Back 2 Skool

Today was my first day as a senior in college (!!), which is really kind of overwhelming for me.  On the one hand, Im excited to be almost done with school, but as I told my friend the other day, I'm not quite sure I'm done with academia.  There are always a million classes I want to take and I hate having to choose the ones that go best with my major over the ones that just sound cool.  I pretty much never want to stop learning.  I realize that I will continue to learn through my experiences, but I kind of enjoy the classroom setting and the opportunity to sit before an expert and have them relate their knowledge to me.  That and, like most people my age, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with myself once forced to join that ominous proverbial Real World that looms over us, promising difficulty in finding jobs and lack of parental support and freedom to live as we please.

And so, like so many others, I remain hidden at least partially behind my veil of college student denial, pretending that my responsibilities are minimal...even though they are at the back of my mind, making themselves known at those times that I let my guard down.

Beyond that constant train of thought, when I am able to just sort of be in the moment, things are going pretty well.  I took a week-long road trip with one of my good Oregon friends, who flew down to ABQ, hung out with me and my friends for a couple of days, and then kept me company while I drove to Eugene.  It was SO fun!  I love introducing people to my crazy mix of friends, and I think she quite enjoyed the experience that is my friends (and she didn't even see anyone in drag!).  Some of my friends threw me a little going away party, which was a lot of fun and may have gotten a little out of hand...lets just say it's a really good thing we did it two nights before I had to drive to AZ and not the night before :-P

After doing the NM thing, we drove to Flagstaff and hung out with my dad and little sister, which was really good.  April loves kids, so she had a blast with Sofi, and I just plain adore Sofi to pieces and am so happy when I get to see her.  And it was good to spend some time with my dad, too, since I hardly got to see him this year.  

Well rested after a weekend in Flagstaff, we hit the road again and drove to San Francisco.  This was the only part of the drive I was worried about because it was about 11 hours and I was doing all the driving myself.  Thank god for Macy's coffee and Taco Bell and April, because I never once got very tired.  In Sanfran, we stayed with a friend's mom (as our friend was already back in Oregon), and mostly did a LOT of shopping.  It was insane, but how often are you in a place with Sephora and H&M across the street from each other?  And then Express and the Body Shop were having sales.  *sigh*

The last two days of the road trip were spent driving up the California coast and trying to visit my old roommate's parents (which was, sadly, unsuccessful) and hanging out on the beach, and watching the sunset, and seeing the Redwoods, etc.  I really love the drive between San Francisco and Crescent City because you get to see beauty in so many different forms.

Finally, I had a weekend to get settled and see my friends and prepare myself for going back to school in the states, which is overwhelming after the somewhat experience of the french system (not to say that I didn't have any work, I just didn't feel nearly as stressed in the first week as I do here).  I spent the weekend doing more shopping for necessities for my room and groceries, spending as much time with my friends that I hadn't seen in far too long, and decorating my room to give it the feeling that I live there.  I thing I did a pretty darn good job considering a relatively short time frame.  It's still a little messy because there are a few things I'm not quite sure what to do with and because there is a ton of cardboard waiting to be recycled being stored in my room.  There are still some things I would like to improve, but I'm pretty happy with the place.

On the school front, I actually only had one class today: Environmental Management.  It's looking like it will be an interesting class, but I'm a little overwhelmed because we are supposed to have at least a vague proposal for our environmental plan project by Wednesday.  Eek.  Tomorrow is my busiest day, and I would really like to get a few things out of the way over the next couple of days, but I also kind of want to just hang out a little bit more.  Today, despite knowing that I should have been working, I hung with half of my roommates.  We ran a couple errands and then Andy made mac n cheese, which was delicious, and then I helped Alexa with her French homework, which made me miss France and speaking French SO much (which I had already been doing after emails to Wei and my host family, and looking at Gaby's pics from France).

Ok, I need to send a couple emails, do a little more reading, and then go to bed!

Bisous!

