Okay, this is my whiny post. Read at your own caution.

This is going to be pretty stream-of-consciousness with no real rhyme or reason. Pleave forgive any whiplash-inducing topic changes.

and no caps from here on out, because additional finger movements are superfluous at 10:00 pm. plus for some reason i like the way the font looks with no caps. i feel like it all flows better without interuptions. somewhere, my english teachers of yesteryear are crying.

went to paris this past weekend with sara and margaux and stayed at margaux's house which is in Massy, a suburb of paris. her family was really nice, and there's an exchange student living there named walter. he's colombian and iranian and for some reason he ended up being named walter. this will never, ever get old or any less hilarious. we went out friday night, it was pretty cool. the two other times i've been there i didn't go out so it was interesting to see the city at night. The next day we got up to go shopping and spent all day wandering around. however i was rather unimpressed with parisian shopping, to be honest. i kind of wonder if it was just the area we were in -- le marais. it may just have a general style, but then again we stopped in other stores and it was basically just a massive repetition of the same style. i did come out with an old, olive military jacket that i have to definitely wash because it smells like a vintage shop but i think it'll be cute once i finish working on it. and that's about it for paris, actually. i looked for a purse--couldn't find one i liked; looked around for other stuff, too. i'm excited for my mom to come with me so we can do touristy things. ahhhh architecture and museums!

ugh i'm such a nerd i can't even handle it sometimes.

speaking of, i've been working on my schedule for this next semester and i think it's going to work out pretty well. it looks like i'll end up taking 18 hours + thesis. i have to choose between INST 203 and FR 331 at some point, which is kind of scary because they're both required by my respective majors. great planning there, y'all. and i think i'm going to take that intro to american law class? just because if i'm going to swear off law school definitively and say i never, ever want to be a lawyer, i'd better know exactly why. although knowing me i'll fall in love and go to law school and be a paper pusher for the rest of my life.

i've been in a weird mood lately. i think i'm at the bottom of that inverted bell curve we learned about in predeparture. (for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about, it's basically a way of analyzing culture shock/homesickness.) last night i told sara that if i could go home right now, i would, and it's only slightly less true today. it's really hard to like, put into words, and i know that is annoying because i just sound like a whiner. but really i just want to be in my own bed and watch 24 straight hours of tv, even if it's qvc or something, and to bake and take a bath and drink drip coffee and not have to constantly translate in my head. i miss the quiet. living in a city is loud and i live right off a busy street. i want to not have to ask people to repeat things 5 times, or worse, have someone re-explain something three times and STILL not understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. i miss the american way of doing things. i miss that publics works projects actually get done in a timely manner in america. and i feel like i wear the same thing all the time...because i DO. the totality of my clothing takes up two shelves and a couple of wire hangers, plus one drawer for underwear. and i have four pairs of shoes, one of which is too small and another which is too big. this is literally the longest i've ever been away from my house, too, which i'm sure is playing a role. The five weeks i spent here in angers in 2008 was the longest before this.

it got a lot better today, though. i skipped my afternoon classes and went for a long walk and that helped. i got some sunlight which i'm sure kickstarted my serotonin and the exercise probably gave me some endorphins. ("exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy. happy people just don't kill their husbands.") and then today i worked at the USA table for international day and danced some to the cha cha slide and cupid shuffle. i attempted to do the soulja boy dance but just kind of embarrassed myself so i went back to sneaking peanut butter and jelly squares.

i need to go walking/running more. it felt really good.

i love my grammar professor. she actually explains things and they make sense to me. i feel like i learned more about how the french language actually WORKS in our one hour of class today than i've learned in two or three weeks. and it's NOT that complicated...it seriously made me so happy. because in the end, i want to be speaking correct french, not just throwing together whatever sounds right. my langue professor is kind of the same way, but is less clear in her explanations. i dunno. i understand that she's telling me something, but i guess i don't get the way she explains it. but i can tell now from her body language when she stands over my shoulder that she's about to correct something i've written. i've started just saying, "okay, qu'est-ce que j'ai fait cette fois? (what did i do this time?)" and she always snicker-laughs and points it out. but she's always nice about it and i feel like i can ask questions and stuff even though half the time i have to look up explanations in english.

i got a 16.5 out of 20 on my History test. yesssss. in France, that's a really good grade. at the bottom of one of my mini essays, she wrote that my essay was very satisfying. and i had a lot of "TB"s in the margins, which stand for "très bien = very good." i seriously love it when i get good grades and i feel like my teachers are kind of proud of me. again: i'm such a nerd. and a teacher's pet.

what else? i guess i'm going shopping this week/weekend. and i'm going to normandy on saturday, so i'll try to put up pictures next week. i have to be at the university at 6:00 in the morning. i'll be sleeping all day friday in preparation. we have three weeks until spring break, and i cannot wait. and after spring break there's only a month left of classes. i can't decide how i feel. i don't want to be weird and bitter and count down the days, but i'm kind of counting down the days.

please, france, i want to be in love with you again. i promise to come out of my funk soon.

i think i'm just thinking about stuff too much. i'm second guessing a lot of my life choices i've already made and trying to think about what's in the future, and i wish i could be in a familiar enviornment while i think about everything. but alas, i'm abroad in a country whose language continues to baffle and confuse me.

i need to buy some more chocolate tomorrow.