Danny's life in France

ok...so my christmas vacation so far. lemme see if i can remember everything. so on thursday of last week we were invited to frieda's, our resident director's, for a party. and a party it was !! i told everyone i couldn't stay too long because i had a 6:43am tgv to take the next morning. also, i was staying in town with some friends (the bureau) so i would be that much closer to the shuttle from the gare routiere. well, the party got a bit wilder. everyone was drunk (including me) and we all just danced and danced and danced. i finally got back to their place at 3 and went to bed. i woke up at 6:43 - when my tgv was supposed to leave. how dumb was i to go to bed for only an hour?!?!? well, i took the 8:50am and luckily there was a seat. but it cost me 30euros more to take it. i'm so retarded. so 3 hours at high speed to paris, an hour of hell dragging my heavy suitcase and carry-on bag through the parisian metro system that is not at all handicap-friendly and another 3 hours at an even higher speed from paris to st. brieuc. when i got there it was all fine and dandy. nanou was at the train station to get me. and i also saw emily, a girl who studied in st. brieuc with me 4 years ago and who is doing the same program in aix as me right now, at the train station. so when i got back to nanou and laurent's house, we just hung out. we visited laurent's mom and their neighbor, odette. one night we went to the casino - virginie won 108 after 6 or 7euros and i lost 15. oh well. then i went to the bouvier's, another one of my host families. and from the bouvier's i went to the josse's. during the day, i went into the center of twon (centre ville) to meet up with emily and roman (who did the same program 4 years ago, who is studying in italy this year and was in st. brieuc visiting his old host family). and...so then the next day i took the tgv right to the airport. from the airport the hotel shuttle came to get me. one almost sleepless night in a hotel room and my cell phone rang at 4am france time on 12-24, 10pm indiana time on the 23rd. it was my mom telling me to get out of bed and get started on the trip home. and i did...and what a trip it was!! when i checked in, i went to run my carry-on bag through the x-ray machine and the guy who is supposed to be looking at the screen wasn't looking at it!! he was...doing something else, i'm not sure what it was. but he wasn't paying any attention at all to what was in the bags!! then we were about 30-45mins late arriving in zurich from paris. and my flight from zurich to chicago was delayed 2 hours (waiting for passengers who were coming from connecting flights and the frozen water system on the plane was being fixed - can't go 9 hours on a plane without water). what a flight it was!!! coach was PACKED!! and there were only 2 people in business!! and babies just cried and cried and screamed! the legroom wasn't worth anything (wait - or lack thereof), and the whole flight for 9h25mins just sucked. just too cramped up and too many screaming children. i wasn't AT ALL impressed with swissair, which is an airline said to be one of the best. however, alcohol was free... in chicago, i cleared customs, turned my us cell phone back on and started making calls to let people know that i arrived back in the us safely. then my flight from chicago to indy was another horror. delayed at first for like 20 mins, then we board, then we find out that the pilot's chair's broken, we sit there for an hour, then we deplane and reboard another flight - arriving in indy 2 hours late. but the safety announcement by the flight attendant was really nifty, though - she made it rhyme and sound to the 'night before christmas.' now that i'm home, i wrapped gifts and went to bed. at 12:30am on christmas eve night and everyone in the house has gone to bed because they're 'tired.' ha! i spent 24 hours w/out any sleep on an airplane crossing an ocean. so everyone else went to bed and i stayed up to 'work' - to wrap gifts. oh well. now it's 6am on christmas morning, noon for my body. i'll adjust somehow... merry christmas!!

so to update all y'all on what's been going on lately, well, nothing really. i finally finished my paper. i sent it to paris via email for anne-caroline to look at it. she sent it back to me, i made some changes and finally turned it in today. i hope i get a decent grade on it. and i gave my oral presentation yesterday, too. that went fairly well, too. so things are finally slowing down. well, not really, looking at all of the work that i have to turn in when i get back from chrstimas break. today, i got up at 8 to go do laundry, thinking that the laundromat would be empty. wrong. after that, i went to my classes and then the program had a christmas party/gift change for the students. i got liza candy and erin got me bart simpson and betty boop socks!! i'm definitely gonna wear the betty boop socks on the plane coming home!! now, i'm off to go upstairs to start packing since i'm leaving early on friday and i'm busy all day tomorrow. this will probably be my last post until...well, a LONG time, probably after break. i might post during break but i'm not sure though. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! EXACTLY 1 WEEK FROM NOW, THIS VERY SECOND, I WILL BE WITHIN ONE HOUR OF LANDING AT CHICAGO O'HARE!!!!!!!!!!!