Overdue...as usual

I recently wrote in an email to a friend that the hectic, somewhat spontaneous nature of my summer, while bringing a lot of fun and excitement, has left me feeling like I'm missing something.  Or a lot of somethings, really.  My plans of keeping up the blogging have been unsuccessful (and it's not for a lack of things to say, let me tell you).  I haven't done nearly as good of a job at keeping up with people as I had hoped...both people here and abroad.  I haven't had time to read as many books as I would like (or as I have bought this summer).  I definitely have a sense of absence of quite a few things in my life right now.  Although I think part of that is something that comes with nearing the end of something...as I look toward heading back up to Oregon here in a couple weeks.

That being said, I've been incredibly busy and done so many wonderful things and met a lot of really great people.  There have been ups and downs, but a lot of memories have been made.  I'm not even going to try to sum it all up, because I know I'll forget something, and I know that a lot of what I've done falls into the category of "you kinda had to be there".  I think the big things that really stand out are the great concerts (I really think live music is quite possibly my favorite thing ever), cleaning out my grandpa's house (which has played a part in so many of the ups and the downs of my summer), and, of course, the nights at "Terrorist Gardens" (my friend's apartment building, which has come to be the definitive location of my summers).

Most recently, though, I drove up to Denver for the Democratic National Convention last week.  It was definitely a spontaneous thing...I invited myself along with some friends two days before they were leaving and just kind of inserted myself into the trip, and I have to say they are amazing for accommodating me and pulling some strings to fit me into their plans...particularly calling in some favors to get me into Invesco stadium for Obama's speech on Thursday.  

My political involvement has been at a minimum this year, which is sad considering what an important year it is.  A big part of that, I just realized, is that Napoleon, my political mentor of sorts, isn't doing the campaign thing this year, so my main connect into campaign life isn't there.  I do have other friends that are working in politics, but not as much in capacities to pull me in.  And since LCV isn't running a field campaign in ABQ this year, I don't have that to compel me either.  I also kind of have this sense (which I know rationally isn't a correct one) that there is a lot of hype about this election and therefore enough people campaigning that I'm not as badly needed.  I've gotten the sense from friends that Defenders of Wildlife (who have kind of filled LCV's spot) isn't scrounging for volunteers, and a canvasser from Obama's campaign told me they were doing pretty good also.  I do know that the election is going to be close and I want to be a part of that, but something keeps stopping me.  I really hope I can get over that when I get up to Oregon, although in a way it will be harder there because politics is such an insider sport, and I'm much more of an insider in NM than in Oregon.

Going up to Denver was one of those things that left me feeling more inspired and motivated, though, at the same time as it actually left me feeling like I could have definitely experienced it more.  We ended up not making it to any of the caucuses for a couple reasons, and I think I spent more time looking at t-shirts and buttons than actually talking politics.  But in the end, the energy there definitely reminded me why I want to be a politico.  There's something about the inspiration, confusion, conflict, compassion, gossip, alcoholism, silliness, change, solidarity, struggle, intelligence, passion, insiderness, etc of politics that has a very strong appeal to the crazy schizo in me...while equally kind of making me want to run and hide and get a nice, stable job in an office or something.

Well, I think that's enough for now.  I would really like to say I'll be better at keeping up with this, but I don't like to make empty promises.  I will try, though.  I'm constantly telling myself that the reason I get so caught up in my thoughts is because I never take the time to let them out, but somehow I don't do much to fix that...and meanwhile both my journal and my blog are collecting dust and cobwebs...le sigh

In summation...it's not that simple

Well, I'm back in hot (but not humid, yay!) New Mexico.  I think I'm having a hard time really accepting the fact that the goodbyes I spent last week saying are as final as they are.  I mean, I guess they aren't necessarily final, because I will definitely be seeing some people, and I know I will keep in touch with the really important people.  But at the same time, there's so much uncertainty...and the fear of falling out of touch scares me.  

But things end...that's something we must all get used to.

