It's Time for a Break.... ASAP!

This has certainly been an interesting week with both good and bad points and unfortunately this upcoming week is not looking good at all. Classes were the same for the most part. I'm almost done as I have this week, then two weeks off for Easter Vacation, then we are back in class for about a week and a half and then we are done April 30th. It's a really messed up schedule that I'm so not used to! This week is the sixth week of classes in a row since the last break which is longer than normal back in the States... so that's not easy to deal with. And the weight of all my classes is bearing down upon me very heavily, and it does not help that I have pushed some things off - or in some cases, things I didn't know about till the last minute. I was just told that the class I have on Friday mornings not only had an analysis assignment due last class (which I did not even know about till Charlie told me about it Thursday night!) but that we also have our final test this Wed, instead of Friday. Well I have classes that meet on Wed. and definitely did not know about this so called test... and Charlie is been helpful at all recently - so I guess I'm going to have to add figuring this out to all the other things I have to do tomorrow!

I have two short essays due this week on Wed, plus a couple French books I still have yet to read, and assuming I keep the Master's class on Marguerite Duras, I have a 12-15 page paper to write by the end of break - PLUS I have to finish translating my short film script, actually film it, edit it myself and finish it by the time break is over.... not to mention the basic weekly homework I have! It's frustrating and those that I had expected to help me out have completely fallen through - I guess you should never rely on anyone unless you direly have to!

On other notes, this week and weekend was like most. I have recently been informed of a online organization called CouchSurfing so I joined that this past week and have tried to become active. The basic concept is that people open up their couch or spare beds in their appartments to fellow Couchsurfers for when they are traveling in your town. While I cannot host anyone due to my circumstances, I have talked with others and actually will be staying at someone's place for the couple days when I go to Paris in a few weeks! I have asked a couple people if they could host me for my short trip to London next week but have not heard back and might end up going to a hostel instead. I will have the name and number for a hostel or another place to stay in case things don't work out right though. But the local group here in Lille had a Quiz night on Thursday that I went to. It was rather interesting - we split into teams of 4 and had to answer 40 questions then name 10 songs artists and titles. While most of it was done in French, it was a good way for me to practice my French. Although, one of the questions that I knew the answer to they originally marked wrong! It asked what the thirteen red and white strips of the American flag meant... so naturally we explained that I should know what they mean! HAHA! But it was a good time and I plan to go to the monthly meeting of the group this Tuesday as well.

This weekend was rather boring and relaxing, I stayed in most of the time as I was worn out from the week and attempted to get some schoolwork done - though that wasn't as successful as I had planned! I had made plans to go to the sunday market here this morning with a friend, but as we had daylight savings time change our clocks last night, she had forgot to put hers forward so I had some time to spare! But aside from the rain now and then, it was not too bad. The rest of my day was spent working out details for things, attempting more school work, and watching a few movies too.

Well... I should get back to either doing some more work or perhaps I might call it a night as I'm worn out and have things to do tomorrow that I didn't have to worry about before... but if interesting things happen, then I'll add a post then!


Oh, here's some pics that I uploaded today, mostly new pics of my room here as it looks a bit more lived in now!

Misc Lille 30-3-2008

Till next time! Ciao!

Easter Weekend - Pâques

Hello again! Well, it's time for another update. This week was rather boring - mostly with classes taking up my time. As I didn't have class on Friday - I slept in! which was a good thing to do.

Being Easter weekend, or Pâques as the French call it, I had wanted to see if there was anything special going on. Well, in France there is no Easter bunny! Instead, they tell the children that the bells of the churches, which go silent on Good Friday to mourn the death of Christ, fly to Rome and return on Easter Sunday with chocolate eggs! So there is the tradition of giving and receiving chocolate eggs on Easter. It is also tradition to have a huge feast on Easter Sunday after going to mass with the traditional dish being lamb.

