in line in front of u though. then we came back here and went to the market by my house. later we went and had dinner and wine by the eiffel tower. 

The museum that I went to see for this week is the Tate Modern in London. I just realized i forgot to include that in the itinerary of what we did, I have no idea when we went, friday maybe? Anyway it was fantastic. It is just this huge space near the thames. The bottom level was this movement instalation that included like balance beams and tight ropes and climbing walls, and a hollow cylinder, and there were just children playing with them everywhere. the balance block made thing thundering noise everytime it hit the ground and it was in this huge room so it echoed too. then around the corner there was a video of the equipment being used by people repetitively. a few floors up there was a lot of matisse and picasso and warhol. this tied in really well with what we have been studying in howards class. I was really impressed with the collection, and that it was free, and that there were so many people there. The next floor was like the next half of modernity with a large collection of jackson pollock  and then kind of moving into theings that we have only just touched on rather then studied, like objects made from blood and food. there was a woman artist I had never heard of her but her stuff was amazing. i cant remember her name, but she was extremely recent and just painted pictures of distorted women. There was also a room playing a movie with like french nonsensical words playing over it, of a woman who iguess was like the creator of the idea of using self in her work. anyway it was of her hooking up with men in this like orgy, but then there was a lot of meat there too. like she would be making out with this guy and then all the sudden he would tear the head off of a chicken and start like thrashing it around. it was extremely bizarre, called meat love, and transitioned into a part of the museum that was mostly video experiments with and without sound including one that was just like gorss things with food. like this man dressed in a horrible outfit with an almost clown thing going on rubbing just bottles and bottles of ketchup in his sheets. it was pretty awful. so then we left and outside there was this great little lawn with almost a fair of performance art on it. like peoples art was their clothes, or they woul dset up a tent and recreate a scene, or pull up a trailer with their installation inside. it was like like the salon of rejects. there was this tent with a giant bed in it called grandmas bed and all these women were inside nursing their babies. basically i loved this museum far more than i thought i would and im  SO glad i went to it instead of a different one. Pictures coming as soon as samantha posts them!

In twenty minutes I am going to go get samantha from the metro/rer. I cant wait! and then londont his weekend, i thik i finally feel caught up from all the traveling of spring break to the extent that I am actually excited about traveling more. Because then after this it is bayeux next weekend, and then bordeaux. i hope i didnt lose the information on my reservations for bordeaux....becuase now i cant remember which hostel im staying in and such. hmmm ye ai have no idea that is a concern. not as big of a concerns as my socks though. they have turned into socks for someone with cankles. it is really too bad. i think i am going to need to start them all over again! but i kind of feel like i should stop until i get home so i can measure more. 

John graduated this weekend, and was almost as frustrated as when i graduated. his whole family was there, and going out to dinner and he and all his friends were going out at night. it would have been nice to be there, but also im just kind of jealous of how much actual pomp and circumstance went on. but to have graduated from law school, like that is so unbelievable. 

I had a rather more exciting weekend then usual even before samanthas arrival because come invited me to the movies with his friends TWICE! the movies were only 3 euros this weekend for some reason, so we went and saw star trek and angels and demons. both ended up being in english. his friends seem really nice, and everyone was very sweet about me being the weird foreign girl. i think people here are more used to it and judge less and are instead just impressed that youre trying .yesterday i figured out that i can  make spicy eggs in the microwave now that i have hot sauce. i put way too many peppers in them for the first time, but they were really good anyway. daffy the dog is visiting but i think come is the only one here besides that so daffy is staying in the kitchen, i wish he would come up and play. I am also not unconvinced that the old lady who  live across the street died...because we are on the same schedule somehow so i saw her all the time, until the other day i woke up when there was this giant flash of light in my room at 600 in the morning, and when i looked outside there were alll these firefighters and ambulances but no one had their  sirens on. maybe i have just been watching too much greys anatomy. actually i definitley have been watching too much greys anatomy. Once samantha leaves there is only like a month left until i leave, that is ridiculous.

Tricote-Machine

Today was the first productive day in a really long time. I have been putting off my paper and hw for forever, but I finally got around to doing it today. That is the good thing about Sunday in france; there is actually nothing else to do but the things you are supposed to. Friday was extremely disappointing. I had finished my scarf in knitting group on wednesday so I had nothing to knit. I made a list of all the places i could go to find yarn and was reallye xcited about checking out the legendary dougerie. BUt then everything was closed because of armistace day. I was imagining like the clouds would burst just as i was walking in and then i would have no excuse but to spend the afternoon there, but then it didn't happen. It worked out for the best because i could kind of scope out where I actually wanted to go, and went back with this girl from my class clara the next day. We went first to this place called the cat'laine which had an incredible amount of really tacky yarn but some truly beautiful things as well. I bought 14 skeins of yarn! she was so patient with my french and even helped me do some of the conversions for my pattern. I bought 6 skeins of this purple blend to use to make the shirley sweater. then i bought 3 skeins of creme silk that were only 5.90 each! I am going to make lace stockings that i have been looking at for a while I think. Then I bought my mom a lot of this like wine, almost hemp colored silk too. The silk yarn smells so good, my whole room smells like silk now, its great. I also bought 3 skeins at the bon marche! of this black bio cotton that is made from non- genetically modified cotton seeds lol. I cast on to make john a pair of socks. I had to start them over so many times but now i think i finally have the gauge right. Its too bad though because i think when they stretch out they will be kind of hole- y, just beause i dont knit very tightly. ANyway, then clara and I went to the drougerie. I am so glad i didnt try to buy yarn there it was so intimidating! you are not supposed to take pictures there it says all over it, but I "kinneared" one because my camera is my phone you cant really tell. 

    I also cancelled my interview with cleanwater this week. While I did it for the right reasons, I am all the sudden really excited about having some freedom and mobility this summer. I know i will still be applying for jobs all the time and looking for places to live, and applying to law school, but I am kind of excited about not like, having to take off work to be able to go up north for a little while. I think i was a lot more depressed about not having a summer to look forward to than i thought. i mean starting in the fall at a shitty job seems fine, but having to miss like long weekends at the lake, or going camping, for a job that i hate seems a lot worse.

