i catch a train to brussels in 4 hours to go home. it’s finally hitting me that i’m leaving, and part of me wishes i hadn’t changed my ticket. but i know it’s for the best – i have a lot to accomplish in my very short 2 month summer. and in the end, leaving 3 weeks early doesn’t really make that much difference.

i keep trying to write some profound summation of the last 10 months, but i don’t think i can write it yet. i’ve spent almost my entire life dreaming about france, and i can’t say that i was disappointed. yes, there are things i don’t like, but there’s even more that i don’t like about the states. i’ve felt at home in lille since day one, and i’ve learned an incredible amount about myself and hopefully grown in the process. i’ve had to deal with some weird shit here, such as what i thought was a life-long friendship surprisingly (at least, to me) coming to an end, and i’ve had to learn how to make friends and be outgoing around strangers. for me, that’s a big deal… i also got to see an incredible amount of places and fall in love with little parts of the world all over.

for awhile, i contemplated trying to stay in france and go to grad school here. in the end, it turned out that doing grad school in the states opens more opportunities for me here (a degree from france would basically be meaningless in the states) if i don’t get into a ph.d program at home. me and france aren’t done with our little love affair; in fact, i think it’s just the beginning.

so that’s why i’ll quote garden state like a teenage girl and say that “i’m not like, putting a period at the end of this. i’m putting like… an ellipsis on it.”

so there you go folks.
see you in america.

i keep meaning to write about my 20something days of traveling, but at the rate i’m going, i’ll never get to it.

i come home pretty soon and i don’t think i’ll be writing in this anymore. it feels silly to keep it now that i’m saying au revoir to lille and france. maybe i’ll do something else, but i think my life back home will be pretty busy and i can’t manage to find the time to write here when i have basically no commitments. for instance, this fall, i have class on wednesdays from 10am to 6pm with a 30 minute break, teaching 4 hours a week, 4 hours of office hours a week, 1 hour with mentor group, etc…plus i need to, you know, KILL at my MA program so that i can get into an amazing ph.d prgram.

i’m still kind of in shock that i’m going to grad school, for free. actually, getting PAID to go. and that i get to teach my very own class…that what i’ve wanted to do for the last 6 years is actually happening. i used to wallow in the fact that i was “unlucky” – looking back, i’ve definitely maybe (note: definitely maybe? ha) had an unfair amount of shitty things happen in my life, but i’ve finally learned that wallowing in it only makes it worse. since i’ve tried to be more of a “you make your own luck” kind of person, i’ve gotten every single thing that i’ve wanted and worked for. i’m pretty stoked on life right now. i can’t wait to come home and see best friends and make new friends and reconnect with old friends. oh and eat a lot of chipotle.

on the first day of vacation i woke up at 4:30am for a 4 hour train ride to karlsruhe, germany to hop on a tour bus for 5 days. it was pretty awesome to see so many friends all at once, but it took me awhile to shake off my weird mood – i guess it was kind of overwhelming to be surrounded by everyone at once. even though all the shows were in places we couldn’t really get out and explore, i had a really awesome time. i wasn’t sure how i was going to feel about being at a hardcore show every night – i don’t even remember the last time i was at a show for any purpose other than seeing friends – but it was really amazing seeing bane every night. the anniversary of columbine was approaching, and i told someone how bizarre it was that then, bane was my favorite band, and now 10 years later, i’m hanging with them in europe? they definitely showed me that hardcore is still relevant and maybe i’m not quite as over it as i thought i was.

what was also amazing was that, 13 years later, i finally got to see the get up kids at a huge fest in meerhout, belgium. i only really like the first EP and four minute mile (although something to write home about is finally starting to grow on me) so i wasn’t sure how much they’d play that i liked, but they played half the EP and a couple from FMM so i was pretty satisfied. while hanging out in the bar area after the fest was over, pretty much everyone punished them…they told matt, casey and i that they were happy to see other people here from the midwest, but i really think they meant “leave us alone.” the drink tickets seemed to be endless that night and we certainly brought it to the next level, after having started drinking wine at 2pm. i also met a bizarre amount of mutual friends of people back in the states. go figure.

the tour ended in haarlem and i was sad to leave after 5 awesome days, but punchy and lindsay met us there and then trip of a lifetime 2009 could begin.

keri & arya were here this past weekend and we had a jolly ol’ time (minus the shoe tragedies). it’s nice knowing i don’t have to say goodbye “forever” like i will with most other people here since they are just a short drive away from my family in michigan.

tomorrow is my last day of work and then i leave at 6am wednesday to catch a train to paris, then a 3 hour train to karlsruhe, germany (where is that? your guess is as good as mine!). 8 countries in 4 weeks. i’m so excited at the thought of seeing my friends that i think i’m going to throw up if i eat anything. and now it’s just 6 days until i see punchy and lindsay…i love it.

i won’t have my computer with me at all so this is probably my last update until after norway. not that i’m good at updating this anyway. i will take lots and lots of photos and will hopefully have many good stories to share. peaceeeee out mes amis.

i’ve wanted to read 2666 since the day i first heard about it, and i found it at FNAC – but i don’t think reading a 900something page tome of a novel in french would be quite the same experience (although it’s translated in either language i’d read it in). kottke has been posting excerpts and i NEED to read it now!

“Not believing your ears, though, thought Espinoza, is a form of exaggeration. You see something beautiful and you can’t believe your eyes. Someone tells you something about… the natural beauty of Iceland… people bathing in thermal springs, among geysers… in fact you’ve seen it in pictures, but still you say you can’t believe it… Although obviously you believe it… Exaggeration is a form of polite admiration… You set it up so the person you’re talking to can say: it’s true… And then you say: incredible. First you can’t believe it and then you think it’s incredible.”

