Leaving so soon!!

So here I am just 2 days before I leave France to meet up with Trish and I have NEVER been so conflicted. I am SO EXCITED to see my family and friends in the US. After an academic year abroad, I know that it's been too long since I've been able to spend time with everyone and it'll be a relief to just be in the US for a while. But on the other end of it, I absolutely cannot imagine saying good bye to the people here and Rennes. I have a life here as weird as that sounds and I can't imagine not speaking French every day. I feel linguistically, emotionally, culturally and  gastronomically unprepared to leave France!

These past few days have been all about preparation though. I had the majority of my exams last week with one left for tomorrow. Thursday we had a big party for all of the host families, students and a few previous students. I gave a little speech about how much of a family we've become and how much I love my host family, but I hadn't told them beforehand so they were completely unprepared. My host mom came up to me after, crying and kissing me telling me how much she loves me. I turned around and another friend was crying. Then there was a photo montage and we all felt it. It was an overwhelming feeling of unity between all of us.
Afterwards we all went out to the bar and hung out just chatting about the semester, trying not to think about this week.

Friday I had my 2 exams, then I came home just to prepare to go out again. We had a party for all of the international students at the university at a dance club which was crazy. We had a really great time and it was so good to see everyone in the same place.

We decided to leave around 3:30 so my friends and I took a cab. I didn't get to sleep until close to 4:30, and I didn't get up Saturday until 11:30. My friend Denise who I studied with in Morocco last semester and is studying in Paris this semester came to visit me and see Rennes so we went to all of the places that my friends and i always go to like Haricot Rouge for the BEST hot chocolate that i've ever had, a walk along the canal here in St Gregoire, sitting in Thabor (a garden in Rennes) and a cider at O'Connell's! We walked all over the place and had so much fun! My host parents had a couple friends over for a barbeque which was awesome and we had a great time until my host dad drove us to the train station. But luckily Denise is from NY so i should be able to see her again this summer.

Since then I've been slowly packing my stuff and trying to get myself ready for Thursday. I said good bye to Stacy, the assistant program director today which almost made me cry. I have just one more exam tomorrow afternoon and I'm done! Tonight is the birthday of 2 of the girls on the trip so naturally we're all going out, but before that I'm making my host mom (host dad is going to his sister's) breakfast for dinner. So my friend had found a place that sold bagels!! I mean they're obviously not from A&B Bagel or Bagel Market, but they get the job done! So i'm making a ham egg and cheese sandwich with pancakes... not sure if it's gonna be banana or apple cinnamon. It's gonna be great! I'm so excited.

Il faut profiter

So there we were on the Corsica ferry that was trying to pretend to be a fancy cruise ship. We ended up doing what a ton of others did which is camp out in the lounge and sleep on a couch. we were pretty pathetic the next morning as we got in at 7:30am but that first view of corsica was..... incredible. we couldn't be cranky! so we got off the boat and found the bus right away. our hotel wasn't in the middle of town, so we took a fairly long bus ride. But we didn't know where the stop was so we got off and had to walk for like 40 minutes in the rain. But we made it. we had to wait for a while but the hotel put us in a room until ours was ready.

The hotel was absolutely gorgeous and the room was huge! we had a terrace, kitchen, table, living room and big bedroom. Oh and each night we fell asleep to the sound of the ocean because it was right across the street and our terrace looked out to the mountains and ocean and oh man. The next few days are kind of a blur because we just took it easy. I read both The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest along with Persuasion and half of sense and sensibility. We walked around and explored a bit, went to the beach and hung out by the pool. We didn't have the best weather every day which is probably a good thing as we fried in Nice and were still trying to recuperate from that.

So after 4 nights in paradise, we took a bus, then a train through the mountains to Bastia. I have NEVER had such an interesting bus ride. Ok I take that back as Morocco was pretty interesting, but I was surprised this time because I definitely did not expect it from Corsica. It reminded me a lot of the windy and narrow roads of Morocco. It was crazy. But we made it safely to Bastia and got on another boat to land in Italy!!!

