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.