Universities

So yeah, I know that I haven't posted in a while. It's mostly because I haven't found it really worth it that much. But do not worry, because I am posting now! Besides, this blog started out as a daily thing and it's definitely not going to stay that way, so this has turned into more of a whenever-I-feel-like-it kind of shindig. I suppose it's mainly the fact that I have 5 different social networking sites and Facebook always seems the most appropriate, seeing as it's in my bookmarks bar and won't require more than 200 characters per post, as well as the fact that I'm not willing to devote my valuable precious free time to typing, it'd probably be more something along the lines of sleeping.

Bref! I've decided to develop my own website for this stinky blog because it hasn't been fun managing two different blogs for whoever wants the french or english version of my posts. Hell, the posts that I put up usually aren't even about the same thing! So I'll develop it into a website and switch over to it. Haven't really figured out how I'm going to manage an RSS Feed and Facebook link functionality, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

So some of you might be asking, "Jack, how was France?" And to be honest, words cannot describe the amazing experience that I had there. Photos can't even describe the sheer awesomeness of my friends, their personalities, the breathtaking nature of every single monument that I've visited and the experiences that I had had there. So I'm going to answer to you, dear reader, as I have to everyone else, that it was simply amazing. It sounds boring, and you may want to ask me more, but I honestly can't fit all of it into words. I will never stop missing the amazing friends that I made there and the wonderful people and teachers that I had met. I will definitely be going back there someday and without a doubt I will try by all means necessary to make it there during this summer.

So that was my one paragraph on France. I'm sure it deserves more but I'm not going to give it more because if I did this post could be stretched around the earth several times. On to the real meat of this post, which was explained by the title: Universities! That's right. As a junior half-way through the year, I now have the right to start worrying and biting my nails over a very scary prospect: Applying to universities. On my list currently:

• UCLA
• Berkeley
• maaaybe Stanford
• Harvard
• Tufts
• Amherst
• EPFL
• Carnegie Mellon

It's quite a list. On the top of my list is EPFL, an engineering school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Not only is it in the French-speaking part of the country, but it's also halfway between Paris and Rome. Can it get any better? Yes it can. The school is positioned right across from Lake Geneva and will be just a train ticket or two away from my French besties, probably two if they've landed in England. I'm going to Boston next weekend to check out Harvard, Tufts and maybe Amherst if we have the time, considering that we only have two days to visit all three of them and I've heard that Amherst is a bit of a drive away. Also, only to twist the screws, all my EABJM buddies will be going to Boston this weekend, not the next to attend a mock-Congress at Harvard. I wouldn't have minded maybe a 4-week distancing, but one? C'mon life, that was a bit too much.

With that I resume developing my awesome new blog. I hope all of you are doing splendidly, and have an awesome day / night / dight / nay wherever you are.

So Far, So Good

Not much has been going on lately, we've all been getting used to living in Paris and a few things still need a bit of ironing out, but I think we've got most of it down. School this week was all right, other than the 45-minute commute and the scary administrators. All of the kids I've met (so far) are really nice, and I know that it's going to be pretty hard to leave them all behind in December, as awesome as my friends are back home. Each morning I wake up at 6:30, leave the house at 7:15, wait for a bus that will take me to the La Défense subway station, then take the RER A to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, then take Metro line 6 to Dupleix, then walk for about 5 minutes, and then I'm at school. It's quite a trek, and I always end up surprising my friends when they ask me which Arrondissement (basically sector) of Paris I live in, and I tell them that I actually live in the suburbs. That said, could you blame us? There's no way we'd cram all 6 of ourselves into a postage-stamp Parisian apartment.
Anyways, since Monday (30 Aug) we've been entertaining our grandparents, who were flying in for a conference in Berlin but decided to stop by while they were on the way. We checked out the Centre Pompidou, ate at some really nice restaurants, and rode the Bateau-Mouche (which taught me that if I am to ever do that again at night I am to bring an extra layer). It was nice to actually go out and explore after having lived there already for 3 weeks. In driving to all of these places we also went through the Étoile exchange a couple of times, which is (and I may have posted this already, excuse my amnesia) a giant roundabout with at least 12 spokes, 6-8 lanes wide, no lane lines, and a speed limit of at least 40 mi/h (that's 65 km/h for the metrically inclined). I'll post both a video of the Centre Pompidou and us going down the Étoile in this post.

Driving on the Étoile from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

Fontaine Stravinsky in front of the Centre Pompidou from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

So that's been the majority of what's happened in the past week or so, we got our Navigo passes in the mail and have felt so official waving our wallets over the scanners to get into the metro. Before that, it involved using tickets, and it wasn't the same because it didn't make that awesome dinging sound. Yes, that's right. I'm weird. Those who are now just starting to check out this blog probably haven't noticed yet if they haven't been reading my posts, so this is just me warning you.
Hope everyone's enjoying themselves! Use my QR code to contact me if you're interested.