We got off the boat in Livorno and jumped on a bus as the bus driver was an incredibly friendly guy who got us to a stop for a different bus to get to the train station. Revelation: I LOVE ITALIANS! It was shocking how different the feeling was in Italy than in France. In France it's not that people aren't nice, but they aren't openly friendly with strangers (although I'm finding that less and less true the longer I'm here) and they don't go out of their way for a stranger. But in Italy we had no idea where we were and how to get to the next bus stop so we stopped to ask a guy, but he didn't understand us so this random guy taps his wife (who was on the phone) saying that we need help and she spoke French and English. So she's got her phone on the side of her face as she's trying to explain to us how to get to the train station. She was so nice! So we made it to the train station, then on to Pisa!

Our hostel in Pisa ended up being a couple rooms in this guys house but it wasn't too bad and it was in a good location. Pisa was cute but I think the best part of Pisa aside from the tower is how inexpensive the AWESOME food was. We took it easy the first night as we were pooped from all the travel. I mean bus, train, ferry, bus, train... it was a little much. So we woke up the next morning and saw the tower which is pretty cool. We walked there and let me tell you, it's not very tall so you can't actually see it until it's right in front of you. it was pretty cool though. So we walked around, then made it to the train station and jumped on the next one leaving Pisa.... On to Florence!

Florence is breath taking. We had lunch, then went to see the Dome! We walked around, got gelato, then got in line to see the David. We got in, then took a quick look around before turning the corner and BAM. there he was. naked. The statue's HUGE and a little overwhelming so we sat down for a little bit.

After that we walked around the rest of the museum, then we went to Dante's house on our way to Porto Vecchio. We walked back towards the train station, had a coffee, then went back to Pisa for dinner and our last night in Italy. Only complaint about Florence is the overwhelming amount of tourists and constant crowds.
Kathryn left first, then Liza and I went back to the tower and walked around until we had to leave for Beauvais, then Paris, then the train back to Rennes! On our way to Paris we made friends with this guy from London, studying at an Australian university in Florence then parted ways when we had to catch our train. Liza's host mom met us at the train station in Rennes and that was it! Our vacation adventure was over!

