movement

just in case anyone missed the memo, my new blog is ohlavache.blogspot.com
thanks and sic em.

fin

this will probably be my last post on this blog (not like they've been coming all that often anyway) because i'm thinking about moving headquarters to a new one that's not about my time in france. i'll update you if this happens!

i don't know about you, but i know about me. and methinks this whole three week best-friend-extravaganza that starts tomorrow is going to be pretty much unbelievable. how many twenty-somethings and not-even-twenty-yet-somethings get to travel the globe for three weeks? AND who planned their entire trip themselves? madison and i have both worked very hard on this trip, and i'm so excited to see the culmination of almost a years worth of planning when i go get her smily face from the airport tomorrow morning.

and, looking back at my almost four month venture in france, i kind of can't believe it's almost over. in less than a month, i'll be home. then i'll move on to waco, get a job, and start my junior year. life will revert back to normal. but, as crappy as this semester has been, i really love france. i love paris. i love my family. i love knowing i can walk a few blocks in any direction in any french city and find a boulangerie. i love the french language so, so very much. i love hearing my host family, my family, and random frenchies all around me tell me how well i speak it/express surprise at my speaking capabilities, but there are still huge differences entre me and the real french. i would give a lot to be able to speak it at a native level.

i'm so looking forward to this little vacation. it's going to be so great. i'm seriously so blessed with the opportunity to do this, and to share it with my absolute best friend in the world. i can't wait until tomorrow! :D

byebye frans.

give me long days in the sun, preludes to the nights to come

I have been doing a woefully inadequate job as a blogger. I have a newfound respect for those that blog for a living, it's harder than you would think.

Just to update on my life in France for the past couple of weeks:

Two weekends ago I went to Rouen with a friend. It's a beautiful city and I believe it's the capital of upper-Normandy. It is in this city that Joan of Arc was burned to death. I had a relaxing and wonderful weekend where I got to visit beautiful churches and museums, shop with a good friend, and just in general enjoy myself for a Saturday.

this is the Joan of Arc tower. It's old, and awesome. She may not have agreed though, since it was her prison before she was murdered.

All in all, I had a lovely weekend in Rouen. So I decided that the following weekend (which is last weekend) I would go to Bayeux.

Bayeux is a little bitty town that probably would go mostly unnoticed but for the second world war. I spent the day visiting Omaha beach and the American cemetery, as well as just soaking in the picturesque little French town. The cemetery was definitely hard, but so good to see. I think we grow too comfortable in our comforts and forgethow much we have to be thankful for. Such a redundant statement, but I can't think of any other way to phrase it.

Something else really cool about Bayeux is the aptly named Bayeux tapestry. It was probably completed in 1077 and is over 220 feet long. So, old and huge. And cool. And crazy. Suffice it to say that my Saturday in Bayeux was just short of perfect, and that I feel like Belle probably lives somewhere in this beautiful town.

Other than these few little trips, I've been spending all of my time in my classes/doing my work for them. I have gotten to the point where I actually like Caen, I'm glad to be here, and things aren't looking so bad. I still can't wait to be home, back to theatre and Baylor, but at least I will be able to look back on this semester with something other than disappointment. I am still very unhappy with this program and how badly it was presented to me. I definitely would have made some different choices if I had known how this would all be upfront. But, there's only 29 more days until I go home for spring break. After that, I have two weeks of finals and then my best friend is flying up for what will be a most marvelous and amazing trip.

I will be spending this coming Tuesday in Paris with a friend from high school who's come to celebrate her birthday. That will be super fun and I cannot wait. After that I'm hoping to go visit the Mont St. Michel and then on an outing with the CEFE to Versailles. Then I'll be home! I am so excited.

I have also noticed that I'm having to search for words in English, and my spelling is off. Although this is a little disconcerting, it's also fun, because it means my French is progressing well! yayhooray.

i got crowns of words a woven each one a song to sing

This whole blogging thing hasn't really turned out the way I expected. I thought I'd be happily typing away, noting each and every fun and frenchy thing I accomplished, posting pictures of me surrounded by frenchness and generally enjoying myself. I never imagined I'd have to come to it and try to figure out how to best explain my situation without complaining, without seeming ungrateful, without seeming selfish, or stupid, or any other numerous descriptors. Unfortunately, I'm tired of doing that. I'm tired of putting up the happy face, trying to make it all seem so much better than it is.

The fact of the matter is, I'm miserable. It seems like no matter how hard I try to smile, to enjoy my time here, to give thanks in the little things, I simply cannot win. Ever since I arrived in France it's like evil doers galore have conspired against me to make it absolutely impossible for me to get a moments rest, a single second of freedom from worry, stress, depression, and general confusion. All I talked about for months was coming here. I was counting down the days. And now I'm counting them again.

