word associations

1. You’ve got a friend:: in me
   
2. Immigration:: omi medical visit...good times
   
3. Waitress:: job i'm happy i've never had
   
4. Snickers:: snickers bars, my favorite...yummy
   
5. Recognize:: you betta recognize!
   
6. Concept:: "i'm not a concept...i'm just a f'd-up girl looking for my own piece of mind" - clementine to joel, eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
   
7. Birthday:: "happy birthday, mr. president"
   
8. Told you so:: know-it-all
   
9. Unlikely:: improbable
   
10. Extension:: no doze...she knows what i'm talking about!!! :)
    

john stewert, how do i love thee...let me count the ways...

haven't laughed this hard in a while...

ps...found this site on blogger.com...this guy has way too much time on his hands...just move out already...

"i've been looking so long at my pictures of you..."

oh how i adore the cure...

anyways...pictures! i took quite a few and even though it's taking ages to upload them i will not tire in my mission...i will post them all for you, my adoring readers...um...yeah...

glasgow

edinburgh

liverpool

yeah, and no pictures of dublin...i was too sick :(

speaking of...i had my first experience with french healthcare yesterday...all went smoothly and he prescribed the all important antibiotics...today i'm off to lille to see finding neverland and i might make it a double feature and see ray too...

can't stop coughing long enough to come up with a real post...

1. Dirty work:: i need to find someone to do my dirty work for me...like a henchman...or a lackey...somone to carry out my dastardly deeds...you know, if i had any...
   
2. Shopkeeper:: shopping...hmmmm (please imagine in homer simpson voice)...
   
3. Goodness:: "goodness gracious me..."
   
4. Yearning:: the yearling
   
5. Show and tell:: a weird memory i have of some kid bringing his talking alf doll to show and tell in second grade
   
6. Trapped:: booby trap
   
7. Malcolm:: in the middle
   
8. Season:: "to everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn)..."
   
9. Bestseller:: harry potter
   
10. Desk:: work...boo!
    

booo for the flu....

so i think it's official....after nearly three days of absolute hell, i've come to grips with the fact that i have la grippe (the flu for you non-francophiles)...the truely unfortunate part is that i'm still on vacation in dublin...so how is dublin, you ask...well aside from my bunk bed and the tv room in the hostel, i couldn't tell you...i haven't seen any of dublin, and i probably won't before we leave...honestly, that's perfectly fine with me...i'll stay in bed, continuing my steady infux of fluids, advil and sudafed...we're flying out bright and early tomorrow, so hopefully by noon tomorrow i'll be miserable in my own bed...

incredibly frustrated

argh...the first free access to a computer since we left france and hotmail is not working...i'm ready to chuck this computer moniter out the window right now....

alas...liverpool is great...we've thrown ourselves into the beatle mania...we spent 2 and a half hours at the beatles story on sunday...yesterday we toured around matthew street (home of the cavern, the club where the beatles got their start)...and today we took the bus to the suburbs and saw strawberry fields and penny lane...it's safe to say after three days here we're beatled out...we're flying tomorrow to dublin...we'll be there a few days, then we'll head back early saturday morning to lille....

hope everyone is well...i'll email as soon as hotmail get's their act together...

oh yeah, a few days late but here's this week's free associations...

1. Judge:: judge dread (lame, i know, but it was the first thing to come to mind...and i've never even seen the movie)
   
2. Detroit:: red wings (once again...don't know why that one popped up)
   
3. Hyphen:: hyper
   
4. Get it right:: "or go home"
   
5. Pulsating:: my head right now...i've got a terrible headache...which i completely blame on hotmail
   
6. Yoga:: yogi bear
   
7. Memorable:: memento
   
8. Financial advisor:: what i need right now...
   
9. Ten million:: 85 gagillion (my favorite number)
   
10. I:: "there's no i in team"

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"let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields
nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
strawberry fields forever"
-strawberry frields, the beatles

"a song for someone who needs somewhere to long for..."