The final countdown part 1

So here I am looking ahead to only 2 weeks left of this madness that is study abroad. But before I can look ahead, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I know I know I've been bad about this whole blog thing this semester. So here is the past month....
Exactly one month ago I had no idea how I was going to make it until the end of the semester. Classes sucked, I was fighting with Jason (always a bad sign) and everything seemed to remind me of home and the fact that I wasn't there. It's been gorgeous out, but that most certainly did not help my productivity. At this point I realized that no matter how much I like traveling (or rather being in new places as actually traveling stresses me out), I am not at all happy without my friends and family. And Jason. It may sound cliche and stupid, but he makes it incredibly difficult to be here and not there.
So now I have ruled out a few career paths.
1.) Peace corps. It's never gonna happen. After the village in Morocco and after not even a full year abroad all signs point to me hating it.
2.) Any job that requires me to live too far from family. I start to hate myself for not being able to be there for them. Maybe I'm not selfish enough (never thought I'd say that) but when I miss things or can't help out with family issues I get angry, then sad, then disappointed, then mad at Jason for one reason or another, then sad again. No bueno
So after these reflections and 2 weeks of classes, we had a 2 week vacation for Easter. My host mom went to Montreal to visit their son who lives there so she, host dad and host sister went to Paris on Friday evening. I had the house completely to myself for Friday and Saturday so I naturally had a couple friends over and did what I always do... I baked. Friday I cooked rice and beans and Katy made lemon bars. Then Saturday I spent the entire day reading and sitting out in the sun. My older host sister surprised me by showing up and told me that we were going to have a bbq on sunday so I was only kind of surprised when Marine and Michel (my host dad and sister) showed up at 2am from Paris on Saturday night. But before they came back, I had done a TON of baking and made more lemon bars, carrot cake and chocolate chip cookies. Sunday I went to church with Ashley, which was great, then came back, hung out and had a nice lunch with the host fam. It was me, Marine, Michel, Annaise and her wife Charlotte. The bbq was not your every day bbq. Maybe it's just me, but I don't normally drink champagne at a bbq and I don't think I've ever had eggplant from a grill... it  was awesome! After we just sat out, then the girls ended up starting a water fight. This is gonna sound  really weird, but I was actually really happy when Annaise threw water at me. I know that they aren't over the moon about having a foreign student in the house, but it was like a sign of inclusion. I thought it was even better because just after she threw it, before she saw the look on my face (which I was already laughing as soon as I saw it coming) she said "laugh, laugh," as though she had no idea how I was going to react to it. She took a chance by including me, the risk that i'd be pissed that she dumped freezing cold water at me. I was actually impressed. But then again I could be over analyzing it.
In any case, I went to my friend's house and hung out with her for a little while until it was around dinner time. I came home and prepared for a VERY early Monday morning.
5:30am. That's when I got up, threw my clothes on, ate breakfast, ready to leave the house by 6. The train left at 7am, and Kathryn, Liza and I were happily settled by the time we pulled out of Rennes. A train switch and 8 1/2 hours later, we were safely in Nice and it took us another hour of walking to find the hotel but we were finally there. Kyriakos, a friend of my friend Meri who is studying in Montpelier, met us there and the first night we just got some pizza and hung out. The next day we set off for Monaco.
Monaco, just a 1 euro hour long bus ride, is absolutely gorgeous! The gardens, the flowers and the fountains! There were statues everywhere, the water was the bluest blue and the Monte Carlo Casino was magnifique! After exploring the outside of the casino we went to the beach and Kyriakos and I went for a swim, me in my dress, him in his boxers. Liza got her hair wet, and Kathryn put her feet in as she had quite a few blisters already. We waited until we were almost all dry again before hiking back up to the bus stop and got back to Nice. Just in time to get paninis from our now favorite place from the nicest guy.
Day 3 we woke up pretty early and declared it beach day. We were on the beach from 9am til about 4 when some nasty clouds showed up. By this time though the damage had already been done. Kathryn and I were pretty red. I'm still peeling. lol. But the sun pretty much drained us so we hung out in the room, then Liza Kyriakos and I walked around Nice for a while before going to bed.
Day 4 we got up early again and did some hiking in the old destroyed chateau, went to the market then checked out of the hotel. We left our baggage there so that we could wander around for a few hours, but we didn't want to wander too far. Liza and Kyriakos went and took some pictures while Kathryn and I sat in a park and read. I wish I had recorded it, but there were these 2 guys in the grass trying to teach each other break dancing tricks. It was freakin hilarious. When the other 2 got back, we went to a cafe and hung out until Kyriakos had to go get his train. We took our time getting our stuff, then we too left for the train station. We got to Toulon fine, found the port with only a few bumps in the road, and saw the boat right away. We had no issues with tickets and got on with time to spare. Liza decided to get a room as it was an overnight ride, but Kathryn and I didn't so we decided to venture through the boat to find a place to sleep for the night... and to be continued! I'll finish the story tomorrow!

Il va faire du soleil!

It's been sooooo nice out! This past week has been absolutely gorgeous, which of course makes me want to be outside ALL THE TIME! and the best thing to do outside? Run.

ok maybe I can think of a few other things i like to do outside better like sit and read a book, but the best thing for me to do is run. I've been running quite a bit lately and made it through a 10k stopping only once to stretch out a little. It's fantastic! i feel so much better having run. although changing my eating habits is ridiculously hopeless here (i'm sorry i'm just not going to stop eating the butter, desserts or caramels), running has made me feel so much healthier! It's funny because now that i've been running, the fat that i have on my body which i didn't notice too much before has started to hang off like it knows it's not supposed to be there and is waiting for me to work it off. Already my legs feel stronger and I'm tan (er) now because i'm outside all the time.It's fabulous.

What's not so fabulous is the amount of sh*t I have to do that I have no motivation for. I have to finish 2 applications for grant money, one of which is due next friday, and I have a skype interview on monday for an internship at the women's rape crisis center in burlington. There's the apartment situation and i'm still looking for jobs for the summer just in case.