I can't really sum up my study abroad experience.  It was really great...although I feel that great (and amazing and fantastic and wonderful) are such cheesy terms that don't really even mean anything, really.  It was also incredibly difficult in so many ways...being away from home and my friends, and especially going through the loss of my grandfather from across the Atlantic; having to deal with my work situation; getting used to, and accepting, the differences in the french education system; etc.  I also learned SO much about the world and about myself and all that good stuff.  

And, I think most of all, I met some really amazing people that have all made quite the impacts on my life.  My roommate and my host-family were amazing...I couldn't have asked for a better situation or more wonderful people to have had in my life every day for the past 9 months.  Flo and Claudine, my two best frenchie girlfriends made my experience so fun..it was nice to have people that I could just hang out and be a girl with.  Even the other americans that I got to know...people from Oregon and Penn and California and SLU, people who were sharing my experience, and people that I will continue to share that experience with in the future, because we will go through France withdrawals together.  All of these people and more that I had to say goodbye to...or rather, à la prochaine or TTFN (ta ta for now) because I hate the term goodbye.  And I hope to see them all again.

The last few weeks of my experience in France were really very intense.  My friend Andrea came to visit, and I had finals, and Cassy came, and we did some traveling, and I was trying to spend time with my friends, especially ones I had just started hanging out with, and we discovered bedbugs in my apartment, and I had to pack up my life, and meanwhile my computer and my ipod both decided they hated me...it was almost too much for me to handle.  But I made it and came home, and made it with all my luggage and apparently didn't look nearly as exhausted or stressed or sad as I was feeling when my mom and two good friends picked me up at the airport.

It's been pretty non-stop since I've been home.  I haven't really had time to think about all the hard stuff.  This weekend was Pride, so I did some volunteering, went to the parade, and spent the day running around the fairgrounds and being fabulous.  And then I slept.  For like 15 hours.  I was completely burned out by Saturday afternoon that all I could do was sleep.  Which was actually kind of sad because it meant I didn't get to go out and do the evening Pride stuff, even though this is the first year I could have done all that.  But I desperately needed the sleep, so it worked out. And then yesterday I spent the day cleaning/unpacking.  I had to rewash all my clothes and carefully unpack everything to make sure I hadn't brought the bedbugs back.  On top of that, since I was house-sitting for most of last summer, I never really unpacked or dealt with my own space, so as I've been unpacking, I've also been trying to clean everything and get rid of stuff.  One bag of trash, one bag of paper recycling, one bag of stuff to send to goodwill, and three loads of laundry later, I'm nowhere near being finished.  And I need a bigger closet, more hangars, and more bookshelf space.  Hmmm.  

Anyway, I have to go take care of my car and get groceries.  I'm going to try to keep up this blog business, but I'm not sure where I want to go with it, so I don't promise to be terribly regular about updating, but feel free to check back every once in a while.  I may need to use it to debrief after all the time that will be spent cleaning out my grandpa's house, and I also have a long list of books to read this summer, so maybe I'll do some book reviews.  Who knows?

Consequences

So as it turns out, when you've been a vegetarian for 6 years, eating meat isn't such a good idea.  Especially ham, which you didn't eat much before you became a vegetarian.  Last night, I was invited to have dinner with one of the other teachers from work.  I had forgotten to tell her I'm a vegetarian, and didn't think of it until we were at her house and she was putting things together.  Not wanting to cause a scene and make life difficult for her, I decided I would just shut my mouth and deal with it just this once.  She was making quenelles (a very lyonnais sort of dish) that had ham and chicken (or some other sort of fowl) in them.  Quenelles are kind of like giant pasta balls...like giant gnocci in fact, only they have meat mixed into the dough.  Quite often they are made with fish and occasionally you can find them without meat, and they are one of my favorite things ever, but it is not easy to eat around the meat, so I just went for it and figured my conscience could handle it.  Unfortunately, my stomach, not so much.  I was SO queasy in the car on the way back to Lyon and then just kind of felt icky until I fell asleep and then all day today I've been feeling kind of yucky.  A feeling which was worsened by the fact that Florence was cleaning the floors with some harsh chemicals.  Sigh.  