Well, the bells didn't bring me any chocolate this year - they must've skipped me as I'm not actually French! Haha! I was going to see about going to a mass here in Lille this morning - however I had no energy to get out of bed this morning and had forgotten to look at church times before I fell asleep last night. So this weekend has been rather relaxing for me, and will continue tomorrow as I don't have classes because it is Easter Monday which is a bank holiday to give people time for traveling - thus no school!

Yesterday, however, I decided to go on a little excursion out to the cities of Tourcoing and Roubaix - without knowing what I was doing, or where I was going but armed with just a few maps which ended up not being very useful! I bought an all day pass for the metro and tram, and took the metro over to the Gare Lille Flandres station which is the station between the two train stations and just a hop from the city centre here in Lille. At that station, I got on the tram for the first time and headed out to Tourcoing Centre. It was an interesting ride, the tram was basically a train above ground with overhead lines that gave it power. It was a bumpy ride though! But was an interesting way to see things above ground on my way out.

Once I got off in Tourcoing Centre, which was the end of that tram's line... I was a bit lost but finally found the main square: Place de la Republique and St. Christopher's Church. The church looked closed though so I wasn't able to get in. However, I followed the signs to the Tourism centre which was easy to find - however when I got there, it was still closed for another 45 min for lunch! So I decided to just walk around the city, ended up doing a few circles around places - in general just trying to find something interesting to do! I ended up in a park called La Place de la Victoire where there was a large and interesting monument to the dead. From there, I kept walking along streets, just seeing what there was when I spotted a metro station! So I headed on down and after looking on the map there, realized there was not much to see in Tourcoing and as I still would've had to wait a half hour for the Tourism office to open to ask them what to do there... I decided to take the metro over to Roubaix!

I first got off at the Grand Place in Roubaix which was a good place to start! It was there that the Hotel de Ville - or the city hall- is located. There was also a huge open area, this of course being the Grand Place! And there also was a very white church called St. Martin's opposite the place from Hotel de Ville. Well, as I wasn't sure where to go, I had seen a sign for the tourist office - so that was where I headed! Only I have come to realize that French direction signs are not easy to follow! I ended up doing a huge circle, though I ended up passing an interesting statue that I got a picture of but have no idea what it's for! I also passed an Industry Museum thingy but it looked closed and I wasn't that interested in such a museum to check it out! Well, as I said, I did a huge circle and ended up back in the Grand Place.

The weather to this point has been fluctuating - sunny at times, drizzling at others and even rained every now and then too. But when I came back into the Grand Place, it was only then that I noticed the direction sign for La Piscine - the main museum I wanted to see thus the reason for my little excursion! Of course, it was right under the sign that said which way the tourist office was! Go me!

So I headed off into that direction and it looked like I was headed towards the train station in Roubaix. But I finally saw a sign for La Piscine and I saw the museum itself! However, there was a huge building on the other side of the street and some random monument that I checked out first - still don't know what they are but according to online the building is a school and I couldn't find any information on the statue. I got pictures though!

So I finally got to La Piscine and of course took many pictures of the museum from the outside and inside as it's a very interesting place. It used to be the municipal swimming pool ergo why it is called La Piscine - aka swimming pool! However, it was converted into a museum years ago and is now a rather well known museum in the area. The inside was really cool as they kept a lot of the old swimming pool intact like the showers and the main pool itself. They decreased the size of the pool and made it level but it was really interesting! They had exhibits of art and stuff in the places where the showers and changing areas used to be! It was a really cool museum. They also had an exhibit there from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris which was all about animals and stuff.

After I saw the museum, it was raining out so I headed over the the train station. After going inside to check a map if there was another interesting places to see, I couldn't find any... so I headed back out and took the metro station there at Gare Jean Lebas to Eurotéléport. There, I was going to catch the other tram back to Lille - however I had some time to wait so I walked around the shopping area there. It was some kind of outdoor outlet area thingy but nothing seemed interesting to look at. Naturally though, when I got back to the tram station, the tram was just pulling out! So I walked around the other side of the station and found a shopping mall! After walking around that, I ended up coming out behind in what seemed like an alley way. Though there was an odd gothic looking building in front of me. So, I walked around it trying to figure out where I was.. and low and behold I was back at Grand Place and the old, grey, gothic looking building was the back of St. Martin's! So I got a bunch of pictures of that church. Naturally the inside was closed so I walked back towards the tram station and after waiting for a couple minutes - it arrived. It was a nice scenic view going back - it followed a long parc for a while which I might go back to sometime if it's a nice day!