In addition to that Thursday night, Friday night and tonight were Jeremy's play performances... and I'm so jealous of all of you who got to go! In case you were unaware, he was in the Sound of Music and played Rolf. So essentially he got to sing my favorite part of the whole movie/play and I don't get to see it!!! Apparently he's been singing in the shower and had trouble taking off his eye make up. While they're such small things, it kills me that I couldn't be there because I would have LOVED to hear him sing in the shower and I have eye make up remover that I should have been there to help him with. I told Trish that it's her job to work on the teleportation thing because if I could have been home just for the weekend I would have loved to. I hate it because I sound so spoiled and ridiculously ungrateful, but I can't help it; I would have loved to be home for this. What killed me the most was when Tricia told me she was sorry that I couldn't be there, I told her not to be because after all, I chose this. I chose to be out of the country for an academic year. I chose to miss birthdays and plays and apartment purchases. And while I've had the ride of my life traveling and seeing such different places and meeting the most interesting people, it's hard not to look at home and at school and see what I'm missing.

Luckily, now my classes are all scheduled so I have a French women's autobiography class, french lit from 1500-1800, World food population and democracy, international political economy and my global studies senior sem. I think I'm going to have a rough but good first semester for senior year. It's still so weird to think of it as that. Senior year... jeez. when did that happen? i guess that same time that Tricia's in graduate school, Jason's working towards his Ph.D and Jeremy's going into high school next year. When did we become so frickin old?? But as I explained to Jason the other day, we're still not old. I still feel like we're babies! I mean, not the same babies as when he and I first started dating I guess... when I was 16 and he was 18. so I guess that makes us toddlers? Finally starting to walk/live on our own but with some (major) help from our families. But that's another thing... it's always funny when people ask me how long Jason and I have been together because they're always so shocked when I say about 4 years. Except that the other day I was talking to my friend about the summer and everything and she was telling me that she's going home on July 4th. So I said that that was a day before our anniversary. When she asked me which one, it took me a minute. Then I realized that it's already been almost 5 years. 5 years! How did that happen and where did this year go? I guess the best way to answer that is to read my blog. Seriously though, I am baffled by how quickly everything's gone by. When did it become April (that's a rhetorical question btw)?

Paris, Je t'aime

Soo this past weekend I made my way to Paris to meet with my friend Lisa, who is studying in Madrid, and see my friend Mollie who is studying in Paris. I took the train just a couple hours after my last class on Friday and I was on my way! I found my friend Mollie, saw where she's living and met Lisa at Port Maillot. We walked around Sacre Coeur for a while, then called it a night. Mollie had to leave for a trip to the Loire Valley at 7:15 so I was up bright and early with about 2 hours to kill before Lisa was gtting up. So naturally I started walking.. It was the logical thing to do... So I walked from the most southern point in Paris up to Sacre Coeur... It took me about 2 hours partly because I gave my map to some guy who was really lost along the way... so i took a few detours. If I hadn't taken detours, it still should have taken me about an hour and 40 minutes according to Google maps. At any rate, by the time I was sitting at Sacre Coeur with a pastry and baguette, it was only 9:30... So I met Lisa and we walked down to Centre Pompidou and Notre Dame. I think that I am actually in love with the Shakespeare bookstore because we went and just sat and read for a while. That was the first time I actually seriously thought about someday living in Paris for a little bit simply to have access to this little store across from Notre Dame. After a little reading, we went to a cafe, then to the Louvre. We sat by les Jardins Tuileries until I decided to call my hostel to find out when i was supposed to check in. Good thing I did because I was supposed to be there at noon and it was now around 5... oops! Luckily we got up there and no harm done... I checked in and then we made dinner (I made galettes! which are like wheat crepes with ham and cheese and a TON of butter). Then we headed to the Eiffel Tower. By this time it was pretty late so I wasn't sure if we'd be able to get up, but we took the elevator and went up to the 2nd platform just in time to see it light up at 11pm. It was magical. After almost an hour we took the last elevator down and walked to place de la concord so that Lisa could see the bridge that's in the movie Anastasia. We crashed at about 1:30/2am... Then I was up at 8:45 so I could check out by 9, and hung out at Sacre Coeur. Lisa met me there and we went to mass which was so nice! We ended the trip with lunch at a kebab place, a trip to Moulin Rouge and a quick cafe before Lisa got on the bus to catch her flight back to Madrid. I took the metro and changed my train ticket so that I could get back to Rennes by 7 because I was sooooo tired by then. My host mom picked me up from the train station and told me all about her weekend and asked me all about mine. While I like Paris a lot, I think I like Rennes better. Everything is SO expensive in Paris and I was always on the move. I feel like Rennes is just a little more laid back... and I missed my host family. and the dog =)

