Joyeaux Noël et Bonne Année!

We had our theater "performance" at noon on Friday. It was, as I expected, horribly lame, but! I think that some of the kids who are a little more serious about theater are beginning to accept me into their group. My little part was singing "Cry me a river" and the teacher made me sing it 3 times in different areas -- kind of annoying since is was OMG SO HUNGRY and the cafeteria was trying to close, but still, it was ok because people clapped and stuff and normally when we tried to do anything people laughed or just stared. It was really that lame. I asked and apparently next semester 15 of the 30 of us will be doing a real play and the other 15 will continue with the stupidest clown unit of life. The teacher picks who gets to do what. Hopefully I'll be lucky... yeah, cross your fingers for me.

After one of the lamest science classes I've ever had (followed only by the lesson where we got punished for singing), Christmas vacation began!!! On the 24th (Saturday) was the first part of the Christmas festivities. Christmas Eve = la Reveillon (I have no clue if it is masculine or Feminine or if I spelled it right, so yeah, thats the general idea of the word). Geneviève and I made a christmas tree out of cardboard (there might be pictures on my picture site by now, I'm really not sure if I'm gonna be too lazy tonight, but in any case there will be soon.)We had a ridiculously expensive meal -- Fois gras, A seafood that I forget the name of, various vegetable products, and BUCHE DE NOËL!!! Omg so tasty. And Fois Gras is one of the nastiest things I have ever tasted, animal cruelty aside. After our meal we waited up until midnight to open presents and I taught camille hand games like 'Ms Mary Mack' and 'Mailman mailman do your duty' and the cup game that I learned at Westminister Woods in elementary school. We had a killer time. However, the soirée was ruined by Ben, who decided to sit there, reading his fantasy novels, not talking to anyone and being a bastard in general and pissing me off until midnight when he said "Its midnight, give me presents" to which I said "You're really pissing me off and your attitude doesn't make me want to give you any presents" and then he said "then fine, don't give me any" and then his parents told him to go to bed and that we'd do presents in the morning. Ooooh he can piss me off SO MUCH and its worse than if he were my real sibling because I do have to restrain myself just a little bit.

CHRISTMAS MORNING!!!! There were a buttload of presents 'under' our christmas 'tree', and the cat was freaking out and rubbing herself up against everything. I got some suuuuuper gifts from both my real family (can you say tartine cookbook?!?!) and from my family here, including a cd of some music that is always on the radio that I really like and a giant stuffed hippo. Around noon we went over to Christphe's parents' house for the even bigger Christmas meal, where we, finally, ate our roadkill sanglier!!!(boar) I totally forgot it was roadkill until my mom reminded me over the phone. This is the kind of meal where you start out by eating way too much, then they tell you that there are 13, oh yes, 13, desserts, including another BUCHE DE NOËL!!! (again, possibly there are pictures by now) So, we stuffed ourself and chilled with the family.

Yesterday (wednesday) we didn't have a lot to do, so Geneviève and I called her mom to see if she wanted to go out walking for a bit. She called back a few minutes later in tears -- their dog had be hit by a car. I must say, it was kind of awkward for me, because she was crying a lot and then I was home alone with the crying grandma because camille wanted to be at gross boyfriend's house RIGHT NOW... so yeah, she showed me all her plants and explained the entire story of Jesus to me when she showed me her thorn of crowns plant. Apparently because I wasn't raised Catholic, I don't know anything about Jesus. I tried to explain that my family is Protestant and she just continued on her Jesus for Dummies kick. I was pretty stoked when Geneviève came back. We did end up walking for a long time and it was pretty ok except for the fact that it was fricken cold;

I forgot to say that it was -6C° on CHristmas morning. MINUS SIX!!!

My family got the Bellons all ipods for christmas, and let me just say this has been ipod week. I have spent so many hours trying to explain how to upload, download, import, and unplug these silly ipods... its not even funny. And Christophe still hasn't even tried because he is still working like crazy.

Tomorrow Camille, Geneviève and I are going to a Hammam, which I guess is like an Arabic Spa. I'm pretty stoked.


Yeah, I updated! How cool is that!

Happy New Year to everyone!!

love kendra

(if my english has started to deteriorate, please please forgive me... the spellcheck is in french, and therefore finds every word I write to be misspelled)

PICTURE UPDATE OH MY GOODNESS HOW COOL!!

to your right.

(even better, now most photos have captions!!!)

Part 2!!!

I got my report card the other day, and what a sad day it was for Ben. I got better grades than him in every single subject, including sports and french. Yeah, sadface. Even bigger sadface that he is only passing sports...

Grades!!! if you care!!! With comments!!!

English - 18/20
French - 10.6/20
Italian - 12.6/20
Math - 15/20
Bio - 8/20
Physics/Chem - 14/20
PE - 18/20
History/Geo - 10.5/20

We're not graded in theater, which I guess is good because I have no idea what they'd grades us on.

Speaking of theater, we have our "performance" (emphasis on the quotation marks) this friday. This basically means that we have people doing scenes and monologues and me singing, and all of us doing this weird step thing and this horrible horrible dance we learned between noon and 2pm over and over again until people feel like throwing things at us. I'm totally looking forward to it....