I cannot even fathom how I arrived at this point. I have to try so hard not to let myself get overthrown. Each morning I wake up and remind myself to breathe, to note the beauty around me. "You're experiencing a different culture!" "I wish America could produce bread like this!" "Hey, look, the wind isn't blowing at 500 miles per hour! Isn't that wonderful!" and also, "There are children starving in Africa!" (that one was what I told myself as I ate the pizza tonight. You'd think being so close to Italy the French would have awesome pizza, but alas, that simply isn't true).

Homesickness has never bothered me before. I was always the kid who wanted to go to camp, who couldn't understand why other kids cried, who couldn't wait to get out and experience all that was new and different. Looking over my journal this whole time I've been here, every entry contains the words i just want to go home.

It is so hard for me to admit this. I feel like a failure. I feel like a fraud. I despise myself for a weakling. I cry because I cannot change my behavior and my emotions. Because of my inability to get over the situation, my parents are letting me come home for my spring break. After that, I'll return to France, take my finals, and go on a three week trip with my best friend.

I have learned much about myself in this small period of time. I am not as strong as I wish I was. I am proud to be an American. I am not a socialist. I like it when people take showers and wear deodorant. I like my family who are French. I like to speak the French language, but I am very tired of taking classes pertaining to it. I like to travel, but not stay for five months.

To anyone who's reading this outside of my parents, who already know the situation, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be so weak. I'm sorry I've stopped trying to seem like I'm enjoying my time here. I'm sorry that this blog isn't what it was meant to be, and neither is this semester.

Just because I said I would, here's an update on the living situation:

I am now living with a host family. They are nice. They have a two (soon to be three) year old daughter. I have my own room and shower. It is still very awkward. There are still misunderstandings. I was supposed to do my laundry today and my host mom forgot to tell my host dad, so he was doing laundry and used their little hanger thing to hang up the clothes to dry (because there's no dryer). She had told me to use that, but since I couldn't I just hung my clothes up around my room. Apparently this is a stupid thing to do, so please don't ever do it. They were surprised I had done it and asked me not to do it again since it would make things smell. I didn't understand the next part, either they are going to buy me a clothes dryer thing or I have to buy one, I was just trying not to show how upset I was. It seems I just cannot win here. No matter how hard I try.

But hey, my Comprehension Orale teacher really likes me, so I don't think I'll have a problem getting an A in that class. Also a friend of the host family who was over for dinner the other night (an English teacher who hosts American high school students) told me she could hear evidence of my French family in my accent and that it was better than that of other Americans she had heard, which made me feel good. So all is not lost. :)

i've got halos made of summer, rhythms made of spring

I have got to brag on my family a little bit here, y'all. I cannot even describe to you how awesome they are. I cannot comprehend how blessed I am to be even slightly related to them, to be able to call them my cousins. Yeah, we speak I different language (although they kindly assure me they are super impressed with how my French has progressed), we do certain things differently. But we're family. And they will never let me forget it. I keep pestering them so someday they'll come to the US and I can try to give them back even a little bit of the love they have poured into me.

On another happy note, I'm moving in with the host family (the Lefevre's) on Tuesday. Yay for being settled, for having a nice room, for having my own shower, and for eating good meals. I'm beyond stoked. What's kind of funny is that I have some cousins who are the Lefebvre's. Obviously not exactly the same, but close enough for both me and my dad to be slightly confused for a moment.

I miss theatre so much. I have to confess, I had kind of hoped that this semester would temper my desire to act, would dampen the pull to try to do this crazy thing for the rest of my life. But it hasn't. At. All. I feel like a part of me has been cut away. I love theatre. I love the people, I love the stress, I love the drama, the heartache, the exhilaration. I can't believe I left it, even for a semester. But it's okay, because once I get it back in my life, I'll never let it out again.

I love Verdun so much. It is what represents France to me. It is the little French town with the houses and the boulangerie and the beautiful church. Other than the McDonalds, it retains the feel that I truly am in a different country, surrounded by a history more vast than my own has or ever will. And I love these people. I love that my little cousins here are just as enamored of me as my cousins in the states are. I love that Charley constantly has to be sitting on me or holding my hand or playing a game, and that Killian isn't truly happy unless I'm watching him master a game on one of his many game things. (<-- I obviously don't play video games. This kid does though, haha. He has a Playstation 2 and 3, a Wii, an Xbox 360 and a Gameboy.) It reminds me that no matter what country you're in, no matter what language is being spoken, family is family. And we take care of each other, and love each other unconditionally.

