Ok wooo! Blog time.

First of all I gotta explain the skiing thing. We woke up at 5am to get on the road by 530, and drove three hours to get to the ski place. We got all geared up, and set out for the slopes. Then everything went wrong. Me, not knowing what the hell I'm doing, told them that I'd only skied once before, but that I enjoyed it when I did it. They took that to mean that I knew how to ski... We got into the egg cars that go ALL THE WAY up the mountain. Then, to make it even better, there wasn't enough snow for all of the blue and green slopes, so really I had the choice of red, black, and hard-level, which is with crazy things in the middle of the slope designed to kill you if you don't ski at olympic level. I freaked, tried to ski a little, fell about 10 times in a minute, hurt my knee, and then ben camille and geneivève went off and Christophe stayed with me. It took us 3 hours to get down the hill because we went in a little zig zaggy pattern that took forever, and I was freaking scared out of my mind. We decided that when we go again (holy shit were going again?!?) I'm gonna stay on the little kid slopes, and they said that don't know what came over them, it was their fault for bringing me up so high.

After my ordeal was over, geneviève decided she was done skiing too because she was in some pain, and we chilled while the other three raced and did silly things. It was actually pretty warm while the sun was still out and we sat at the café they have there and drake cokes and people watched and talked about really random things. Apparently once I get talking I talk pretty loud and so people stared a little bit... and geneviève laughed at me, and then I laughed at me too.

I am not skilled.

I've gotten sick like 20 thousand times in the last week, which really sucks.

I'm sick and tired of my theater class.

This blog update is lame, but I want to go eat because I'm hungry. Another half blog will come soon.

My concept of soon seems to be ridiculously far in the future if my last blog to this blog time ratio is any indication.

I have the feeling that this blog makes no sense.

have fun
kendra

Ow...

Ok, this is another lame pre-post-post, but! I have put up new pictures.

They are considerably more happy than I was on the slopes. Enjoy.

(next post = soon)

Wooooooooooooooooo!!

It snowed in Mallemort last night!!! YAY!

Only problem = now we have the wind and the snow, and that means that it is fricken cold.

Hey hey kids!


I have passed the 5 month mark here, and that kinda freaks me out a little. In some ways it feels like way less and in some ways it feels like WAAY more. I'm starting to grasp the realization that I will be taking the Bac in French in a couple of months, and that I will most likely stress a lot and then fail. I have yet to come to terms with this realization.

I really don't like not being good at things.
I do, however, enjoy double negatives.

Lately... what have I been doing? I have no clue.

Cecilie and Maria came over to my house and we made chocolate friands from the tartine book of glory. Cecilie slept over, we goofed around and hung out with my host family. It was the first time I've been able to have silly relaxing fun time with a friend, which was really comforting. I know that cecilie and I get on each others nerves sometimes, but she is the only other one who can really relate to whats going on in my head. It is different with Maria because she lives with her Aunt and speaks spanish at home. Totally different.

Our class photo is today, which makes me giggle a whole lot. I thought we stopped doing that in like 6th grade! But no, here everyone does it up until Senior year.

Silly.

I'm going to try to motivate myself enough to get some pictures online. Hopefully that will work.

There are officially 4 people in my class that I strongly STRONGLY dislike.
I participate more in French class than half of my classmates.
If I write another sentence with the word 'class' in it, it will lose all meaning.

There we go.

Sorry that this is so random, I have no clue what to write.

The weather was randomly really warm for like 3 weeks, but now the cold is coming (back?). There was a huge storm last night and thunder and everything and I couldn't sleep.

I bought boots. They're black with stars, and better yet, they were on sale. The month of soldes is almost over.

We still haven't recovered my bag of clothes. This is ridiculously depressing.
My last hope is drama tomorrow... if she has it by then, I'll be happy, but if not I think it is lost forever. SADFACE!

It was totally the bag that ana and rachel sent me for christmas. gahhhhhh!! sucks.

Apparently it is the franco-allemand week, which is something to do with connections between France and Germany, but I'm not entirely clear on the concept. It is possible that there are germans at l'Emperi for this week, but seeing as how none of my friends take german here, there is no way that I'd know/meet any of them.

This tv show that we watch (not because it is good, but because it is something to do) had an episode yesterday talking about foreigners and accents. They said that the american and english accents in general were charming, but I totally don't think they are. They sound kind of annoying to me. This one woman spoke a little bit in her accent-y french and geneviève was like "OMG that is your accent exactly. Weird." Apparently it was pretty good for an american, but i still don't like it. The problem is that I can't really hear my accent. I know it exists, but unless I pay super attention and repeat a sentence after someone, I don't hear it at all. Then again, cecilie says she doesn't hear hers either, and hers is so thick that I tend to do french to french translation for her. Maybe mine is really thick too? I have no clue.

I've officially stopped stressing about my accent, but I still don't like it when people comment on it, or when I'm misunderstood. I also think it gets thicker when I'm tired.


Ok, hope you enjoyed all that. Nothing major going on.

yeah.

love kendra

This is a blog!

Let's start right away...

Two weeks ago, it was still vacation. I was chillin' like a villan at home everyday, but seeing as I had about 200 pages of required reading to do in French and more than 1000 pages of other Frenchy reading, I was cool. That and I had my snurchy tartine cookbook and the kitchen to myself. Hello lemon cake! Whats up shortbread? Tasty. That is whats up.