Once I got back to the Gare Lille-Flandres station, I headed up to Euralille and did some grocery shopping in Carrefour - the French equivalant to Wal-Mart! Then, I took the metro back to my stop at Cormontagne and came back here. For some reason I was dead tired, so I ended up crashing early around 9 pm!

But that has been my weekend, now it's to the boring part of doing homework. I have two more weeks of classes and then we get two whole weeks off from school! I can't wait for that breek because during the first week, I'm planning to go back to London for a day or two, mainly to buy souvenirs and to see the places I didn't get to see when I was there last. Plus, I hope to take a bunch of pictures to replace the ones that I had lost! I'm also looking at maybe getting out to see Stonehenge if possible!

The second week though will be my fun time as I'm going down to Paris for about 4-5 days. Assuming it all doesn't get too expensive, I'm going to go to Disneyland in Paris, see all the famous sites in Paris, and top it off with the show at the Moulin Rouge!

So, I've got a lot to look forward to here, but first comes the dreaded homework! Hopefully things are going good back home!

Happy Easter!

Quick little tidbit I found out...

While I was in London the first day, after I visited the Tower Bridge Experience, I had decide to try to go to the London Bridge Experience (they're two different bridges! Tower Bridge is the one that raises!) However, I had gotten there, and even though their brochure said they were still open - they were closed. Since I was in the area, I figured I'd swing by to get a glimpse of the reconstructed Globe Theater. Well, while I was walking in that area, I ended up walking down a very dark and closed in street. I noticed the street sign said Clink Street, and there was the Clink Street Prison museum thingy there as well. I didn't think anything of it at the time, I might have taken a picture of the sign as well... but while researching what I would like to do when I head back to London for a day or two - I came across somewhere that Clink Street was where Charles Dicken's father was imprisoned. It is this area that also helped to inspire him to write Oliver Twist! I thought that was a bit of interesting stories to share!

Things are going good... classes are becoming tiresome and tedious as they usually do around this time, though I am looking forward to the weeks to come as spring is here and the flower gardens and trees will be blooming! Yay! Well, I'm off to finish my homework for class... laterz!

Hello again!

I'm in between watching a movie and working on school work, getting ready for my English to French translation DS this morning... so what's best to do? Update my blog!

This past week was a rather bland one. It was mixed with the usual boringness of classes, with the semi-boredom that evenings can bring on. This has been a bit of a stressful week for me because I am really learning the use of budgets and the harsh realities that life can bring. Since I have been over here in France, the value of the dollar internationally has fallen, and therefore how I spend my money is even more critical. I have to balance things out, just like it is in the real world once school has finished - and I'm glad that I am able to do that now when I have the support of others to help me. I've also been figuring out a bunch of things with classes over her - as I have to budget my time to get all my classwork done too!

I think I am going to be dropping my Modern Literature class - which is only about books of the French author Marguerite Duras. My reasoning for this is two-fold. I have another class with the same professor - Mr. Godo, who is a really friendly and understanding professor, as well as completely passionate about Marguerite Duras! In my other class with him, we are reading Moderato Cantabile - and doing in depth analysis about the book. However, as it is in French and while my French is improving greatly while being over here - I still have yet to finish reading that book. Well, for the Modern Literature class, I not only have to read that book but five others that she wrote. Also, as the Modern Literature class is a Master's class, the level of work is higher and that is the reason that instead of a DS, there is a 15 page theory paper due. Catie, the other international student in the class with me, and I have talked with Mr Godo, our professor, and he recommended that it would be easiest for us to do our paper on Moderato Cantabile. Normally I wouldn't have an issue with having a paper like this to write. But giving the fact that it would have to be in French, and I have other school work to work on as well - which includes writing a movie script with Charlie; writing, filming, and producing a short movie on my own; plus the work load from other classes - I'm starting to get a little overwhelmed about Modern Literature. I'm going to email Mr. Godo and hopefully talk to him after class this week and express my concerns. I hope to find out what the final test is going to be like and whether or not I can feasibly pass the final. As I am not going anywhere for my two week break from classes in April, I would have the time to sit down and read the books and do the paper plus all my other coursework but as I have 14 classes and only need to pass 8 of them - I'm wondering if it might just be easier to drop the Modern Literature class. So I hope to talk with Mr Godo about my concerns and reach a conclusion that will be best overall. So, on that note - I will keep you guys posted!