I told myself I was going to run a bunch of errands today, but by the time I finished running, showering, and doing laundry, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and feel sicky.  So I did that for a while and cleaned and whatnot and before I knew it it was like 5:30.  Then got an email from a friend of Wei-Ching's who wanted me to edit a paper she wrote in english.  I did that right quick because she wanted to come over tonight to go over the revisions with me.  And now that's done and the day is over and my tummy still feels kind of gross and I didn't get my errands done.  Bah.  On the bright side, though, my room is clean for when my good friend Sandwich gets here on Sun night and my clothes are all washed and I'm 21 euro richer.  I guess we take what we can get right?

So to completely change the subject, I just have to say that I really should have sucked it up and talked to the schools I work at sooner.  Suddenly I actually enjoy the job a lot more...just in time for it to be almost over.  In the morning school yesterday, one of the girls gave me flowers, which was sweet.  And then in the afternoon 2 of my classes were on a field trip, so I read some stories to the preschoolers and then had my normal 1/2 grade class and then with the kindergardeners I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and played duck duck goose.  Which was awesome.  I love working with kids, but the pressure of having to introduce them to a new language with no experience was a stressful thing that made it not fun.  But now that some of the pressure is off, I really like it.  Anyhoo, after school, I hung out while Isabelle (the kindergarden teacher) was in a meeting, and I worked on making menus for an activity for next week, and then Isabelle took me to her house to get ready for dinner.  

We ended up having a decent amount of time before dinner, so we went to Perrouges, which is this little medieval village, and wandering around.  We went in this gallery where there was some hand-made jewelry on display, and the guy who makes it started telling us all about it.  His inspiration for the different pieces was really interesting and it was cool to hear him talk about the stuff.  Plus the necklaces were really cool.  As Isabelle said, "I would have been really happy if they had been just a little bit less expensive."  It was a cool thing, though, and it was nice to take a little walk before dinner.

Dinner was pretty interesting.  Lots of questions about the US and politics and music and all sorts of good things.  Isabelle's husband was really one of the first frenchies, not including my host family, to really interrogate me (not in a bad way) about issues in the US and whatnot.  I always get simple questions, like what's different and whatnot, but I think a lot of times people don't want to put us on the spot, but he had no problem with asking about the tough issues like 9/11 conspiracy theories and other Bush administration business, Katrina, health care, elections, religion, etc.  It was interesting and forced me to think about that stuff in a different way than I usually do.  This was all broken up, of course, with talk of music and more fun things.  Isabelle's daughter is quite infatuated with english and has amazing taste in music and movies.  She was cool and fun to talk to, as well.  Overall, despite my meat/tummy fiasco, it was really interesting and fun to eat with them and discuss things.  My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.  I feel that that's a line from a song, but I can't think of which one.  

So anyways, before this gets overwhelmingly long, I shall say adieu and get ready for bed methinks.

ps, because I have this lovely countdown on my wall thanks to my dear friend, GG, I would just like to say, 28 days until I go home! AH!!!!

Bisous.

What a lovely long weekend

Ah, this weekend is a long weekend because Thursday there was no school because it was the anniversary of the end of WWII, and tomorrow there is no school because it's Pentecost...I think.  Anyway, a lot of people had Friday off too, because the french like to do this thing called "faire le pont" or "do the bridge," wherein if Tuesday or Thursday are holidays, then you get Monday or Friday off, respectively.  Unfortunately, my teachers decided not to faire le pont, so I had class.  But it wasn't really all that bad because it was capoeira and portuguese.  I thought about just ditching (about half of my portuguese class actually showed up because a lot of people go on vacation), but it was my last capoeira class of the year, which is really sad.  But, because my teacher is awesome, he said we can come take classes at the studio for free until the end of the school year.  Which is definitely a bonus as I was just considering paying to go take some classes there.  And some of us were talking about getting together at the park and doing some capoeira on our own, which would be pretty sweet indeed.

