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Now that it is past the middle of November and I haven't had a real post since October, I figured it was time to update this thing. What's going on in France? How's the concussion? Shit like that. This may be long.

As far as events go, I went to Normandie two weekends ago and ended up with a concussion that I sort of wrote about in my last post. I smacked my head into a sign, because French signs are at head level and I'm prone to that sort of thing. So I bumbled around Omaha beach and Point du Hoc with my world spinning and ready to vomit. Otherwise, the American cemetery and museum before that were pain free. I was sick for days after that and am just now starting to feel normal again.

Continuing with events, this last weekend was our final, already paid for excursion. There's one more but I would have to salvage 60 euros that I could have spent on things in Dublin or London during the Christmas break. On a side note, after Christmas, I will be going to Dublin, Ireland; Holyhead, Wales; London, UK; and finally Paris with my Japanese roommate. But back on topic about my last excursion, we went to the troglodyte caves, had a wine tasting, and ate in a cave restaurant. It was neat. The only downside was that I am not used to drinking alcohol and after a total of maybe a glass and a half of wine I was feeling a little groggy and ended up feeling sick the next day.

This week I had an exposé (presentation) in my Langue class. I worked so hard on this nice PowerPoint and I had planned out everything that I was going to say only to forget nearly everything I wanted to say and stumble all over the place. Just as I was thinking that my concussion was better I ended up with a horrible headache, my bumped spot throbbing and I almost had to leave to throw up. Though, I imagine that was a combination of concussion and embarrassment/anxiety. I seriously felt awful for almost the rest of the day until my professor pulled me aside after my second Langue class. She told me that I lack an American accent and that even though my presentation went a little long and I stumbled a lot she said I did well. I was so surprised and I am still feeling high off of the small esteem-boost.

Other than school and excursions, I've been stressing myself out regarding next semester. As most know, the program that I am in while in Angers is too expensive for me to afford for the spring. So I applied to another program in Grenoble, which is located in the south of France and is next to the Alps. It was a very difficult choice for me because I've grown very attached to my host parents and Angers, but there is no way I can manage 6000 more dollars for AHA (my program) as much as I wish I could. I've been very stressed over the whole situation, especially after I applied to Grenoble and realized that I applied for the more expensive program and after taking a billion years to apply to the program I wonder if they will accept me or not. I even thought about returning to Fairbanks for the spring semester, even though I'd be jumping in two weeks late.

One hurdle for me is making it to my brother's graduation. When I initially applied for Angers, I knew that it wouldn't end until June and I figure with whatever money I had saved up after my construction job I would buy a brief ticket to see his graduation and then come back. I greatly underestimated how hard it was to pay the 16,000 dollars that I had to for this fall semester. I was barely able to do that and after going through all of the stress that I had to, I just can't do that again, especially when I know that I do not have the money this time.

Luckily, now, my main worry is getting accepted into the Grenoble program. If I don't, it's back to UAF for me in February. I'm honestly not that worried about it after how easy it was to tell them that I applied to the wrong program. The person was very nice (not like one can really tell over email, but I like to think that was the case) and helpful. So I changed that up and if I am accepted into the Grenoble program I will be back in Alaska April 27. That's only about seven months in France, but it will be better than returning after just four months. Everyone I have ever talked to that has gone abroad for only one semester always say that they wish they had stayed a few more months for language learning reasons.

Now that I've gotten events out of the way, I suppose the next thing on the list is feelings (for lack of a better term). Since I've been in France, I've become a lot more observant of myself and others. At first it was overwhelming, my brain taking in so much new information that it was on overdrive. It is still like that occasionally, which is probably why I have mini-breakdowns with myself. By mini-breakdowns I do not mean crying, because I have obscure ideas about crying. I mean that I hate the world for a short time and despise everything about everyone. I've had times where I've had the urge to cry, but then i tell myself to stop being a pansy/pussy and the need to cry fades pretty fast. Works every time.