As for the movie script that Charlie and I have to write for my Ecriture class, that is going rather well for the most part. We are actually ahead of the rest of the class and the teacher is using our work as an example! We got together Saturday afternoon and actually started to write the script - and for being ahead of everyone else in the class, the teacher might even give us some bonus points! Though, it's a bit interesting to write it because naturally it is in French and my skills with the language are nowhere near fluent. So, the language and wording has more or less fallen upon Charlie though I am helping as much as I can. I actually was the one typing it up on Saturday because I am familiar with the program we are using! But the story is a really good one, and we have things planned out well enough that we could easily see it being actually produced! We're just hoping for a good grade on it though!

I had mentioned the short movie I have to essentially create from scratch - this is for my Performance Artistique class. I had a great idea for my Court Mettrage - what it's called in French, and had everything planned out and most of the script written but not translated to French yet. I had originally shared my idea with Charlie to make sure it was a good idea and she had said it was but that it would be hard to film. Well, I didn't think much on that as I know my levels of standards are higher than the average persons and when I want to do things I want them to be the best I can be. Well... I found out on Friday while we grabbed lunch between class and my DS for Greek History... the reason it will be hard and almost impossible to film my Court Mettrage is because you cannot film in clubs and bars in France. Naturally, half of my short movie script takes place in bars and clubs... so that whole plan had to be tossed out the window.

Then I had to deal with Charlie talking about what we should be doing financially as I have explained what is going on with her just because she's someone to talk to here... naturally she's trying to give advice that won't work out which is just making me a bit frustrated... I explained my desire to drop Modern Literature to which she said not to worry about the movie script that we are writing because she'll be doing most of it anyways... etc... and to top it off... Friday night she had paid for tickets to see Le Roi Lear - Shakespeare's King Lear only in French at the local theater. I knew it was here but didn't plan on going and most certainly did not know that Charlie was going with some of our fellow classmates. Naturally, she doesn't tell me this till Friday morning - as well as the fact that the show is completely sold out. So I was a bit ticked off at the fact that she was going to see a very classic theater repertoire show, knew about it in advance, and didn't even bother mentioned or asking me if I wanted to go as well - and I'm way more a theater major than she is and probably will be!

But aside from that mess... my Greek History DS was rather horrible... I was tired from having class all morning and not looking forward to a 4 hour test it was scheduled to be. I had done the best studying I could - though I'm sure I could've done a lot more if I really wanted to! But I completely was drawing blanks after reading over the three options we had to pick from. The first one was a basic dissertation on Greek meteques and strangers during the pre 5th and 4th centuries BCE.. while the last two options were a commentary on the given texts. I hate when I have to comment on texts, especially when no topic is given to comment about - just given the text with no direction. Naturally that's how the last two options were - no direction! So after a bout an hour of wrangling my brain for any little tidbit of facts I could use in my dissertation - plus I think I kinda dazed off a couple times too! I was finally able to piece together a dissertation that I hope has enough information in it and talks about what our professor was looking for to give me a decent grade on it.

DS is Devoirs Surveilles - basically the French equivalent of a mid-term. It's normally in a different room, either a Friday afternoon or Monday morning, and there are other professors there to supervise it but not the professor himself. They can last from an hour to 4 hours and usually entail all writing. They have not been much fun so far as they are rather difficult to even think of studying for! I have another one this morning at 8:30 for my English to French translation class. Basically we'll be given a document in English and have an hour and half to translate it into French - without the aide of a translation dictionary of course! Therefore, it's almost impossible to study for this one! I just hope I do a good enough job on it!

