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