So yeah, I'm only not passing Bio, but considering the average grade in that class is a 9, I'm chill. The teachers also give us pretty harsh comments about the class and us personally. I'm gonna take a picture of my report card/comments and I'll post it when I do my next big upload.

Today and yesterday were red. This may mean nothing to you, but this is the devil's sentence to me. Basically how we pay for electricity is on a system of colored days. Before 6am and after 10pm is always cheaper than during the day. Blue is cheap, White is semi expensive, and Red is when we don't use electricity if we can help it. This means no heating, very few lights, no computer, no tv until 10, etc. The worst is definitely the no heating part, because they choose for it to be red when the temperatures are below freezing. Always. What we do is we light a fire, and everyone is in the main room all evening long. This can be good or bad depending on the mood of everyone, as you might imagine. Yesterday was good for a while and then suddenly everyone was in a hellishly bad mood (quite possibly caused by ben's bitchiness) and I went to bed early. Tonight I was planning on uploading more picture to my picture site, but since there is no computer usage during red days (at least not the amount of time it would take me to upload all of those pictures,) I'll put 'em up soon. This week I swear. What I have is a couple of on-the-bus-on-the-way-to-a-play-before-my-batteries-died pictures, one of the view at school in the morning, and a bunch of our run through for the "performance". I wish we did a real play... better yet a musical.

I got invited to a new years eve party!!! It is with some girls in my class who I've been trying to be friends with, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

I found this book on american culture in the library, and there are parts of it that are oh so good that I had to rip them out. Since I'm on the school computers (re:red days), I can't very well take out ripped out pages of a book from their very own collection, so for now, you're just going to have to imagine the brilliance until the governement decides that its warm enough to not charge us a fortune for turning on appliances. This book has made me realize why they think American society is the way they think it is -- because this is the only book on america, it was written by a french man living in New York in the 70's. 'nuff said.

As far as the Harry Potter game goes, you guys suck. I got two responses... Jessica won with 13/20 and heidi had 8/20 and she admitted that she only did it so I would write her an email. If you guys still want to play, you can, but seriously!!

I am told that people read this. I don't think I believe it.

It is 11:11 and I am fricken hungry. Nothing is open in this forsaken town until noon, and sometimes not until 2. Lame.

French girls are starting to look all the same with their tight pants and ridiculously fashionable jackets, their thick scarves, sweepy bangs and overly layered and high-lighted hair... It is freaking me out just a little bit.

That is all for now I guess?

<3 kendra

Ok guys, lazer tag is officially my favorite sport. We played for my host-cousin's 11th birthday, and let me just say, I kicked their 11 year old butts by almost double. (This includes Camille and Ben too, so yeah, pretty much I rock)

Speaking of sports, I'm definitely not in PE right now, just because I really don't want to be and Camille is home today, so I am too. I know, be jealous.

However, on the OMG French is really difficult scale, I had a 4 hour essay test for French class on Saturday. I wrote 8 pages and almost killed myself. There are three questions on the written section of the French baccalaureat (which I'll be taking at the end of the year by the way) and you have to answer the first, and then you get a choice on the second. The first question was something along the lines of "What makes the connection between the reader and writer in published 'private correspondence', and what were the causes that inspired these people to write these letters" and the second was "Do published letters have meerely a historical significance"

Yeah, bow down before my french skillz.


Christmas is coming. Weird!!!

This is my last week of school before my next fatty vacation. Hopefully this one will be siginificantly better than the last. I'm thinking it will be since I know people's phone numbers and have completely mastered the bus system.

Ok, I have to take a shower and stuff because although I may be able to skip out on PE, I do have a history project meeting that I have to be there for. I'll write more later, so wait with bated breath!

and never ever spell that kind of bated 'baited'

love!!!
kendra

We wish you a merry christmas, We wish you a merry christmas, We wish you a merry christmas, and a happy new... OH MY GOD IF THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC DOESN'T STOP I'M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!

Hi everyone.
Yes indeed, the music hasn't stopped yet. At least the crappy street market has disbanded for the weekend, and has taken with it the screeching radios, but seriously -- everywhere you go you hear not only Christmas music, but really bad English Christmas music sung by french people.



The weather here kinda freaks me out. It isn't "cold" per say -- its in the 40s most of the time, so it is chilly, but not really COLD cold, but the wind. The wind killsssssssssssssss. I do say though, I seriously prefer too cold to too hot.

I am feeling really rambly with nothing to say...

OOoh! I participated in French class without being asked! The teacher was really proud of me and there were little whispers all around the class. It gave me serious warm fuzzies.
It is now second trimester, so my teachers are starting to expect work from me and Cecilie.
My science classes are such a joke. Half of the class starting singing last Friday during Physics and the teacher made them write "Je ne chantrai pas en cours" 200 times. (I will not sing in class)

I never thought stuff like that actually happens... I thought it was only the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. (recess anyone?)

My hands are coooooold!!!


Guess what time it is?
It is definitely time to play a Harry Potter related game.