   That said, I have a tacky new hobby i think. Or at least I want to, and john says hell do it with me. You have to make a stamp, and then you look up on this website places where these secret boxes are and they have like scavenger hunt directions to get them. So then you follow them, find the box, and stamp it with your stamp. I think the part of it I want to do most is make the stamp, but i cant think of how I want our stamp to be...

   I talked to this girl who is becoming my friend in my knitting group about it and she says she has wanted to do it too, but that its too hard to come up with a stamp she has been thinking about it for like months. I think I am going to go to the embassy with her to vouch that she is not married, because she and her boyfriend are getting pacsed and she doesn't want to have the person shes pacsing vouch that she is not married, or maybe its not allowed or something.  Anyway, here is the kinneared photo of the drougerie:

Italy, Graduation, and Swine Flu

So if I had gotten around to writing this post last week it would have been a LOT MORE swine flu oriented. I don't want anyone to underestimate the extent to which I was worried about swine flu. However, I read a very interesting article about how boring this pandemic is becuase in a real pandemic you will not be able to slowly, painstakingly record each case. And so I am feeling much better. 

The rest of my vacation was great. Rome. Sometimes I worry that Kaitlin and I are just fringe friends because even though we lived togetehr we dont talk that much or like go out together normally, and Pi phi is just such an unusual situation. But we were so happy to see each other, and she always asks such good questions. There is no one in my life who likes to analyze social stuations as much as she does, and we are so on the same page about that. ANyway she had a lot of work becuase it was her finals time so I did a lot of sightseeing by myself for at least the first two days. But hten I got really sick of sightseeing and just started shopping full time pretty much. I bought everyone souvenirs i need to except my mom and johns sister and i already know what and where they are both gettign things, i feel so much better.

I fell in love with this leather bag becuase they have beautiful leather things in italy. but it was like 60 euros and i kind of feel weird abuot real leather anyway. and so i determined not to buy it even though i really need a new bag and it would cost like 30 euros event o get a cheap new one. so i was walking into the vatican where i was determined not to spend any money so i wouldnt support the vatican. so much so that i even got gelato before i got in becuase i was afraid i would need some because the gelato here is so good. so good! one day i ate my gelato and then as soon as i threw it away i got some more just right htne becuase i couldnt even help myself. so i was wlaking into the vatican and i saw this vendor selling purses like knock offs, then i saw the one i was in love with. so i walked over and started looking at is like wistfully and this guy came over and was like it is a great deal its only 25 and its REALY LEATHER (yea right). and i was like hmm okay thanks and he was like what its too much? and i was like yea a little, im a student, sorry. and he was like you want a discount? a pretty girl discount? and i was like maybe i dunno sure? and he was like okay, 20! and i was like okay well ill seee how much money i spend and come back...and started to walk away and he was like okay hold on hold on 15? and i was like done and bought it but i only had 2 euro things so i had to give him 16 and asked for a euro back and he was like you know what? you are so pretty here, and gave me the 2 euros back. so got the bag for 14 basically and its not real leather which is great so i dont even have to feel bad about it. even though being in europe really makes me want fur and leather, and above all a cute cropped tan leather coat but im so against it....but its so cute....

so then i entered the vatican with my new purchase and saw st peters basilica but it cost 7 euros to get in and i didnt want to spend any money there so i sat down and texted john about my bag and how unsafe i felt being that i was in my first absolute monarchy. that like if the pope finally succumbed to alzeimers right then and said kill the heretics! im pretty sure i was surrounded by people who would do it and it would be FINE. and then i accidently spelled absolute like absolut like the vodka and then i laughed to myself about how thats probably what the pope drinks. and then I left. 

I got to go out with kaitlin and her friends and that was GREAT. her friends are great. it is such a different vibe to have boys in the program, and like, real people.there are so many bars like, actual bars in italy. it felt like being in anna rbor almost becuase you could just go out to a bar area and bar hop. I got to cook for kaitlin like every night too. I made johns stirfry, and eggs and toast, and pasta, and I even bought artichokes but I didnt get a chance to make them. :(. I did get to eat a deep fried artichoke though, and it was amazing. I also got to eat caprese salad pizza, miam. 

The couchette to italy was great I as all alone in the cabine! On the way back though it was AWFUL. I ended up being in the same cabin with two girls who were from institut catholique but we spoke french to each other for like 15 minutes before we figured out we were all american which i think is problematic. Then there was this 18 year old from  mexico (can you say swine flu?) and a like super clingy woman from magrheb who thought we were all the same age even though she was like 35 who made us all take photos together...then there was this horribly fat smelly woman who had like fake TOENAILS and was using this toothpick to like get dirt out from under them and her fingers, and guh it was awful. she left the toothpick like kind of where my head was supposed to be and i was so afraid it was going to fall on my head while i was sleeping.t hen i was on the bottom bunk for the first time and it like doesnt even go flat? the head rests still like come into your space becuase it just converts from chairs into a bed and then, the worst of the worst happened. she CHANGED HER PAD IN THE CABIN. what the hell. WHAT THE HELL. it was awful. 

So then I was back here and like really unhappy about it. I just really was not excited about being back in paris, and then my first class back my professor like kept us an hour after class and told us we were like going to have to have saturday class. I should have known better then to get upset about it, I just feel like so isolated here, and was again reminded of honestly just how much I lmiss my real friends. and how like when I get back it feels like they will be all graduated and gone and done and I will never get to play beer pong with them again. And i was like really down about John even though he had already been gone a week, my routine had been so diffeernt that I forgot like how really unsatisfying skype is, and now it is like a lot worse because ihad gotten used to him not being around. I had like a really hard two days. But hten I remembered that this is not like a dramatic change from how I had been feeling here before, I had just been used to being so happy being around my friends and john all the time. 

So then yesterday I went shopping for a leather jacket, despite my reservations about leather, and ended up getting this really cute shirt adn a belt at the vintage store. Then I talked to eva for a long time, and erika for a while,and even shannon for a few minutes. And I think I feel a lot more ready to face this gradutaion thing (which is good becuase it is technically today. I wonder if I will have the same feelings again on the last day of school here or just general end of study abroad feelings. I am about ready to admit that I am really excited to go home. LIke I do think studying abroad is really important if only for like the changes in how you perceive things when you get back home but I am tired of being here. I know that makes me sound so ungrateful, like I'll stay, I just wish I could be home now. 