ok...as you can see from my last post i sort of went into hiding. i have worked 3 full days nonstop on this paper and i'm only about 75% done. but it'll get there. the only other thing i have to do is finish reading this other book and give an oral on it on tuesday. but when i get back from break it's going to be even worse - i've got 6 to turn in!! it's awful... in other news, nothing big here. just workin like a villin' covered in chocolate fillin' yo yo. last night we were invited to Mme Marechal's place, our prof from the intensive course we had to take when we first arrived here in aix. it was fun - we ate, drank wine and danced. she put on hispanic music and we all salsa'd, did the meringa, tango, etc. it was too much fun!! we didn't end up leaving until 3am this morning. then i got back and patty was wondering the halls at 3:30am looking for people who were up so he could talk to them. he slept all day so he didn't want to go to bed. so he came into my room and i finally kicked him out at 4 so i could go to bed. i woke up at noon today and went straight to the office to work on this blasted paper again. ankica and i went to quick to get a burger for supper. seriously - i've lived on bagettes and coke for the past 3 days. not healthy. oh well. who cares. then i found out that good ol' saddam hussein was captured. woooohoo!! and...yeah...that's about it from here. this week's gonna be a busy one with me living at 5am on friday morning on the bullet train, my work to turn in, another party to go to at frienda's place (she's our resident professor who's from UMich) and packing. lata.

ok, this bitch is officially going into hiding. after going to my one and only class today, i realized that i literally have a ton of bricks hanging over my head and that it's about to come tumbling down on me any minute. and get this shit!!! i've got SIX papers due the week that i get back from the United States!!!!!! SIX!!! what is up with that?!?!?!? are they trying to kill us here or what?!?!? i'm fed up with it! and they're not small 2-3 page papers...they're 10 pagers. bravo la france - t'es genaile!!! putain! ok, so enough complaining. so i spent the entire night in my room reading. and will be doing so for the next 6 or 700 hours. maybe my christmas break in the us won't be a 'break,' afterall. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

today didn't bring anything big but classes. i had my first class from 11:30-1:00 (for which i had to get up early and write a paper), a class from 2-4 and then my final class from 6-7:30. all except for the first are incredibly boring. and...aside from that, nothing big today. i am just now getting back from all of my classes. i think i'm going to fix something to eat and do some reading. blah.

friday resulted in me sleeping in, going into town to check my mail at the office, coming back to my place to pack for my weekend in miramas and...going to the train station to go to miramas. monique cancelled again on me for english lessons so i was free most of the afternoon. my trip to miramas was quite a mess. the train from aix to marseille was packed. and as soon as i got off of the train in marseille, the train station was just flooded with people. and on top of that - i looked at the large departure board to find where my train for miramas was going to be leaving - it wasn't on there!!! but i went to the train that was supposed to leave at 17:45 - the time i was supposed to leave - and even though it was a different train number and had a different destination city, it was still going to miramas. see, it's not like an airplane - trains stop at different towns but have one main destination - the end of the line. elyane was at the train station to get me. we went back to the house and waited on christian to get home. he had gotten back from bloomington on tuesday. it was good seeing him again. we ate and just hung around the house. saturday, we got up and i read a bit for one of my classes in the morning. the afternoon - elyane and i went to salon de provence, a small city not too far from miramas. we both got gifts for our families. before going to salon, though, we went to the town square of miramas because the telethon was going on. it's only once a year and it's all over france. it's not localized where each city has one at different times throughout the year. they were in each city in france last weekend. it was really cool. there was this irish/country-western group playing music there. reminded me a bit of home. then after all that on saturday, elyane took me to the theater to see a circus. well, it wasn't exactly a kids' circus, even though there were A LOT of kids there. it was a russian group. there weren't any words but just a lot of funny acts and stuff. I HAD SO MUCH FUN!! i was so glad she took me - we were talking in the car going there that we were afraid we were going to fall asleep. she said that often when she goes to the theater she falls asleep. but seeing as how she's an "elu" - an elected official in the town - she gets free tickets left and right. so it's not like she's wasting her money. sunday, we got up and went to a sporting goods store, decathalon, to get her a golf club bag. and...then we went to see 'intolerable cuelty' (in french). it was horrible!! it's the typical american dream romance - but worse! it's way too far-fetched. but we still had fun. then their (elyane and christian) son, yohann, came over with michael. we ate dinner, he did elyane's hair, and....just nothing, really. then christian watched this HILAROUS movie on tv - a girl who is searching for her father, comes to find he's gay, and so she dresses up as a guy, meets 'his' dad, tells him he's gay, they catch up on old times, then he finds out 'he's' a girl, yada yada yada...but it was hilarous!! today - i got up and christian brought me back to aix in the car. so i got the money back on my train ticket. and...then i took a nap and then went to class. but i got an A on the test that we took last week!!!!! ummm...cleaned my room a bit and now i need to write a small composition to turn in tomorrow. whew!! now that i can't feel my fingers anymore, i'll bring more to the website tomorrow...

today consisted of my alarm going off at 8am and me throwing my phone on the floor with a hard 'clack' (i use the alarm clock on my cell phone) and sleeping right through my 10am. no biggie - i didn't care. then i got up, got ready and headed out to my 2 hours of boring political theory. after that, i went to monoprix to get some printer paper. i saved a book on a disk - a book that i have to read for one of my lit courses and i found it online in english!! it ends up being 144 pages in Word, but i guess i'll somehow get it read. i should have had it read 2 months ago!! i'm sooooooooo far behind on my reading. now that i'm back, i did laundry and have all kinds of underwear, socks and jeans hanging up all over my room. i hope they're dry before tomorrow because i'm leaving for miramas for the weekend and i have no more clean underclothes!! we'll just wait and see. now that i have fixed myself something for dinner, i'm going to go back upstairs and start more readings...more to come on monday after i get back from miramas. in the meantime, i've always got my cell...

