A rather interesting day

I was planning on doing a detailed account of my last day of school, but then I fell asleep, so here is that blog along with other things afterwards. Enjoy!

Oh yeah, and MASSIVE picture update. Look for the albums "Theater", "Last Day of School", and "Carnival" (yeah, yahoo started working again :D) I'm serious about this being massive. If I get everything up there should be about 300 pictures. Wow... (UPDATE: OK.... after getting about 30 pictures online yahoo started failing on me again. Someone is going down. I'm trying to find another better picture service, but at this point you have "theater" and about 15 of my 150ish last day of school pictures.) (UPDATE #2... I got 200 pictures on to flikr (look to your right) and it told me that I can't add any more until I pay or delete some other ones. I swear some day I'll figure out a way to organize all of this mess. But anyways! You have about 30 new pictures on yahoo and 200 on flikr. Enjoy.)

So, last Thursday was the last day of school. I woke up and the lovely kind and gentle Benjamin was already in the bathroom. Oh happy day. Around 6:50 I decided that I really would like to go to school clean since I was not planning on coming home until late that night, so I started banging on the door saying 'BEN THE BUS IS IN 15 MINUTES PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GET OUT OF THE SHOWER" and he kind of grunted and then slammed the door open. Apparently he'd been done for a while but was just chilling looking at himself in the mirror for kicks. I love mornings... can you tell?
I get to school, go up the hill to where my friends and I stand before the first bell. We're staring at the school, realizing we have Gavois and how this is just not gonna happen, so we decide to go get coffee instead of the first hour of class. We go to the Grain d'Arome and go downstairs and find more than half of our class there too... hahahahaha... Gavois' fan club.
Pauline and I get all excited about going to Italian because we had a project to take a picture with all of our teachers and this teacher -- let's just say a picture of her would be GOLDEN. The hair, the clothes, she has provided us with countless hours of entertainment throughout the year. We wait around for a while, and it turns out that she has decided to cut the last day of school. I was so sad that we didn't get a picture with her... She is crazy. Pauline and I went to the castle next door to the school instead and sat and chatted about how fast the year went.
Then we had math (again we were going for the picture) and he too cut school. What is this crazy french school system?! We took loads of picture in the hallway until the hall monitors came by and told us to leave, so we started walking out and took pictures in the stairwells. One of the hall monitors saw us and we thought she was going to confiscate the camera but instead she took a picture of all us and was really nice and out of character.
4th hour of class was Gavois again, and we looked at each other and said... hold on... is the last day of school really going to be ONLY history? No, I think not. So we went to monoprix and too pictures and walked all around the city for a while instead. It was a very good plan.

There was a concert at school afterwards with groups of student... it was sooooo bad. I took little video clips of the "musicians" because it was just that bad. Anyone know how to put tiny video clips online?

After "school" Diane and a couple of the other girls decided that we were on a quest to find this guy so they could stare at his never ending beauty. I was not as gung ho as they were, and unfortunately this put me in a pretty bad mood, but whatever, I got over it. I drank SO MUCH COFFEE because we went to every bar in the city looking for them and when you sit down you have to order. It was horrible.

All the girls left around 6pm to catch their buses. I went over to the table with Pauline and her boyfriend and we hung out until 7:30 when he had to work. I then went to his restaurant (petit mexicain!) and got tasty tasty food with Pauline and her mom. It started POURING rain to the point where I was outside for literally 10 seconds maximum and I was completely soaked. There wasn't a single hair on my head that wasn't wet -- it was like a shower.

Then, at 8:30pm there was a theater thing at the Casa Palabra which is this little middle eastern style tea place with a very cosy atmosphere. There were two text readings and then afterwards it was kind of an open mic thing. There was a woman who told an amazing story complete with voices -- I was completely enthralled, my friend Jade played accordion, and I sang. After the story I had to go because Christophe was picking me up.

Very cool day.

Friday I was going to go to Aix to a little get together that Diane's cousin was having, but it turned out to be WAY too much of a hassle to get there and back, and I wanted to go to Pauline's house on Saturday night so I ended up not going. We did, however, got H&M where I bought pretty things. I am going to go through hell trying to bring everything home with me...

Saturday I bummed around the house all day and then took a bus to Salon to meet up with Pauline. We went back to her house on her motorcycle and chilled there. Later on, Diane, Marine, Cyriel, Chloe and her boyfriend and Cyriel's cousin met up with us and we hung out in the little fountain building near her house. I was the only one that slept over though. The next day Pauline's mom drove me home. At home we were having the family celebration for Ben's birthday where he was amazingly douchy. He is just not a nice person... at least at his 16 years of age, he is NEVER nice. ever. I took a little video of him while we were singing happy birthday and the apathy just shines through. (again, video... online... how... please?)