Sorry, Guys.

I realize that I haven't posted in a while. Yes, that's right. I'm turning into the least interesting person in the world. Actually, what's happened is that I'm becoming progressively more lazy as the school year draws near, something that I'm sure won't play out well for me once I start having classes in French.

We spent all of twelve hours in Geneva (by the way, the couple in the room next to us was having very loud sex... so much for a good impression of Switzerland), and then it was off to Paris. We arrived about two weeks ago, and since then we've been getting to know the neighborhood. We live about 3 minutes away (by bus) from La Défense, which is essentially an enormous square filled with shops and restaurants. It also happens to be the Terminus of Line 1 and a stop on the RER, so it's a straight shot right into the middle of Paris if we ever get bored (we technically don't live in Paris but rather Courbevoie, which is essentially right on the outer border). We've been poking around the city, mostly getting used to our surroundings (we still have a hard time believing that we're actually living in Europe) and figuring out how to get where using the Metro.

Recently we went up the Eiffel Tower, although I forgot to bring my memory card that day so I was only able to take 3 pictures saved to the internal memory, and I can't find the proprietary cable to hook up to my camera to salvage them. Honestly. Why can't they just stick to Mini-USB? I left my house and I still have 2 or 3 of them floating around, for Christ's sake! I did take a video on my Nano, though, and I happen to have that proprietary connector, mostly because it's everywhere. So yeah. Here it is:

Climbing up the Eiffel Tower from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

I mentioned some pictures in my video and if I'm not mistaken, not everyone on the interblags is friends with me on Facebook so I'll post them for all of you. They don't do it justice at all, it was a really cloudy day and my camera couldn't cover the entire building, so the few shots that I actually have of the entire Arch make it look kind of tiny. The panoramic photo I tried to make didn't turn out well at all, so we'll have to let that one slide. Here's my best photo:

So that's that. I'll embed the Vimeo video when I get the chance, for now I'm waiting in line until my video gets processed.

On the Road

So at the time of this writing, I'm sitting in the car on the way to Rome. We woke up at about 3am to avoid the traffic, and so far the drive has been somewhat, well, boring, although I guess I should have expected that. Since half of the drive so far has been me sleeping, I can't tell very many stories about what happened on the way, but I did have the very strange experience of falling asleep in France and waking up in Italy: suddenly, upon waking up, all of the signs looked different and the spelling took on the standard "bouncy words" that comprised Italian. It didn't really fully register until we went to the gas station, and we got to actually hear the language. Unfortunately, I came to a realization that I was now in a foreign country where I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. While this was true, I absolutely loved listening to it. For some reason, the Italians speak very quickly and then emphasize the last two or three syllables of their sentence, which I always found myself anxiously anticipating whenever I heard one of them talk.

The French side of the journey was rather, well, French. For some reason, we came up to a speed camera only 2 km/h over the speed limit (that's slightly over 1 mi/h) and we were greeted by a blinding flash. Keep in mind that this was at 3:45 in the morning, so a flash that bright leaves us somewhat visually impaired for the next 15 seconds or so: I'm amazed that there hasn't been a lawsuit over something like that. Of course, we felt pretty crummy for the next 10 minutes or so, but I honestly think that being stopped by a Gendarme would have been even worse (the French have 3 different police forces: the municipal police, the national police, and the Gendarmerie, which supervises the highways and is militarized so that they'll wake up any time due to the fact that they're sworn to service). Honestly, I wasn't driving, but I'm pretty sure that the adrenaline levels of getting caught by a speed camera is far inferior compared to being pulled over by a policeman. There were literally 5 speed cameras during the next kilometer, which was quite annoying thanks to the built-in speed camera alarm on our GPS that essentially yells at you and prevents any sleep whatsoever.

At the moment, we've knocked 7 hours and 20 minutes off of our journey, and we still have another 2h40 to go. At least the countryside (and the language) is beautiful. I'll post another one of these once we make it to the hotel and collapse from sheer exhaustion. Unless, of course, my crazy mother decides to go somewhere. In that case, I ask you all to pray for me.

Update

So we're leaving for Rome tomorrow, and before I leave I just want to take in this awesome town one last time before I leave. Ah, Hyères. Quite honestly, I didn't really like this place when we first came, but it definitely grew on me. One of the parts that I absolutely love about some of these cities is that they still have their older beginnings, so we can literally walk through the town as one would centuries ago. Being an American doesn't really equal history considering, as of this writing, we're only about 234 years old, so what seems everyday for these people is just so amazing for me. By the way, in my stupid American unable-to-perform-simple-math self, I got the chills when I realized that we really are only 234 years old. I thought we were at least 300. Silly me.

