This Vacation Is Too Long

In theory, it sounds great to get two week vacations every other month or so, but to be honest, I really want to go back to school. I can't say I'm overly excited about trying to keep up with the lessons, but I would like to see everyone. I miss them! Two weeks is a longgg time. I could settle for one.

Fortunately tomorrow, I'm going to play a laser tag game with some friends from school. Then, on Thursday, I'm playing again with some other friends. hah. Evidently that's the thing to do around here. It sounds fun enough to do twice in one week, though!

I pretty much caught you all up on my trip, so we'll just start with yesterday. After getting off the computer, I hung out on the veranda with Annick and Pierre. I know Pierre always complains about how much Annick talks and gets really annoyed, but I love that lady! She's really entertaining! She was talking about all the different French foods I need to be sure and try before I leave, like escarot, frog legs, creme brulle, etc. She and my host mom told me that I might be able to go to a cooking class with some of my host siblings, so that would be really cool! When I get back, I'll make you all snails :P

After lunch, we went over to Thomas's house. We ate strawberry pie and then talked for a while. I played a game called Lynx with Lilian, Lou-Marie, Thomas, and later on, Romane as well. There is a bigg circular game board with a million different pictures of objects and such on it. Each person is delt a certain number of cards with a picture that corresponds to one on the board. Your goal is to match up all of your cards before the other players. It's really hard! There is so much to look at! I did manage to win one game, though!

Yesterday was also National Grandma Day! So after we left Thomas's house, we stopped by Grandma's house and delivered some flowers. We didn't really stay that long. Annick came back to our house with us and chatted for a while. I wrote out most of the rest of my postcards. Then I watched TV with Pierre a little, ate dinner, and went up to my room. I didn't get to sleep until midnight, though! I swear I was exhausted, but I just couldn't sleep! It's been like that for the past few nights, actually. I have a hard time falling asleep, then I wake up at some insane time in the morning and about an hour later, I fall asleep again and wake up between 8 and 9. Then throughout the day I'm tired!! I don't know whyyyy I can't sleep and it's driving me crazy! Luckily I've got some aromatherapy for sleep, so I'll try that tonight and see if it works. Maybe I'll make it a full night without waking up. :P

Today was a cleaning day! I woke up at 8:30 with a headache, so I laid in bed until a little after 10. When I finally got up and finished getting ready, I cleaned my room! I got to empty my garbage, change my bedding, vaccuum, and tidy everything up! Normally, I'm not really into this kind of thing, but I actually had a good time doing it. Once I'd finished, I read some more of Manon Lescaurt. I'm only on page 20 or so, and there are like 150 pages, plus a paper to write yet over the break! Ooops! This afternoon, Pierre and I went to a field and played catch with the football I gave him. I found a nice sized stick and used that to play baseball a little bit, too, with his kickball. That was pretty fun.

Now we're just kind of chillin' out. My host mom is going to go grocery shopping soon, so I'm going to go with her. Tonight I think Jean-Marie and Susan are coming. Susan's friend is in the hospital in Arras, so they will be staying a couple days.

Since I didn't have the time to do so yesterday, I'm going to do a little one-month reflection today. At the end of each month, I plan on just kind of looking back at some of the things I learned, both good and bad. I'll try to just list things that I forgot to mention in my blog, too.
-First off, French people sometimes make their Ms look like Ns. When I met with the school admin, I corrected the secretary's handwriting, because I thought she wrote Niranda. The I realized she wrote Minnesota the same way! Oops! haha.
-I have the Marsaillase on my ipod, and when some of my friends were looking through my French playlist, they gave me major crap about that! :P
-French students don't staple their paper, or at least that I've noticed! They have paper that is kind of book-style to write tests on, or they stick loose sheets in a page protector, binder, or folder. The folders are different from ours, though, too. They fold all they way open and you tuck your papers into one side. I'll try and bring one back with me. They're kind of cool.
-The drinks in vending machines are upside down.
-The French really aren't as high fashion of people as I was expecting. They mostly just wear dark clothes, whatever label and whatever style. I dunno. It all kind of looks the same to me, and it's not exceptionally classy like I was expecting.
-I've noticed that in general, French people don't wash their hands after using the toilet as often as I'm used to. I hardly ever see soap in public bathrooms. It kind of irritates me. I've gotta get some Purel (sp?)!
-I really haven't picked up as much French as I had hoped by the end of the first month, but I can definitely say that I've improved my comprehension by a lottt! I'm kind of at the stage where I can comprehend almost everything when people are talking directly to me. It's a little harder when I'm sitting at the table with a bunch of adults who are going on and on about who know's what. I've gotta work on that, yet. I'm much better at forming sentences and can ask for things and say quite a few things without much thought. I still have a longgg ways to go, though! My writing is terrible, not to mention my grammar! That needs quite a bit of work! I'm not going to worry too much about that for now, though. My goal for the next month is just to work on talking more in conversations and saying more than just a sentence or two at a time. I've also started thinking a lott in Franglais. When I have an English song stuck in my head, I usually end up translating the lyrics as best as I can. Haha. When I'm thinking about other things, I do that, too. I think they words I know well in French, and everything else stays in English.

I think that's about all there is to say, though! And Thomas just came over, so I'm going to get off!

Au Revoir!
<3Miranda

Every person you meet knows something you don't; learn from them. -H. Jackson Brown