I hate crying. For the record, just because I call myself a pansy/pussy when I'm about to cry does not mean that I think other people are like that. I do not hold others to the standards that I hold myself to. I detest crying (when I cry, specifically). Why? I don't know. I would rather cause psychological damage by holding all of my emotions in until I implode than cry too often. I used to have a record of crying only once per year, but when I was fifteen/sixteen I cried all of the time. After a while I got back on my normal train until this last year where I cried a lot more than normal. It's been a few months, not as many as I'd like, but I can pinpoint the reasons. In the past year and a half I've had my aunt, two of my great-grandmothers (one of which I had special memories with - the first time I went down to the lower 48 states I stayed with her) passed on along with a few old family friends. Also, I ended up having issues with getting my birth control so was taking birth control at odd intervals, fucking up my hormones. Finally, my parents' divorce was subconsciously getting to me more than I would have liked. Actually, scratch that, finally goes to the fact that I had so much paperwork to do for going abroad. I lied! Finally, for realz this time, I was trying to figure out why I have chronic pain in my hip/lower back/pelvis/whatever. Either way, just like everyone else at some point in life, I had a lot of shit going on and like any other normal person under lots of pressure I kind of snapped last November and December and had a mental breakdown. It's been a year since then and I am feeling a lot better ... well, relatively. I am having a lot of stress here because it's a new environment and blah blah new country blah blah other things blah blah blah. Oh, I don't count tearing up for a movie or other media or crying from laughing as 'crying'. I mean, of course it's crying, but it is in a different category than a heart-breaking sob fest where your nose is so stuffed you go through a whole box of tissues.

Anyway, onto my next topic, since I've come to France I feel as though I've had a lot more epiphanies than normal.  While in Normandie, I ended up thinking a lot about death (makes sense, yeah?), a topic that I've always found complicated. I've always known that subconsciously I have some kind of deal going on regarding the idea of death. Throughout my whole life I have had terrifying nightmares, even when I was really little and didn't watch horror movies. They always involved death, illnesses, the end of the world ... death-related things. Deep down I believe that I will never die and for a long time I would say it jokingly until I realized that I actually believed it.

Death haunts me. I always ignored my counselors when they said that I need to come to terms with the idea, but mostly because a lot of my counselors said other stupid things like that I harbor intense hatred  towards people in general and that's why I have a legit phobia of spiders. Yeah. Okay. But I think that at Normandie it really hit me. It was no longer this idea that I pushed to the back of my brain while telling myself, "I'm not scared of death, I will never die. I am different. People I love won't die." Death became too real for a moment and I finally came to terms that I am so terrified of death. Not only that, but I have an obsession with it. So many things that I enjoy have the subject of death or something similar. It attracts me and I don't know why. Sometimes I fear death on a daily basis, but then I read stories that involve death and the afterlife. One of the main things I find interest in while researching folklore are the monsters that are undead. There are times I just sit in fear that I will die and just rot in the earth without there being an afterlife. I think about all of the things I would give to live forever. It doesn't matter which religion I am currently believing in, I always think about it. This is sudden, but I have decided to stop talking about this subject because it is depressing me out. Either way, that is what Normandie made me think about. And more.

 On a lighter note ... my final note of the day ... it's always very difficult for me to answer the question, "How do you like France?" or something like that. I have had such a broad experience here that pinpointing one part of it feels like I'm lying to myself. It's like trying to sum up how the past month and a half have been. Or how Alaska is like when I'm living there. What's it like living in Alaska? I kind of dislike that question too. Maybe it's because I have a love/hate relationship with everything. I don't know. It's always hard for me to answer either way.

Until next time!

Toussaint and more...

This blog post is a little late considering that Toussaint was November 1-4. Not much really happened besides watching TV with my host parents and hanging out with my Japanese roommate. Oh, and strep, but I was a lot better during Toussaint than I had been before. Unfortunately, I can't seem to remember a lot of things right now because of a nice bash to the head yesterday. I am hoping that I will be feeling better tomorrow. 

Yesterday was our excursion to Normandie, which was depressing and made me think about death more than I like. 

This is going to be a very short blog post since I can't seem to focus on much of anything right now. Just an update to say I'm still doing stuff and stuff. 

Customer Support

This is just a blog post about me talking about my recent frustrations with customer service.

First off, dealing with electronics have been a hassle as of the last few months. Why? I am not completely sure other than a sneaking suspicion that there is some kind of otherworldly force trying to sabotage my attempts to have a normal experience with purchasing things electronic related. It started this fall (my first fall of the year back in Alaska) when I just wanted to buy a pretty and powerful gaming computer. I bought an Alienware (AW) through Dell but before I get into that I am just going to say this right now - there is a lot of AW hate and I cannot find a reasonable reason for it (okay, I can't really find much reasonableness with hating much of anything really). I did my research beforehand and know that I paid more than I should have for my laptop. But you know what? I have wanted an AW since I was thirteen years old and there is an alien head on it. So ... leave me alone, I am not stupid. I know that I could have made my own laptop with the same power and everything for much cheaper, but I had the money so why not? And there are cheaper laptops to get like ibuypower and blah blah blah. That were only 100 dollars cheaper with exact same specs. Yeeeaaaah. Anyway. I bought an AW and I enjoy it.