Another cool thing that I really liked about the town was the French camp. While everyone there spoke English and for the most part didn't help out my French, it was fun interacting with the various people from different countries, getting a glimpse into each one as I met new people. The majority of people there were Russian, German and Spanish, which made me pretty distressed because the only language that I've studied in detail at all is French, so I couldn't understand Russian because it's a Slavic language and I couldn't understand German because, well, spoken German sounds somewhat different than how I'd read it, apart from the fact that they all sound chronically angry. Spanish was somewhat easier for me to understand, and when there actually were Italians there I could comprehend a great bit of what they were saying thanks to my previous experiences of hearing Italian followed by French followed by Italian again with the Mazzeis. If any of you are interested, the camp is called "Fondation La Navarre." Just don't visit during the school year because it's a place for trouble children.

One of the kids at the camp, Leo, is going to be in Paris for the following year, so we're planning on meeting up. Unfortunately, I think he'll be the only friend I made there that I'm going to see again. Although that might be a good thing depending on if I now want to learn French or German. Considering my three years of studying French, I think I'll decide to perfect it. German can wait along with Italian, although I might have to learn a few phrases in Italian if I wish to survive in the cold, Mafia-filled world of Calabria.

Speaking of the Mafia, my grandmother and aunt will be going to Italy with us, and when they expressed their desire to go out, all alone, in southern Italy without having learned the slightest bit of a Romance language or the ways of European (especially Italian) driving, my mother went absolutely berserk. Currently I'm supposed to accompany them, but I honestly have no idea how I'm supposed to converse with locals in Italian when I speak French, nor have I any idea how to help them drive when it's illegal for me to do so in Europe because I'm under 18. That, and the stickshift is an entirely new concept to me. I guess I'll have a lot of time to think about it, though: we'll head off for Rome on Saturday (July 31st) at 3am to avoid the omigod-its-really-hot-im-going-to-the-beach traffic, and after 2 weeks I'll have to make a decision whether I want to go with them or not. In the meantime, I'm just trying to look forward to tomorrow, because looking two jam-packed weeks ahead just isn't working for me.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, not falling asleep after a full day is fairly difficult.

Recap

This is a recap starting from the 14th of July, which happens to be the French Independence day. I apologize for not posting at all during this rather long period of time, we've been rather distracted what with things being more French than we expected. Plus, finding internet when you have none is fairly difficult. All right. Here goes.