Last year at this time I wasl ike flipping out about jobs and being ready and stuff like that and now, even with my worst case scenario come true, I do not have a job or a place to live except with my aprents this summer and I am so much calmer about it. Maybe that is the legacy of being here, that I am just too distracted being worried about htings here than worrying about real life concerns lol.  

amine with my syrup

  corridor

 amazingly expensive lunch in prague

museum of medieval torture, not actually the torture of the cold war as I thought originally...

fish with peas for eyes

mini car races

sleeper train

holocaust memorial

right before i got too scared and had to get down

 by the river in berlin

windmills

Spring Break

So I don't think I technically have to blog about spring break but my dad talks about how hard it is going to be to remember everything so I think I need to start writing down some of these adventures.

Thursday the 9 through....Tuesday the 14 I was in Arles with Amine, Morgane, and Mialey. This was fantastic. It only rains in arles and montpelier 10 days a year and I was there for 3 of them. The other two days were gorgeous though. Amine picked me up at the train station which was nice. It was so nice of his girlfriend to let me stay with her becuase `I only know amine through his ex-girlfriend who is one of my friends. Plus I have only met amine like 3 times. the last time I was in paris i met him with kate, and then he came to visit me in paris earlier in the semester. when he was in the united states i was like too busy to visit him even though he was miserable and now he like went so much out of his way to take care of me. SO I was lucky enough to be in Arles for Feria which is like this spanish festval sort of thing that im pretty sure like only celebrates ricard, this licorice flavored liquer syrup, sangria, and the running of the bulls. EVerything was so inexpensive in Arles! I seriously spent like 50 dollars the whole time I was there. MOrgane had just moved into a new house to be nearer to amine so i felt like it was even more of a pain that I was there. AMine was in and out a lot and at first morgane and i could hardly understand each other. her french is so accented, and sometimes i would speak french to amine and he would translate my french to her in french. but then after we were alone for a while and after amine told us to speak to each other sweetly lol, we all the sudden could understand each other and she was great. we both thought she was older than i am because she has a 2 year old but it turns out she is just 19! goes to show you the difference between american 19 year olds and french single teenage mothers...They kept trying to give me these things called like ciros but i had no idea what they were until finally amine forced me and they are delicious! they are like grenadine or lemonade just from concentrate and you add water to them and make a drink. i think they are mostly for children but im also pretty sure thats how you get lemonade here? and amine told me that ricard the licorice alcohol is also a syrup which i do remember that you have to mix it with water. 

  I was really bummed because we didn't get to go out for feria really. Amine and his girlfriend don't really drink and mialey was there anyway so someone had to stay home. I was going to go out with her roomate and her friends, they were ncie enough to invite me but i got lost in the crowd and couldnt find them again. Mialey (whose name was so hard to understand in french that i didnt get it until i saw it written down) is around 18 months old I think, and she is just learning how to talk. it was so funny for them to teach her adn I words at the same time. She would always wake up at like 4 am though and talk to herself and laugh and play and one time Morgane went in there and she was like talking to a ghost, and morgane hearad noises in the "case" (basement but like super scary version) too. SO after that I was terrified of the phantome which is french for ghost but I accidently kept calling it the phantasm which means fantasy and everyone around me thought was truly hilarious apparently. 

 Then on the last day I went out to get dinner and I figured out the bulls were going to run one more time so i waited around and amine joined me and it was really fun. much less scary than i imagined. As a matter of fact, there are horses that run in front of the bulls and the first several times they went by i didnt see the bulls behind them. All of the boys stand in the middle and wait until the horses come, then they get out of the way to the side until they can run up behind the bull and try to touch it or pull its tail. everyone else stands behind the barricades that are new because i guess a few years ago the bull turned around and went into a restaurant. The bull did turn around several times anyway. I came away from arles feeling so much better about my french and especially my ability to communicate with people my own age. Amine is great, he spent some time in the US so it was funny to hear what he though about americans and he loved to hear what i thought about french people. It is amazing we are friends becuase so many of our attitudes are like strikingly different. He like really offended me at least once and i know I really offended him at least once. I am amazed at what good hosts he and his girlfriend were though. Like you could not find people at U of M my age who would be so nice. They like dropped everything to show me around for 4 days, they kept trying to feed me, they were just really so attentive whereas I feel like any of my other peers would be like dont eat whats in the fridge, they grocery store is down the street if youre hungry. I was really really impressed. Amine even drove me an hour to montpelier an then walked around with me in the rain all day to show me the city. Then his brother abandoned his apartment so I could sleep there and amine went and slept at his friends house so I could have it to myself. It was so nice and so ridiculous at the same time. and his brothers girlfriend had a scale there!!!! MOrgane took me to this garden of arts by the garden that van gogh painted where I had a chai milkshake that was so so good. It had whipped cream on it but I guess european whipped cream is actually whipped cream. It is not sweetened and is like really really heavy. I was really really happy to be there too. The whole time I was there I just felt so much better and so happy to be like we were acting like a family like eating together and making plans together. It is just so nice to be with real friends, even though amine and I don't go back that far.

   So then i went back to paris. I got in at like 1130 and john was going to arrive at like 9 the next morning but his plane ended up getting delayed by some like freak storm in new jersey which made him miss his second plane so he actually didnt get into paris until like noon. we met up at the metro and it was soooo weird to see him. I was like kind of shy. He kept hugging me but i had my sunglasses hooked onto my shirt and it kept like hurting me a little and i just felt like he was there too fast for how long i had waited almost. I told him it felt like an arranged marriage arranged by us lol. His bag was lost and so I had to call the airline and give them my phone number which they told me was not really my phone number because it had one less digit and i was like stumped because it is exactly what i had told everyone else and they had been able to use it. But eventually figured out he had it on his caller id or something I don't know the whole thing was really embarasssing and as was a theme for this part of the trip john seemed to expect me to be able to do like terribly difficult things in french easily and I just utterly failed everytime. Talking on the phone in french is really really hard. I hate it. 

