bray-dunes. February 25, 2009

yesterday on my last day in dunkerque, mack and i took the bus to a cute small sea-side town called bray-dunes. as you can imagine, there were many dunes you could explore. i got to see the atlantic again (it was actually sunny by the end) and i will never tire of seeing the ocean. i guess that’s what happens when you grow up landlocked in the midwest. we walked along the ocean and chilled on some dunes, profit-ing du soleil.

there were many neat looking shells/remnants of sea creatures to be found on the beach.

like a huge ass dead fish…

…and a creepy dead bird.

we walked back towards the “center” of the town and got some food. we had a picnic in the parking lot of carrefour.

j’ai pris the bus back to dunkerque, and j’ai pris the train back to lille.

dinner with strangers. February 25, 2009

via means i shall not mention for her sake (wink), mackenzie met someone who hung around us a little towards the end of the bande on sunday. he mentioned that he had two extra tickets to the ball, if we were interested in going, after eating dinner at his friend’s house. while initially i was a little hesitant, i decided to be adventurous and go with them. we waited with damien for his two friends to arrive. they were both really nice, and then antoine’s parents arrived (we would eat dinner chez eux). i figured i was probably pretty safe once the parents showed up, and they drove all of us back to their house.

we were given delicious beer, and had a yummy dinner with onion soup and lots of cheese afterwards of course. we were probably the first americans they’d ever met. we had nice conversations and learned some lovely translations of the carnival songs (which i shall not reprint here).

at 11:30 or so, antoine’s dad drove us back into dunkerque and dropped us off at the ball. as with the bandes, i had no clue what happens at a ball, but it’s basically just the same thing inside instead of outside. you still listen to the same 5 songs played by the same marching band while marching in the same circles and forming the same chahuts. it was hard “keeping my own” during these chahuts and it did start to get a little old after ohhh hour 16 or so.

we ended up losing our new friends, wandered around a little bit, and then made the hour walk home at 1am. we don’t have phone numbers, e-mail addresses, or even last names of the three friends we made that night. but i guess that’s what you do in situations like this – you share random, awesome moments with complete strangers who you’ll never see or talk to again. all i know is they work at some kind of engineering firm in rennes. hopefully they will think fondly of their american encounter…

carnival. crazy. carnaval. February 25, 2009

so school’s out again and i started this vacation by heading to dunkerque, france where mackenzie lives, so that we could celebrate carnival. while there are many more elaborate carnival celebrations throughout the world, dunkerque’s is the biggest in france (and i think the only other city that really celebrates it is nice). i didn’t really know what to expect from the weekend, other than i knew there would be a lot of men dressed as women and a lot of neon.

saturday was a smaller bande (bande = a parade basically) and only a hint at what was to come on sunday. we dressed up in as much neon as we could find/purchase at a reasonable price, and headed out to join the celebration. i learned that most of the time is spend parading down various streets, sometimes stopping to have things thrown at you, sometimes stopping to march around in circles while forming chahuts (mobs) which i would liken to a very bizarre mosh pit, and singing a lot of songs with raunchy lyrics. at times like this i really wish i had more than my point and shoot digital camera. it’s frustrating when in my mind i know exactly what i need to do to get a certain shot, but can’t produce the shot because my camera has almost no manual settings.

part of the celebration includes various people (including the mayor) throwing pickled herring at you. while it does get thrown in plastic wrap, people quickly open it and eat some, so you can’t escape the fish smell nor avoid stepping on fish guts at some point.

sunday was the bande in the center of dunkerque, where over 40,000 people were expected to be hangin’ out in the street (which is over half the population of this northern costal town). this is the day that the mayor throws fish at you. the crowd is unbelievably large. here’s an aerial photo from a different year that represents quite well what my sunday was like (the yellow blob is the marching band):

the street food and beer consumption continued until about 8pm…when we went to a complete strangers house for dinner.

april: 5 countries in 10 days! February 20, 2009

15th-18th – cities i’ve never heard of in germany and belgium with CBK/MS.
19th – 20th – haarlem/amsterdam with CBK/MS (and say goodbye, boo), meet up with PUNCHY AND LINDSAY!!
21st – 23rd – paris.
23rd – 25th – BARCELONA. FINALLY!

if i have any money left maybe i’ll go somewhere else after punchy and lindsay leave on sunday. it’s also looking like may 7-10th will be NORWAY (visiting the home land/hangin’ with stephanie) time.
ughhhh the countdown begins.
54 days?

new jen wood. !!!! February 18, 2009

hardly anyone i know shares my obsession with her, but that’s because her stuff is impossible to find (getting past the static goes for $175 on amazon?!). i’ve been obsessed with her since tattle tale (anyone??) but you more likely will recognize her as the female vocals on “nothing better” by the postal service (everyone thinks it’s jenny lewis on that song…nope).

