sick

sick sick sick

so sick

bleh

 can't eat

moms pissed

 missed a whole week of school +

brother and german girlfriend come in a couple of days

 i have so much school work to make up

help!

Seattle Part Three

ok.. so i swear this is the last post about seattle 

really 

i woke up around 2 pm, kevin was still asleep. i was still wearing my dress and ripped it off. stared at the ceiling for a while. stole a pair of his boxers out the drawer and a wife beater off a pile of clothes on his floor.

veronica was the only other awake person in the kitchen. there was nothing to eat. she woke up cam, i woke up kev and the other roommate callum. veronica made coffee and we turned on tv. in like flint was on. sequel to our man flint, i love that movie

zoe and ray wake up. we all pile in the cars and drive to ihop, this was around 4:30

we came back at 5:30 to get changed to go see the band i was promised 

it was at this tiny bar that was totally packed and sweaty but the band was pretty good and i bought one of their CDs 

next stop: beach house again

belgium boy, ok so his name is actually Jean-Bruce, but everyone calls him JB

he was ichatting his sister Laure and smoking a gitane. wtf, i didn't know you could get gitanes in america.. can you? after he was done i asked to borrow his laptop which is when i wrote my last post

smoking kills? im shocked

anyway, very popular in la france

went swimming a little bit, smoked a little bit, talked a lot 

im pretty excited i made a bunch of new friends and jb.. more excuses to come back to america :) 

callum was kind of amazing, he spoke russian (and spanish but not as good) and was telling me all about his gap year in yekaterinburg,russia. i could tell it was a really life changing thing for him. he was talking about interning with the foreign service, thats really funny cause i have friend who works at an embassy. i think he should go for it, hes got full support from me

around three we all came down from that party high and went home.

me, veronica & cam got up at twelve and drove back to the motherland

well half mother land for me..consult here

that was yesterday

today was my first day of school

uneventful..it sucked

though my world history class was ok

Seattle Continued

continued (obviously) from last post 

i was so lucky to be able to go, this whole trip could be considered very questionable/sketchy considering those are the kinds of people zoe hangs out with

fortunately for me my mom thinks she is the sweetest thing and loves her

so anyways we arrived at the apartment around 2:30 and just hung out.. the 4 guys who could most accurately be described as hipster

and me & veronica

the pabst blue ribbons were passed around and the gents engaged in some sort of conversation about hot chicks like charlotte casiraghi and politically abstract ideas like marxism . veronica dragged me off to the kitchen where she raided the pantry and we made pasta for everyone. around six zoe shows up with about three more guys and another girl i met a few times named sandy and by 7 all eleven of us piled into two old jeeps and a nissan xterra.

someone forgot to tell me to pack a swimsuit...

we drove to a beach around northern seattle where there were at least 10 other people five of whom where au natural splashing around in the water that was freezing

guess i didn't need a swimsuit after all

there was a bonfire and my favorite part, a guy from belgium! he was spending his junior year of undergrad at seattle university and was friends with one of rays (zoes bf) roommates kevin. i was so excited haha we kind of isolated ourselves by hanging out in the kitchen of the beach house & only speaking rapid french. he was so pleased to speak with someone who could actually speak french and i was pretty glad to talk to someone in french other than my mother. by around three a.m. i was totally fatiguée so belgium boy and i grabbed two huge blankets and three little pillows from one of the two bedrooms, threw them on the beach and slept for two hours. it was like we were still part of the party while we slept though because everyone was out there around the fire. four hours later zoe woke me and against my better judgement got in a car  with 4 other half drunk/stoned people.

thankfully we made it home safetly. veronica & cam crashed on the living room floor together, the 3 guys and sandy stayed back at the beach house and slept there, ray & zoe peeled of to rays room and i informed kevin (belgium boys friend) that i was sleeping with him that night, or should i say morning. all was well and kev didn't try to pull any moves but instead conked out as soon as his head hit the pillow

dear me, i fear i will surely be sent to hell

Lets go to Seattle

im so fucked when school starts thursday

let me explain

monday morning around 3am  (i was still awake) i get a phone call from a good friend of mine in seattle she says 'hey you need to come down, catch a ride with my friend cam it'll be fun.. a lot of really sick local bands are playing' also she mentioned that it was the last chance for us to party it up because she was moving to the east coast to go to middlebury college which is like a pretty small liberal arts school in vermont (shes a year older than me)

im kinda bummed now *frowny face* she was one of my best & craziest friends i thought she was going to washington state but thats ok this other school is probly better

so anyways i shoved some jeans, a t-shirt, a dress & some underwear in my messenger bag, called her friend cam (who lives near me), dug up my american passport and went straight to sleep

later that same monday morning..