The last week, Charlie and I didn't go to the gym at all - either we had too much work to do for classes, or we were just so worn out to go and spend two hours working out. So hopefully today after classes, we'll hit the gym again and get back to that this week. We normally go every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after our classes. We spend a half hour on the bikes, then another half hour on the ellipticals, followed by a session of lifting weights and doing sit ups - and ending with another 15-30 min on either the elliptical or bikes - it's quite a workout! The one day I went by myself and according to the machines on the equipment I burned about 650 calories in an hour! According the the scale Charlie had bought - I've lost 15 lbs since I was last weighed at the doctor's in December! I don't feel like I've lost that much weight but I can only hope it's accurate!

I really didn't do much this weekend - I didn't know what my friends were doing and I was a bit worn out from last week so i just took it easy. I slept in both days - had planned on going to the market again but ended up sleeping a little too late! The rest of the time I spend doing my laundry which took forever! The door in the basement of my part of the building has always been open before when I did my laundry - but for some reason now it's locked. So... in order to use the single washer and the single dryer in our side of the building I have to go all the way across the hall to the other building, down all 5 stories to the basement and then cross back into the basement of my building! At least I got a workout doing so!

I did find out something rather interesting about this building though. My friends and I have always wondered why the ceilings are so high and why it feels like a medical institution. Well, lo and behold - the building used to be a hospital! Now this isn't such a huge concern - however as the building is a U-shape with the main entrance at the bottom of the U... it has two wings. The are now known as Foyer International and Sainte Camille. I live in the Sainte Camille wing. However - when this building was a hospital, the Foyer's wing was the main portion of the hospital while my side of the building was used as the mental institution. This completely explains why the ceilings are so high and why it feels like it does! Which is kinda creepy to think that I'm in a room that used to house mental patients! But I guess when buildings are centuries old - and often reused time and time again - things like this happen!

Though I'm not a big fan of the building the longer I'm here. As I've explained before, I have a sink and mirror in my room, but to use the toilet, I have to go down the hall and use the W.C which is basically a tiny closet with just a toilet in it. Then, for showers, I have to go down the hall to another small - but larger than the W.C's room - where there is a single shower stall. While I've gotten used to this change in lifestyle and culture - its still a bit of a shock at times. To make things even more not so likable, the microwave that was in the basement kitchen for us all to use disappeared about two weeks ago! And to top that off - the main ceiling light in my room has been blown out for about three weeks now. I have asked the cleaning ladies what to do and from my understanding I have to change the light myself! Well... the ceiling is rather high to the point I can't even reach it if I stand on the huge table I use as my desk! So I have gotten accustomed to only having the fluorescent light above my mirror and my tiny desk lamp as my main sources of light in at nights. So, in some ways like these - I will be glad to return home and have lights I can actually change and a microwave to cook food it right at my hands, etc.

One nice thing though is the weather here. It has not felt like winter at all since I have been here. Perhaps that is because I haven't seen snow with my own eyes since I left Pennsylvania on January 3! There's something to do with the air here that won't allow it to snow - or if it does manage to do so - it doesn't stay on the ground! The closest I have seen was frost on the grass in Dublin and one morning here I had glimpsed frost on cars passing by! However, for all the snow I have not been getting here - we have had a good share of rain! Though for a good couple weeks it got rather warm and felt like April weather! It's odd because the flowers here are starting to bloom as spring rapidly approaches us! I can't wait to be able to walk around and have green trees, with flowers all over. Of which I will naturally take tons of pictures of! There are many parks here that are just flowerbeds so that will be fun to go exploring in the next few months.