I wish that everyone had the opportunity to experience a family like mine, and it hurts my heart that there are those who never know the love I bask in no matter where I go.

there's something in the water, that makes me love you like

I love France. I really do. I love the food, I love the atmosphere. I love the age, the history that weighs heavy in every corner. I love the people, even. At times I perceive their rudeness for maybe what it really is; solidarity of person. Unapologeticness. I'm almost positive neither that phrase or that word exist in real life, but they describe exactly what I want them to, so there it is.

However, being here, I have come to realize that I need polite people. I need warm, sunny weather, apple pie, and Tex-Mex. I need toilet seats and twizzlers, scooby-doo mac and cheese and Baylor University. I need my family, my annoying little brother and my puppies. I need the stability that English gives me, the knowledge that I am correctly and adequately expressing myself. And I need theatre like I need milk. (can't say water, I don't drink it. commence with the lecture, mother.)

Y'all, let me tell you something. France is stinking awesome. It is quite frankly the only place where I could put up with the amount of stuff that I have, been as low at points as I have, and yet still wake up every morning so excited just to be here. Some days are disappointments and I Skype my parents in fear that it won't get any better. But the fact is, everyone feels this way. Not everyone gets to feel this way while studying abroad in a foreign country. And I'm not sure I would have realized just how much I love my own country if it didn't feel so far away at times.

I'm hopefully going to be moving in with a host family sometime this week. That will make living/eating conditions oh so much better. I am definitely visiting my wonderful cousins this weekend (purchased those insanely expensive tickets on Friday. that was fun.), and I could not be more elated. I've dropped some classes at Baylor and am just not going to the ones I don't get any credit for here, so the load is lot less to bear. I will have read 19 books in less than two weeks and already have an email started of some more for my mom to hit up Barnes and Noble for. Most important, I've gotten really good at Sudoku. I'm kind of proud.

Hopefully I'll hear about the host family situation soon! That would be so awesome. Think nice thoughts towards France and I'll let you know how it turns out.

there's something in the water, something in the water

Okay, it's been a while. Sorry to all three of the people who randomly stumble upon this blog and to my mother, who was probably checking every day for updates. (Love you mom!)

Just to catch everyone up: mostly I've been doing a whole lot of nothing. A little depression, a ton of hours (19! What the heck is that?), and some decisions made that will hopefully change everything to the better. As soon as the French hurry up and do some paperwork (translation:probably mid-May) I'm going to meet a host family and possibly/probably/hopefully move in with them for the duration of my time here. That means no more crappy cafeteria food, no more crappy dorm room, no more only speaking French in class because the French students shun us like we have the plague. Maybe it'll be more like the France I remember and want to get back to. I sure hope so.

Also, I'm going to be dropping one of my classes at Baylor, which means I won't have to go to it here. Unfortunately it's one of the ones I was looking forward to, Francais de Medias, but the teacher is an absolute cray who speaks waaaay too fast, has a huge gap in her teeth so I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying even if she wasn't saying it at the speed of light, and is a scientific linguist. So instead of spending class time talking about - I don't know, French media? - we're talking about grammatical constructs (I probably just made that up) and the reasons behind why the French of today is what it is. It's way too hard and I'm quite simply not interested in bringing down my GPA because of it.

I went to Paris this weekend with my friends Morgan, Denea, and Allie. Allie and Denea got rooms in a youth hostel, but because Morgan and I have been dealing with so much crap we weren't even sure we would be able to go and booked a hotel about an hour before we left. After a really long train ride and some exhausting efforts with the RER, the French metro, and then just navigating Paris in general we both ended up in our respective places. Morgan and I were in a really cool part of Paris (about 5-10 minutes from the Louvre) on a really old street called Rue St. Denis. We were pretty excited until we finally find our hotel, which is flocked by some DVD stores and random other places to go in and do things of various levels of crassness and all about ickyness. It was pretty sketch and the hotel was old, but we slept on top of the comforter and ignored the bedet, so overall it was a success.

Just because I think it's funny (although getting kind of annoying): When we were checking in at the hotel, we told the guy my name probably 5 times and spelled it a couple more before I finally wrote it down. After he read it and went, "Oh, Lee!", he smiled sheepishly and told us he couldn't comprehend that my name was really Lee because I wasn't Chinese.

In case anyone has any doubts: I AM NOT CHINESE. OR ASIAN. AT ALL.

Ever heard of Robert E. Lee? I'm not related to him at all and who is was/what he did is not the point, just know that his name was Lee and he was American. But I bet he came up against the same problem.

Okay, pictures have been posted on the facebook, so if you're interested in clicking through over 100 random pictures of things like the bottom of my purse and blurriness all around, by all means, go right ahead! Oh, and about 99 of them are of the Eiffel Tower, so no surprises there.

Toodles!