Where Do I Even Begin?

I guess we'll just start with yesterday morning and go from there, like normal, but I suggest you grab some popcorn and pop and get comfortable, because this is going to be longggg! I'll try and condense it as much as I can, for your sake and mine.

First off, yesterday morning I took the bus to school like normal. I was told by some classmates the day before that there was going to be a protest and the buses wouldn't be running, but nothing out of the ordinary happened, so I dunno what that was about. Vincent rode the bus again, yesterday, too, so I sat by him and let him listen to my ipod with me. This doesn't really pertain to him necessarily (because he wasn't singing) but I loooove listening to French people sing English songs! Most of the time, they don't know all the lyrics, so they make up words to fit, or they hum or mumble little sections. ha ha! And even when they do have the words right, the accent is still present, so that makes it really amusing, as well!

Moving on. I got to school and started my day with Histoire. Since we've switched topics now, I really don't understand a lot. I mainly just try and read Kévin's notes and copy those down as best I can. It's a little frustrating though, because besides having messy handwriting, he also covers the paper with his hand as he writes, so I'm trying to copy the notes, but his hand covers them and ahhh! I didn't get any of the 'Conclusion.' I suppose it's really no big deal because the notes aren't going to do much for me anyway.

Between Histoire and Français, I pulled out my Jelly Bellies and a few Oreos and shared them with some people in my class. They all seemed to like them, and I had nooo problem getting rid of the icky jelly bean flavors. :P In Français, we got a piece of paper with what I think were song lyrics on it. We were supposed to answer some questions or take notes on them or something, I didn't get that part, so I just sat there and underlined all the words I didn't know. I plan on looking them up in the future.. whenever I get around to that.

I literally smiled/laughed my way through math. I understood nothing. And by that, I seriously mean nothing. There were graphs with wavy lines intersecting all over the place, and symbols I didn't know and all the notes were in French. So, I just sat there, feeling more stupid than I did on the first day. hah. It made me laugh. I turned around to see if one of the Jeremies understood, and they were playing a game of Hangman. That looked wayy more fun than math, so I joined them and played until the end of the period.

After math was a class that I could understand- Anglais Complementaire! I'm not overly fond of my teacher (he actually kind of creeps me out, to be honest), but I was happy to understand what was going on. Before class started, though, I got some bad news. My teacher informed me that I was absent on Monday morning and demanded to know why. I told him it wasn't marked on my schedule, which was the truth. He told me to mark it in from 10 to 11. Now I don't get to sleep in as late anymoreee! Zut! :( For the rest of the class, we watched a video and filled out a worksheet on Martin Luther King Jr. It wasn't overly difficult, but it would have been nice to watch the video in English rather than in French. I mean, we are in English class, rightt?

I finally got to eat lunch after English was over. I went to meet the Jeremies in the foyer (foseball room), but they told me they'd already eaten, so I went with Alexandre and a couple of her friends this time. It was a little weird. She has a thing with picking out boys she doesn't like, and then sending them SMS (text) Messages and stuff. The other girls laughed and laughed and I was just like, Ummm okayyyy. Hah. That's not really my thing, I guess. I found Sabrina sitting with Marion, Virginie, and Laureen a few tables away, and when the girls I was sitting with got up to leave, I went and sat with the others. They were nearly finished eating, too, so the five of us went to the library. We played a game that supposedly determines your destiny. I dunno, one girl asks another a question, and then tosses up a bunch of pieces of folded paper with various answers on them, and the girl who was asked has to chose one and read it. It was kind of dumb, but at the same time, really amusing.

It's kind of funny. Virginie has bright red/orange hair, like the old Lindsay Lohan; Marion has dark brown hair; and then Laureen has almost white blonde hair, and they all hang out together. It kind of makes me thing of those "There was a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead" jokes. Ha ha. Then Sabrina's sandy brownish blonde hair and my blonde hair kind of wreck it. I dunno why I find that so interesting, but everytime I see the three of them walking together I think of that. :P

Two hours later, I had my last class of the day- another dose of Français. This time all we did was watch a movie called "Ridicule." I'm not sure what exactly was going on most of the time, but oh well. No big deal, I guess.

After I got home from school, I basically just did Latin. And then I did some more Latin. After that, I ate a dinner and worked on Latin once again. My host mom helped me for a little while, and then we both gave up and went to bed. I made a mistake, yesterday, though. I told you it was 11, and it was actually only 10:00. The clock is set up on a 24 hour scale, so I had to do some math, and you all know how bad I am at that! hah! It sure could have been midnight for how tired I was, though!

This morning I took the bus again. As I left the house, something that I never thought would happen in real life actually did happen; a rooster ca-ca-doodle-doo'd!! Seriously!! Granted, it wasn't right at daybreak, but it was right as I started walking, and I thought that was the funniest thing ever. I listened some more when I got to the bus stop, and noticed how many birds were actually chirping. It honestly made me feel like I was in the middle of the jungle. I can't even tell you how many different chirps I heard.