i thought that it would probably be really awkward catching a 2 and a half hour car ride with this guy cam. he pretty good looking but nothing spectacular. tall with light brown hair, green eyes. i was surprised when he came to pick me up that in his car sitting shotgun was an absolutely gorgeous asian girl, 'thats my girlfriend veronica' 

she was really petite with an eyebrow ring baggy guys jeans and a black tank top revealing her huge bosom. she smiled at me and i immediately felt relieved. they were both chill and pretty funny. cam even introduced himself to my mom, major points there. after the first 45 minutes i got over being slightly intimidated by them, as they were both 23 and i am merely 17. they mostly cracked jokes over how awful high school was.  how does zoe know such cool people of all ages?

we had no problems getting across the american border and arrived at our final destination, zoe's boyfriends (soon to be ex i assume) apartment that he shared with 2 other guys 

Baguette Weapon?

once I was in Paris walking the street alone and I swear, a woman whipped out her baguette and beat her small child with it. and then i thought if someone tried to attack me or something and i had a baguette, i would most certainly hit them with it

several times too

big bad baguette

thanks for calling..?

today gabe called the house for the first time in a while

he's in montreal with grandmère and grandpa 

and his german girlfriend

who none of us knew about

her names nadja and he's bringing her to visit us

i suppose he cares a lot about this girl because he NEVER brings girls home ever, let alone brings himself home. so the happy couple's coming in 2 weeks

our mother's overly excited

this better be good

i'm expecting heidi

and not the super model

i will not let him become attached to some bitch

even my brother the black sheep, who secretly hates the rest of us

ok so i'm assuming she's a bitch 

but gabes always liked the bitches!

lately a little busy

me and todd are surprisingly close for brother and sister, we are a lot closer with each other than gabe. so with my bubbling excitement for him leaving for higher education, todd has allowed me to help him out with little things before he moves into UCLA on sept. 20

which is 'faaar away in the future' as he keeps telling me, but i just want everything to be perfect for him

he's my big brother and i really love him

my mom gave up the whole "i will speak only french to the children" act with me because as we were still living in alaska i declared myself "american not french!" at the age of four, although i don't recall, anyway he never gave up on me and refused to speak english with me until i was maybe 11

now i proudly declare myself french canadian 

i digress

we bought him a new macbook for school this weekend and after thinking long and hard decided he's going to go the engineering path, which i know nothing about frankly

and honestly i feel that it's something he is certainly interested in but isn't his true burning interest which i figure i'll never really know for whatever reason

but he did say that for his masters he hopes to go to a grande école d'ingénieurs in france. my mother almost died of happiness at the prospect of her youngest son studying in france, even if it is slightly far in the future 

on a more sporty topic

on sunday afternoon i had the second half of my lacrosse tryouts (i play club). and admittedly i was a little rusty after not playing for a year in france where the sport is basically non-existent but i found out monday afternoon i made it and i can't wait for the practices to begin. im naturally more on the thin side but you tend to notice a little unwanted weight after a years worth of baguette and rich cheese. plus the naturally good feeling you get after a nice workout has been severely missed recently. couch chair lounging is becoming less fun by the day

lastly sunday night my friend threw a very average house party for no apparent reason, a celebration of life i suppose, the french seem to do this often..

it was fine i guess if it weren't for the annoying amount of random alaskan party goers and the fact that i just really wasn't up to it

ever since i've gotten back i feel like things are really different, people have changed, why aren't we seeing eye to eye, etc. when really it's been me thats changed, i see the world so differently now. 

mostly its that i care more about what's going on outside vancouver and around the world and a lot my home friends seem to think something along the lines of well why should we care if it doesn't apply to us

but i think im just frustrated now because i finally discovered myself a little bit and realize that my old friends and i no longer have much in common. my love of international travel and world language and culture now outweigh my desire to remain friends with the same people as before. i guess i just find them immature now

am i wrong for feeling this way? i feel bad

when we leave for college i doubt i will stay in close contact with more than a handful

i get the feeling im going to spending a lot of time with the foreign exchange students this fall

Uni List Revised

after much stress with todd, i have significantly narrowed down my application list

my mother has decided i can apply to ten max.

 

Canadian universities

McGill

université de Montréal

leaving canada wouldn't be so bad

UK universities

oxford 

university college london

warwick

kings college london

u of bristol

england would be too perfect *crosses fingers*

possible french & swiss universities

american university of paris

Lumière University Lyon II

université de Genève

and so ten it is

i can't wait to leave

leave home that is

and it looks like im england bound too

My Canadian Half

my mother is not from vancouver

in fact

she doesn't like it very much here, i can tell that the only reason she is here is because she loves my strange father more than she understands. she is from montreal and all of you who know montreal know that the people speak french and are damn proud of it too

i think if we were living there right now she would refuse to speak english to us, ever, my poor father who is the only non bilingual of the family would suffer shamefully from the wrath of my mothers french temper 

she is the epitome of a proud french canadian

her last name is Gauthier which i believe every 5th person in Montreal shares (ok so maybe every 20th) and her fathers names is Jean-Baptiste (très français)