The 13th was our first day at French school, a place called "Fondation La Navarre", which, or so I've heard, is a place where all of the trouble children go during the school year. Which makes sense, considering there's a huge gate up front, all of the glass has cracks in it, and every single window has bars to prevent the children from escaping. A veritable prison. I'm in the highest level class with about seven other people, and it's hilarious because all of the teachers just love making announcements to our section because they don't have to speak slowly and use hand gestures. Just another ego boost to make me all the more hated once I get back. Or maybe before. After we went to school, we began preparing to meet the Mazzeis, a family that my mother has been following considering that we share some ancestry with them: If we can prove that we share ancestry with an Italian family, and that that family emigrated to the United States and had a child before they renounced their Italian citizenship, then we ourselves can become Italian citizens and therefore European Union citizens, which means that we can actually work in Europe. It's a rather long story.
Anyways, after we left, our GPS ended up taking us to the wrong place (oops!) and we ended up being 20 minutes late getting there. Great first impression, but I've heard that the Italians can be up to 1 hour late and not notice at all, which makes me feel somewhat better. We met them in Bandol, which is really a wonderful little town right on a huge harbor. After meeting them out in front of the town casino, we went to a little cafe and talked a bit. After that, we went to Lenou (the mother)'s brother's shoe shop, which was, funnily enough, called "Scalise", which is another Italian family name of ours. After that, we headed back to our minivan, which they found absolutely enormous, and went up to their house, where they literally stuffed us to the gills with a 3-course lunch: Paté, ham, sausage, and bread followed by a pasta dish and some salad (with olive oil as dressing) followed by pastries, followed by fruit. My mother explained to us that the more food they offered us, the more they liked us, and that we should try not to offend them, but I literally have never eaten so much in my life. And that was only lunch. After walking down to the harbor, they bought us ice cream, and after returning to the house they decided to serve us dinner, only it was the very same food that we had said we weren't able to eat 3 hours ago. So we stuffed ourselves again. With the same food. Later on, my mom admitted that at the time the only thing she was thinking about was how much she'd have to work out to lose all of the weight that she had likely gained from that day.
So, after nearly exploding, we went back down to the harbor to watch the fireworks (it was Bastille Day, and I was anticipating making up for what I had missed the 4th, considering the fact that all we really did was sat and stared at each other while a huge party was going on back home. And I was somewhat disappointed, but only because I was expecting American-size fireworks from a tiny beach town. They had anchored a battleship in the middle of the bay, and I was amazed at how many bottle rockets they could fit on the thing (although it is a battleship, I suppose). The show lasted about 20 minutes, and then everyone and their mother began running to the car to beat the end-of-fireworks rush. So we all returned to the house for a glass of water, and then we managed to find a clever way of avoiding the traffic that knocked at least 45 minutes off of our journey back, which was already a good half-hour. Plus, it was about 12:30 AM, meaning that we were going to be zombies when we went to French school the next day.
The next day was fairly uneventful: we pretty much went to school, got back, took a little nap, and then the Mazzeis arrived. We talked, ate (less) food, and skyped with my father, who was in Germany at the time. The funny thing was, my dad hasn't seen us in at least 1-2 weeks, and after speaking Spanish and German to everyone for that amount of time, he was absolutely craving an English conversation. Only thing was, the Mazzeis were over. So he was greeted with "Ciao Henry! On va parler en Français maintenant, ou si vous voulez on peut discuter en Italien!" For those of you non-French speakers, that was basically the Mazzeis telling my dad to speak in French to them, or Italian if he wanted. It was all he could do to not explode. Lucky for him, though, that he was arriving in Marseilles the following evening and would stay at our apartment for the next two days. The only two problems were that Marseilles was about 90 minutes away from our apartment and about 50 minutes away from the Mazzeis, and that their prioritization was more oriented to finishing the meal that they had made for us. So he ended up waiting for about 15 minutes, just about ready to start looking for hotels (the shuttles stopped running at midnight). Once we picked him up, the back of the car immediately went to sleep while my dad told me and my mom about his adventures in Spain, Holland, and Germany.
Today we went into town and watched Toy Story 3, and even though it was in French I found it absolutely wonderful; I really love sequels that don't make me cry. After that, we went and saw the old town, which forced me to imagine my mother trying to navigate the 2-meter wide streets in her minivan (we came very very near to that particular situation, she had to pull back her mirrors just so she could fit in the street). Once we got up to the top, though, it really was amazing: you could literally see the entire village (old and new) sprawled out in front of you, with the structures terminating where the sea began. I love views, but unfortunately my camera's been acting up lately, so I'm afraid I can't share it with you. I hope my readers (if I have any) are actually appreciating the fact that I added pictures to this post, though.

Southern France is Rather Boring

Hello blog! Nothing much has gone on since we've arrived in Montpellier. The drive here was pretty hectic, though. Between my mom's re-learning stickshift, my difficulty understanding how to operate the French GPS, and the frequent speed-cameras situated on the highway, we didn't have much time to relax. Plus, the night before, we all slept horribly. Once we got there, we pretty much chilled (or tried to chill) in our new apartment, where there are only 3 beds and 2 bedrooms. Plus, there's no AC: the only way to keep the place cool is to open up the windows, which means waking up to these really, really weird noises that I think are some birds fighting outside. I think they could be seagulls, but I'm not entirely sure. I guess the pluses are that we have a space that's bigger than our closet of a hotel room in Paris, and that the beach is just a five-to-ten minute walk away. I've spoken to a few people here, and they're all really surprised that I'm American, because apparently, Americans are too lazy to actually learn to speak the language here: the stereotype does exist after all! So yeah, that's pretty much all that's happened since my last post. Then again, I have no idea where my last post left off: there's no WiFi here, and I'm composing this post in OpenOffice until we go park in front of the visitor's center and hijack theirs, because my mom has no shame whatsoever. Next post should come by whenever my mom feels the need for internet again. Until then!

Recap Part 2

So after Nice got boring, we pretty much just hung out a lot. The last day with my family was interesting to say the least, it was the France vs. Mexico game and everyone was really interested. Or so I thought.

The football game was simply a façade to allow the kids to drink to their hearts content, something that left me rather (._.), for lack of a better word. I was watching them as they finished their first glass of beer, upon which they moved onto a bottle of rosé, and then another beer after that. Looking through their photo album of that night, it's fairly clear when they started to get drunk because they all began taking pictures of random road signs, climbing up these respective road signs, and singing/screaming at the top of their lungs. This was all while going through several cartons of cigarettes, of course. Needless to say, it was a little surprising, but once again, it's a different country, and they were really having a good time. That said, I didn't join in for fear of expulsion, so I was branded the evening party pooper. Once weighing this against being expelled, however, I thought my integrity was fairly intact.