Anyhoo, besides that little educational detour, it's been a pretty crazy weekend.  Week in general I suppose if you include the fact that we had a Cinco de Mayo dinner fiesta at Silly Thing and Fortune Cookie's house on Monday.  But the fun really started Thursday when those two and I went to this lake called Miribel and had a picnic in the grass and stood in the water a little bit.  That was SO nice and it was amazingly beautiful out and I was so happy.  I had to leave them a little early, tho, to take a train to meet Flo in Bourgoin-Jailleu, which is a town east of Lyon, where nothing but the cafés were open, so we ended up just heading to her house and hanging out listening to music.  And then we had a BBQ and watched some TV/a movie, which pretty much everyone was falling asleep during.  It was so fun to hang out with her and Claudine, a friend of hers who I totally adore (just in case, Flo is the girl I met in the TOEFL class who was hoping to study in Oregon, but instead she's studying in Ontario.  She's and Cladine are also the people I spent New Year's Eve with).  It was really fun to do that and have a girly sleepover and whatnot. 

Friday morning, we hung out and chatted before Flo had to give me a ride to the tram so I could make the trek to school.  That was very long.  Then I had class, bla bla bla, did some grocery shopping, and headed over to ST and FC's house to hang out.  We ended up waiting around quite a while for our other friends to show up and then proceeded to get silly and do things like climb on the neighbor's roof and then have a different neighbor call the cops on us for being too loud.  Who would have thought that 6 people could get that crazy?  Anyhoo, there was some drama and ridiculousness which I shall not go into, but overall the night was a success...I kind of slept through a lot of it because I was really exhausted, though.

Saturday I went home and was lazy for a little while before going to the market (I think I've said this, but I'll say it again: I'm going to miss my Sat morning market SO much) and came home and made fruit salad and lemonade from the tasty things I had bought, and then FC came over after taking an exam and we had lunch and then walked to Place des Terreaux to buy tix for les Nuits Sonores, which I will explain a little later.  There was supposed to be a march/celebration thing of the end of slavery in France, but I realized I had severely misunderstood the time, and about when we were sick of sitting outside, was when it was starting, so FC went home and I headed to where the march was supposed to start.  I feel really strange that I always end up at these kinds of cultural events by myself.  I don't really get the sense that my friends are all that interested in them, but I feel like I'll regret if I don't go.  In the end, I wasn't really alone because all the Senzala (capoeira) people were there and I ended up hanging out with them, but it was still kind of weird to go by myself.  Chao, my teacher, was like, "so where are all the Americans?"  I didn't really know how to respond to that without making it sound like they really just didn't care, which is kind of true, but I feel like it's so stereotypically American.  We ended up deciding that it was because it was too hot for them.   It really was stifling hot, especially as we were marching at like 2 feet an hour and all huddled close together.  But the whole even was pretty cool and it was nice to feel more or less like I was a part of the group and to be able to joke around with everyone.  And lots of bises all around, which, as I have said in the past, is kind of something that makes you feel like you are accepted.  

That went a lot later than I had expected, so I ran home, quickly ate some food, and headed off to meet people for les Nuits Sonores, which is this music festival that has been going on in Lyon for like 7 or 8 years.  It's a lot of elctro/techno-y music, but also indie and rock and other kinds of music.  Last night was the last night, and I went with FC and ST and then our friends, the Sleeper and Touf (a couple of frenchie boys who are friends of Katie's host brother).  Katie was also there with Lauren, another girl from Penn, but they ended up meeting up with some other friends and we got separated from them a lot.  It was a really cool thing to go to, because it was in a slightly fixed up abandoned warehouse with three different areas, each with a different kind of music (Rock, Electro, and Dub).  We kind of wandered in and out of the different rooms for a while.  Unfortunately, we were all really tired from lack of sleep, hangovers, and being out in the sun ALL afternoon (that one was just me), so FC, ST, and I ended up leaving around 1am, which was right around when things were really starting to pick up.  I'm definitely glad I went, though.