And today is Monday!

Wish me luck with the picture update! If there are no new picture when you go look send me an angry email or an angry comment because seriously, this should be working now.

LOVE! Kendra

It has been so hot lately that I've been wearing pretty much exclusively skirts/dresses. However, today it is windy and chilly.

Yesterday we had a huge picnic with friends of the family in the sun (sidenote, I saw a bunch of people I really like for probably the last time, but didn't think about it like that and feel better and not all weepy like I usually do when I see people for the last time), and me being ridiculously white and sometimes not all that smart, got really really sunburned. The funniest part for you and most painful part for me? The fact that I was sitting crosslegged so the sides of my knees/legs is burnt worse than any other part of me. Fun!!! I guess never really living in the hot hot heat makes me forget that I should probably put on sunscreen all the time. Oh well.

Diane had her 17th birthday party the other day and it was OMG so much fun. The only problem was that she forgot to tell me that we weren't allowed to go inside the house and I hadn't brought anything to sleep on... but luckily her, charlotte and myself decided to sleep inside on the kitchen floor, so we were cosy and warm on the linoleum, and everyone else was outside in the chilly night air. They decided to make us pay for this around 7am by BANGING on the door. I guess we kind of deserved it, but it didn't make me any less angry. I successfully yelled at them in french after they woke us the third time.

There is a fly in my room and he is bugging the shit out of me.

I have SO MUCH REVISION TO DO BEFORE THE BAC!!! I'm planning on not even attempting the science papers, the math is freaking easy (I got an 18.5/20 on the last bac blanc without studying, so i'm not tripping), but I actually want to succeed in french, so I bought the annales and am studying. It is kind of crazy. OOooh! I got a 12/20 on our most recent bac blanc in french, which means I was corrected by someone who doesn't know who I am and who didn't know I am not french. I know, I'm pretty much the best ever, worship me. Thing is, I couldn't be too externally happy about the grade since the two girls next to me had picked the same subject as me and had gotten an 8 and a 9 respectively. The whole class is kind of like "??!O_O?!!?" at my grades. I am more "!!!! :D!!!" I'm also pretty excited that Hampshire doesn't have grades. Yesssssss.

We picked cherries at the grandparents' house the other day. TASTY! A bunch of them were too ripe, so Genevieve made jam this morning.

Picture Update!!(Oui diane et pauline, il y a des photos de vous 2. Et pour tous ceux qui font du théâtre, il y a des photos du spectacle y compris les "kids" tout sale! Et moi avec la robe trop laide.) ((EDIT! Er, for some reason Yahoo photos is being a jerk and only uploading 7 of my 40ish pictures... I even tried doing one at a time, and it just isn't working. I'll try again later today, but if it doesn't work, I don't know how to fix it. Sorry!)

They just opened up a bunch of new stores in Aix (including an H&M) and I'd really like to go, but this week is a little bit busy, being the end of school and all. Oh yeah! I only have 3 more days of class, and one ends at 10am and the other at noon. It is crazy how fast this school year went by.

Hmm... I can't think of anything else at the moment. I have to pick classes on June 11th, and I have no clue what I'm going to do. I just keep reminding myself that we have add/drop period for the first two weeks and that I can shop around.


love kendra

Forgive the emo-ness of this post.

Ah!! I'm a huge emotional ball of yuck right now. I have one month left in France. ONE MONTH! The result? A horrible division of Kendra into 2 entirely separate parts. Let me introduce them.

Kendra (pronounced ken-dra)
-So excited to go home
-Misses her family
-misses her friends
-stoked to start college
-ready to move on with her life
-done with life in France, wants to get back to normal life

Kendra (pronounced l'a-mér-i-caine)
-Dreading going home
-already misses her host family
-already SERIOUSLY misses her french friends
-wants to stay here and do Terminale with her buddies
-life in france is her normal life.


Whatttt? But Kendra, you ask, this doesn't make any sense! Most of those statements are contradictory! Seriously, I'd help you if I could, but I don't know how to even process my thoughts right now. You know what I'm doing? I'm avoiding it. I can't stop thinking about it, but I just numb myself to the thoughts because it's easier.

AHHHH! Why are France and San Francisco and Hampshire all so far away from each other? Why do I have such a hard time ending things?