Returning to my experiences with purchasing my AW, everything had gone fine until they would not take my debit card. So I got on Dell's chat and spent two hours with some lady who actually ended up being very polite and understanding. After a few days I noticed that I had yet to be billed so finally just called customer support and ended up with all these free additions and a case manager that made sure that I got my computer. While the experience was not bad, spending hours on customer support when I just want the purchase to be done and over with is frustrating. 

My next electronic annoyance was when I decided that I wanted to buy Skyrim for the PC since I wasn't going to haul my PS3 and most likely my TV if I wanted things to be less complicated to France. After buying a hard copy and my wonderful AW came in the mail, I attempted to install it only to find that the stupid key code was invalid. Since I bought it from a store that is 100 miles away from where I live I had to wait until the night I left to France to return it. The store clerk told me that all of the copies of Skyrim in the store are experiencing that issue because Bethesda or Valve or whoever sent out a whole bunch of shitfaced copies. So I was told to just buy it on Steam.

I did not get around to doing that until about a week ago. Steam, because I'm in France and anything involving the internet has changed its country to France, now has everything in euros. So I just put in my US address and they go, 'Your address does not match the country of the store, press continue if you would like to change form of payment. We will update to dollars'. Yeah. Okay. Great. Then it shows it in dollars and everything is wonderful. When I click purchase, it tells me there is an unknown error and that I have to contact customer support. But I refused because I had just got done with dealing with Apple support ... a situation I will explain after this. I waited a few days (till today) to try again only to pop up with the same issue so I gave in a sent them an email. We'll see how that goes.

Now onto the most frustrating customer support experience I have ever had. Apple support. Since I bought a new computer, I wanted to move everything from my HP to my AW so that included iTunes. That worked fine. Everything was perfect until I tried to buy something through the iTunes store and I was told that I needed to put down the answers to my security answers (that I never remember putting down in the first place ... or forgot that I did). So I ask customer support how I can retrieve my security answers. I am told that I have to call. Now, my phone situation is a lot less convenient than it had been when I was in the US. I was reduced from my Samsung Inspire smartphone to a piece of shit Samsung with real buttons (oh noooooo). Also, calling the US, including toll free numbers will wrack up my minutes like no other and I don't really understand how that works since I have always been on a family plan with unlimited so would just like to avoid it in the first place. So I told them that I can't call and that this situation needs to be taken care of over email. She returned by saying, "Oh, you forgot your Apple ID?"

What?

And after repeating that it was my security answers I had lost and how I need to retrieve them via email I received a response ignoring my request completely. She (her name was Pauline so I assume it was a her) just gave me a list of steps on how to get my Apple ID back. Finally, after I sent her a kind of angry email saying how she must not be interested in helping me as she ignored everything important I said she sends me back an email saying that she is sorry and wants to make things right. So I tell her again what the issue is and she goes, "You can retrieve your answers by clicking a link under where it asks you to fill in your security answers." So I go there thinking, 'why couldn't she have said that in the first place?' and there is no link. I send her an email back and she tells me that I need a recovery email that I don't have and the only way to set that up is to call customer support. I gave up after that and just told her that she can't fix my issue and thanks anyway.

Then I received an email from Apple about a week ago saying, "We noticed that you recently talked with Apple Support. Please take five minutes to fill out this questionare about how your experience went." Thirty minutes later I hit send. I am not sure anything will come of it, but I tried to be polite while explaining how frustrating it all was so at least they can't disregard it because of rudeness. It still makes me a little annoyed thinking about it, but I do have my HP here with me to buy music. I just kind of wished that I could have gotten everything moved over to my AW for convenience. 

I hope that this is my last bought with customer service. 

Interestingly enough, I have had to call customer support more times this year than I think I have ever had to in my life. They do say third time's the charm. But those were my recent experiences with customer support. If I never had to contact costumer support again life would be so fantastic (it already is, it would just be more so). 

Until next time!

And for today ...

Sometime on Sunday, I realized I was starting to feel sick. In order to prevent an illness from forming I did my best to keep myself well. Unfortunately, by yesterday I had white spots on my tonsils and swollen lymph nodes. I used to have strep once a year as a child for a very long time and was about 95% sure that was what was going down. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the doctor until today. By the time today turned around I had a stuffy nose, which is a bit strange for strep so I decided that my previous prognosis was wrong. When I went to the doctor, he confirmed strep, much to my chagrin. So I was given some nice doses of ibuprofen and amoxicillin (nice, giant pills!).