Then today I slept in a little before meeting up with FC, ST, and the Grim Reaper and going to Ile-de-Barbe, which is this little island in the river on the north side of Lyon.  We had a little picnic there and then chilled enjoying the sun for a while.  Then we walked around a bit, but as it turns out, there really wasn't much to see, so we came home.  And now I'm back feeling sleepy and being sad because I think it might rain.  I've been so enjoying being able to run around and enjoy the sunshine lately.  I hope it is nice at least tomorrow because we were thinking of getting a bigger group together and going back to Miribel, the lake, to enjoy the last day of our long weekend before we have to go back to thinking about school.  Sigh.

Anyway, things are really good right now and I've really been enjoying myself (despite recent tensions among my friends and awkward/dramatic situations that have been coming up a lot).  I have a hard time with things like this because I really try to avoid these kind of dramas, but it's hard when what ends up happening is two of my friends are not getting along.  I don't like to take sides, but sometimes I end up doing just that inadvertently or because I sympathize with one party more than another.  Basically it's just this kind of tension that sometimes hangs in the air, and it's frustrating because I'm more or less outside of the whole thing and, not being involved, can see how ridiculous it all is, but then I can also put my feet in different people's shoes and understand at least a little bit where they are coming from.  Long story short, things are sort of socially weird, but at the same time really good.  It's hard to explain, but let's just say it's not always easy being Switzerland, but that doesn't mean you can't have a good time.

Ok, I think I shall go now.  Sorry I keep writing such long posts.  I go for days and days being too busy to write much, and then I try to recap everything and it's a little overwhelming.

Bisous.

PS.  To my mommy and my grandma, even though I will talk to you later, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!

Relief

After a week of stress and 4 days of work, I am done with my 10 page paper for my Humanitarian aid work class.  Well, basically done.  I still need to reread it and do some editing, but I'm going to do that tomorrow...give my brain a break before I reread it.  

I've also more or less recovered from my little panic attack last week.  Getting this paper out of the way was a big weight off my shoulders, and my teacher in my lit class decided to gice the foreign students an out of class essay instead of an in-class one, which means I don't have a final tomorrow, and I have some time to write the essay (although i would really be a happy camper if he would send us the topic already).  I talked with various people at the schools I've been working at about my issues with the teaching job, and they were surprisingly understanding about it all.  I guess I should have done it sooner.  I think that a lot of the things I was upset about were related to various misunderstandings and lack of comprehension within the system of what my job entailed.  And then I managed to talk the whole death thing out with various people, so while I'm still upset, I'm more ok.  In talking to my mom, she reminded me that I'm going to be pretty vulnerable over the next 6 weeks because I'm emotionally preparing to leave France (AH!).  So I guess maybe I'll have to get used to panicking every once in a while.

On the plus side, the sun has been out for several days now.  I've missed most of it because I've been huddled in my little hole working or in class...and having a nocturnal Friday night and being exhausted all day yesterday...I swear if I wake up tomorrow morning to rain, I very well might cry.  I have time tomorrow to go sit in a park or an outside café (and do reading homework...I guess it's better than my room though) and go running if my foot is done being lame (I think I sprained it or something in capoeira...it hurt like hell to walk yesterday, another reason I stayed in my room mostly).  Things I haven't done in a while.  

It's funny to think that less than a week ago I was such an upset mess.  Right now I'm actually feeling really good.  I mean, I'm still a little stressed, and of course always freaking out a little inside about how much I have to do in 6 weeks, but other than that I really have had a great couple of days.  And I'm feeling good about things.  Especially if I things work out for going to Grenada next weekend.