The weekend before we started back at school, we drove to Antibes to buy a motorcycle product... a 125 to be exact, but really I have no clue where that is on the scale of motorcycles. It is somewhere in between a bicycle with a motor and a Harley. (vague, yes, I know.) Camille and I stayed up until 3 in the morning chatting, which felt really amazing because for the first time since I got here I am capable of just chatting, not having to think about every single word that I say and worry about whether it means what I think it means or not. *high five*

When I got back to school, I was really disgusted by my routine. I'd just gotten myself into this rut that I felt like I couldn't do anything about and I got all weepy for a couple of hours. I really think that this was the lowest point so far since I've been here, because before when I'd been sad it was usually because I missed people at home, but this was something entirely different. This was probably the most profound loneliness I've ever felt. So, Monday sucked pretty much sums up that thought.

And then there was a change in my rhythm that got me out of my silly rut. On Tuesday, we had a new arrival in our class! Her name is Maria and she is from Nicaragua, and speaks pretty damn good french for only having taken two years of lessons. She tends not to conjugate ANY verbs ever, but she has this amazing skill of getting her point across even if shes not speaking in any language recognized by the human race. It was really refreshing to have some new energy in my increasingly stagnant class. Cecilie was a bit pissed at first because this new girl is much more easily understood than here even after her having been here for four months, but I think she got over it as soon as she started talking with her a bit. I think that Cecilie and I need a little break from each other, because we've been pissing each other off A LOT lately.

In conjunction with what I'll call "sad Monday", I got all down on myself about my diminishing English skillz and decided that I need to start writing, so I created a Magical Help Kendra Retain Her Command of the English Language Project. Basically this involves writing down everything I'm thinking whenever I have free time. It is actually pretty awesome and I'm recording a lot more emotion and a lot less "we did ____ today... it was good" that i did when I was journaling regularly

(side note for Rachel: the little yellow book is more than half full, but it pretty much stopped at November. Lately its been a lot of re-capping, so you can see my new one too... i think. yes.)

I have been having some FREAKY DEAKY DUTCH dreams recently. They tend to include video game voices, ground that is somewhere in between solid and liquid, people who should be speaking french speaking English and vice versa, a gnome holding a sign, blue polar fleece, and singing. They're seriously starting to freak me out. Last night I dreamed(dreamt?) that I was back working at Peet's and there was a new manager and she decided to hate me and all the other people working there besides me and R!ck were robots... don't ask me why, I have nooooo clue.

This month is SOLDES which basically means that everything is on sale and oh so tasty. Logically, we decided to go to H&M on Saturday afternoon, when everyone was doing other things and definitely not shopping at the exact same store as us. I did however, score me some pretty ridiculous deals. Yay, new clothes.

Ok, so I've seen a couple of plays here, but they've all been in difficult to understand french and I haven't really gotten much out of them other than an evening of doing something other than staying at home or being at school. Yesterday, my friends, was a horse of a different color! We left school at 12:20, already this day is beginning gloriously, and went to Cavaillon where we met up with 4 other schools worth of theater enthusiasts. Annoying and great at the same time.(anyone who has ever been in a group of theater enthusiasts knows what i'm talkin' 'bout.) We divided into 4 groups and went off with the different actors in the play and did projects; I changed groups at the last minute because the one i was scheduled for included writing and the one I switched into was purely improv. Writing in french < class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">improv-y goodness, during which I became an ostrich with my head in the sand along with many other things, and then we had our time to eat. The french always have at least 2 hours to eat, and its a problem if they have less. I still don't completely understand that, as the district at home seemed to think that 30 minutes was just a little bit too much and that if we were bored for even a second panic would break out. Yeah, cause it did anyways. BACK ON TOPIC! After the 2 hour meal period, we filed into the theater to see "Froid" -- a piece about racism and xenophobia in Sweden written by a contemporary swedish author and translated into french. Yikes! Ok people, this is quite honestly one of the best plays I've ever seen. I was sobbing at the end. It was just... woah. It was freaking amazing. The boy sitting next to me was crying. Yeah, I know. Just wow, there aren't even words. Basically the story is about 3 neo nazi kids who have just graduated from high school. They're having their own little drunken party in the woods when the korean kid (adopted by swedish parents) who was in their class passes by them on the way to his graduation party. They make him stay and the four of them talk for an hour and a half but it is absolutely impossible for me to explain the story... i don't know, and they keep saying they're going to kill him, and they keep almost letting him go, and in the end it is the one who is the nicest and least racist and horrible of the three who ends up snapping and killing him. It was ridiculously well acted and waaaaaaaaaay too realistic. Shivers down my spine, for serious. We discussed politics on the bus, where I got more people to admit that not all americans suck just because the TV told them so, and got back to salon around 11. Mallemort, where I live, is kinda 25ish minutes away, so I slept over at a friend's house who lives close to the school. Then, in true kendra fashion, I left my bag with my clothes and stuff on the fricken bus. DSJIOGSJIODGS!!! I know. So right now I'm at school, in her clothes, typing. Party over here. Goal for today? definitely find the theater teacher and ask if I can get my bag back, because apparently she is friends with the bus driver.

Completely different topic!http://www.deannamolinaro.com/Stuff_That_I_Made/Books/BookTitles.html

Read those. They almost made me pee myself.

Ok, I think that is all I have to say. If there are silly mistakes, let us all remember a few things.
1. I haven't spoken English really since the Hawaiians were here
2. The keyboard is bugging on me and there is a serious delay when I type
3. The spell check is in french, so every word is wrong when I ask the computer.



LOVE!

kendra

Hi everyone! Before you kill me with your thoughts for making you wait just a tiny bit longer for your next installment of the everyday and not all that exciting life of kendra, let me say this...

I love you.

Forgive me.

What the next blog will include:
-New Nicaraguan Exchange student!
-Kendra's new writing project
-dream fragments
-plenty of ramblings
-homemade Pastry goodness
-H&M
-The best (non)children's stories I've ever read in my entire life
-The reason why this is a lame half-blog and I'm not posting on Monday
-(Hopefully) glorious theater related activities


Until Tuesday!

Kendra