it's a great day to be alive :)

alright... i'm gonna start this off by saying i'm really sorry that i have skipped like four days of blog-writing! i know you guys (my friends and family) like to stay updated on what's goin on in my french life.

secondly, i'd like to thank some people for making the past four days quite lovely:

1) r. kelly - thank you, because i was walking home from school and "i'm a flirt" came on my itunes shuffle and just put me in a good mood. it made me think of my sister stephanie because she loves r. kelly, and it also just made me think of his ridiculous "trapped in the closet" stuff. what a lovely, lovely man.

2) old lady in her late 60s/early 70s - thank you old lady for brightening up my day by wearing black leather pants. it's great to know that you're keeping that young spirit alive. now go work it, girl!

3) my new friend kayla - i met kayla briefly, like, on the first day of school. but on friday i was able to have many-a-conversation with her and we had some great bonding time! kayla helped grace and karen to keep me sane while enduring a crazy friday night. thank. you. kayla. :)

so, my first week of school went pretty well. since it was the first week, we didn't really do very much. i had a few homework assignments here and there, but nothing for a grade. the grading starts this week! ahh! it's a little scary because i am absolutely terrible at oral comprehension, which is covered (obviously) in my oral comprehension class, but also in my general language class! i'm sure i will improve as the semester goes on. but my teachers are so awesome! they are all really enthusiastic and funny and i love it. i'm not liking that i've got 8 a.m. classes, though! boo.

so, friday night there was a club in nantes where bow wow was playing, so we all thought it would be awesome to go. nantes is only a 30 minute train ride away, and we would only be there for friday night and part of yesterday, so i thought why not. well, grace and i almost missed our train... but we hopped on at the last second and made it. it may not have even been our train as far as i know, but it was the only one there leaving at the time ours was scheduled, even though it didn't have the same train number. so when we got to nantes, two other kids in the angers program had already booked a hotel room for the night, and we were trying to see if we could just stay with them and crash on their floor, but hotel rooms in europe are definitely not like american hotels. they are tiny. so we had to get our own hotel room, which, split between the four of us ('cause karen and kayla came, too) was only 20 euros. so it wasn't too bad. grace and i had to sneak them in our room though because there are only supposed to be two people to a room and you have to pay 20 more euros for each additional person. and we thought that was just ridonkulous so we opted for sneaking them in. we think that the lady at the desk knew, but just didn't care. and i can totally respect that. so we met up with skye and zach and we all went out to eat at this chinese restaurant. and i was so excited because everything was like 6-8 euros... but then they brought out our food and they were tiiiiiny dishes. i just thought, this isn't enough to even feed an infant! but i didn't want to order anything else because it took them like 30 minutes or more to bring out our food, and i didn't want to wait that long again.

when we were done eating, we tried to figure out where to go for the night because the whole bow wow thing was way too far away. and i definitely didn't want to take a taxi anywhere because it gets so expensive, especially since we had to take one from the train station to our hotel and then from the hotel to the restaurant. and i knew we would have to take one later to get home. so i was like, eff that. i'm staying here. everybody wanted to dance though, and we all wanted to go different places and blah blah blah. it was a mess. there was a lot of arguing and tension and the night just went down really, really quickly. and i was soon wishing i had never gone on that trip. (there are many other events that happened and reasons for me having such a god-awful night, but it's too intricate to explain it all and i don't want to re-hash it.) finally, we split up into our two different groups of people who wanted to do the same things and started our night. me, grace, karen, and kayla went to a bar called "the elephant club" and it was pretty fun. that was the beginning of turning our night around. then, skye and zach came back to the bar where we were at and we all figured out something close that we could all do. and after searching and asking a million strangers for directions, we finally found a discothèque where we could dance. at first, we were the only ones there. which was fine, i was still having fun. and then after like 2 in the morning it started to get busy. these europeans are crazy!! who starts their night at 2 in the morning?! anyway, grace and i talked to the bartender upstairs for a long time because he had traveled to kansas city a few times and we thought that was cool. we talked about kansas city things, about the jayhawks, barbeque, and whatnot. he was really nice. finally it was time to end our night, so we caught a cab and went home. we slept three people to the bed and karen slept on the ottoman at the end of the bed. hahah!

the next day, we got up and headed out to explore nantes in the daytime. we went and got something to eat then wandered around and took lots and lots of pictures. we went to this chateau where the dukes of brittany (a region of france) used to live. it was so awesome! after that, we went to the train station to get karen and kayla's tickets to go back home. then we wandered some more and found this beauuuutiful garden. it was huge! and all of the different kinds of plants were labeled. there were also a lot of ducks, pigeons, doves, and other birds there. it was breathtaking. we walked around there for a long time just enjoying nature and taking pictures. after that, we walked around trying to find a crêperie but by the time we got to one that we wanted to go in, it was closed. :( because they open and close at really weird times. like, a lot of crêperies open in the morning, then close in the early afternoon, then open again at 7 p.m. so we wandered more, found this cool secondhand store, then finally settled for a pâtisserie. i got a pineapple tart and some orange juice and it was so good. we just sat there and talked for maybe an hour and a half or two hours. and we still had nearly 3 hours to kill before our train left for angers. but we were all super super tired, so we went to the train station to see if we could get our tickets changed to an earlier train. and we did. and it felt so good to be home. :)

i finally got to skype my dad!! i was so happy to see him and hear his voice! <3 and i also got to talk to rhonda and i was so happy to see her, too. i don't know what i would do without skype. seeing people's faces and hearing their voices is just so much more comforting than anything else. and i told my dad about how my roommate, karen, is from alaska and how she told me she has seen killer whales before, and he goes, "really?! that's killer!!" hahaha. my dad is always good for cheesy jokes. i love them. another cheesy joke: while the girls and i were waiting at the train station for our train, we were talking about how we don't really like the wedge-style shoes anymore. and grace goes, "yeah, that's because french people like to live their fashion lives on the edge." and kayla goes, "or on the wedge." hahaha! so great. yesterday was definitely one of the best days i've had here. :) today, i'm probably just going to be hanging out, doing nothing at home since i've got school at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. so i might not write a blog post for today. but don't worry, there will definitely be one for tomorrow because tomorrow is valentine's day! and my amazing boyfriend planned something for me all the way from the united states. <3

okay, you've been on my blog page long enough, now go away! i'll give you a video to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5hrUGFhsXo&feature=fvst

à demain!