i was elated to discover today that an album she’s been sitting on for months is now available on itunes…she’s backed by a band this time around. you can preview the songs on itunes of course (zeppelin is my favorite so far and features vocals by jeremy enigk), or peep her on myspace (in 3d is one of my favorite songs ever prolly). she’s just catchy goodness, “highly rec’d.”

dry and dusty. February 17, 2009

so as i’ve complained about several times in several different places, i’ve been sick off and on (mostly on) since sometime in november. this is driving me absolutely insane and i feel like it’s sucked all the life of out me. i went back to the doctor again this week, where she gave me another three prescriptions, one of which is sudafed. i tend to not “believe” in cold medicine. if i’m sick, i just suck it up because our bodies healed ourselves of colds and crap for long enough without medicine that i won’t die if i’m sick for a few days, and normally i wouldn’t take the sudafed (it’s also hilarious that i got it PRESCRIBED to me).

i don’t know what kind of crazy doctor i’m going to go see, but i would highly recommend NOT taking things containing pseudoephedrine at night…on an empty stomach. maybe most people know this already, but since i only take advil, i was clueless. i’m about 90% sure that i spent almost the entire night high. i was dizzy, my heart was racing, my vision was all weird, my thoughts wouldn’t stop racing (and it also didn’t help that my thoughts kept coming in three different languages (and by thoughts, for spanish at least it was just random words like “trabajo”, not actual sentences)) and i couldn’t sit still. i fell asleep at 4am, 6 hours after taking the medicine and a lovely 2 hours before i had to get up for work.

the obvious conclusion to this story is that i will continue to not take cold medicine.

i also dreamt the other night that my shoulder/arm was being eaten alive from the inside out by small black maggots. when i think about this i want to throw up, but it keeps coming back to my mind because it’s the most bizarre dream i’ve had in awhile. i don’t even want to know what dreaming about maggots means.

case report number 99-7625 February 11, 2009

all the reports from columbine are/were online in pdfs. i only have mine saved.
the only thing true in this case report is that i was in guitar class. she didn’t even get the location right. i guess after 2000+ interviews no one cared that “my” (aka my mother’s) version of events contradicted all the other stories from kids in my class.

INVESTIGATION
at about 1207hrs 072699 i called (W) amo’s mother (omitted). (omitted) said (W) amo was in michigan until 081599.
(omitted) could provide me with the information i needed.
(omitted) said “stacey was in guitar class just off the auditorium. mr. sanders stuck his head inside the classroom door and told everyone to leave.” “stacey had heard some noises that were later determined to be pipe bombs.” she did not know what they were at the time.
as stacey was leaving the scene she saw lots of paniced (sic) kids and confusion.
(omitted) said she guessed it was about 11:30-11:40hrs that morning when she talked to stacey who was already home.

you know it makes my heart beat. February 10, 2009

brief thoughts for today…
1. i want slightly higher than ankle length black boots. sadly french shoes are not made for my weird, small, high arched, wide feet.
2. i know this song has been blogged about to death the last few days, but i seriously can’t get enough of royksopp – happy up here (boys noize remix). i listened to the original and didn’t like it half as much…
3. i’m still not used to seeing dudes standing with their fingers on the triggers of machine guns in the train station on my way to/from work.
4. i was wearing the same thing as at least 3 of my 4/5 year old students today: a bright pink cardigan.
5. if it doesn’t rain all day tomorrow, i’m going to go cemetery exploring.

sometimes i doubt your commitment to sparkle motion. February 9, 2009

yesterday i watched donnie darko again. i still get chills when donnie opens the door to find gretchen during the party scene. i don’t know if it’s just the joy division song creeping into me or what, but i just love that scene…

like violence, you have me, forever, and after… February 9, 2009

i woke up this morning to find out that the whispered rumors of a blink-182 reunion were indeed confirmed by the band at the grammy awards last night. could they have chosen a more bizarre place to announce this? i doubt people attending/watching the grammys are really their target audience…but that lead me to another question: does blink even HAVE a target audience anymore? a quick glance at the top 100 songs in itunes right now produces only 2 “pop punk” artists, fallout boy and all-american rejects. for all i know those bands write metal songs these days because i haven’t heard their new albums, but it doesn’t seem like it’s exactly an environment where pop punk is thriving…according to my itunes the last time i listened to blink was in sept 2007. do bands like this even do well anymore? while i liked angels and airwaves and +44 to an extent, neither touched the amazingness that was blink and i’m terrifed of what this new album is going to sound like…