Some highlights from this week include writing a 4 page (single spaced) paper on Wednesday and celebrating over some Belgian souvenirs and pizza and watching Napoleon Dynamite with my girlies, who we shall call Fortune Cookie and Silly Thing, which was really good.  Then on Friday night the same girls and "the guys," who are Katie's host brother and his friends.  Fortune Cookie and Silly Thing had brought the guys presents from Amsterdam, so we all ended up getting together and hanging out sans dormir until like 7am.  Well...Silly Thing slept a little and Fortune Cookie kept falling asleep in her chair while we waited for the metro to start running again (and then for croissants and pain au chocolat).  Somehow I was wide awake.  I guess that probably has something to do with the fact that all the guys had to drink were energy drinks and then we randomly decided to make coffee at like 3 am.  I was having quite a good time, though, just chatting with the everyone and laughing at their silliness and chillin.  Good times.  And so then yesterday I got home at 7am or so and then tried to work on my paper cuz my head was still awake from the caffeine, but my body wasn't having it, so I slept for maybe two hours and then got up and went to the market.  I haven't gone to my Saturday market in AGES.  I had forgotten how much I like it, and was happy that my vendors hadn't all forgotten me.  I really do love that the neighborhood market is like a community.  People stand around and chat and get to know each other and it's just so great!  I'm really gonna miss that a lot.

Um, I guess that's about it for now.  Life is good.  La vie est belle.

Venting

I am supposed to be in class right now but I am having a really strange day and have barely been able to stop crying for like 5 hours (except for the hour and a half that I was close to falling asleep in my literature class, which I feel horrible about).  Maybe I will calm down by writing some and then I can go around the halfway point when there is a break.  Or I will just upset myself more...I guess we shall see.

I don't know what is up with me today.  Actually I think I kind of do...like a million different things that are upsetting and frustrating and stressful.  I'm sorry to everyone who is reading this...if you are looking for a happy, here is my life and I just went on an amazing vacation (which I did, but that will have to wait until I am more stable) sort of post, this is not it and feel free not to read this...but I guess most of the things that are bugging me are part of my experience studying abroad and therefore are the kind of thing that I'm trying to chronicle in this blog.

First of all, I got back late last night from 9 days of traveling in Italy and Belgium and I am absolutely exhausted.  The trip was amazing, but I think it was that much more tiring for that fact.  Plus I think I'm kind of having travel with-drawls or something.

While on my trip, I was visiting a friend who is studying in Florence, Italy.  She's a friend from high school who I absolutely adore and it was so good to spend time with her, but it kinda made me more homesick.  We talked a lot about going home and made lots of fun plans for this summer, which was really cool, but it made me wish that summer were here already.  And I was a little jealous that she's going home in like 3 weeks.  On the other hand, there's also the fact that as much as I want to be home, I'll be leaving France in about 7 weeks, and that's kind of scary because I can't help but think of the things I haven't done and the things I'll miss.  So all of that is on my mind. 

On top of all that, I had to get up for an 8am class this morning and confront the fact that there are 5 weeks left of school and I have a zillion things to do and am starting to stress about some of my classes.  Some of this stress is my normal, "oh shit I've been procrastinating and now I have to deal with the consequences" sort of stress, but I'm also facing the stress of exams and a real distress about the French system and not knowing what to expect and therefore worrying about my grades.  I know grades aren't everything, and I have dropped the bar for myself a little knowing that it's a lot harder to be a straight-a exchange student in France than to be a straight-a student at U of O.  The problem for some of my classes is that, while I'm pretty certain I understand the material, I have this fear that the ONE essay question that appears on the ONE exam will not be one I can't address...or that I won't be able to answer it the way the teachers expect.  I know that teachers will grade my exams slightly easier being a foreign student, but that is usually a language thing, which I'm honestly not concerned about.  What I'm afraid of is that the French have a different way of looking at things and expect very specific things (organized in a very specific way) and that's what is hard for me.  But I feel like if I can express myself fine in the language, they will expect me to be able to understand the question perfectly and be able to answer it the way they expect.  And in one of my classes I'm the only foreign student, so there won't be any comparison except for the french students' work, and in another the professor is doing an oral exam, but because I'm doing the normal assignment for another class with the same professor, she expects me to do the same for this class.  So basically I'm the only foreign student taking the exam.  Why can't I suck at french?

