Fourth Update

yesterday... I can't really remember it all that well. I was in a really irritable mood for some reason which sucked. the whole time i was just biting my tongue and trying not to glare too much. of course i hate being in that mood and i know it's irrational so usually i like to be alone. Of course that wasn't going to happen. it was a pretty good day, though.

yesterday courtney and i just hopped into town to knock out another paris walks walk. we met up with Richard, Mike, Brooklyne, Sky, Rosalie and Ariel. We split up into two groups. Ariel, Courtney and i went on the Metro walk, and the others went shopping and on a different walk.the metro walk was kind of useless. we learned a bit about the metro's history which was pretty cool i guess. nothing interesting enough to type down, though. we saw the arc de triomphe and there were street dancers there performing. I had to check it out expecting great things. it wasn't all that impressive...

we then went to some french department store so i could buy supplies. Everything is redic expensive! notebooks were like ten euros and a pack of twenty envelopes were 6. holy cow. It's a good thing it's the soldes (sales) right now or that would have hurt. it still did a tad... i miss how cheap everything is in the US! idk what all my european studies teachers say... that is def one awesome thing about the US. and how our outlets have two plugs... and our toilets are in our bathrooms... I was able to talk to all the employees in french the whole time, though, so i'm proud.

Courtney and i took Ariel back to show her our place. apperently we got the set up. like the best place here. then we went into our little town to check out any food we could get. it was really cute! It had the bakery, buchery, cheese place, winery, fruit stand... everything. it was all still open too. it was prob at 7 this point. we went into this one pub looking for food and an awkward exchange of words revieled that no one serves food past a certain time. It was weird cause all the little shops were still open. oh well. I'm also getting really frusturated wtih my lack of ability to communicate. I'm actually looking forward to my french class for once!

That night i watched the French VMAs with Lidwin and the mom. Robbi Williams won something. he has been around for forever. they were very suprised to learn that he isn't really popular in the US. Black eyed pees won best foreign song. i guess they are really popular here. i noticed though, that a lot of american music that they listen to, i have never heard. rock operas are the thing now, too. it was very interesting. Then the dad came down and they put in Slumdog Millionaire. It was in french and they only had french subtitles hich helped me a little. Even though i didn't understand a good portion of it, it was still a really good movie. It's not really a feel good movie though... kind of a tragedy even though the main charecter wins out in the end. it was fun to be able to socialise wtih the family and to hang out with them.

They don't sleep... They are always up later than us and wake up way before us. It makes me woner. They prob think we sleep a ton. They also don't eat greens or drink a ton of water. I'm not sure how they are so healthy...

Today we had church! it's at 9:30 which sucks a tad cause of our commute. we left a bit late but courtney and i seriously lucked out with catching the train on time so we weren't too late... most of the ward aren't actually French. there are a lot of chinese people, black people, and americans. it's also one of those wards that does everything backwards. I didn't understand any of reliefe society... bored. most of us went to the single adult's class (a couple went to the english class and Rich, our token asian went to the manderine class). it was taught by an american in French so i understood most of it. It was about adam and eve. pretty interesting. They invited us to go to their institute class and FHE and i really want to get involved with them. the other kids are kind of hesitant though.

One of the guys, mike, came over for a bit. he just came into paris yesterday so he's pretty jet lagged. he fell asleep on the couch in the basement by our rooms and was snoring really loud. there is apperently another older girl and her fiance came down to use the computer. he didn't really say anything to me but i started giggling and mike's snoring and then he looked at me, then looked at mike and started to giggle as well. idk why but it was just a grand moment. he then asked me how to say that in english. i tried to tell the story at dinner. it wasn't very succesfull and i ended up snoring since i didn't know the verb... why would i. they wanted to know the english word for snore too. well... amusing.

I just had dinner. it was just lidwin, tiphaine, tristan and the mom were there. we had a salad wtih some weird but tasty asperigus egg thingy with more bread and cheese. Tristan left and then we had a "crepe fete" I ate a ton because i haven't really eaten anything the past two days. it's rough trying to feed myself. they had a cool little pan kind of like our racklette thingy only for crepes. it was pretty cool. i tried to talk a log. I'm so terrible but they are pretty good about helping me through it with conjugations and such. i'm so glad to have that all refreshed in my french class. boo for homework though. we talked about the princess and the frog and the.... stuff. Mostly i didn't understand them but i didn't tune them out this time and whenever i heard a sentance i sort of understood i would try to throw my two cents in. they prob think i'm super random... but i want to try and talk more. they asked if i liked avatar and i was able to say something like it was beautiful but i thought the plot as a tad stupid. then i tried to say that the "blue people" were like american indians. Tiphaine told me that she did a project on cowboys and indians in school. I talked a little about the reservations about how they are good and bad. bad because they don't work and are fat and love beer but good because it preserves their culture. you're going to think i'm a nerd but like three days ago i was practicing talking about the reservation for the heck of it (i like practicing certain convo scenarios just to practice speaking...) so i was excited to be able to say all that. Idk why but during the whole dinner i was trying not to giggle. like when i accidentaly gulped my water really loud or when the mom dropped her crepe in her lap... i mostly held it in. thank goodness!

the family pretty much doesn't laugh. They talk loudly and over each other and joke but they just don't really laugh, and if they do it's really quiet. it made me notice how much i laugh. it's odd. i wonder what they think of it.

also their floors and walls are super dirty. my feet get really dusty when i just walk from the shower to my room. They always wear shoes. Just a difference i guess, cause in the US we always keep our floors clean and take off our shoes in the house.