It's odd to think that in a little over two months I will be on a plane back home to the states - and saying goodbye to France for probably a good few years at the least. After figuring things out, we decided that it was wiser for me to come home in May after I finish my exams. I had originaly planned to stay here till the end of June because of Rattrapages - which are kinda like make up tests. They are only needed if you don't pass the final test in the first place! But as there are three weeks between the end of exams and the week of Rattrapages (three weeks in which I originally had planned to do some traveling around Europe) but due to financial strains am no longer able to travel. Therefore, we decided it was best I study hard to pass all my classes the first time around, and come home the end of May. It will save us a month of expenses, me having idle time on my hands, and I can also start working a month earlier. Because of this, I'm really starting to treasure my time here as it's been so valuable and such an experience. Not many get to say they spent five months living in another county!

Well... I think that's been quite a lot today! Not that there was much to talk about in the first place, but I think I'm going to go get some sleep in before my test and get ready for a long day ahead of me! Till the next update! Bon soir!

Gala, Improv and Power Outages? Huh?

Meant to post this yesterday but I kinda fell asleep!

This weekend certainly was an interesting one! Charlie and Phil were off to Amsterdam so it was a weekend without doing stuff with them - however I certainly had my plans! Le FEDE which is the student organization with L'Univserite Catholique de Lille hosted a Gala party on Saturday night with many sponsers including Fashion TV. It cost 16 euros for admission but was definitely worth it as most of my friends were going. I got there, after dressing up in nice black pants, red shirt with my black sweater vest... which was a good thing because everyone was dressed up!

It was in our the RU cafeteria which normally is a rather large area with four different areas for eating in as well as an actual club room downstairs. All of this was covered in red or black fabric - from the floors to the walls - everything! They had themed rooms as the entire theme was the world. Paris was the largest room with the Moulin Rouge bar. Then the club room was London which had live bands but had the smokers too... :-(. The one cafeteria room was New York and the hallway downstairs was Milan. By the time it got going, there were people dressed up fancy everywhere sipping glasses of champagne, or wine, or beer.

Since Fashion TV helped host the Gala, they threw a fashion show which I think was televised but not sure... but I was able to get a good standing spot for that and it turned out to be rather cool as I've never been to an actual fashion show like this before! I'll hopefully upload some of the pictures to my webalbums - I can't upload all because I don't want anyone flagging the lingerai photos and getting my account canceled - but I'll just say there were some rather provocative outfits!

Everything was so posh and I was so glad we all dressed up for the night. I had a good time hanging out with friends and actually ended up randomly running into a girl who is planning to study next year at Clarion! So we spent a bit of the night talking and will of course talk more later on. After the night though, I came back and crashed as it was going on 4 am if I recall!

Sunday was a relaxing day with me sleeping in and then I spent the rest of it doing homework and working on projects for this week and doing some studying for my DS's because they started for me this week. DS's are basically midterms for the French students.

Today really threw me off though! Because this weekend all of facebook and friends and everything was talking about Daylight Savings Time - so I figured that it was worldwide and affected me too .... WRONG!

After one of my friends asked what time it was here and he said that I was now only 5 hours ahead I started to get worried! I didnt want to have my time screwed up - but none of my clocks nor my computer had changed time. So I did the next best thing - I got online and looked it up! Apparently Daylight Savings Time for me here in France is on March 30th! Even after figuring this out I still was worried because this week is an odd week for me. Normally I dont have class till 1 on mondays then I am in class until 6. Well, for the Art du Spectacle kids which I have been semi-adopted into as I'm taking half their classes... there was a special presentation of three actors from the Theatre du Nord performing improv this afternoon for us. Because of this, our two afternoon classes were then meeting this morning - and I had a presentation to do in the first one! So I was really worried that I had missed giving my presentation but thankfully I was fine!

That being said, my presentation went fairly well! The classes are Analyze Textes and Practique du Jeu which are mainly about different types of acting and styles - and this week's lesson as well as my presentation was on Bertolt Brecht. I chose him because back in Fall 2007, Clarion did Brecht's Threepenny Opera which I was in - so I knew a lot about his style of theater. I think they liked my presentation about him because I included pictures of our production showing how Brecht's ideas and style actually looks when presented live! I was also able to speak off the top of my mind about things to answer their questions. Being I'm the only international student in all the Art du Spectacle classes - and Charlie who is bilingual in French and English decided not to come to class! So being able to think off the top of my head and answer questions I hadn't thought to prepare and them to understand was a good sign that my French is getting better!

