(ok, it is now... um... friday? and I am going to fix this blog and then update at the bottom.)
((and now it is the thursday after that friday. BLOGGING NOW!)

I can't believe I'm leaving in 3 days. This defies words.

Ok, what do I have to talk about -- lots of things I'm sure. OH! Paris. So, today we'll do Paris, my oral exam, Fête de la Musique, and My last day with my friends.

It's like midnight and i'm freaking tired, so i did an outline and i'll fill in the blanks when i get the time -- probably tomorrow night my time or maybe even monday sometime. we'll see.

Paris:
thursday: I woke up really early in the morning with Christophe to go to work with him (otherwise I wouldn't have a ride to the Aix station) and we got some coffee. We did two clients, had more coffee, and then went to the TGV station at around 8:45 (my train was at 9). Me being the wonderfully talented person that I am, I managed to lose my tickets right after getting there, but found one of the security guards looking for it and was ok. I got on the train, all was well, listened to music, chilled, and got to paris. In paris, I realized that hey guess what, I had NO money on me, and the metro machines weren't taking my card. GREAT! so I called Olsen freaking out and ended up bumming 1euro40 off of some teenagers after several unsuccessful begging attempts. I took the metro to the Belleville station and got over to the apartment. That night we went out into the city and met up with Mr. Farges and his wife (who is swiss) and we had couscous with them. It was pretty much an awesome night, and makes me really wish I'd taken harder math just to have had his class.

friday: We woke up, went to this garden with amazing comfortable chairs, found a park with lots of play equipment and zane played, then went back to the apartment. Marina (a girl who was planning on going to hampshire who'd been studying french in paris for 5 months) invited me to go get coffee with her, so I flung myself into Paris on my own (LOVED IT) and we chatted and chatted for about 4 hours. It was pretty amazing. I bought myself a snacky dinner at a Casino (supermarket chain) and sat in front of the Pantheon to eat. I got home andddd we chilled.

saturday: Anastasia wasn't feeling well in the morning/didn't sleepy well the night before, so Olsen, Zane and I went to this little park near the apartment. There were lots of other little kids who asked me questions in french and they were incredibly cute. Someone had emptied a bag of birdseed into the bushes so there were about a kajillion pigeons everywhere. Later on I decided to go wander about the city by myself, so I found myself near the Centre Pompidou and there were street performances going on all over the place. After about 2 hours of wander time (I think it was sufficient) I parked myself in front of the museum and watched this crazy guy do tricks. I took lots of pictures and if I can find a cord to connect my camera to the internet I will put them online this weekend (I think it is like the 7th-8th this weekend... yeah). I went back to the apartment and we talked about lots of hippie things.

sunday; I don't remember what we did in the morning, but around 6 I met up with Chris (french/american kid who IS going to Hampshire) and Marina (from before). We hung out around the city and had an all around awesome time. (alliteration... YES).

monday; We went to Versailles, ate in the gardens, I was going to go take a tour of the castle but it is closed on Mondays so instead I wandered around the surrounding area (I really enjoy wandering in unknown areas, can you tell?) Found a cool little shop and bought a scarf and some presents. I ended up chatting with the shop keeper for like 15 minutes. She was about my age and was really nice. It made me feel better about speaking french because at this point I'd been speaking in pretty much only English for a while.

tuesday; Tuesday SUCKEDDDDD. Sort of. I thought my TGV was at 7:04 so I left the apartment at 6ish. Missed the metro by about 5 seconds and had to wait another 12 minutes for the next one, so I was freaking out that I'd miss my train. Got there just on time, but wait! It isn't at 7:04, it is at 7:54. I wait, some guy starts freaking out on his phone at someone named Catherine. He was seriously screaming... in english... it was awkward. I get on the train and find that my lovely darling ipod has decided to erase all of my music. I die a little on the inside. 3.5 hours later I arrive at Aix TGV which, for the 99% of you who have never been, is in the middle of freaking nowhere. It is now 10:30. The next bus for Salon? definitely at 2:40. I call Christophe kind of in a panic and he says he can't pick me up before 1. I look for other options. I find a bus that leaves for Aix centre ville every half hour. I've missed the last one by like 2 minutes, so I wait for the next one. I arrive at Aix centre ville and find I've missed the bus by one minute. ONE MINUTE. I'm starting to freak out a little at this point. The next bus is at 12:40, so I wait and do Sudokus. I see Delphine and... other... guy... at the gare. I take the bus and get to Salon at 1:30. The last bus was at 1:20, the next is at 2:40. I almost cry a little, but then I walk around looking for someone, nobody is in Salon, so I call Vio and she lets me come up to her apartment. We talk and I chill there until my bus and go home and pretty much collapse.