A week ago I was SO ready to go home.
Now, this is the happiest I've been here, and it's ending.
But I still want to go home.
I just want to come back after I'm done being at home.
And then go back home when I'm tired of being here.

I guess the thing is, I keep thinking about if I were really French or if I were to live next year here in France, there would be so many things I could do because a) I speak the language now, and b) I have real friends now.

I feel so emo writing all of this. Don't take the pseudo cry fest all that seriously, I'll be fine. Sometimes I just need to write it down in English.

love kendra

Ok, I swear I'm in the middle of writing an excellent blog entry! I'm just so busy that I haven't had time to finish it yet. I'm not going to be sleeping at home for at least 3 days this week (it is crazy theater fest in salon) so I'm not promising anything before Sunday, but I swear it'll be awesome and there will be pictures.

love you all,

Kendra

UPDATE! The new post is below this one. I don't know why.

Happy Sunday!

I haven't updated in a while, but happily for me, this time it was not for lack of things to say, but for lack of time because I was out doing things!!! This is ridiculously exciting. Can you tell how excited I am? Really? Really Papi? (let it go...)

Ok, hmm... where to start. This might be a little out of order.

I only have a little more than 5 weeks left here and that scares the shit out of me.

Two weeks ago on Wednesday and Thursday we did our play 3 times for people from the school and parents. It went WAY better than I though it was going to be, which was refreshing considering I thought it was going to be horrible beyond belief. A bunch of my friends saw me sing for the first time and they were all excited for me and that made me burst with happiness. Oooh! Another most excellent thing, in the last week I've had at least 10 people tell me that they though I was either faking the American accent in the play or that I am French and just have a weird way of talking. Made me SO FREAKING HAPPY.

I've been hanging out with my friends every day lately and I am realizing that it is going to be so hard to leave. Yes, I miss everyone at home, and I can't wait to see everyone, and I can't wait to start college, and a lot of things here are crazy hard all the time, but I have a life here now. I have real friends. I want to finish school with these guys here too. I need to clone myself.

This week was the 18th Rencontres de Théâtre Scolaire which pretty much means that I lived in Salon at Violaine's house from Thursday night to around 2pm today. We were the first and teh last group to perform, opening night was Tuesday, and we did really well on the two shows. The first group was a lot better the Tuesday night and my group was better the Saturday. On Saturday all 3 of the balconies were full... there were so many people there, it was impressive. I keep wanting to use french descriptors... I have lost my command of the English language. Good job kendra. I saw about 9 shows and did a modern dance in the street performance, which was wacky but a lot of fun. We climbed on things and flailed about in the streets. It was definitely one of those things that I probably should be embarrassed about but totally am not at all. Most of the plays were pretty crappy, but the one done by the conservatory (with Mathilde and Violaine) was crazy good. I tried to take some picture of it, but they all came out blurry. I think I'm gonna go see that one again in June (c'est le 10 et le 20 juin je crois si il y'a qqn ici qui veut y aller avec moi)

Continuing on the theater thing, Christophe, Genevieve, Camille and I all went to marseilles the week before last to see a play that my neighbor directed. It was... bizarre. I didn't understand a whole lot (then again, neither did christophe and genevieve, so I feel better) but the basic subject was two women in a car talking about their childhoods for 2 hours. Yeah, it was long.

Last night I had one of the most surreal "french" moments of the whole year. I was walking home (to Vio's house) from our post theatrical celebrations and Jade (another girl who does theater, but not with me, and who plays accordion amazingly well) asked me to improvise with her. We were walking down the street at like 1 am with about 10 people, everything was abandoned and all the street lights were still on, singing and playing accordion/jazz. It was trippy. I've been having a lot of weird "moments" like this one lately.

May in France is the month of but-I-don't-want-to-work. Why you ask? Every single week in May has at least one day off. It is pretty sweet, except for the fact that we have our first tests in 20 days. Yep, 20 days... fun.

I haven't been to English class a lot recently because it is always at the same time as our practices/performances for theater, and I've just realized how much I can't stand it any more. It is such a waste of my time! Every time I talk she acts like I'm wasting her time, so I've just stopped talking pretty much.

I think this is a good size entry. I'll try to write more frequently for the last bit of time I have here.

Oh! I almost forgot. For those that stalk me via this blog, do you want me to keep blogging this summer/during college? Cause I totally will if there is an interest.

love you guys!

Kendra

I know, I know, you all love me. This is why I managed to get a copy of the most glorious picture known to man kind. That's right, I got a picture of my History teacher along with the kid who dressed up as him for Carnivale. You ready for this?


Bask in the glory.

Love kendra