But being my classes got moved to the morning, I had to book it to my 1 pm History of France class - and the first of my DS's! I was worried because I had no idea what to expect and couldn't find some of my notes to study from ... but it was surprisingly easy! Only three questions and the first two I knew right off the bat and was able to talk about them in short essay form. The last question I wasn't sure and just came up with something, which ended up being wrong - however since our professor told us what she had been looking for to get full credit once we were all done with the DS, I realized that if I had thought a little harder I could've figured it out and gotten those 4 points. DS's are out of 20 points as are all grades here in France. However what is nice is that in order for me to get an A back home in the states, I only have to get a 16 out of 20! So the fact I completely got the 4 point question wrong isnt bad because I got the two 8 point questions almost all right!

The next thing this afternoon that was different was the improv from the Theatre du Nord. The Theatre du Nord is the main theater company in this region of France and decently popluar as well. Three of their performers came to La Catho and presented an hour of Improv for those of us in Mr. Martinache's classes (for me it's Travail du Spectateur.) Mr. Martinache works at the Theatre du Nord so that is how he can manage things like this! It was really cool to watch! although I think I only understood about 60% of it because there were times between the different skits from the previous past season's shows when all three of them were talking at once and it was hard to follow and for my mind to keep up understanding it all! There were many good funny bits mixed in with the odd, sad ones too! And the three of them - two girls and one guy, were amazing as well. There was a question and answer season afterwards which was cool to listen about them talking about different things with the Improv show and other things they do as performers.

I also talked to Mr Martinache about getting involved in doing something for a show here - and he basically told me and Charlie that we just need to get him a resume and letter of motivation type thingy and he can see what he can do - so hopefuly that will work out and I can do something with a working theater over here in France though I doubt I'd be onstage (That would be great to do though!)

Now naturally, this all seems to be like and interesting weekend so far ... but as the title so states - there's one thing still left to discuss. I was just relaxing here in my room when about 11 pm - we lost all power in my residence. Some of us werent' sure what was going on at first but we just kinda chilled out in the hall and Mark and I chatted about things (he's from Wisconsin) while people mingled in the hall playing guitars and stuff. Apparently, all of Lille - or at least the entire Vauban area which is a 6th of the city - lost complete power! After about 25 min though it thankfully came back on and since it has been fine. We've had somewhat of a storm come through today which has made the weather really odd. Sunny, cloudless skies at times then after a class it's pouring down rain, dark and windier than Wyoming! Perhaps it's the remnants of an Atlantic hurricaine or something - but it was odd to lose power. Then even more odd that the French just went on about things! They pulled out guitars, hung out in the hallways chatting and basically just waiting and relaxing till we got power back!

Well, as I have class at 8 am and it's my busiest day, I'm off to bed after I upload some pictures of the Gala!

Gala a Lille!

Update Time!

Well, I realized that it has been rather a long time since I updated this blog - oops! I finally all my pictures and blogs up from my trip. Here are the links to the albums (I ended up loosing half the pictures I took in London on Saturday but hopefully will be going back there so it's not that big of a deal!)

Saturday Feb 16 - Dublin, Ireland (Part 1)

Sunday Feb 17 - Dublin, Ireland

Monday Feb 18 - Travel to Glasgow via Belfast, Northern Ireland

Tuesday Feb 19 - Glasgow, Scotland

Wednesday Feb 20 - Glasgow & Highlands

Thursday Feb 21 - Glasgow & Travel to London

Friday Feb 22 - London

Saturday Feb 23 - London

Sunday Feb 24 - Traveling Home

That's all the albums from my trip! And a ton of pictures too!

As far as things that have been going on since I got back, I didn't have classes the first few days of that week because it was rattrapages from last semester. Basically here, if you don't get a passing final grade, you are given a second chance to make a passing grade and that's what those are. That whole week just kinda flew by then because I didn't have many classes and was still in a tourist mood - but by the weekend I was good and back in the mood for classes. So by the time monday of this week came around - it had been two weeks since most of my classes met so it was kinda odd getting back into them.