“Amalfitano had some rather idiosyncratic ideas about jet lag. They weren’t consistent, so it might be an exaggeration to call them ideas. They were feelings. Make-believe ideas. As if he were looking out the window and forcing himself to see an extraterrestrial landscape He believed (or rather like to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist. The time difference only masked their nonexistence. And so if you suddenly traveled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jet lag, which arose not from your exhaustion but from the exhaustion of the people who would still have been asleep if you hadn’t traveled. This was something he’d probably read in some science fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read.”

i just realized i should have said i had quit my job and was coming home for my april fool’s joke…that’s what usually happens: i always think of something “good” too late. but perhaps it’s for the best. i didn’t fall for anything either…sadly.

two weeks until my awesome time starts. i am definitely in need of seeing faces from home. i have been really “friendsick” lately and have just been having a weird time re: home. i’ve had too many situations blow up into ridiculousness lately, and i think a large part of that is the fact that everything has been hashed out via internet which allows for way too much miscommunication, or misunderstanding the tone of what is said, that sort of thing. this is pretty frustrating considering i have to rely on the internet 95% of the time to communicate with anyone at home. i’m sure i misinterpret things as much as others have misunderstood me, so i don’t think there’s anyone to blame, but it’s still hard. i’ve also kind of been bumming because the majority of people i’ve grown closest to here will be gone when i come back to france on may 4th. a double whammy of missing home + finding lille a lot emptier for the last 7 weeks i’m here has just put me in a weird funk, and having way too much time to live in my own head (as discussed in previous entry) makes it all the worse i think.

so to be positive, here is a list of some things i find very awesome.
- THE WEATHER. 50’s/60’s and lots of sun.
- the dinner i had last saturday with abby, lindsey & charlie.
- seeing simian mobile disco on saturday.
- au revoir simone and metric.
- spending 5 days on tour with 10 of my favorite people.
- getting to see the get-up kids even though they probably won’t play anything from 1996 like i want them to.
- spending just about a week with PUNCHY AND LINDSAY!!!!!
- having new couchsurfing adventures in italy.
- reaching out to some old friends and being slightly successful (and hoping enough time has past where things can be mended for good…)
- pink hoodies.
- running. a lot of running.

i have finally reached the point where i can comfortably admit that i am bored. i basically haven’t worked for the last 7 months (and the last 3 before that were working as a nanny, which, while it is awesome, is not really “work”) and i’m starting to go a little crazy on the inside. i don’t really function very well when i don’t have structured things to keep me focused because my internal clock wants to stay up all night and sleep all day, and if i don’t have things i have to do, my body just slowly tries to creep up my bedtime…i just spend all my time lost in my own brain. i’ve been better about hanging out with friends the past few weeks, since i’m finally not sick anymore and i won’t see (most) of them again after april 15th. that’s helped a little.

i feel spoiled saying “i’m bored” in europe, but lille has been home for a long time now. i have places i like to eat and drink and walk and run, but those things can only fill up so much time. having lille 3000 going on helps a little since there’s always new things to see, but i’m very ready to have a month of amazing travels and then come home to start the next chapter. and speaking of that, i should find out this week or next week which graduate assistantship i got…hurray for funded MAs.

female science professor is one of my favorite blogs. i love hearing about the inside workings of academia. her most recent post is just too good not to share. she writes,
“At a recent Open House event at my daughter’s school, one of her teachers said the following to my husband and me:

Your daughter is doing really well. She got an A on her last report, though I wish she’d just do what I ask her to do — I do provide the students with a checklist — and not go off on tangents and provide extra information about stuff that apparently interests her. But that’s not what you really need to worry about. I gotta tell you, if your daughter ever marries — and I’m not sure she’s ever gonna get married — her husband will not be the one wearing the pants in that family.“

juuuust amazing what some people think is appropriate to say out loud! “i’m not sure she’s ever gonna get married” – really, dude?!
in the comments, it says she will be taking her daughter to a new school next year. if it was my daughter, i don’t know if i could wait that long!

april 15th: lille –> paris –> karlsruhe, germany to hop on comeback kid, misery signals & BANE tour!
april 16th: munster, germany
april 17th: leipzig, germany
april 18th: meerhout, belgium
april 19th: haarlem, holland
april 20th: amsterdam –> lille –> paris until the 23rd
april 23rd – 27th: barcelona!
april 27th – 29th: milan!
april 29th – may 1st: ROME!
may 8th – 10th: oslo, norway.
may 11th: riga, latvia.

is it boring that i just post pictures of my trips? i sensor myself on here a lot since i don’t have a clue who actually reads it. maybe that’s the point?

anyway, today my new friend emma and i went to bruges, the venice of, well, not venice. i “woke up” at 7:30am to shower, and discovered, comme d’habitude, it was pouring rain. in my heart i had faith it would be a nice day, and even only wore my windbreaker to prove it….an hour and a half later, we arrived in bruges to sun. for a couple of hours, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. that does NOT happen in this part of the world. i even got a little sunburnt on my face…

emma and i mostly just walked around, without any set itinerary. we of course ate belgian waffles, had belgian beer (pineapple for me, fruits of the forest for her), ate some porn chocolate, and took a sweet canal tour. this little city really stole my heart. i can’t wait to go back in may or june when everything’s green and warm and it somehow becomes even more beautiful.