Sometimes you just gotta live your life

So today is my free day. Every Tuesday I don't have classes, so usually I come up with something to do whether it be making plans with friends, sleeping in, running, reading a book, etc. There's always some little errand or some kind of homework that could use doing so I find things (besides sitting in my room all day) to occupy my day. Today was no exception. Actually, before I get into this I should preface this with an explanation of sorts. Lately we've all been feeling a little down. We're more than half way through the program with less than 2 months left and most of us are starting to feel it. I didn't even realize why I was in such a funk until my friend Miranda asked me the other day "Aren't you just getting tired of being abroad?" Which I answered with an "Yes. Absolutely." I don't mean to be a baby or ungrateful. I am the luckiest little shit alive to be able to study where I've studied, met the people I've met and simply been all of the places I've been in the last 2 semesters. and my adventures aren't even over! but it definitely comes with a price. Studying abroad for a year sounds like such a good idea when you're planning it at your university when in all actuality it is really rough. No income for an entire year, getting funny looks everywhere you go for speaking english and feeling exhausted after an entire day of speaking french/attempting arabic. Not to mention living in someone else's house, no matter how nice they are and how close I may be with my family, at the end of the day it's not my house. We've all hit a wall I think where we miss controlling when and what we eat, doing our own laundry and how long our showers are.

So bearing that in mind, today Liza and I got lunch, when I realized that I had left my wallet with my lunch tickets sitting on my desk at home, which just happens to be about 40minutes away... so liza lent me one which was fine. Then we went to a tabac (a drugstore type deal) and bought her minutes for her phone and proceeded to go to the train station to pick up our tickets. This is round 2 btw because the first time I forgot the confirmation numbers. This time, we waited in line, just to find out that I needed my credit card to get the tickets, which was in my wallet. at home. I think it was a combination of things because we felt so defeated in that moment that Liza first suggested we get a glass of wine. It wasn't even 12:30 in the afternoon. lol. But as we got onto the metro we both agreed that tea felt like such a better idea than wine...

So we went to what has become one of our favorite places, Haricot Rouge. This place has it all. They have the most incredible hot chocolate, teas and coffees, along with literal milk shakes. and all of which come with a little bite of brownie... SO GOOD!! But today we not only got tea, but we got 5 cookies to share. I think we looked pretty pathetic too because we usually get like one little brownie with our tea, but the woman put like 3 of them on each of ours... but we ate it all. We sat there for 3 hours just talking about life and how we've gotten to this point. We watched people come and go as we sat there slowly drinking our tea and eating cookie after cookie just talking about boyfriends and high school, family and college and what comes next. We joked that we were having our quarter life crisis and that this is the time to have it. One of the things that really stuck with me was a story Liza told me while we were both stressing out. Apparently she had this friend who never finished what she started. she never finished college, and would start a diet just to say forget it later the same day. One day Liza was eating a burger and her friend asked her for a piece which confused Liza because her friend had said just that day that she was giving up eatin red meat. To which this girl responded "Sometimes you just gotta live your life, you know?" It's so simple but just struck me as so extraordinary. Liza said she was just blown away by it and it's stuck with her for year now. It really seems like such an obvious thing but I think it's interesting how hard it hit me.
Anyway, by the time our teapots were completely cold, we were starting to feel a little less overwhelmed, so we started making a grocery list for our vacation foods. We decided to continue by going to the grocery store and looking at foods as this is one thing that we have complete control over. So we walked around the grocery store and then galerie lafayette which is somewhat like macy's just talking and window shopping. Liza was still hungry so we went to a kebab place, then we went back to my house to get my wallet. Tomorrow is my host mom's birthday so I wanted to make her something. I decided on rice crispy treats with chocolate chips, so we went back to a different grocery store in st gregoire (closer to my house). The grocery store is HUGE btw... A lot like a super walmart or something... it has anything you could ever want to buy! After we found what I needed and explored a little, Liza went home and I went back to my house.

My host parents went to dinner with friends for the night so I invited ashley over and made dinner and the rice crispy treats while catching up as we hadn't hung out for over a week. anywhere else that would be really weird to say, but those of us who are here or who had been in morocco can attest to it; when you see the same people every day for weeks and weeks, then go a couple days without seeing them it feels like a lifetime. Oh the beauty of study abroad!