So after that crazy night, we all slept over at the same house, and waking up a bunch of hungover teenagers was, not surprisingly, fairly difficult, especially at 8h00. We drove to the train station, said our fairwells, and I got back on the TGV to go to Paris. Which was, ironically, the longest train ride I have ever taken: While we were out having fun, a storm had rolled in over Marseilles, which is directly between Paris and Cannes. A flood destroyed a great portion of the region, and while they were able to clear off one of the train tracks in time for our departure, there were terrific electrical problems during our voyage. We started off at a decent clip, but once we hit the flooded region, we inched along at what seemed like 5-10 mph. We eventually came to a halt, upon which the conductor told us that there was a problem with the electricity that would necessitate disconnecting power from the railways. For the next hour, the lights in the train were limited to the aisles and one ceiling light out of 5, and no air conditioning of any kind. By the time the grid was fixed, we were all very eager to get underway, and cheered when we saw the countryside begin to pass before our eyes again.

After a bit, we hit a stretch of TGV track that let us cruise along at the usual 200 mph; TGV track is different from normal track because it's smoother, allowing the train to travel at a faster clip. So there we were, moving right along, until we discovered that the train in front of us had hit a goat, and that the SNCF crew had to clean up the resulting mess. So the train stopped once again, and we sat, waiting, for several hours more. At last, the train advanced!... for 50 yards, then stopped again. The conductor went on the loudspeaker to tell us all that, in hitting the goat, the train in front of us had thrown a bolt and would need to be repaired on the tracks. More waiting. Thoughts of walking back. After all, we were only an hour away from Paris. It'd have to be faster than repairing a 300-yard-long high-speed train, right? We never found out, because we eventually got moving again and arrived in Paris 4 hours late. We had sat on that train for 10 hours, which is 3 hours longer than the time it took for me to fly from New York to Paris. We almost missed our reservation for the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, but thankfully we were able to get there only 10 minutes late. We would have gone to the Musée d'Orsay, but the 3 hours it would have taken were consumed by the obnoxious train delay. So we settled with dinner on the Eiffel Tower, poor us, and got back to our hotel at about 1am.

The next day, I got myself ready by about 7:30, which was, apparently, 30 minutes before a receptionist would show up at my parent's hotel. While I was a bit irritated for waking up earlier than I had to, Mr. Barrs was absolutely panicked, because this meant that he'd have to find a way to get me to my parent's hotel before he got to the airport, which would have had to have been at 8h45. Thankfully, we figured out that my dad was on his way from the hotel, and that he'd be arriving at around 9h00. So I went back to the hotel with my dad, and I spent my first day in Paris without a friend, which really wasn't fun at all, because all my family wanted to do was sleep, and I kept having fleeting thoughts of re-finding Mr. Barrs and my school group at the hotel, only to realize that they were on a plane headed for Chicago. So I've pretty much been relaxing since then. Pretty much. One of my Saint Louis friends is on a tour through Europe, so the 20th and 21st we've been hanging out. After she left, we checked out the Fête de la Musique (Music Festival) of Paris, in which anyone gets out on any street corner and plays an instrument, no matter how good or bad they are. I've found that this can be both good and bad. We went with some friends of friends, the Bottes, and they were really friendly. I hope that we'll be able to meet up again when we return to Paris, although it'll probably be a bit busier considering it's the school year and all. We'll see.

So that's my entire recap! Well, I've abridged it a bit, but for brevity's sake I figured it'd be better that way. We're headed off to Montpellier tomorrow, we're getting a taxi to take us out to the dealership where we'll be picking up the car that our mom bought for our stay. I still really wish that we could live here. I just love the subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between American and French culture. Maybe I'll get to live here when I'm older. Who knows.

Recap

So I realize that it's been a fair while since I last posted, and I just wanted to apologize profusely, both to whoever's reading this and myself, because I realize that I really need something to remember this experience and I'm not doing anyone any favors by putting this off. A lot of stuff has gone on since, and I really hope that I can remember enough, although I'm sure that I've forgotten plenty. I'll start off at the beginning and work my way back.