she is the only child to her two black parents and i know that her family has been here for several hundred years & they have been catholic for nearly equally as long. they are fortunate to have lived up north where there is much less racism rather than virginia (my fathers grandfather told him 'don't you marry that negro or your grandmother'll curse you from her grave')my grandpa worked very hard his whole life enabling them to buy a very nice home in senneville and allowing my grandmother stay home all day & chain smoke

unfortunately they are also rather snooty

My American Half

as previously mentioned, i was born in anchorage, alaska 

a random yet very beautiful location on the map

we can blame my father for that

but truly, its not his fault

he was just an unsuspecting boy from virginia who fell in love with her mountainous glory

paul, my dad, is pretty typical american. born to charlotte & joe in virginia. his younger sister, my aunt lana is married to some guy from Louisiana whos last name is 'MacNair'. im not really sure what they do there, but i am sure that its not really interesting. also they have 14 year old twins phillip & cambria

those 2 aren't so bad and i like to send them 'typical canadian' things for their birthday which probably seems pretty cool to them as they live at the most southern part of the US and canada is "soo far" as i was once told 

i love my american grandparents, they're so much nicer than my canadian ones (no offence mom) they're very southern like and live in one of those small towns where everyone gossips and goes to the same church. also whenever we come for american thanksgiving they bake me things i don't normally get to eat in vancouver like sweet potato pie and cobblers

though i must say, alaska & virginia are like 2 different planets

well except for all the rednecks they have in common but even the rednecks here up north are kind of different 

(well maybe i'll put up another post later about their differences)

my proud alaskan/virginian american half

The Drama of Uni Apps

so im at the year when im making decisions about university 

my dad: wants me to apply to a lot of american universities, anyways he was mr.super nerd & wants me to apply to UPenn (where he went)

my mom: went to Jean Moulin University Lyon 3... in Lyon (bien sûr)

also i think she would kick my ass if i went to america 

so how do i feel?

well...there is no way in hell that i want to go to university in america (no offence) but the universities there are waaay too expensive 

i refuse to pay off college debts until im 60

though i will probably apply to nyu or something

 

list of possible Canadian universities

McGill

u of BC

université de Montréal

university of Toronto

possible UK universities

oxford (i have the notes)

university college london

st.andrews 

warwick

kings college london

u of bristol

possible french & swiss universities

american university of paris

Lumière University Lyon II

université de Franche-Comté

université de Genève

université de Lausanne

soooo

as you can see my list is very long, later today todd is going to help me narrow it down a bit

anyone have any input about any of these places??

i think im leaning towards england, maybe because it will be really easy for me to understand but still close to france and all

Marmande

Marmande,France

an extremely small town, of many tomatoes

my home for a year

population: maybe 20,000

i went to a small private catholic lycée called lycée Notre-Dame de la compassion 

my host family consisted of a couple in their mid 60's who had no children

Charlot & Ernestine Bachelier

they might have been in their 60's but they had the energy of a pair in their twenties and i loved them dearly for that

their home was on probably around 3 acres and they lived in what i think used to be a huge barn/thing that they renovated and made into an actually pretty modern home

according to Charlot, the year before i moved there Ernestine went crazy with an ikea catalogue and had their kitchen remodeled to look exactly like the one in the display 

so basically their kitchen looks like this, straight out the catalogue

the only other foreigner in my school was an exchange student from Sweden, we became pretty close 

her name was Kia

she looks very swedish, doesn't she?

she was my best friend (plus one other french gal) while i was there, we both had a lot in common being expats and there were literally no foreigners in the whole town! wtf, we were trapped in the middle of nowhere! 

other best friend juliette (with her boyfriend Gabriel)

she looks very french, non?

well now i made it seem as if this little town was no fun

but we managed to entertain ourselves somehow...

Just A Little About Me

i've thought about getting a blog for a while, an outlet that other people can read. i guess i could call myself an obsessive blog reader. i literally have at least 50 blogs in my bookmark folder. 

haha 

so umm, a little about myself. i was born in Anchorage, Alaska and moved to Vancouver 6 years ago when i was eleven. my dads American, my moms Canadian from Montreal. my two brothers and i all have dual citizenships, which is pretty cool. we're also biracial.. this gives me a really interesting perspective of the world. dads white, mom is black.

i spent my 11th grade year (08-09) on a year long exchange in Marmande,France which is a really small town kinda near Bordeaux.

i'll probly write about that a lot. the french are slightly crazy but i love 'em.

my two older brothers are Todd & Gabe. Todd is 18 and starting at UCLA this fall, knowing my brother he'll have a little too much fun. i've heard some pretty crazy stories about that place, but it doesn't really interest me. Gabe is 20, and somewhere in Germany, but I literally have no idea where. he's been there since he was 18. well, actually 17 because he (like me) also went on an exchange except to Leipzig, Germany and it was his last year of high school. He loved it so much he applied for college there too, we don't really talk that much.

so thats me, & this is my blog..im not sure how to end this

im kind of shy at first but once you get to know me, you'll know that i love to party and have a good time

i think its really important to enjoy our short lives