    We went to a cafe near school so we could eat lunch and john was just amazed by all the cars driving by. Its funny becuase i have not noticed a cool car the whole time I have been here but evidently like all the cars are cool cars, who knew. (My mom drove john to the airport so his car stayed at my parents house where evidently it caused quite the stir and the spanish teacher at beth's school tried to buy it). Then we went to my house so john could nap while I tried to work out his bag and they said they would deliver it the next day at before 6 pm, and that they would call us a little before so we could arrange to be there. This was great except we were supposed to go to Normandie the next day so we cancelled that leg of our trip. The weather was not great but John was such a trooper becuase he didn't nap for that long and then was ready to roll once he got up. We headed over to the arch de triomphe and then walked down the champs elysee for a little bit. John found the mercedes store on the champs and was really excited to get his picture with it. All the cars had signs that said "Buy your mercedes on the camps elysee!!!" as though that were like a really cool thing to do. We were planning to walk all the way down to the louvre past like the tuileries and everything but we got hungry so we sat down by a fountain where we had some bread and camenbert and babybels, macaroons, and meringues.  But it was getting really windy like tornado-y and the camenbert fell gooey side down onto the ground and we didnt have a bottle opener so the wine sprayed all over johns only clothes and face when he tried to open it. So we put everything together and went over to the hostel. 

     I have stayed at this hostel twice before with  my friend kate (who dated amine). One of these times was the scariest night I have ever had ever but it really had nothing to do with the hostel, or its location, or anything. We were just being dumb mostly. However, the trip to the hostel took FOREVER. We had to change metros like 3 times and we still had to ride each one fore like 7 stops it was awful. (I think John thinks he rode the metro A LOT while he was in paris)  We finally got there and it was the same guy who was working the desk as the last time I was there. He showed up to our room and it was all yellow and really hot. So we opened up all the windows and were ready to go to sleep when the  moped races started. EVidently this tiny alley is central for moped races becuase they raced for like several hours. It was SO LOUD and I would so much rather have the fresh air and have it be loud but john would way rather it was hot I think. ugh. I slept pretty well actually and I think john did too even though it was so loud he was just so tired. The next morning we woke up at 6 am starving. This was so true of when I was jetlagged too that I was like starving, all the time. SO we ate a lot more cheese and bread and macaroons and meringue and felt way better and went back to sleep. We got up and tried to go to the catacombs the next day but the like was SO INCREDIBLY LONG we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. I honestly right now cannot remember what we did on this day, isnt that horrible? we also tried to go get falafel  but that was closed becuase it was passover. I think we ended up getting crepes, actually like the best crepes I have ever had, with tuna and cheese and egg. I think maybe we went to centre george pomidou to see the kandinsky and crandel or something else (not my fave but john loved it, it was like toys made out of wire and statues made out of twisted wire that we 3-d but their shadows were like pictures on the wall behind them). I just feel like that was so recently that I did that. (Maybe john has reasons and all we did the first day in paris was ride the metro).

              So then after we were trying to go to the eiffel tower but  I got a call from the lost bag delivery service that I couldn't understand and then he HUNG UP ON ME. So we got off the metro and I made john call and speak english and he hung up on him too. Now that I have thought about it I think he was asking to set up a time when they could deliver it but at the time I thought he said something about twenty minutes, so we just went back to my house and called the dispatcher who told us the deliverer spoke english, false. The dispatcher told us that he had his bag right there and wouldn't be able to deliver it until after 8 pm and then denied ever telling us 6, continental airlines told us they were no longer responsible it had been located, and she was in houston anyway, it was awful. OUr train was supposed to leave at 6 so I pretty much bullied John into going through with our travel plans even without his bag, and he bullied continental into giving him 50 dollars for clothes and stuff so we went to monoprix and the centre commerciaux at montparnasse where for 50 dollars we were able to buy i think 3 white tshirts, 3 pairs of underwear, 5 pairs of socks, a toothbrush, and some renu. MIRACULOUS, because like usually a pair of underwear costs like 20 euro was what we discovered. The underwear was the hardest part because it was all like european mens like brief like stretchy underwear. John wasworried he was going to fall in love with it and then i would have to import them for him but really I am the one who fell in love with it, they are great. So we went to the train station and caught our first sleeper train ever. We met this really nice family a mom a dad adn the daughter who was 18 and they were going to berlin to learn about the cold war for her class. as soon as he found out we were american he yelled at his daughter to get off the phone and  come practice her english with us. Fathers are the same the world over I think. 

  I think I knew this was a lie on some level but i thought, and i had told john that the sleeper trains are private. This is far from the truth. There are six people per sleeper car. And there are no like alternative spaces so you just had to lay in your bed until it was time to go to sleep. I think the family was very concerned when we said we didnt want to sleep that we were like crazy americans so they directed us to the bar car which was great. you can sit there and beer was like almost free even though it was on a train and it was cool to see the landscape. So we got tired at like 1030 and went back and slept in the car. or at least i did, i slept fine except for once i woke up really claustrophobic. I'm pretty sure john did not sleep at all becuase we kept stopping and thought something was wrong. I knew we kept stopping but as I explained to him the next day I knew trains needed water so I figured we were just stopping for water. Evidently that is only STEAM ENGINES that need water. WHO KNEW. So I slept pretty well considering and then we got to the Berlin Station in the morning( my phone texted me a welcome to germany) where we bought sandwiches for breakfast because of how much i hate french breakfast food. We had kept those little babybels too and kept eating them even though they got to be like the consistancy of cream cheese without refrigeration.

Then we took the most amazing train ride to prague. We both slept about halfway (I don't think john slept at all on the sleeper). The second half was just the most amazing view though we were following a river with  these cliffs of either side. Then every once and a whole we would come across like a cluster of houses, or like, an american tank in one case. All the houses look they had eyes because they have these little windows in the roofs.