Making up for lost time

So recently I realized just how little inspiration I've had to write this semester. I mean, I'm half way through and I still cannot seem to get a routine down so that I post all the time and my logic is this... you ready?

Blogging to me is like running. As I'm sure Jason or any of my friends will tell you, I love running. I love the way i feel after I run, I love being active and I even love being sore the next day because how sore I am is a good judgment of how hard I pushed myself and I LOVE pushing myself to my limits. However, I haven't been able to get a routine down for that either since high school ended because I always seem to find reasons not to or that make running inconvenient. And the longer it's been since I last ran, the more of a reason not to run again because it's been so long and I forget how I feel after. But I've been running more regularly lately, which might be why I feel like I should catch up on my blog. So I won't waste any more time on this analogy =)

So in the past month, more has happened than I could possibly write in one post, so I'll just sum it up. For our winter break that lasted a week, I went back to Morocco and took along some of my friends. As usual for me, plans got really messed up, my friend wasn't going to be getting into Paris until 9:30 with no way of getting to Beauvais at the hotel only she had access to while the other 4 of us tried to figure out what to do. My solution? I went into the grocery store right next store to the bus station and came out with only one item which I then put on the table in between 3 very stressed out girls. It is not physically possible to be stressed out when reminded that here we can buy a good bottle of wine for 2 euro. Immediately the other girls relaxed, we made a plan, bought dinner at the grocery store, drank 2 bottles of wine from a nalgene on the bus on the way to Beauvais and decided to spend the night at the airport. Bad idea in theory and in practice as the airport closes at 11:30pm. So we took a cab to the hotel we had booked, but the front desk was open. Luckily, we found a hotel that had a machine that let's you buy a room and we all squished onto a full sized bed for a few hours, before getting up to catch the latest bus to very narrowly make our flight. Funny enough, I made it through security with a razor, hand sanitizer and shampoo, but my friend got stopped for her adapter. Isn't airport security fabulous?

But who cares because we made it on the plane and got to Fes!!! When we got there, 2 of my friends were looking to me for direction and help, but as I had only been there once on a bus with my program (which I had mentioned to them several times) I turned to them and was like "So where do you want to go?" It may have scared them a bit... but needless to say we got lost, which is not uncommon in Fes as it's such a HUGE city. But we found a wicked cheap hotel eventually after going to what was probably the most expensive hotel there and asking for directions. We had a nice time in Fes, but I have to say I was soooo relieved when we left. When we got off the train in Rabat I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I felt like I was home again and you couldn't wipe the smile off my face.

We stayed one night in the Hotel Majestic, which was where I had my orientation the first week I was in Morocco. We showered, then went to the medina. I got to see almost everyone I had been missing. Youssef, Nabil, Fatiha, but most importantly, I got to see my host family and spend some time with them. The coolest thing, I think, was that I was actually there the last day of my host mom's mourning period for her late husband. I didn't even know it until the next day when she wasn't wearing white anymore and I asked Chaimaa what was going on.

I took my friends to the kasbah, we walked along where I used to go running right by the coast, we ate chocolate covered almond balls, rif, tajine, couscous and drink tea while eating pastries with my family. I don't think I can even begin to describe how happy, content, overjoyed, and overwhelmed I was to be with them again, in the same place I had lived for so long. It meant so much to me to show my friends where i'd lived, what I'd done and give them a little look at what my life was like. I know my friend ashley thought it was the coolest thing that she got to meet and eat dinner with some actual moroccans rather than just being a tourist.

While it was incredible, good byes were inevitable and always seem to come too soon. I felt my heart being ripped out of my chest as I hugged Chaimaa, Ahmed, Hamza and finally Tara, my host mom. She and I were in hysterics as we said good bye and as she told me to come back any time... to come back soon. I had to run down the stairs to force myself to leave, with ashley trying to catch up as she said quick thank yous and goodbyes. I took a moment at the bottom of the stairs, still kind of hidden from the street, to just cry for a few moments. I was blown away by the fact that there I was, again, having to say good bye to people I love and care about, who took care of my for months and let me into their lives. Except this time, there was no promise of coming back. I have no idea when I'll see them again. All I know is that I will. I will get there again someday because they are now my family as well.