So last time I posted, it had been the first few days that I had gotten back. Now, my homestay is over and I'm in a one-star hotel that happens to be a block away from Notre-Dame. Which isn't all that bad, it's just ridiculously cramped. We'll be leaving the hotel for Montpellier on Wednesday, but I really wish that we could stay in Paris permanently. I like the beach and all, but I really love this city, and I can't wait for the school year to start so we can make our way back. But I digress. The day after I put up my last post, I went to my neighbor's school, because Nicolas had to study, so I didn't see much of his friends after that, except for Marion who was at his house once after that. So we went to her school, and we were about 30 minutes early. Everyone had stationed themselves facing the school across an intersection, smoking enough to replace at least three bonfires. It was charming. And also rather smelly. Noticing my extreme discomfort/asphyxiation (ironic that I'm typing this while listening to a song that's repeating "I can breathe again", it's French so I don't know the title. Whatever.), everyone proceeded to ask me if people smoked in America. I told them that young kids never smoked in public like this, and that it's very rare for people to smoke, and when they offered me a cigarette and I told them that I didn't smoke, they didn't believe me at all. One thing that I always have to tell myself here is that it's a different country. Just keep telling myself that, up until the point where they all tell me that ritual sacrificing of Americans is quite common, and that they'd need me to lay down on this bier for a brief moment.

So after the first day, which was somewhat uneventful and incredibly boring, we basically just toured around town, mainly to Nice. One day we went down to the Nice air show, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Nice's joining France, and it was really amazing. The only problem that I had was the fact that the announcer liked the sound of his voice a bit too much, and kept talking for at least an hour and a half after the show had actually finished. People were getting pretty angry at him, but he didn't seem to get the point. Anyways, Nice is absolutely beautiful. Old Nice is incredibly colorful, filled with lots of fruit, olive oil, and gelato stands, has a few beautiful cathedrals scattered here and there, and has an amazing view of a turquoise beach. A perfect place to live if you have a ridiculous amount of money, which I happen to not have. After going to Nice a lot, the weather got kind of crappy, so we stayed away from there given that it was pointless to enjoy the beach in stormy weather.

I have to wrap it up now, but I'll be adding more stuff tomorrow! It's almost midnight, so I need to get myself into bed. I'll add a part two later on. I realize that I can edit my posts, but for some reason I just prefer adding it in parts. Adds to the suspense, no? Because I'm sure the entire internet is reading my blog right now, anxious to hear what happens next. See you all tomorrow!

Homestay

So after a really long train ride with a bunch of screaming Americans, I got off the train. The train ride itself was pretty cool, it was like being in an airplane that was continuously taking off. Me and Gowri went to the bar upstairs and ate lunch, watching the entire French countryside pass before us. It was absolutely stunning. As if that weren't good enough, after we got off the train, I met my family, who lived in front of an amazing view of the "countryside"; apparently, it's not the countryside here. If this isn't the countryside, then I really want to see the countryside.

So after I met them, Nicolas decided to take me back home with his dad. He still has a learner's permit; in France you get it at 17. I felt kind of bad for him, they were all talking about how everyone wanted to be in the US so that they could get their licenses early. I told them that the food, fashion, and pretty much everything else was crap compared to here, and that if they went to the US, they'd have to wait until they were 21 to drink or 18 to smoke. Speaking of which, when I went to his school, everyone was smoking out front, and when I arrived at his house his sister was drinking a rather large glass of wine. Definitely different, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'm amazed that they let people make decisions such as whether they should be addicted to certain things before they do something as simple as driving, but I guess it's better to be addicted than dead. Whatever. I'm just being observant.

So I got to their house, pretty much just in time to unpack and eat dinner, I met his parents, who were very nice. There isn't much to do here when there isn't internet, though, although they have a gorgeous view outside their back windows. We talked with his neighbors, apparently one of the people from our group lives right next door, so we're pretty much all we have right now. Or at least, she's all I have, considering that I don't have a cell phone out here and my internet is restricted as per Nicolas' discretion. That being said, they're very nice people and I doubt that I'll have any problems, other than the obvious language barrier.

So, after I went to sleep, woke up, and got dressed the next day, we went to his high school to study for his BAC. It was fairly boring, but his friends were incredibly nice. I had no idea that cards were so popular here, but they really are, and I spent a fair amount of time playing cards with his friends. After about an hour of "President" (card game) at his high school, we played pictionary (in French) for about an hour, then went to his physics class, where I proceeded to be bored out of my mind until the teacher inadvertently spelled out "Fap" in a mathematical equation and I tried my hardest to keep myself from laughing. As soon as I told Nicolas what was wrong, he became extremely interested and wrote it down in his notebook with a star next to it. Look at me, teaching the French the intricacies of the English language. I ought to be ashamed, but it was pretty funny.

Then, after that, we ate lunch, which, for a public school cafeteria, was pretty good; I'd say it was better than some of the restaurants I've dined at. At that time, I learned that the letter I wrote to my family was filled with double-entedres, and that he thought it was so funny that he showed it to all of his neighbors. That was a little embarassing, but I was glad to have made him laugh so much with my terrible French. After all of that, we went to his friends house, a girl whose name I have completely forgotten. I think it's Marion, I'm just trying not to name her after some marinade or something. If I get it wrong, she'll have to sue me. It's my first week speaking legitimate French. So we went to her house, went swimming, where her and her boyfriend decided to start making out in the middle of the pool while me and Nicolas just sort of stared awkwardly at each other, which was great, and then we went back inside to play more "President."