Sadly, and unfortunately, that was not the worst part of the day. It was kind of inevitable on retrospect and no use being upset about it anyway, right? I get on the tram to start my long wait home. As I put in my ear-buds  this man sits next to me and starts to talk nonstop. His words were slurred to shit and he would just not leave me alone. I figured that if I told him multiple times how I don't speak very much French that he would decide that talking to me was exhausting. He was constantly getting in my face and sometimes when I would tell him that I didn't know what he was saying he would start to get angry with me.

The worst part was the pitied looks I received from other people. The pity in their eyes made me want to cry from knowing that this was not a normal happenstance and that they felt bad for me. One man who was getting off asked the man next to me if he was drunk to which he said, 'No,' and the other man nodded sarcastically and said, "maybe you should leave her alone" before getting off. That didn't stop him and he went right back to talking about the days of the week or something. Before I finally decided that I could no longer wait until my stop (I hung on almost till the bitter end, I had about four stops left - and it takes about thirty minutes to get from the stop I get on near the University to my stop) two teenagers behind me were saying, "Why is she still talking to him?" and the other says, "I do not think she speaks french well," "Oh. I feel bad for her!" So the next stop I got off to save myself from further embarrassment and just waited seven minutes till the next tram came. When I took the next tram and got off at my stop, I saw him standing on the other side of the rails and I walked as fast as I could home.

He will probably end up with strep in a couple of days.

This situation probably wouldn't have been so bad if my head was a little clearer and I didn't have strep throat. Maybe not. It was a new situation that I have never been in before. But now I know that I should get off a lot sooner if this ever happens again. Thought at first I was really hoping that he would get off within the next few stops, but he never did.

Anyway, since I do have strep and am not feeling very well, I will end today's blog posting. I've been thinking about how to do this, if I should have a designated day to update my blog (every Sunday or something) or just update whenever something exciting happens. Though, if I give myself designated times and dates then it will feel more like work and I will most likely update a lot less.

Toodles!

Second Excursion

Yesterday was our Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Malo excursion. Pictures will be posted someday on Facebook.

We started off with our three hour drive to Saint Malo, in which the driver decided that he wasn't going to turn the lights off at all. It irritated me more than it should have, but with the lights on the atmosphere was completely ruined and atmosphere is very important for me. On our drives I enjoy staring out the window at France and atmosphere makes looking at farmland a lot more enjoyable than without it.

Saint Malo was fantastic. We walked the wall around the little city inside and the wind was something else. It reminded me of my first day as a gate guard back in Alaska and the wind was blowing so hard that the gate fell over on me. It was fun, the wind jerking everyone around and whatnot. There was a beach where I collected two little shells and enjoyed the tide pools. After that, it was crepe time. My first crepe was the Tatin, a specialty crepe that I was not aware came with about a shot of  rum caught on fire and then dowsed in it. No doubt, it was really cool to see, but I hate alcohol. It tasted so heavily like alcohol and I tried so hard to mix it with the ice cream and apples but I just couldn't fully enjoy it. But, hey, it was seven euros and so I ate it anyway. There was some ice cream that came with it so it wasn't all bad. Afterwards, we toured the small city in Saint-Malo and I bought a caramel salted butter crepe and everything about my day was forever redeemed.

At Mont Saint-Michel, we were kind of pushed through a little fast because of time limitations. Otherwise, I had an overall good time there. The inside was not as exciting as I had hoped for, but the small castle-city leading up to it was seriously the best. I felt like I was in the Middle Ages and needed to be wearing some armor with my sword at my side (fuck gender roles). The Gothic architecture was very neat, and I greatly enjoyed it even though it wasn't quite what I had thought. A lot of people had raved about Mont Saint-Michel, so maybe I put the bar up a little too high for expectations. After that, I had one last chocolate crepe and we returned home to Angers.

It's difficult to say which place I liked better. Saint Malo had that beach and caramel crepe ... but I really adored the castle-city with Mont Saint-Michel.


Now, for a small drink rant that is completely unrelated that you are free to skip this paragraph and the next one to get to better, less ranty, stuff stuff. I have sensitive taste buds and I do not like bitter tasting things - hence why I also don't like coffee or alcohol (or dark chocolate). No matter how many coffee drinks or alcohol drinks I have had I still taste that hint of bitterness. Sure, there are infinite number of both but seriously? I can't wrap my head around why people won't just accept it. No. I am not going to drink coffee just to wake myself up or drink alcohol just to get drunk. I have never been drunk and I have literally zero desire to ever be drunk. I am all for tasting things, and chances are I will probably taste more coffee/alcohol drinks in the future just to see what they taste like, but I will probably never like alcohol or coffee. Even if my taste buds happen to change so drastically to the point where I do, I have too many sleep issues for coffee and have seen the bad side of alcohol more often than the "fun" side, which I don't find that appealing in the first place.