so i've been doing pretty well dealing with homesickness since i've been here...it very rarely pops up, but when it does it's always at the most unexpected times...last night we were taking the bus from edinburgh to liverpool...well really it was edinburgh to newcastle to leeds to manchester to liverpool, but that's beside the point...so i was watching the cars fly by (on the wrong side of the road, mind you) and listening to my iPod on random play when "as bad as they seem" by hayden comes on...and instantly this song brought back a flood of memories about "j" - my best friend since highschool...no one specific memory, but an amalgam of afternoons hanging out in my bedroom listening and playing music (ok, j played on my pathetic excuse of an accoustic guitar, i just listened), late night movie watching and uncountable, stupid inside jokes that i can't even remember why they were so funny anymore...i was homesick, not just for j, or for home, but for a time i feel is long past...something that can never be regained...it shocked me how quickly these emotions snuck up on me...by the time the song ended, i had managed to get it undercontrol and quickly wipe away the tears...the next song on random play, "baby i got your money" by o.d.b., helped change the mood as well...god bless iPod random play...
*********************************************
"a song for someone who needs somewhere to long for
homesick...
cause I no longer know where home is"
-homesick, kings of convenience

qwerty sucks...just thought you should know....

hi all....sorry for the long delay since the last post...since we last spoke:
1) i had quite a nutty weekend with the assistants, frenchies (pierre and olivier) and new lilloise, mariya...a blast of a friday night at djolloff, a rhumerie (rum bar), and then down the street at mcewens...i did meet a really nice guy who happens to live in gondecourt...it's good to know that i'm not the only person under 25 in that town...i was beginning to think ester and i were alone out there...

2) i have voyaged to lovely scotland...monday we (miriam and i) flew ryan air to glasgow...gray, cold, and rainy; i wasn't particularly impressed...today we took the bus to edinburgh and i must say, it instantly won me over...we pulled up next to the edinburgh castle and princes gardens on our way into town which were quite impressive...we'll be heading that way tomorrow morning and, of course, i'll post all the pictures when i get home...

it has been nice being back in an english speaking country...but it was a bit of reverse culture shock...i've gotten so used to being in france and constantly living in "french mode" that it was a bit of a shock to the system when we arrived...i'm feeling less rattled now, but it makes me worried about when i head back home this summer...how am i going to handle it...especially since i still have another 5-6 months left in france...i'll be truely french-ified by then....um, yeah, right...

one thing i can't handle right now...qwerty....argh....

les emissions...

the thing i love the most about french tv is the commercials...for one thing, there are far fewer and the commercial breaks are every 30 minutes (or more, if you're watching a movie)...and secondly, they're just more interesting...my favorite commercial is for cegetel dsl ("la vitesse vous manque?" - "are you lacking speed?")...

the one thing that really bothers me, however, is the fact that nothing starts at a normal time...maybe i'm just used to american programming where everything starts on the half-hour...here, the 9 pm movie, actually starts a 8:50...the morning news ends at 9:07 instead of 9 on the dot...part of it is the problem of making foreign television, which they have a lot of, fit this commercial schedule...to fill these weird programming gaps, they created these funny little programs that they stick randomly throughout the schedule...the most famous, "camera cafe" shows corporate life from a hidden camera in the employee coffee machine...they've now turned it into a film (espace détente)...there's "un gars une fille" (a guy a girl), about a couple, chou-chou and lou-lou, absolutely hilarious...but my favorite is samantha...nothing beats french men dressed as women, making stupid jokes and puns...

evolution...

another article...this one about evolution and how it's not being taught in classrooms in the u.s., eventhough it hasn't been banned...it seems teachers find it easier to avoid the whole evolution/creationism discussion all together...which maybe is a good idea...lets not worry about if our children are prepared for university and have an understanding of the most widely accepted and most important theory of biology, but by all means, let's avoid an "unpleasant" debate...it always disgusts me when they insist on teaching creationism alongside evolution...first and foremost, creationism is NOT a science...it has no place in a science class...that's what religion classes are for...sorry...it's the biologist in me rearing her ugly head...she's pissed of that i've kept her burried since graduation...all in good time, my pretty...all in good time...