Speaking of President, I forgot to spell out the rules. It's sort of like crazy eights mixed with BS; you put down cards in ascending order (you follow the standard order, except 2 is the best), whoever wins the hand serves next and can put down however many of a certain card they want (but they have to start out with small ones, so, for example, I would put down 3 3's, and everyone else would have to put down 3 of something as well. If not, then I win the hand, and I get to serve next.) Whoever finishes first is the President, second is the Vice-President, and then the last and second to last are Asshole and Vice-Asshole, respectively. I like how I understood that word. I felt a little guilty, but it actually turned out to be useful.

Anyways, after that, we went back to Nicolas' house, where we hung out with his neighbor, her respective buddy (from my group), and Nicolas, playing soccer, ping-pong, and billiards. Which was pretty cool. Then we ate dinner, which was also really good, and I'm going to go to the neighbor's school tomorrow because Nicolas has to study for the BAC, and I really don't want to. So right now he's sitting behind me on his bed, playing Guitar Hero, and I'm trying to use complicated words to keep him from understanding. But I'm probably being kind of mean, and he's a senior, so he can probably understand a great deal of what I'm saying. Nicolas, if you read this, bravo! You're ready to take your English exam, and I have to pack up and run away before you kill me. Bye!

The Champs-Elysees

Today was so much fun, and so incredibly exhausting. We went to the catacombs (this computer won't let me upload photos because I can't connect my camera, I'll post them later) where there were literally walls made of bones. In the 19th century, there was a huge epidemic, and after the mass graves filled up, the people decided to fill up one of the excavated quarries below the city with the bodies. So there were layers upon layers of bone, and sign after sign that said things that translated to stuff like "at death, one allows everything". Really cool. Also, to add to the effect, there's a sign above the entrance to the ossuary that translated to "Stop! This is the house of the dead!" (It wasn't added for effect by the museum, either, the entrance was carved into the wall and had been there since its construction). After that, we went to a pizzeria for lunch, where the waiter nearly gave up because of the twenty loud Americans all shouting at him at once. But I digress. And insult myself. Moving on.

After all of this, we went on a scavenger hunt around the city to look for various things and take various pictures. The first one to came back won, and we made it back in time. Unfortunately, it also meant sprinting the entire way, and when we arrived, we realized that no one else had done the same, and that we could have relaxed and actually enjoyed ourselves. But at least we get a prize. Plus, we got to walk the Champs-Elysees all alone, which made me feel pretty damn cool. You know, just walking down to the Champs-Elysees with my friends. We also spotted out several bike rental stations (something totally foreign to me) and checked out the tiny cars. Anyways, I really felt proud because, when I wasn't with my friends, I could totally pass as a frenchman, and when I spoke French to them, they spoke it right back. When I was with my friends, though, they just spoke straight English, mostly because their cameras and obnoxious handbags screamed tourist. All in all, it was a great day, and even though this makes for a really short post, I'm too exhausted to write right now. I'll see if I can follow up tomorrow.

The Dawning of a New Era

So yesterday was the last day of school for me, or at least, the last day of school for me as a sophomore (Despite fleeting thoughts, I've resolved to not be a truant), and its closing really didn't make me feel any different. There was this odd thing that happened to me starting freshman year, where when school ends, the end of the year just doesn't have a tangible feeling of finality, unlike my experiences in middle school. I'm not saying it feels different because I'm an old fart, but it does kind of bug me, because at the end of the year, after studying my brains out, I feel like I have no other purpose in life but to study, and they dump me out to do nothing at all!

While I certainly don't want to go back to school because of that, I'm definitely going to start studying things that I actually want to know, like Perl. Perl has been really cool for me, I've only learned bits and pieces of it, but so far it's looking fantastic. Before Perl, the only language that I could really mess around with was PHP, and PHP for me was somewhat limited in that I could only really use it to develop web pages, although I've heard of people using it for other purposes. So Perl's my current obsession in the computer world, along with getting my bloody Eee PC to work again. I need to get it to work if I'm going to blog about my time in France; that thing is so tiny it's the perfect computer to sneak into a suitcase.