When we arrived in Prague it was pouring down rain. This nice woman ran into us everywhere like trying ot figure out the metro and probably helped us four times. I had my moms bank card because if I lose mine I lose my ability to reclaim my london tickets but I didn't have the code for my mom's card and i accidently entered the wrong one 3 times so my card was turned off for nearly the whole time we were in prague. So we got the metro but could not figure out the bus so we walked in the pouring down rain to our hostel. John was wearing like literally the only clothes he had and I was wearing all my warm ones and we got soaked. JOhn is so good with maps though! He got us there directly, but it was at the top of this like incredibly steep hill and hwen we finally got up there no one was there so we had to go back down and back up after we called from a nearby bar. Oh my gosh. BUt we got there and the hostel was gorgeous and so cheap! (not like our other hostel). There were literally like 3 beds. We didnt do much the first night but nap a little and go out to dinner across the street. I ordered a fish that turned out to be the entire fish, just on my plate, with a pea in the place of its eye on one side, but not on the other and it was delicious. WE had a really hard time figuring out the exchange rate and that meal may have been either really cheap or really expensive, I still dont know lol. WE drank a lot of this czech beer called pilsner urquell that was at every location where you could buy food and that john's cousin had raved about when he was in prague. 

We woke up really early the next day because there was like this buzzing noise out our window. We laid in bed and tried to guess what it was for a while but I had to give up (I think john actually guessed right which will tell you how much he knows about motors). There was this weird blue track outside our window and we had been unable to figure out what it was the night before because it covered like an entire parking lot. They were having like the nascar of remote control cars that day. They had like tents and grills and coolers while these kids raced their cars around like literally all day. They were still at it when we came back home that night. John said that he thought some of them even had gas motors in them because of how they sounded and they had no antennaes. Side note there is a mexican restaurant in prague but i was not hungry at an appropriate time to go there :(.

I had dinner for breakfast, I ate spicy gnocchi at like 1030 am and this cup of what john called chocolate soup. it was supposedly hot chocolate but really it was like several chocolate bars melted in my cup.  and john got real drip coffee!!! he was not as impressed as I was. Then we walked and we walked and we walked. I can't remember all we saw, the Charles bridge, the castle, we went to the torture museum which was kind of tourist trappy but actually really interesting. I saw a real chastity belt! we stopped at this little restaurant by the water where we sat outside even though it was kind of cold and they suggested that perhaps we were from some icelandic country lol. We ordered fried cheese and goulash with noodles. It ended up being shockingly expensive, I guess we  should have known better. We went to so many churches I can't even remember. We were too tired and not hungry after our late afternoon feast so we went to bed without really eating anything and then woke up in the middle of the night and ate up the rest of our babybels. 

We had to be up at 500 anyway or something to catch our train out of prague at 640. We got to the train station starving and the only thing that was open there was a sandwich store so we got them and i ate my sandwich all up right away like, on the  track in the fog waiting for the train. I felt like we were in fiddler in the roof at the part where the dad takes huddle to the trian station to move to siberia to live with her poor teacher lover who is in a prison for being radical but is at least jewish. There was SO MUCH MAYONAISE ON MY SANDWICH THOUGH.

We got to berlin at 1140 or so and got on one of those giant tour buses that lets you stop and get off whenever you want. We stopped at like every place. John was like so distracted by the cars we could hardly walk without him noticing new ones. We saw a ferrari or something and even I could hear that there was like a lot of horsepower in that car...i think thats what i heard....We got lunch at this steak house and i got a giant beer. John tried the budweiser and he was right, it did taste different in germany. My beer was delicious too though. The wall was so much smaller than I expected but the history of the wall was amazing, like written across another wall and it was so pro american like even in french! I guess I am just used to assuming that whatever took place the united states was to blame or at least behaved terribly. BUt it looks like they did a great job with the berlin wall at least. It was a beautiful day in berlin like 70 nearly and sunny. The holocaust memorial was also particularly impressive. Like these big blocks start off being flish with the ground and end up getting higher until if you are in the middle you cant see around them. I thought it felt like the group mentality. I climbed up them while they were small but then all the sudden i was too high and got scared and had to come down. I really think those are going to get so graffitied up, or at least kids are going to come smoke pot and make out there for sure becuase you are so secluded, and if you turn a corner you can get away. John and I got caught kissing on the bus by the guide, who announced it over hte loudspeaker, and i was SO EMBARASSED that we had to get off and catch the next bus.

We got back to the train station a few hours early and just went and bought some beer and sat by the river and watched boats go by. We couldn't believe how lucky we are. I eventually bough some currywurst and ate it all up and it was not as good or as spicy or as curry flavored as i had imagined it. And they were all out of schnitzel! Then we were waiting for the train to come and volia! there was the family who had been in our cabin on the way there! They were on our train home too and in the same car! unfortunatley they were in the cabine one over, I think we were all sad becuase they were so perfect on the way over. There were a bunch of couples in our cabine, and it got really really warm becasue there was no ventilation this time. There was this big thing over my head that kept making a lot of noise and john was so nice to me when i fussed about it even though he had been miserable the whole first train ride and I was just zonked. We went down to the bar train first thing so we could just sit for awhile and there were all these windmills, it was just beautiful. 

We got into paris the next morning and came directly to my host families house and johns bag had beaten us there! Evidently it had arrived at 11 pm here... I felt so bad but I was so glad it finally caught us and I think john was relieved too to be able ot shave and such. We did so much on this day. We went to the sacre coeur and then we bought some wine and sat on the island or penninsula of the seine for a while, then we went to the eiffel tower before heading back to the same old hostel. We got a much nicer room this time that opened into the garden and was much quieter. We had a picnic of bread and cheese and sandwiches. The next morning john had to leave early early. I took him to the RER and I was pathetically sad. The man next to us kept looking at us like he thought he would have to intervene and remind me that I am not actually fifteen anymore.

things I want

Things I want right now so much:

corn cooked in the fire with lime and  salt

pancakes

pecan waffles

eggs and toast

tios

john's stirfry!

mmm salmon with honey and soy sauce

nikhil's rice and beans and salsa! with cilantro!

broccoli and carrots with honey and butter and pepper and salt

to go up to the cottage

to have a fourth of july party

to be at a bar watching the final 4

my car

I'm not really that homesick I just want so many things to eat that I don't hate and can cook myself!