so here we go...lots to tell tonight. yesterday, i got up not at all feeling 21. isn't that wierd? it's probably because i am in france celebrating my 21st. but i went to my french lit class and then had lunch at quick (france's version of mcdonalds). after that i went to another one of my lit courses (yes yes i know - i hate lit. but these are required courses for my major in french). 30 mins into the 2 hour course someone came pounding on the door and asked if we knew what was going on. of course we didn't. but they were evacuating the fac (university) due to floods that were coming. well, so we all left happier than a bunch of kids that just found out that they were on a snowday. i came back to the dorms and hung out a bit with jessie. after coming down to the computer lab, the director came in and said that they were probably going to have to shut it down (the comp lab) because there were 'tempettes' coming in. i asked him what tempettes were and he said that it was a hurricaine. i knew that wasn't true because hurricaines don't form in the med. sea. but come to find out they were really really strong storms with damaging winds and lightening. he also said that they were shutting down all public buildings. i didn't know what to do - i had a class at the IEP (political science institute) that's 45 mins away and this class - i HAVE to be there. so i called the director of our program and she didn't know anything. she called the 4 people that she knew there and called me back saying she didn't get ahold of anyone. so i then tried calling all my friends who study at the iep to see if they knew anything. of course they didn't. so i called a girl who lives not too far from there and she said that she would run to the iep to see if it was closed. meanwhile, ankica and i went ahead and left to go to this wreched class. stevie called me a few minutes later telling me that 'the sonofabitch was closed!' woooohooooooo!!! we didn't have class!! the 3 of us were extatic. all through this there is no rain, no storms, no wind no nothing, mind you. so we all met at 7:15 to head to snacksomos, where we were going to celebrate my birthday. our waiter gave us a free bottle of wine because one it was my birthday and two, i brought a lot of business for him. and we just ate the BEST sandwiches on earth and had a bunch of fun. i got a ton of cards, too. i especially liked the one i got that my cats 'signed' and sent me. that was cool. i can't wait to see my kids (cats) when i get home in less than 3 weeks!! after that, we all went to ben and jerry's for ice cream. upon our return to the dorms, jessie and patty decided to throw me a little 'after-hours party.' i didn't get to bed until 2 and would have slept through my class that was at 2 this afternoon if it weren't for my alarm!! today, after going to the same class that got cancelled 30 mins after it started, i went into town to run some errands (grocery store, went to get my mail, etc). ummmm...then i came back, cleaned a bit and fixed something to eat (which consisted of heating up a can of ravoli). 47 cents a can at Ed's!!! aside from that, the wind here is HORRIBLE!!!!! it's blowing at around 60mph!!!!! it'll blow you away if you go outside!! it's insane!!! hopefully it'll come another downpour tonight and classes will be cancelled again tomorrow... let's hope.

ok, lots going on today with classes/weather. more to come later, but from what i just heard, there is a big 'tempette' or like a hurricaine (which i know isn't true because hurricaines don't form in the med. sea). but i guess there are severe storms w/ damaging winds coming so they're closing all public buildings and the internet room is going to close in a bit, too. but i'll be back with an UPDATED day maybe later on tonight or possibly tomorrow. i have a class on the other side of the city (45 mins by foot) that i should be leaving for here in a bit but...given the situation, i don't think i'm going to go. besides, i just called the director of our program, mme feral, and she called the pol. science insitute - no answer. so i don't know if that means that they're closed or nobody answered the phone. in either case, i think for my safety, i'm staying in tonight. lata!! all this on my 21st!!!!!!!!!!!

now now now...lemme see about today. i have to think a bit. well, before going to bed last night, patty came by and he and i just sat and talked for a bit. then jessie came down. they didn't leave my room until nearly 2am! after getting up this morning, i worked on a useless homework assignment for my class that i had tonight. then i went to get my train ticket for this weekend...yeup...heading back to miramas. and...then i went to class where i had a test. the teacher really urked me, though. i turned something in and 3 of the questions were wrong. now granted, i didn't know what else to put in those blanks, but still. she kinda made a fool out of me in front of the class by telling me over and over and over again that they were wrong and had me redo them. i didn't know what else to put in there!! oh well. then i spent 45 minutes walking home in the POURING rain. everybit of me was just as drenched as can be. and there was thunder and lightening, too!! a first since i got to france!!! it was a misrable experience being wet and all, but at the same time, it was a truly fun experience! just being absolutely soaked to the bone and walking in the pouring rain, thunder and lightening! now that i'm back and all dried off and in dry clothes, i think i'm going to go upstairs and read a bit for my class tomorrow, MY 21ST BIRTHDAY!!!!