Hey hey hey people!

I went with Christophe to his work last Friday, which pretty much consisted of getting in the car obscenely early in the morning and driving around Aix going to different Bakeries and Patisseries asking them what supplies they needed. Being that I am the wonderful and charming (HA) person that I am, this excursion also included lots and lots of free pastry product and a full warm loaf of bread right off the oven. Oh yeah.

PICTURES!!! at photos.yahoo.com/kendrabechtel

Other than that...
I didn't get to go to the party Friday, which was kind of sad but oh well. This Tuesday Manon, her Hawaiian (Allison), Cecilie(for a little while) and another kid who lives in Mallemort who's name is Antoine, are all going to have a pseudo Halloween party. I say pseudo because none of the French are willing to dress up, and I don't really have a costume, so its going to go something like this: Manon, Antoine and Cecilie all as themselves, Allison as Hawaiian girl (she brought a hula skirt or something?) and me as KENDRA WITH SCARF and possibly tights!!! ooooh ahhhh exciting.

Nothing compared to my brilliant costumes of years past -- sock monster anyone?


On a completely different note! Geneviève and I planted vine/tree type plants in the garden to cover the walls. They are really small and silly looking right now, but if they decided to like us and grow they should be really pretty next spring.

People have been asking me for my address a lot, so here it is, once again:

Kendra B.
13 la cour Marius Taché
13370 Mallemort
France

I think I'll put that in the side bar ------------------------------------------------->
there
and the picture address too




For now everyone, I think that is all. Not a whole lot going on here, trying to keep on talking and staying upbeat. It really is nice to get letter/emails from home so thanks SO MUCH to the people who have written to me.


party on wayne, party on garth

love kendra

I know, I know, I’ve been bad; I haven’t blogged in over a week. Apologies all around.

Thing have been pretty chill… Manon’s Hawaiian and all of the other Hawaiians arrived on Sunday afternoon. I met them at school on Monday and OMG do they not speak French… they’ve only taken half a year of French… ever…

Yeah

SO! That is what I’ve been up to the last few days… furiously translating for 8 excessively chatty 15 year old Hawaiians and the rest of the French speaking world who have all miraculously and simultaneously lost their English skills. It’s kinda like a party. The really good thing about this is I’ve come to realize that I can speak French. Before I was only focusing on the things that I couldn’t do because everyone around me could (hello?! Mother tongue anyone?!) but as soon as I’m surrounded by clueless and ridiculously loud Americans I start realizing that I am not far from fluent. Yes I make mistakes ALL THE FREAKING TIME, but!!! I can translate!!! And everyone on both sides understands (or seems to understand) me. It has been a really big ego booster, which I totally needed.

Vacation starts today! How sweet is that? We started school 6 weeks ago and we already have a 2-week vacation. SUH WEET! That is how sweet it is. I’m gonna go to a party for all the Hawaiians this Friday and I’ll take pictures and post them. I’m also going to go with Christophe to his work one day next week (he works with all of the Bakeries and Patisseries in Aix-en-Provence) and I totally take pictures of that too. OOOOH tasty.


This is pretty much just for Rachel and Kim, but I’m totally on a John Mayer kick right now and have been listening to him nonstop for about 3 days. Thought you’d love that.

Write me comments or emails people! I’d love to know that people are actually reading this!

Love to everyone

Kendra

Yesterday was bizarre, so here is a recap:

Ben decided to leave like 45 minutes before the bus, and I refused to go with him so he could smoke with his friends, so I actually got to get ready for school calmly. It was awesome. I get on the first bus and we start 'a truckin', and then about 10 minutes later we stop. dead stop. for 45 minutes. Apparently there was an accident right in front of us. SO I get to school 40 minutes late, of course I have a big in class essay in french at 8 for two hours, and get my retard slip signed (late slip.. but the tops of the pages say "retard" in really big letters because that's how you say late in french) and try to manage a decent dissertation in french in an hour and 20 mins. Then I get to Italian and My prof asks me to give a fricken' ORAL PRESENTATION IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. I almost peed myself I was so nervous and I still failed even though I studied my butt off. This is probably due to the fact that I don't know really how to use the imperfect subjunctive tense in French, so trying to learn it in Italian is kind of useless and since this was the first time that I'd actually spoken Italian, i thought I did pretty good. I said something along the lines of "Article... speaks.... about.... girl... singer... named.... christina delà... songs are many... songs are poetry... end" after Italian I realized that I was done with school because my English teacher never shows up and that means that I never have class, but only when it's really inconvenient.* There was this kid putting on a one man show where he made fun of a famous fat french cook woman who cooks on TV and a singer. I didn't get it... at all. I'm finally doing an activity!!! I found out that there is a bus right after the theater class ends, and I met a bunch of the kids in the class, and they're really nice, so we're going to eat together tomorrow in Salon and then I am going to my first theater class in french in France!!* *run on sentence (written the next day post theater class, i.e. today)

I TOTALLY DID A MONOLOGUE IN FRENCH!