I talked to Laurie about it today, and she understood and said we can work something out and possibly do a pass-fail thing depending on my grade, since I can't gauge myself since there are no grades but the final exam, and that helped a lot but it was also kind of upsetting because I don't like being an exception in that way.  I don't like being held to different standards, even if it's necessary and fair and all that.  It goes against my perfectionism, and is completely irrational and I can't help it.

While I was talking to Laurie, I also kind of vented to her about my teaching assistant job and all of the problems I've been having with it.  I honestly wish I had quit when I had the chance.  Or talked to someone that wasn't my mother (not that you didn't help, mom...but I mean someone more official).  Laurie was really surprised by most of my complaints and said that I was completely justified in them (something I wasn't really sure about because I wasn't entirely clear on what was expected of me...one of my many complaints about the job in general).  She told me to contact this guy who's in charge of the english assistants (or all the assistants, I'm not sure), but made it sound kind of like there probably wasn't a whole lot I could do with only 5 weeks left on my contract.  So I just finished writing him this long email, which was really upsetting because it reminded me of how much I dread that job and the fact that I have to go tomorrow and invent activities for 5 hours of classes that I am supposed to be ASSISTING teachers in, not teaching.  I hate hating my job.

And then, this whole crying session started when I came across something that I knew about, but hadn't really dealt with or confronted in my mind, which was worsened by some news from a friend.  This kid that I have known forever passed away recently totally mysteriously and out of the blue.  I had heard about it from a friend about two weeks ago, but was so caught up in everything that I couldn't deal with it.  But today I found myself looking at his myspace page, where his family had written a little note about his death and a bunch of his friends had written messages about him.  He is someone that was in my sort of extended "Flagstaff family" growing up and was the little brother of a guy who was about my age.  His dad and my dad are really good friends and I have a lot of memories of spending time with his family growing up.  I really didn't know him that well, though, because he was still pretty young when I stopped spending as much time in Flagstaff and that community dissipated in a lot of ways.  But I always remember him being a really happy and great kid.  And I've seen him occasionally over the years and know people that were really close to him and from what I do know he remained a really happy, great kid and was a wonderful musician and one of those people that no one could say anything bad about.  And then one day he just didn't wake up and from what I have heard, no one really knows why.  And that's so heartbreaking.  

This happened this afternoon, while I was thinking about a good friend who just lost her uncle and someone from my high school who went missing in February and I just felt this heavy sadness drape over me.  Sadness for those losses, but especially sadness for my friends who are affected a lot more than me by them.  After my experience losing my grandpa and being so far from the people I needed to support me through it, I hate the thought that I can't be with the people I love when they are going through a similar loss.  I know that they have support systems around them and are not as isolated as I think maybe I was, but I don't want anyone to have to feel that sense of isolation that I felt at the time when you really need every once of support you can get.  And if my apathy weren't hard enough, I kind of drifted back into my own pain that I've been keeping at bay for the most part since I went home and had some closure.  

So all of these things and the fact that I've spent most of the last 9 days in the sun only to come home to rain and ugly and no food and homework that I'd been procrastinating on are all just too much for me and I can't stop crying and I want to curl up in bed but I know I should go to my class because if I don't I'll be even more stressed when exams roll around but I'm a little nervous that sitting in class trying to concentrate and take notes will be too much for me and I won't be able to stop myself from crying.  It's really kind of a lose-lose situation.  Which doesn't help my mood at all.

Well, either way, I will stop venting, because I think I've exhausted my complaints.

Much love and gros bisous and I promise that I will have some much happier posts about my wonderful travels soon (because we all know I love a reason to procrastinate).