Last night, me and my friend went to see the Repo Genetic Opera, which I must say was pretty darn cool. It was showing at the Tivoli theatre at midnight, and the only reason I went was because my friend had been invited by someone else and she needed an escort. I felt special. Anyways, we went up to the box office, got our tickets, and walked in. The film didn't start for an agonizing amount of time, I'm pretty sure the film operator was either high or half-asleep, because it took forever to start and the last 10 minutes of the film couldn't be watched because he broke the projector. Despite this setback, we enjoyed it thoroughly. The film was shadowed by a bunch of actors, who performed onstage while the movie went on behind them.

The actors had encouraged us to shout at them, shout at the film, and pretty much do whatever the hell we wanted save burn down the place. So we did. Or at least, most of us did. One time, when a scene opened up with one of the characters, Shilo, lying in a pool of blood, this random guy in the audience shouted "NEED A TAMPON?" So yeah. That was pretty much my night. Speaking of blood, the whole thing involved gallons of it, in addition to gore, violence, copious cursing, nudity, sex... It was only afterwards that we discovered that the film was rated R, which led us to wonder how the hell we got in. We got out at about 2 am, and I drove home as discreetly as I possibly could, because I realized about halfway through the movie that there's a 12am-5am curfew for young drivers such as myself. So I dropped my friend off, walked back to my car, and I notice that a police car was cruising down the street, high-beams on, patrolling the neighborhood. Thankfully, he didn't stop me, and while I have no idea why, I was incredibly thankful. My mother probably wouldn't have been too happy getting woken up and dragged out of bed to talk to a policeman about me, especially when she had been suspicious about the whole outing from the beginning.

That movie was so amazing, though, that I bought the soundtrack. I rarely buy soundtracks for movies; the only soundtrack I think I've ever bought was James Bond, which was necessary because I was bored and running around the house pretending I had a gun necessitated some theme music. So that was my night, and it sure was a great reward after sitting around taping pieces of cardboard together for 5 days. And now, it'll be back to packing for France. I still have an entire room to clear out.

Awesome Mobile Lab Concept

So I was hanging ten on the waves of the interwebs, when I stumbled across this article, which talked about building a mobile lab from an old cargo trailer:
After sitting in a puddle of drool for several minutes, I began to think of the lab that I'd design for myself. Sure, it's a massive undertaking, and it'd be extremely expensive, but it'd be pretty darn cool. Since I'm going off to France in 10 days, this is probably going to be one of those backburner thoughts that probably won't ever be realized. But since I love thinking about stuff like this, I'm probably going to be designing this for the next few months.

This guy equipped this cargo trailer with a CNC Router, a circular saw, sander, soldering iron, and so much more! He also included a battery bank, which is charged by a solar panel on the top, and by a Honda generator which he fires up when there isn't enough power. It's also got locking drawers, bolted-down furniture, a dedicated Mac, and Ham Radio equipment. I think I've found a new home. But before I decide to live in a trailer down by the river, I think it'd be best to actually know how to use these tools. No sense in getting a trailer filled with a bunch of stuff that I don't know what to do with.

On a different note, mini-term's proven to really not be fun at all. I think I'm going to try to change groups: I'll try to convince them to switch me to "Bike St. Louis," on the excuse that I want to see St. Louis in all its grandeur before I go off to France for several months. Besides, I'm on the cycling team, so it'll probably be a walk in the park. Hope I didn't just jinx it. *Knock on wood!*

French Expedition

So, since I stupidly left my computer at home, I've decided to come in and type on a computer in a physics lab, because I have nothing better to do. Having just finished my French exam, I can safely say that that was the easiest final exam I have ever taken. Foreign language exams are allotted 1.5 hours as opposed to the normal 2, and even though that's less time than the core classes, it still took me about 30 minutes. 30 minutes! Which is a perfect transition into talking about my trip to France.

Just this morning, my dad got on a flight to Madrid, Spain, in his quest for knowledge: Since having 5 degrees somehow isn't enough for him, he's decided to get his law degree. One of the things he wants to learn most is international law, naturally, he used this as an excuse to take us all to Europe. He's going to be in Madrid for about two weeks, then he's going to Germany, and by then we'll all be in France, waiting for him. He'll meet us there, and we'll live in Paris from June to some time in January. I'm pretty excited; I've wanted to go to France for some time, and this is the perfect opportunity to get to speaking French fluently.

So it's off to an entirely different country, to an entirely different language, to an entirely different school: I'm going to a school called EABJM, located in Paris, and about a 15 minute's walk from the Eiffel Tower. Of course, the Eiffel Tower will probably get a little old, but it'll definitely be pretty cool to check out for the first month or so. In the meantime, however, I have to think about school. I still have a week left, and I'm not exactly enthralled. Exams are done, so I'm really starting to think about skipping. We'll see how exciting mini-term is, though. Who knows, reading 1000-year-old books might just be entertaining.