I feel like when I say that I don't like alcohol, or coffee, or cigarettes, or the idea of sex that people get very defensive all of a sudden. Just because I want to be a virgin until marriage and I don't like alcohol or partying does not mean that I am going to judge you. Because, seriously, who gives a shit (okay a lot of people do but I don't). I am not secretly damning you for sinning because I don't believe in sinning for one thing, and why should I waste my time worrying about what other people do with their lives? I don't think I'm better than you because we have different interests and ideas of life. If you are having fun, then do whatever pleases you. I like good energies and happy people who are having fun and enjoy their lives. I don't care what it takes for people to be like that. But please, let me be celibate and not like alcohol (and not be Christian) in peace. /rant (that was much longer than I wanted it to be).


The last few days have been a lot better than my previous blog posting. I've felt a mild irritation, but not as frustrated as I did that day. Sometimes I just want a day where everything makes sense, and I don't have to struggle to get my point across. On the other hand, I knew full well that I would feel this way before I left to go abroad. I didn't plan this whole thing for two years just for shits and giggles. Sometimes I wonder how many people thought I was joking or getting ahead of myself and thought that I'd never really do it. I wonder if I was like that at first but when I think back I know that I was dead serious from the get-go. From the very beginning there were no 'ifs', I believed that it was going to happen no matter what and look where I am now. No regrets! Except maybe a few here and there that I will conveniently blame on culture shock.

Until next time~

A blog!

D'accord ...

Apparently, I've had this blog since 2010. After coming back I noticed that I had a few really, really emo posts and remember why I forgot about this. But I'm back with a better attitude (most of the time)!

So, Lost Inside the Mirror. When I originally started my blog I wanted a place where no one knew who I was and I just ranted. It was supposed to be a reflection of what kind of person I was at the time. I've been on a long personal journey about trying to better myself and view myself from the outside. In a sense, I wanted to place myself inside a mirror so that I could judge myself and my actions from another perspective in order to improve my moral being. Though, I've come to think that while it's important to take care of how the mirror views you, keep in mind that the image is flipped and there will always be a part of you that only you see. Balance is always filled with the right kinds of energies.

Anyway, I am starting this blog (again) because I think it will be easier to update people with my life. My life abroad, that is. It won't be exclusively about France, but mostly since I'm living here. Today I felt probably the most depressed and frustrated that I have since I've arrived in France so in theory would be a good time to write a blog post about my experiences. I'll try to make it quick and short since bedtime is drawing near.

I have been having my on and off days but today I was much more hostile than I would have liked. I felt frustrated and depressed most of the day, especially at certain points. I'd go into detail, but my brain has already been set into 'suppress mode' so the details are a bit fuzzy and just make me frustrated thinking about it. I did spend some time thinking about how now that I've experienced what it is like being a foreigner and trying to learn to speak their language that people should take a step back before judging people who don't speak English well that are in the United States. "Learn English!" Yeah? What if they are trying to learn English? What if they do know English and their main problem is getting the accent down? The accent is a very difficult thing to master. Maybe when you decided that you weren't going to talk to that receptionist/[insert other job where you talk with the person] because they didn't speak English well they lost an opportunity to improve their English. What if they've been speaking English all day and are mentally exhausted? Speaking a foreign language all of the time is exhausting.

On a similar, but different note, we had conversation partners today, but I felt like my conversation partner wasn't being very enthusiastic or interested. I attempted to ask several questions in french where I got a simple reply with a little laugh while we sat there awkwardly and listened to everyone else talk. She asked me one question, I believe. By the end of that, I was feeling a bit morose so my home ride on the tram was filled with thoughts about Alaska.

I miss Alaska. I really do. People back home who read this might think, "No, it's below 0 here, you don't miss it." Well, I do. I really do miss the cold and the snow. It's what I know best. There is a peaceful and tranquil feeling when the snow has set in and it's dark out all of the time. It sounds awful, and it kind of is, but that tranquility and disconnected feeling is very hard to achieve here. I can spend so much time by myself in the cold and Alaska where here I feel obliged to go to do things. Whether it's spending time with my host or just going out, I feel like I have to. That people expect me to. It's hard to disconnect myself from the world here. I imagine that it's just a matter of getting used to the lifestyle here and once I've figured things out it will be easier to disconnect.

Of course, I needed this break from Alaska. I was going nuts there and, like people (friends, a couple), sometimes you need time away from each other. Having negative and angsty feelings are just a part of the process when moving to another country, and hopefully tomorrow it will be on the positive side. May it be better for everyone!