A Sampling

I generally get annoyed if people wait really long between each post and then apologize each time they enter a new one, but that's what I'm going to do tonight. I haven't been a diligent blogger and I apologize.

I do sort of have an excuse, or two. It is partly due to the fact that I am busy thinking about trying to get everything I've accumulated this year home in a suitcase and a few shipping boxes. It may also have something to do with thinking no one reads this anyway except the Chinese website who keeps leaving inappropriate comments on my posts.

But despite it all, I am back to keep you in the know. The first thing you should know is that it's summertime. I know it's been hot back home for months now but summer just sprang upon us here and it is hot. It's not just muggy, swimming through air kind of hot. No, this hot has to do with the sun. The hot, Mediterranean sun. The sun that scalds your eyeballs and makes you see twinkly stars in the middle of the day. The sun that has turned my practically translucent skin to a toasty, probably unhealthy, brown.

But with scalded eyes and toasty skin comes lounging by the pool and taking refreshing dips in the sea. That makes it all worthwhile. All the flowers around are jealous. They wish they could take dips in the sea. They are unfortunately all dying of heat stroke. At least they didn't have to brave jellyfish infested waters last weekend like I did. Scary!

The other piece of info, which most of you probably know, is that I just had a birthday! Twenty-three years of being alive. I think that's kind of an accomplishment. I celebrated the day before with an aperitif at our neighbor's house and then dinner with my host family. It was lovely! I then celebrated the actual day by going to school (which did make me happy) and then spending the rest of the day by myself, moping about being alone.

But tomorrow, I'm getting a mini party at Camilla's house in Cassis with some buddies and I'm really excited about it. Tacos and guacamole!! Somehow I moved to France and fell in love with Mexican food. Hm. Maybe that's because it's so ridiculously hard to find in a restaurant here.

I've also gotten some encouragement on my French speaking abilities this past week so that makes me really happy. I'm always a novelty in the local McDonalds, which can sometimes be incredibly annoying or sometimes it's great, and this time I had a nice conversation with the man taking my order and he told me I speak good French. That made my day.

Then later my host family told me I was finally mastering the R sound. In my opinion, that is the hardest sound in the realm of human communicative sounds. Well, that is until I heard Camilla's family speak Polish and changed my mind. But still, R is hard.

Finally, today I was able to have a typing conversation with my French teacher from college. We were able to have the whole conversation in French and I was so excited about how much I've learned since I've been here. I definitely have a long way to go but I haven't given up hope.

So, I guess that gets you pretty much up to date. Hopefully it won't take me as long next time to write and hopefully I won't get any more inappropriate comments. (But I doubt it. It's been happening a lot. I should probably reflect a little before posting blog titles with the word "nudity" in them, even if it was completely innocent.)

I'll be stateside in less than a month. So, see you soon!!