Sunday, October 17, 2010

Jours Quarante et un – Quarante sept.

Jours Quarante et un – Quarante sept. 11/10/10 – 17/10/10.

I’d like to preface this by explaining to everyone that as more time passes, I become more and more lazy. It’s getting progressively more difficult to sit down and churn out an entry, whereas it’d be so fun and fulfilling early on in my semester. I’m not always busy, no, mais si je suis chez moi, I’m probably wrapped up in blankets in my bed, doing nothing of any importance and yet thinking about how I should really be studying, doing homework, planning my future, planning trips, writing letters and postcards home to people who deserve them, etc, etc. So again, my apologies.

Firstly, some belated photos from Vikki's 21st birthday:

(BAKED POTATO RESTAURANT.)

(I think I have more photos with Christine than anyone ever.)

(Charlotte and Sarah)

(Gaz and Christine!)

(Sarah :D)

(Gaz, me, Brian, Christine, and Theo)

And nextly, I'm going to turn over a new leaf and try to recap some events and things, rather than day by day progressions:

School is going just fine, really. I can’t think of any noteworthy accomplishments or failures academically. As far as funny stories go… I was in my Histoire de la Langue Française class last Tuesday, minding my own business, of course, when I glanced over at the notebook of the girl next to me. What did I spy with my little eye? English. There. She was taking half her notes in English! I was flabbergasted, having been 98% sure that I’d met all the Anglophones in Lille 3. At the break, she asked me a question about my course packet in French, and I replied, before immediately asking if she was a foreign student. As soon as she said “oui”, I told her I saw English written in her notebook when I was looking around. Turns out, Eliza lived in Scotland for a while but goes to school in London. She and a friend of hers directly enrolled into the French university, and receive no special status as Erasmus/foreign students, so she’s a bit overwhelmed and floundering about everything going on. And even more, she knew Georgie, Laura, and Katie. I’ll hopefully see her again this week.

Babysitting has been interesting, to say the least. Simon is 2 and a half years old and super adorable. Really, I almost want to pinch his cheeks when I see him. I’d been with him Tuesday for the first time, while his dad ran out to do errands and things. He was perfectly well behaved. I arrived on Thursday to pick him up from school in a complete panic about where exactly I was supposed to get him, and of course, my phone has been having some problems, so I couldn’t get through to either parent. After a few minutes of near hysteria on my part (What? I’m a bit of an anxious person…), Simon’s mother arrived, introduced me to his teacher, and we walked home. Something was up, though, for dear Simon simply did not want to walk home. He walked really slowly, kept stopping and staring at things, dragged his bookbag along the sidewalk. When we made it back to the house, he immediately went to his toys and wanted to play. His mother kept trying to get his attention, but it wouldn’t work. She left to run errands and was sure to tell me that if he doesn’t want to listen to me, he’s just testing me, and to be firm, and that he needs to eat his snack before he plays, and she’d be home within an hour. Operation Snacktime: All systems go. Only not really, because Simon refused to stop playing with his toy, even after 5-10 minutes of me asking him to please come eat, at least a few bites, and so on. Frustrated, I decided to turn off his toy. He turned it back on. I turned it off. He turned it back on. I turned it off and kept it out of his reach. He screamed. Absolutely screaaaaaaaaaaaamed at me. I expressed that he needed to eat something, and then we could play. He suddenly started sobbing and kept calling out for his pacifier and his little weird puppet things. After holding them and crying for five more minutes, he finally nodded and agreed to eat something. (Mindboggling.)The rest of the time went along without much of a hitch, just Simon constantly telling me, “ne touches PAS!” even when I wasn’t touching anything.. The following day did go better, no outbursts.

It appears that my fall break plans may finally be solidifying. I’ll be going to Rouen, Le Havre, Chartres and possibly Paris with Sarah from Mississippi and Laura from “near Hull”, in England. The other girl from UIowa on an ISEP exchange happens to be placed at Le Havre, and has generously offered us her apartment as a place to stay, cheapening our trip by not having to stay in hostels as well as the knowledge of 2 euro bus routes to Rouen and Caen and other places from Le Havre and making it feel a bit more relaxed and homey. The definite haven’t been sorted yet, but we’re planning to leave on Thursday, October 21st and to return by Thursday, October 29th. Perhaps I’ll get a general itinerary up before we’re off on Thursday. Stay tuned.

Thursday night of this past week was the Soirée Internationale. Association Ulysse rented out a bar/club called Duke’s Club (I think?) and they had paella, and some other things. We arrived promptly because we are good people, and missed out on all the desserts and soup and other food items they’d put out later on in the evening.. Right, well, everyone looked fancy, had a meal, chatted a bit, and then it turned into a dance party. Not my kind of scene. After a bit of moping in the corner and watching everyone else dance, I felt guilty enough to go at least stand around at everyone. Commendable effort by Christine and Sarah and Gaz and just about everyone else to try and get me on stage to dance, but it was an attempt failed nonetheless. I grabbed the last metro home with Christiane, Taynà, some other Portuguese speakers that I didn’t know, Théo, Lauren, Jeremiah.. It was fun overall, I do suppose.

(My relationship with Gaz is clearly a good one.)

(Sarah and Laura, my travel buddies starting later this week!)

(Vikki!)

(I really wasn't so excited, this photo is a trick.)

Friday night, I journaled for my Tandem course, and then went up to Christine’s room to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Christine supplied two bottles of wine, some realllly yummy strawberry cookies, and I brought two éclairs that we had to split to feed the four of us (Christine, Saskia, Sarah, and myself.) It was a nice girls’ evening, and Gaz showed up with his giant rollerblades just as the movie was finishing to show us really (not) funny videos involving (creepy) ventriloquists.

Saturday night was the celebration for Brian’s birthday (which doesn’t actually take place until next week, but oh well!) A bunch of us headed out to Carrefour to pick up some absolutely fabulous looking cakes (chocolate and strawberry, mmmmmm) and then walked over to his host family’s house. Turns out, he’d actually gone to the metro to pick us up (oops!) but he soon made it back and there was much rejoicing. Brian cooked everyone really interesting and delicious hamburgers (complete with onion, cheese, ham, egg, and ketchup?) and there was plenty of alcohol to go around. There were probably 20ish people there in total, which is much more my type of party. You can have conversations, mingle, and eat. Beauteous, and a very good time.

(No idea what is happening here..)

(Mom gave me asian eyes.)

(So sometimes I make my eyes smaller on purpose)

(Australian Mark and I are super attractive.)

(But maybe only when we actually try and look nice.)

(Laurennnn :) )

(Irish Tom's head and me very excited to be in a photo. Check out my tights + shorts combo. I'm obvs integrating well into French fashion..)

(Christine :) )

Tomorrow, I have to go to another suburb of Lille called Marcq-en-Bareoul (or something like that) for my OFII (Office Français de l’Immigration et d’Intégration) appointment. Turns out, they’re going to weigh me, measure my height, take an x-ray, ask if I smoke or am pregnant, some other random questions, take my 55 euro stamp, and then give me a little thing in my passport that will allow me to do basically whatever I want and fully authorizes my visa until July 2011. It’ll feel good to finally have that nonsense done. I still need to try and get a youth card for the metro here, and apply for this sort of housing reimbursement through the French government. I’m going to attempt to get it all done before I leave on Thursday, but we’ll see if that can actually happen…

Overall, everything is great here really. Strikes haven’t affected my life very much which is certainly nice. My friends here are wonderful, I like to eat baguette. Classes are going fine, even if doing homework is difficult, simply due to a lack of motivation. I’m getting to go places and do things.

Content.

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