Today I went to the sewers of Paris. My professor told us we were going to see other people's poop but  I didn't see any. It smelled pretty bad, but not as horrible as you would imagine. The other visit we had this week was to the catacombs. There were just piles and piles of bones stacked up and like all of the femurs were together, and the arm bones, and then they would like put designs in them like hearts , or crosses, or like skull and cross bones shapes.  They are what my pictures are from. To be honest, it was like appalling but it was just so weird that you couldn't even acknowledge that these were like actual people. Then, I went to the open body exhibit, the one that Henry later informed me was like a major issue with amnesty international and the human rights treaty? I guess after they died their bodies were sold for 300 dollars to the people who made the exhibit? Its funny because after I went to see it I kept thinking about how cool it would be to have my body displayed like that lol. Maybe that is self-centered, not like as the fat one, but like, just I don't know I don't think I could care less. But I guess it is kind of disrespectful that I had to pay 12.50 to go see the dead bodies of people who were also sold. Of the two though, the catacombs and the open body exhibit I would be much more appalled at the thought of my body being in the catacombs, and open to tours. Seriously, people try to steal the bones like all the time too, when we left the catacombs they searched our purses and behind the searcher there were like piles of bones that had been confiscated already that day from people who were trying to steal them! There were like 4 skulls even in that pile! 

          Open Body though was really cool even if it was kind of expensive and evidently immoral. When John saw it in chicago evidently there were like fetuses and a pregnant woman cross sectioned and an obese person so you could see how his fat like infringed on his heart function. The version I saw was significantly toned down from that. The images of people without their skin, like riding bikes and stuff so you could see their musculature that they used in their promotional ads were like the most boring part. As soon as you got in there was a body that like, someone had laid down and then cut 1 cm cross sections all the way up. They like replace water in the body with plastic so it stays about the same size and you can still see everything. I was so proud of my french that I could understand everything that was written in the exhibits but then was like put back down to size when we went to the sewers. The man had I guess a very heavy southern accent and I swear he thought it was funny becuase he talked SO FAST. He was nice, but geez. I like tried really hard for the first half and understood most of it but then just got to tired. It sucks that no one can understand me, I like have been speaking so little french lately becuase it is just  like so lame when you think you are doing such a good job and then whoever your talkign to just straight up turns around and says ummm i didnt understand a word she just said. i think my french is getting worse. 

         I also need to stop taking naps! I am getting on such a bad cycle. Food-wise too, although I just ate an entire pineapple and then broke down and got some of that salmon and lentils and a container of tabouli at the monop. It is so good, usually they have this slamon tabouli that i have been wanting to try but tonight they didnt so i got the kind with mustard in it. I think I am starting to like mustard considering i have to eat it like EVERY DAY. They also have this like grape and figue version that looks really good. I go to monop like, more than once a day most days, i think they know who I am. When I get home I would really like to learn how to cook lentils better, in addition to learning how to cook that chocolate mousse that my host mom made that one time, omg it was to die for. She made some more this week but i think it was the cool whip version.

             In other news, I got a second interview with clean water! The more I think about it the more I think I wouldn't hate doing that job. Javon is talking about doing it too which would be cool. I mean, its more money than waitressing and closer to using my degree at least. I have anther interview with greencorps on wednesday at 1 am. My interview with the law firm, I think it was okay, I really think that the position wont be open when I get back and they wanted to meet me instead of just doing a video second interview kind of thing. He got like really defensive when I asked if he thought the position would stay open. So whatever, well see, I'll email him when I get back like he said to. I think I would truly hate that job, but it would be so good for my resume, and like 9-5 for the most part. I think it would make me really excited about going to law school to like get out of that sort of environment. 

I think thats all thats really new. By this time next week I will be into my spring break!

Friday April 10th through Tuesday april 14th- Arles and Montpellier with Amine and Morgane

Wednesday the 15th- John is here!

Thursday the 16th- Normandy

Friday and Saturday the 17th and 18th- Prague

Sunday the 19th- Berlin

Monday the 20th- day in Paris

Tuesday- John leaves :(

Wednesday the 22- Monday the 27- Italy with kaitlin!

Then the next weekend alisha will be here, and two weeks after that Samantha will be! I think the end here is going to be so hard just having like nothing to look forward to except like going home and freaking out about jobs and law school. 

Rachel Shelly at FNAC. The good news is I had a really horrible experience with leader price cheese this week (and an allergic reaction to there lotion I am seriously never going there again!) and as a result am going to be as skinny as she is since I am in France and am anti-cheese.

Omg I am a hundred times happier today and I think it is because I just realized it is 830 pm and I haven't spoken all day

I feel way better today than I have in a long time- I got so much done! I woke up to an adorably sweet message from Javon. I had told her I was going to have to promote her to best friend since erika is moving to Nashville like, when I get home. She wrote back talking about how she was already in the process of like looking at tickets with her family and trying to come here. I am feeling very weird about my friends, and about the lack of social connections that exist outside of college. My mom always warned me that you have to date a lot of people in college becuase outside of college it is really hard to meet people, but I like really feel like its harder to meet friends than boyfriends any day. I am so happy with John and I am so excited about our plans for the future but it makes me worry about keeping my friendships a priority becuase for the first time in my life they are what is really more tenuous. Javon was talking too about how she has not really been bonding with people in her groups at school. Its just weird how she and I met and were bff like 10 minutes later but here it has taken more than  month to get less than half as comfortable as we are together. John says that all I have to do is make the choices that are right for me and that will put me in contact with people I have more in common with and naturally it will be easier to make friends with them. Maybe. So, it will be fantastic if she comes. My cousin Samantha is going to come too now! In may for her birthday and graduation. We are going to go to London together. I think this is going to affect my plans to go to spain except like maybe for a weekend but whatever. I feel so *blessed* that everyone is going to come. 

       Amine and his new girlfriend came to visit this week! She is a saint, and adorable. She has a little girl. I think, or maybe a little boy, what a big change for amine after dating kate. Kate is one of my friends from camp who dated amine for a while. So even though this girl was like hanging out with her boyfriends exgirlfriends friend she was like awesome and bought me hot chocolate and was just such a grownup about the whole thing. She invited me to come stay at her house in Arles and Montpelier with her and amine and her son/daughter for the first few days of spring break and I really hope I can get it worked out! The second day they were here we just actually couldn't meet up with cell phones and maps it was too confusing and I was so tired and carrying like 500 lbs of coursepack, but it ended up being okay. It was just so nice to have them here.