This week in my one class I had to present my first project which is worth a third of my final grade (Performance Artistic). It was a simple project - we had to create a 3 min presentation of images dealing with the word we were given in the beginning of the course. My word was bruit which is noise. So after my original idea got ruled out because I was just unable to create it visually, I came up with another idea last week and set to work on it. The concept was that the world is full of noises - cars, computers, music, crowds, ... everyday noise. All that everyday noise blends together and ends up sounding repeated - like white noise. So the first part of my clip was a bunch of video files I got offline about crowds, music, cars, traffic, etc. I sped up the clips and ran them one after the other - but I muted each clip's sound and instead played "white noise" Then I had a clip of my loud alarm clock going off with the phrase that there are better noises in the world that we forget about. Then I had a bunch of clips played in real time with the sound. These were clips of birds chirping, cats meowing, dogs barking, children playing in the park, rain, storms, and other sounds of nature that are the beautiful sounds we tend to forget about because they get lost among all the other everyday noises.

So I got up and presented my video - after Charlie presented hers. I think it went over well, the point got across. It was tough to talk about it and answer questions because in all my Art du Spectacle courses like this one I am the only international student and most of the other students don't speak English well or at all - nor do the professors! So thankfully Charlie is bilingual and was able to help out. Apparently we weren't supposed to use thigns from the internet but because I'm an international student the professor said that it was alright. Now I just have to work on my other two assignments for that class!

I've been heading to the gym rather often now - mostly with Charlie, but today I went by myself after my morning class. It wears me out but it's at least a healthy thing to be doing!

There's a huge party thing that's being hosted by the school this weekend that I'm going to go too, but aside from that my weekend is all about doing work for classes and studying because this next week I have 4 Devoirs Surveilles (DS) which are basically midterms. So I might get together with some friends and have a study group but not sure. March is a long month for me here as we don't have another break until the beginning of April and most of this time is taking DS and doing work for classes. I technically only have to pass 8 classes to transfer back for my credits back home however I've never been one to just settle for the minimum! So of my 14 classes, I still can drop a couple if I want to - or they become too much work. I just would feel bad now with being almost halfway through the semester and dropping a class so I probably won't unless it's going horrible. And even though some of the classes are tough to follow or are just plain boring - I do enjoy them or at least enjoy the people in them though that mostly applies to my 5 Arts du Spectacle courses as it's the same group of students and I'm the only international student - so in a way it's really helping me with the language and the culture.

I have some friends that share the same desire for taking the same trip over our next vacation in April which is two weeks long, so hopefully we'll be sitting down and getting that planned - hopefully it isn't too expensive for me! As the plan stands right now, we would leave here and head to Berlin, Germany for a few days. Then we would swing down through Prague in the Czech Republic for a day or so on our way to Vienna, Austria. After a day or two there we would head to Saltzburg, Austria (mainly to take the Sound of Music tour!). After that, we would head down to Venice, Italy. From there we're not sure as I ideally would want to go to Rome, Italy but one of the girls in our small group will be going to Rome the week before with her mother. So it's very rough in planning but it's most of what I was originally thinking of doing for that break so it was cool that I have friends interested in doing the same thing. Not that traveling alone is that bad - when you're alone you get to experience what you want to do without having to agree with the others in your group. But it'd be fun to travel and hang out with friends too - so hopefully we'll be figuring all that out these next few weeks.

Aside from that, there's not much else going on. As I said, this month is mostly about studying, taking tests, and doing schoolwork. But I'm sure interesting things will happen and I might take up some local sites around the Lille area on the weekends - and might plan a trip down to Paris as well with Charlie but that's all yet to be decided.

I was excited the other morning because I saw frost on cars! I'm still really missing the snow but the weather here has been rather nice - to the point that February didn't feel like February but more like April!

Well, I should go do some work and get some sleep, so till next time! Laterz!