Oral exam:
I got there at 8 am, but considering that the test was alphabetical and my last name is BEChtel and not AAAbechtel, and given the fact that I was 7th on the list of 8, I assumed I'd be going a little later on in the morning. I now understand why they say "when you assume, you make an ass out of (yo)u and me." I was freaking 2nd. I definitely started stressing at this point. I got into the room and she gave me the prologue of Les Confessions by Rousseau. Not the worst possible, but definitely not a text I was hoping for. The blond girl who is in S who went before me pretty much stared at the teacher for 20 minutes without really saying... well, anything, so I guess that made me look better. I was super stressed so I didn't speak as well as I could have. My accent was craaaazy noticeable and I kept repeating myself, but it's all good. I hung around for a while but I was kind of in a shitty mood because of some problems I was having with some of the girls. I went to Daniele's house (my theater teacher) and she gave me a copy of the play I was in.

I was kind of torn between going with Vio and her friends to Aix for fête de la musique or staying in Salon like I'd planned, but finally i ended up going to Aix. Best. Decision. Ever. We has such a crazy fun time. When I first got to Salon Vio wasn't picking up her phone and I found Pauline so we hung out for a bit. Then Tibo came by so she left and I finally got a hold of violaine. We went to her house for a little bit. Her friends picked us up in front of the Cinémas and then we went to her dad's house to get the camper. We drove that to aix, parked in the parking (lot) "Krypton" and took a bus into the centre ville. There was this one crazy percussion group that was marching through the streets -- they were wearing red teeshirts and white cloth pants and they had some really amazing rhythms. They were impressive. We ate pizza that was croustifondante (crunchymelty) played "cap ou pas cap" which is kind of like truth or dare without the truth, so I guess "dare or dare". It literally means are you capable or not, so I think you get the idea. There was this one place where there were what we called "sound walls" with techno and everyone was dancing and we found sophie and hung out with her. She was hilarious. She wanted to keep dancing so we left. We wandered around some more listening to more music, found another sound wall and danced some more. I saw Pierre and he was tots hitting on me, but it was just awkward because he'd never ever talked to me and he was kind of drunk, so it was... yeah... bizarre. We left around 2am when all the music stopped suddenly. Vio saw someone doing Bolas and she asked if she could for a little while because she'd been spazzing all night about forgetting them in the car. We walked back to the parking lot, got a little lost, but finally found it. They sang tryo. It was a beautiful night. We slept in the caravan and had pound cake and nutella in the morning. We all went over to Vio's house and I ended up staying and playing with her puppies. Afterwards we went to Salon just for a little bit and then we went to Mallemort on her scooter. She was planning on seeing her boy, but he was in Marseille so she stayed at my house. She invited me to go to a party that night but I couldn't because the grandparents were staying over. I said she could stay at my house if she wanted because she said she didn't want to go to the party if I didn't go, but she ended up making other plans... after all, it is Mallemort. Bad. Death. There isn't a lot to do, and by there isn't a lot, I mean there is absolutely nothing at all. ever. We had dinner with the grandparents and then we all went over to Nichole's house. She is one of the sweetest women ever.

On Saturday the 23rd I had my last day to really see my friends. I sent a text message to everyone saying that I was going to be in the city all day and to come say good bye to me. I woke up, went over to Nichole's house to say goodbye. She gave me a novel and a book of poetry. I went to Salon around 11am and nothing was open. I went to the Grain d'Arome and had a coffee and wrote in my journal. I started to get hungry so I got a kebab and ate it at the Château. I was getting lonely (it was around 1ish) so I called Océane and she came by for a little. We walked and chatted. I saw Carlotta when we were in front of the lycée Then Wilfrid came around 2 and we went to the Bièrie and talked and laughed about our theories about the homosexuality of certain boys in our class. It was kind of the best ever. It turns out that it was also Marie la blonde's birthday celebration, so I got to see her and coralie and anaïs and thomas also. Pauline and Alexandre came to see me, everyone wrote in my book. We laughed and chatted about the year. It was very low stress, until I said I was leaving at around 8:30. Coralie asked when we could see each other again before I left and I said, well next time I'm in france I guess. She hadn't understood that I was leaving so soon and cried kind of a lot. I got sad too and left with Alex and Pauline. We parted at the corner of the lycée and the ciné and then it was my turn to cry. A lot. Damn, even writing this now is so hard. I miss them so much. Anyways, I was going to go to this party that Vio had invited me to go to to see her for the last time, so I did. It was kind of awkward beacuse I didn't know anyone, but it was ok. At night she walked me back to where Geneviève was going to pick me up and we drove her back to the party even though we only had two seats. On the way back Geneviève started sobbing and I did too. I can't go into any more detail right now because it is just too sad. Anyways, we got home and all was good and I was happy to have seen people, but it was definitely very bittersweet.

YAY! I filled out the outline! Aren't you proud of me!

Well, tomorrow I'm having oral surgery (funfunfun!) so I should have lots of down time to update my life from last day in france until now. I still have a hard time believing I'm seriously here. There are definitely moments that are more difficult than others, but considering, I think I'm doing pretty well.

(oooh now you guys get to wait some more (sorry) and try to figure out my outline. Wait until my words fill in the blanks. And sorry about the lack of updates lately, i've been kind of crappy at the whole dealing with leaving thing in the last week or so.<--- this is what I wrote before I updated the outline)

love kendra