I know, how cool am I? (The answer is really really by the way)

The teacher, who's name I didn't catch, was kind of pissed that I showed up for the first time a month and half after school started. (Granted this class is only one time a week, so I only missed like 4 classes. Not good, but still lady, its not like I missed a lot. The class was super easy to follow.) After she yelled at me and I filled out a form about why I wanted to be in the class, she was nicer. She gave me a monologue to do during the class and we did theater games (nearly Identical to the ones we did at cap, but in French) and then practiced monologues. I memorized about half of mine, and then we all did them in front of the class. Most of them sucked a lot, but the teacher(s? there's another woman who watches but everyone calls Michelle) liked mine. :D! yay!

On the bus ride home I got into my first big argument FOR the US in pretty much my entire life. It was crazy. The thing is, people here try to argument like so:

them-- "So, all Americans are pretty much the worst people ever and they all love bush and the french are pretty much the greatest people in the world... just so you know"

me-- "yeahhhh, and you know this how?" (I need to know their arguments so I can demolish them in my next sentence. This is how I operate people, get with the program)

them-- "well in Charmed the people all live only for themselves and their money, so all Americans are like that right? And also, your rich people live all by themselves and we have no ghettos and poor people live right next to rich people."

me -- " wow you're really wrong. (insert my brilliant examples that I am only able to come up when I'm angry or frustrated) and that is why I never lose an argument. end"

them -- " uhhh in school they tell us that Americans suck"

me -- " So they must be right, if they told it to you they must be correct?"

them -- *head explodes*

me -- *does the debate victory dance*



Yeah, sometimes I think I'm pretty damn cool.


missing you guys and my language skillz like WOAH!

love kendra

I have found a faster method of uploading photos, and therefore, you get more of them

http://photos.yahoo.com/kendrabechtel

enjoy. I hope that works. I'll be putting up pictures as I take them, but for right now there is the Patrimony festival that happened a month ago, and soon pictures of kids from my class and my birthday party product.


I've been informed that my misadventures in Italian is absolutely hilarious, so I'll share my progress in this endeavor.


Marie è francese? Si (accented i), è francese.

Sei Americana? Si! Sono americana!

Pieu leggere un giornale italiano? No, non pieo leggere i giornali italiani! <-- verb prendere is spelled wrong and conjugated wrong. I need to study.


YEAH! marvel at my langauge skillz.

(meanwhile, the rest of the class is learning subjunctive, so in all reality I still suck)



I really miss understanding everything easily.

Omg guys, guess how old I'm going to be in 2 days... yeah... 18

I know, creepy right?

In other news -- We watched a scary movie last night (Amityville Horror?) and although I didn't think it was all that scary, Camille got freaked out and wouldn't sleep by herself, so she stayed in my room last night.

I am super tired now because she moves A LOT when she sleeps.

I totally have 100 percent in English. Sweet.

My Italian teacher gave me the first year book and has decided that thanks to this book I will be able to be at the same level as the rest of the class in January. That is totally not going to happen, but at least I have homework and will have tests that I am capable of doing. On my last Italian test I totally answered on of the 8 essay questions and my answer was nothing but a list of the "sports" that I remembered in Italian that looked like english with 'il' added at the beginning:

Giovanni participici il bici il skates il minigolf.

something like that. It is totally not even a sentence.

French is starting to kick my butt. I have major homework that I've already done twice incorrectly.

I'm gonna go have some nutella now. mmm tasty.

More pictures

Manon, my friend here, is going to be hosting a Hawaiian student at her house for 15 days at the end of the month. Apparently said Hawaiian doesn't speak much french (that is where I come in handy) and I'm excited so I thought I'd share.

end

Another Picture!!!

This is after I fell.
Sadface.

PICTURES!!! FINALLY!!!

My School. OOOOH!!! and Homework!!!




Unfortunately, It takes like 10 minutes to upload each image. That definitely makes me cry a little on the inside. THEREFORE! pictures will be uploaded sparingly until I find a better way to make this work.



Other than the fact that my handwriting is becoming obscenely neat and the fact that my school exists, not a huge amount has been going on here. School is becoming increasingly hard as the assignments are moving from "write your name and the profession of your parents on a half sheet of paper" to "analyze the tone of this 15th century French poem in an essay due tomorrow".

a bit of a jump if I do say so myself.



I have a fancy schmancy cell phone, because apparently thats the only kind that exists now. It is super pretty and takes pictures : Voila photo

http://www.digitalstore.cl/Telefonos/fotos_grandes/motorola-razr-blue.jpg

beauty.

My number is 10 digits long. I can't call out of country with it as far as I know (the instruction manuel is definitely in french).

For now, that is all.