       This week also welcomed....Rachel Shelley/Helena Peabody from the L-word! I went over to the FNAC she was visiting today. I couldn't find the venue though for the longest time. Evidently though when french people want to say the basement they say it is the negative first floor like it goes -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...etc. So  by the time I got there is was PACKED. She didn't speak french at all but kept trying it was adorable. I guess they are going to make a the L-word movie!!! 

      After that I went and found the train station that all my trains are leaving from, and did all of my readings for almost the next two weeks so I can focus on this big project I have coming up, and went to the train station from the airport so I could give samantha and alisha and john and maybe javon like super specific instructions. I tried to take pictures for the object project but it was HAILING. So I'm just going to go before knitting this week, I haven't been in two weeks because it was canelled the week before last and then this week I was too busy studying for my test, hanging out with amine, and watching the l- word to go. I don't know it doesn't seem like that much I guess but I feel like I am in so much better shape now. Tomorrow I want to go buy sketch indian food from the market that comes near my house. 

     So nowww I am going to delightedly stay in and write cover letters all night. I'm serious, I'm like really excited to get them done so that I can hopefully send them all out by monday??? monday morning perhaps? and then focus on finishing up my powerpoint/starting my outline tomorrow. 

It was like, 15 lbs, the figue. It was like christmas tree cookie dough wrapped around a fruitcake kind of thing? It doesn't sound that delicious but it was and it made me full for like, nearly 9 hours. It was ridiculous. I have accomplished so much today but it just like was a terrible day. We didn't get any of our assignments until 2 oclock this afternoon so I had to read everything for the whole week today and I just feel so lazy that I have been laying in my bed reading for like 5 hours now. I really wanted to go get some ice cream after I picked up my assignments but everywhere that sells ice cream in paris is closed on sunday, like all of the stores even are closed. So, i couldn't get any which is probably better anyway but I am like, starving now. I realized today I haven't eaten any red meat the whole time I have been here I don't think. Definitley not beef at least. I really want like a hamburger. The fact that it seems to be getting warm in michigan has me thinking a lot about barbeques and summer time, and the fourth of July. I can't wait to go up to my parents cabin, and to kayak around with John. I am going to become such a good kayaker this summer, my core is going to be so strong. It is really hard to miss spring because it is always so surprisingly great in MIchigan. Although, its not like its not going to be spring here, it just seems like spring is more gradual and freezing here so far. JOhn was reminding me about how fall isbetter and how much I will love being in Michigan in the fall, but really its probably not going to be. I am not going to be like tailgating and going to class in the fall. I am goign to be WORKING. I was so anxious last year for what it would feel like if I got to this time and hadn't lined anything up and now its real and I just couldn't care less. Like I think I realized when I was working for the past few months like it's not like I am actually not going to have enough money to be alive, I just might like barely have enough money to be alive. I really wonder where I am going to live next year. It is just so weird not to know and not to be able to plan it out until I can find a job. 

    I planned a lot for how much I was going to miss John, and how much I would miss like my family, but I had not really planned for how much I would miss my friends. While the girls in this program are very sweet, we don't have a ton in common and I wonder about if erika is in chicago next year if we will like ever hang out again. I just failed to make appropriate provisions to talk with my friends while I was here. I think so far that is the really big lesson becuase it has always been like so important to have a boyfriend. Well right now I have a great boyfriend so I don't feel the need to be trying to fill a void on that front, but I am still left with a lot of time on my own and it is kind of uncomfortable. I don't know what to do with myself. So I stopped biting my nails, but they are growing really slowly and even when I paint them they look like a child painted them because I have bitten them for so long I don't think I ever learned how to do it well.

      This week is going to be super busy I feel because we have our class meetings spread out, amine is coming to town, I have a french test, and I have a meeting for the like student counsel kind of group at school. I don't know when I am going to fit my knitting group in, I might not be able to go this week :(. and it was CANCELLED last week.

     Tatiana and I went to the ghetto of paris to go to this flea market at porte de clingnancourt. It was actually like really cool. I got harassed less than I do in an average day just around town and they had like all of this music playing from booths and everything ti was just really fun. I think we are going to try to go back there and go out to eat, and I might try to take John there too when he comes. I also went to like, a whole bunch of vintage shops. They all really made me want a fur coat/leather coat. Everybody just looks so chic wearing them... I tried to convince myself that it wont be cold for very  much longer and I think I would never wear it in the united states. They are just so cheap! and cute! 

Figue

Thats right, I ate this: 

I finished my vest! sorry I can't figure out how to rotate pictures in here. I feel like this week was rather uneventful. I can't believe that on friday I will have been here a month already. wow. 25% done with the semester? More, because I only have to go to school 8 times in april? I got everything settled for John's and my spring break. I think it is going to be really great. I can't believe it is only a month really until he is here! Today it was really gorgeous so Tatiana, Zoe, Beatriz and I went to do our homework in the sunshine on the steps of Sacre Couer. It was beautiful, I love it over there. It is in that neighborhood that I bought my buttons. They had a ridiculous selection like walls and walls of them. Then I bought a yard of satin-y materiel for a euro. I am going to try to line the dress that I am wearing in this picture. I bought it here, it has been my most expensive purchase so far but it is super see through. I could always wear it with tights I guess. SPeaking of tights, my box with my glasses in it got stuck at customs. I talked to my host sister about it and sent them an email so hopefully I hear back soon because I would really like everything that is in it. We went out this weekend to the birthday  party of a boy in Tatianas class, and then with PIerre and Gabrial again. They wanted to go to a discotech again but it was going to be very pricey and we just said no, and made them come to this like chill restaurant with us. That is where Gabriel told me I have a very strong american accent :(. I casted on and have been working on a new scarf with the yarn that John's grandma gave me, it is really hard to work with though and I have started over 3 times already. I would buy some more and start something else but I cannot find any other yarn like at all. I am not in love with this pattern, but at the knitting club there are like hundreds of books so maybe I will get some ideas. I went for a run today and stumbled on a market where I bought a lot of fruit to have for lunch. They had dresses that were really similar to mine, but not as nice :). They had yarn too, all from America though and the like walmart brands that are very generic. I want to go to the bonmarche this week, or one of the monoprix's that carries it too. I am starting to think about what I am going to bring home for people. I can't believe I have been here for a month without traveling anywhere else. Although I am trying to get people to go to london the weekend after next but so far no- go. I guess spring break will take care of a lot of that bug, and amine is coming next week...this week? I'm not sure, with his new girlfriend to talk about when I can stay with him in Montpelier. I'm really bummer about how its looking like I'm not going to make it to spain though because my little is traveling like literally every weekend. Maybe I am just going to have to go by myself and for like the first half of the week. Then if we can hang out cool, and if not, fine. I feel like my french has not gotten much better lately, like I was still struggling at dinner a lot tonight, but there were like 10 people here and I was really tired. I hate sundays here, I am always tired all day and theres nothing to do because nothing is open! I've decided (after my incident where I shaved my fingernail off) to try to stop biting my nails, because I hate everything about it. I was realizing this week that I have only talked to erika like twice since I have been here, and eva sporadically. We have always been that kind of friends that like sometimes we do our own thing and arent always in touch. It just didn't occur to me how I had been missing that because I have been able to talk to my family and John so much. Anyway, it has been 54 minutes at least since I finished watching the last episode of the L-word online so I should be allowed again. Goodnight!