Well anyway, I got to school and met up with Justine and Claire (not the same one from theatre). The three of us then walked up two flights of stairs to Latin. That class is another one of those that I can laugh through. I probably could be in Chinese and understand more. I am just starting to be able to tell when my teacher switches from speaking French to Latin, and then back. Most of the time, I'm totally lost. She called on me today to read some of the text, but I realized I had the wrong text and so she settled with the girl next to me- Thank God! I also realized that I had translated the wrong stuff. Haha. Just my luck, huh? We were supposed to translate the stuff I didn't have. I don't care though. I really want to try and drop that class. It is wayyy too advanced for me, and being taught in French really does not help.

I had Français after Latin. All we did was discuss the movie and then get our assignment for over the vacation. All I have to say is HOLY F*CKING SHITTT. I have to read a 100 and some page book, THENNN I have to write a paper that is supposed to be 5 or 6 pages long discussing different concepts and themes in the book, as well as a little about the author. The only part I think I will be able to do well will probably be the part where I have to pick 5 words from the book I don't already know and write the deffinition. Hah. I could probably fill all 5 pages with words I don't already know in that book. I guess I paid for the book, so I get to keep it. I'll be sure and show it to y'all when I get back. I know you will probably all want to borrow it, too, because it looks like quite a fun read! Hah (sarcasm for those of you who didn't catch that)!

I had a one hour break after Français which I spent with some classmates in the library. I looked through my French book (from the US) and ahhh! I wish I could just look at the page and just know all of the tenses and vocab and everything I don't already know! There is so much and I cannot even explain how helpful it would be to know a lot of that stuff. If you guys get through all of that this year, I'm going to be completely lost when I get back. No lie. I will probably be able to speak conversationally and stuff no problem, but when it comes to all those tenses... I'm going to have problemsss. I wish I had more downtime here so I could try and teach myself! There's just so much! Some of the other students at my table wanted to look at my textbook. They thought it was really funny and especially liked the cartoon things. It's pretty basic stuff for them, I suppose.

Following my break was Anglais. At the beginning of class, Sabrina and I had to give our presentations on women voting. She talked about France and I talked about the United States. It went pretty well, I suppose. I tried to talk slow and articulate each word so that the class could understand. Sabrina said she did, so I'm assuming most of the others could, too. I got my first grade (mark) of the school year, too! I received a 19 on my presentation, as did Sabrina. I don't really know exactly what that means, but Sabrina was thrilled, so I'm assuming we did well. The rest of the class was spent listening to a recording and filling in the blanks on our paper. I had a fun time with that.

When Anglais was finished, I got to eat. I ate with Sabrina and the others again. It was pretty fun. I had fries, chicken nuggets, pasta salad, and a piece of chocolate pie. Mmmmm! Favorite lunch so far, I think! I even got all French and ate my fries with a fork! I still ate pretty fast though, and I ate with Ketchup. I don't know howwww the French people can eat so slowly! They seriously cut their chicken nuggets into about 5 or 6 pieces. I cut mine in half and that was plenty small for me! It took me about 20 minutes to finish my food, and the others took literally almost 2 hours. I was hungry again by the time they finished. Sadly, with the way the French cafeteria is set up, you can only get so much food, and you can only go through one time per day. That is the one thing I would change, I think.

After lunch, Sabrina and I went back to the library and talked for a while. I dunno, I guess we just kind of hung out and joked around and stuff. Nothing too interesting to report. About an hour later, we had English again. This time we watched Sleepy Hallow (with Johnny Depp!!), but it was in French with no English subtitles or anything, so I had trouble following it. Most of my class was talking, anyway. I had brought my photo album of Fargo and my friends & family to school because Alicia really wanted to see it. In particular, she wanted to see the picture I had of Obama. I had to say his name about 5 or 6 times just so that the others could hear "Barack Obama" said with an American accent. haha. Anyway, during the film, my photo album got passed around nearly the entire class. Everyone was shocked that I had a locker at school and that South high was so modern inside. They also liked the pictures I had of West Acres and the City Hall. Here, all the "mairies," or city halls, are really old and probably were some of the first buildings in the towns. In Fargo, the city hall has like a million windows and looks muchhh more modern than any building here. I kind of wish we had a cool old building, though. They're really pretty :) I think they are much more appealing to look at than a bunch of windows.

My final class of the day was Parcours. Today didn't go as well as it did 2 weeks ago when I last had this class. The teacher mainly just lectured and went through some papers. I knew the name Victor Hugo and his Les Misérables, but that was about all. After the first hour, we had to switch rooms, and then that room didn't work for some reason, so we had to switch again. It was quite tiresome walking all over the place. I hate all the stairs in that school!

My host mom and Romane came to pick me up today. I'll have to admit, it is a little embarassing at this point when she walks up to me and my friends to pick me up. I'd rather her just call me or pull up close so I can see the car. Today she also wanted to know who my friends were, so I had to go through and explain all of them. After that, we finally left. When we got to the house, Pierre and Thomas and Lou-Marie and Lilian were all there waiting for me. Anne came a little later. We hung out for a while and the kids played and ate some candy. Once they left, my host mom went to tidy up her office and get a few other things in order and Pierre went to watch Pokémon, so I seized the oppertunity to hop on here. Since then, Pokémon has ended and my host mom has returned home and started making dinner. I should probably get off and find something else to do, because I have been on here for quite a long time.

A demain!
Vous me manque!
<3Mirandaa

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get -Anonymous