Here are the rules: Match up the French Harry Potter term with the English one, email it to me (if you post it as a comment people will copy your answers!) and I send you back your results. Who ever gets the most right gets... an internet high five! That and everyone who tries gets a happy, long, and rambly email personally written for them by me! How cool is that! (very very...)

Ready?

French
le Vif
Tom Elvis Jedusor
Cognard
Mimi Geignarde
Pattenrond
Gazette des sorciers
Mangemort
Détraqueur
Serdaigle
Pré-au-Lard
Poufsouffle
Crockdur
Fumseck
épouvantard
Poudlard
Portoloin
Beuglante
Londubat
Moldus
Rogue

English
Bludger
Tom Marvolo Riddle
Moaning Myrtle
fawkes
Howler
Boggart
The Daily Prophet
Muggles
Hogsmeade
Dementor
Snape
Longbottom
The Snitch
Deatheater
Crookshanks
Fang
Ravenclaw
Hogwarts
Hufflepuff
Portkey

Sweet! Ok now, don't cheat!

As you might have guessed from this silly silly game, I have re-started re-reading HP6 in French and this time am significantly more successful! I've already read about 250 pages (I know, how colameol am I?)

So! That is everything I have on top of my head (other than hair... Oh sweet jesus, forgive me for that joke) and yes. Have a ridiculously wonderful week.

Love kendra

Blog Product

Happy December! It is suddenly a whole lot less cold than before… because that makes sense as winter comes on. (or, you know, not at all) Still hasn’t snowed yet, and I must say that I’m really hoping it does. I’ve never actually seen snow fall, and I think that it would definitely be worth the freezing temperatures… at least for a bit.

Today was the end of the first trimester at school and I am proud to report that I am passing French high school! As far as me being excited about getting 10/20s and things like that, I feel like there is something I should explain about grades here. Teachers grade ridiculously hard here. 10/20 is a decent score, even for the French kids. A 14 is a really good score. An 18 is a really really amazingly good score. A 20 is impossible except for in math where you can do something unarguable perfect. (A good example of this is my 18/20 oral score in English. I have no clue how that woman grades.) My “conseil de classe” is sometime today. This is a meeting with all of my teachers and the two class representatives, where they talk about whether we try hard enough or not, and then they write down all the remarks they make and send it home to us and our families. That is another thing about the crazy hard grading -- not only do teachers read everyone’s scores out loud in front of the class, they also write things like “your child obviously do no work at home and has never ever tried in my class. I will make sure that they are held back this year.” Or “Your son/daughter should not be on an academic path as they clearly do not have the mental prowess to perform in my class.” Yeah, it’s tough. I am REALLY happy that my grades don’t count this year. Christmas holidays start on the 23rd. Oh my heck! What is that? The good part is they last until January somethingth.

Geneviève is doing a lot better, and still has until next Friday off of work.

I’m kind of sick of what we’re doing in Theater class. We’re doing “clown exercises” which are all fine and good for a while, but after two months of them I get really tired of exaggerated emotions. Once in a while I’d just love to do something normalish. A scene that we get more than 15 minutes to work on? Anything? No… I guess not. Instead we get to wear clown noses. I don’t much like clowns.

I really hate masculin/feminin rules and Vousvoyement/Tutoiment (informal and formal ways to say ‘you’ (and for those of you that speak french, I think I spelled them wrong... oh well)). It makes life a lot more difficult. Today I accidentally tutoi-ed a teacher, and while she knew that it was just a mistake and not a lack of respect issue, two girls (who lately have been OMG pissing me off) were like “AHHH KENDRA!!! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” and I was like “um… chillax people, sometimes I make mistakes,” but they kept looking back at me all shocked-like and my face got all red. I know the rules, it is just when I’m in the middle of speaking sometimes I forget. The other thing that absolutely kills me is, well I don’t know how to describe it, so I’ll write it like this;
English Translation – (1) “Nevermind” (2) “You are nice”
French Familiar – (1) “Laisse Tomber” (2) “Tu es sympa”
French Polite – (1) “Laissez Tomber” (2) “Vous êtes sympa”

Ok! Explanation. Number 2 has the article in it, "you," “tu,” “vous,” there you go. When I have the article there, I can conjugate the verb after it with pretty much no problems. However! When the article is dropped, (re: example 1--nevermind, as opposed to never-you-mind) I completely forget to change from familiar, which I use with pretty much everyone in my entire life, to polite, which I have to use with teachers and people who work at stores and things.

Don’t worry if you didn’t understand that whole thought. I’m not so sure it made sense.

The Christmas season has officially begun. This can be seen (and heard!) every weekend by the flashing lights hung EVERYWHERE and the obnoxiously loud Christmas carols that screech out of radio things hung on every streetlamp.
ahhhhhhh!!!

For anyone who knows my sincere appreciation of “the Christmas season,” you know what kind of pain this puts me in.


As far as reader interactivity, I feel like we need some on this blog. SO! Either tell me something to take a picture of and to put online (does not include teachers, sorry, mr pirate man will have to be an end of the year treat) or tell me to describe something in detail. This might also help my ridiculously rambling style of writing that pretty much seems to go nowhere.

And on that note! That is everything I can think of to write about for now!


Love you guys,

Kendra