the bathroom is beautiful, the shower is glass and you can stand up and shower it is fantastic it feels like the first time I have been clean since I got here. There isn't enough room to take a good picture of it though. And i bought a HAIR DRYER finally.

Give me the pineapple!

There is a new woman staying at my house who is crazy. She is from alaska and she like can hardly speak any french at all so she speaks SO SLOWLY. I though it was just her french but then I heard her speak english and I guess that is just  how she talks. My host mom told me she was around 30 but I think she is more like 50 because she has a 30 year old daughter and is going to be a grandmother in august. She is super awkward and in some ways kind of creepy. She like invited me into her room to look at pictures of her family but then insisted on speaking french so it took like 45 minutes. At dinner though we keep like having to break into english though, or like the host mom will talk to her and everyone else will like talk over her and around her and it made me like, so happy because I was at least more with it then her. Even though I asked what a word meant tonight and the sister was like we already explained that tonight, and like laughed. I think though overall it has made my host family appreciate more how like bad my french COULD be, and as a result I am now facebook friends with my host brother! So I was feeling really good about my french but then this happened:

 I was really hungry because I hadn't had time to eat breakfast since I woke up 45 minutes before my class started. We have a short break at school so I went down to the cafeteria to buy a snack. I told the lady I wanted an "anana" and some yogurt. I told her over and over because she didn't understand me because yogurt is really hard to pronounce, but really she had no idea what fruit i wanted so I finally just like reached over and grabbed it. And she goes "OOOOHHHHH, Banane." Evidently ananas does not mean banana, it means pineapple, and I was like demanding one from this poor woman while like pointing at a banana. 

Combined with how impossibly difficult my french homework is I am feeling pretty lame in the french department today. My french father is really cool though, he always like wants to talk politics and I think he slows down his speech some but not as much as his wife. The brother on the other hand I can hardly understand at all, and I think he does that on purpose. Anyway, the dad was telling this story about how someone at work had a picture of his wife on his desktop of his work computer. My host father was like appalled, he said that was too private and couldn't believe that his coworker would do that. He said that one of the younger guys, even had a picture of him and his GIRLFRIEND up there. Oh, my, word. 

My knitting group though, was fantastic. Most of the other people there are american, canadian, belgian, swiss, and there are a couple of french people. There are a lot of like girls about my age who have moved here because they married french men. A guy who was there talked like in depthly about the process of PACS-ing (like becoming legal partners essentially, you can enter into a contract to have the same rights except reproductively as married couples whether you are homosexual or heterosexual) becuase he and his partner are getting pacsed so their taxes are less. It was really interesting. Everyone is VERY good, and I stayed for almost 3 hours. I knitted so much I ran out of pattern that I had with me but I guess and I did it exactly right, it was great. Not I picked up and knit around the collar, I am working on that now, the ribbing. I need to find someplace that sells buttons though. Also, I have never knitted button holes before and I don't quite know how it is going to work. I guess I can ask on wednesday. When I came home though, I had asked my mom here to make me a plate and put it in the fridge but instead she just left all of dinner on the table, just out. I was so confused. I like put it all away after but I don't know where anything goes because she never lets me do anything (like COOK for example) so I hope I did it right. I felt really bad. She said its no big deal though and she can do it all the wednesdays, so who knows. 

Today on the metro a little girl started petting my hair (I think we are the only two people in paris who have pink coats, and she was 2 and a half). So I started like peeking at her and then I was like in english, you are so cute! can I keep you? And her dad turned around and in english was like "NO!" She was really adorable though, but didn't want to speak french with me either :(. Being here makes me really want a puppy too because all the homeless people have dogs. I guess if you have a dog you can't be taken to jail because there is nothing to do with the dog so thats why they all have them. Daffy the jaques russelle as they called him came over to play yesterday too. He wanted to play with my KNITTING though and that wasn't going to fly. It's funny, they tell him to s'assoir himself instead of to sit. I mean, that means to sit, but it just seems long, and like really hard for a dog. 

That reminds me about how sick I am about my french homework though. Seriously. It is impossible.  I am posting some more pics after this, please note the HEATED TOWEL RACKS and remember the kids built it like entirely themselves pretty much. 

I am still super stressed out about travel plans for me and John though. I feel like I need to reserve trains and hostels pretty soon so we can sit together and such, but I can't without the railpasses I don't think. Beth has me thinking that maybe it makes more sense just to stay in paris and normandy, but I think John wants to go to the places I want to as well. Or at least he doesn't want to stay in Paris the whole time and I feel like by shortening the trip all we lose are the places we want to see most, so I don't know what to do. I wish that my friends didn't want to go out like every single night all weekend so that I could get things done and not be so stressed out during the week. Or at least not stay out until 5. I just want to like, get up at a reasonable time and not be exhausted all day, and be able to run and LIFT when I want to. And not have to eat carbs for like every meal, or possibly know what is in the food I am eating. I just feel really old. This weekend we met this girl who was hanging out with these guys we had met up with and she was like how old are you? And I was like 21, and she was like "oh I didn't realize you were older." lol. She was 18. She was born in 1991. unbelievable.