Blah blah blah no title here.

I really can't believe how fast this semester has flown by. I'm down to three pages in my planner before my flight on June 6. Scary! (I'm also almost done with my journal. I had to buy another one last week.) I took a test today in one of my Socio-Cultural Studies class, and my final is just three Saturdays from now! (Yes, a final on a Saturday. I don't get it either.) It's kind of weird, getting my final exam schedule and having all of my teachers start talking about it, but I guess it's getting me in the zone. Meaning I'm stressing out some. (a lot.) Sara says I need to find something else to worry about.

On the one hand, I feel like I've just gotten here. I remember almost falling asleep on the train, I remember getting to the foyer and being locked out, and being just awkwardly new here for like a week. But on the other hand, I feel like I've been here forever. I think about all the stuff I've done, like the excursions, and all the material I've covered in my classes, and I realize that yes, I have been here for three months already, and the time to go home is coming up, possibly a bit quicker than I'm ready for. Just thinking about studying for the history final makes me want to curl up into a ball and sleep.

My classes haven't been "hard" in the typical sense, but there's definitely an added layer of confusion and twistiness when it's all in another language. I'm not studying the French Revolution, I'm studying la Révolution française. And France doesn't have a National Assembly, it has une Assemblée nationale. And those are the easy translations. Plus, in the time period we've covered in history class, France has had a few monarchies, a few revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848), two empires, and five Republics. I'm going to have to make the biggest timeline ever... But yeah, it's like that with all my classes, the whole language thing. But it's getting a lot easier. I haven't started thinking in French yet and English is still the first thing that wants to spill out of my mouth (I say "thank you" way too much around here) but I can at least correct myself and write out complete sentences without having to erase something. It's the little things in life.

I'm leaving for Strasbourg tomorrow morning with Inga and Becca for just a few days. It's supposed to be raining the whole time; wonderful. It's my last travel of the semester, so I hope it's worth it! I was supposed to go to Cinque Terre, but all of the trains were full, so we had to cancel our reservations. I certainly thought I would have been able to travel more than I have, but it's really, really surprising how expensive it it. We also didn't get a lot of breaks, so I would have spent the money if I could have visited a city for more than a day and a half. However I have gone on some spectacular excursions to places that I wouldn't have been able to get to by train, and I've been able to stay pretty sane. I can't deal with lack of sleep due to traveling. I've saved a lot of money, too, so I won't be broke when I come back, and I'll be able to save for a car/an apartment after college/etc.

So, yeah, I have almost exactly 25 days left! That looks like such a big number to me, but it's really not. I changed my flight so that I fly into Jackson instead of Memphis, and I'll be stuffing my face with Jerry's Catfish the day I get back. I can't wait. I can't wait to bake and cook. I keep having dreams about Kitchen Aid Mixers.

Sidenote: it's amazing how much chocolate they have here. I really don't even eat that many sweets at home, so I'm going to have to kick this habit in the bud ASAP starting June 7, but Monoprix literally has an aisle dedicated to chocolate. Not one side of an aisle, but TWO sides. Chocolate. Everywhere. It's a cross between a dream come true and type 2 diabetes waiting to happen. I just bought a three pack of milk chocolate bars because I know that I'm going to want them Sunday when I get home from Strasbourg and everything is closed. It's going to be weird to like, be able to get milk and eggs on Sundays when I get back to the States.

And driving. I might need to borrow my neighbor's kid's toy jeep to practice for a few days before I trust myself with the Sebring. That, and I broke my rosary that I hung from the rearview mirror that had been blessed by the archbishop of Rome, so Jesus won't be protecting my travels anymore. I curse the hastiness in which I tried to move it from my car to mom's before my trip to VA. I've never been so nervous driving in my life. Haste makes waste.

Also my bed is going to be really, really tall. French beds are obscenely low--like, the top of the mattress hits the middle of my calves--and my bed at home is obscenely high. The top of the mattress is at my hip and I've gotten pretty used to having to hop a bit to get up into it. And I've been using this crappy roll pillow because I never got around to getting a normal one, so my firm, square pillows are going to be awkwardly large but divine.

Saw my baby boy on skype last night, and I can't wait to cuddle up with him for a week straight. I can't wait to take him to school with me too! Such an interesting mix between a guard dog and a teddy bear.

Like I said, it's the little things.

As much as I'm having conflicted feelings about leaving France, nothing is going to compare to hearing that the plane is beginning it's final descent. I may kiss the ground. And buy an American flag and wear it around my shoulders like a cape. It'll be good to be home.

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.