The next morning, after randomly bumping into a moroccan friend at an internet cafe, I got onto the train to the airport. Off to Spain!

I got to Spain and as soon as I landed, I called my friend Lisa. I haven't taken Spanish since 7th grade and everyone seemed to be saying things with a lisp which I later learned is unique to Madrid (at least I think it is...) Lisa and I had an excellent night finding my hostel, figuring out how to get me to the airport for my insanely early 6:30 flight to beauvais and eating these little sandwich things which were delicious while drinking a combination of wine and lemonade and talking about life in general. We went to a bar and had a drink (which was the coolest thing ever! the bar we went to was cave-themed and the drink we had was directly translated to panther's milk which came from a thing in the ceiling), then walked around until it was time for me to get back to the hostel. By the time I got back, it was 2am. I made my bed, got into my clothes for the next morning, got all of my stuff packed, set my alarm and slept for 2 1/2 hours. At 4:30 I stripped my bed, brought my sheets downstairs, asked for directions, then walked 20min to get to the bus which then took another half hour to get to the airport. I got through security just in time to get in line for my flight, then before i knew it, I was back in France!

At this point, I had to take 2 buses and a train to get to Charles de Gaulle as Jason had landed there an hour before I had even landed in Beauvais. Luckily, he spotted me running around trying to find him! We took the RER into Paris and found the hotel. The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur of sites... we went to the Arc de Triomphe, walked along the Champs Elysee and saw Notre Dame at night and during the day. We had coffee in a cafe and people watched. We went to the Louvre, then walked to Place de la Concorde. We walked up the Eiffel Tower, went to Shakespeare's first bookstore in Paris (my favorite bookstore of all time), had a crepe next to Notre Dame and met up with Ashley and Katy who had stayed an extra day in rabat. We set out for rennes early monday morning so that I could make it to my class. It ended up being somewhat of a mess and he waited for 2 hours by a bus stop, then there was some confusion about the hotel room.... but in the end, it all worked out. We spent an awesome day at Mont St Michel, he got to meet and go out with my friends, we had an excellent and incredibly entertaining dinner with my host parents while I played translator and he loved Rennes more than Paris and St Gregoire more than Rennes!

After Jason left, I got sick. I think it may have been the constant adrenaline rush, but my host mom is sure that it's because I didn't wear a scarf to mont st michel. either way, I had an awful cough and woke up several mornings drenched in sweat from a fever the night before. My host mom told me what medicine to get and I was shocked that it cost me 3 euro to get better. I couldn't believe medicine was so inexpensive! Within a couple days I was feeling much better, only for my health to nosedive as it was Ashley's 21st birthday AND St Patrick's Day... We had a crazy night that suffice it to say kept me in bed until noon the next morning, at which point I got out of bed and saw that I had 5 missed calls, 3 new text messages (one of which asking if I was alive) and a green shamrock on my face while still in my dress from the night before. We're calling it a success because we don't really know what else to call it!
since then I've had no interest in going out.

My friends and I are planning our second break (we have 2 weeks!) which we'll be spending in Nice for a few days, then taking an overnight ferry to Corsica. We'll spend 4 nights at a hotel in Corsica where we have a kitchen, a terrace and plenty of beach. I told my friends... my sole goal for this vacation is to spend as much time as possible on the beach with a couple Jane Austen novels, a trashy magazine or two and a bottle of wine. After Corsica, we have 2 nights in Pisa before we fly out of Pisa into Beauvais, then take the train from Paris to Rennes. It's a 10 day trip which should be incredible!

Lately I've been trying to figure out what to do with my summer and my goal right now is to apply to do research on organizations for male abusers, kind of picking up where my independent study in Morocco left off. My adviser gave me a name of a potential sponsor and the next step is to see if he has time this summer, then to write up an outline and abstract... all by April 8th! wish me luck! if this works out, I'll be in VT for the summer living off a $1500 stipend. If not, I have several back up plans, all except the very last consisting of staying in VT, starting a job and volunteer work that I can continue next year.

Alright and now that I've written a novel, I will once again try to get into the routine of writing... Like I said, I enjoy writing and I always feel good after I've done it. It's just so hard to motivate!