mars - in like a lion

i apologize in advance, because i'm sure this will probably be another doozy of a post! (also, my 'e' button is a bit on the fritz, so bare with the spelling)

well the first fantastic news of the last week and a half is that i finally caved - i bought my ticket to go to paradise - a.k.a: l'île de la réunion!!! life couldn't go on any longer without danielle in it, so obviously a trip was in need. (and that fact that there are glorious beaches and sunshine doesn't hurt much either). i purchased my ticket on th 24th and i'll be taking off for my april break and will be posted up on this tropical remote island (which is located just a little to the east of madagascar) from april 1 until april 14. life won't be able to get any better im sure.

if you can't see where the arrow is pointing to on th map its because réunion island is so small and remote that it pretty much looks like it doesn't even exist. feel free to research this on your own so you can understand exactly how jealous you should be of me, but i will keep my lips sealed on all the glorious things i know about this place until i can tell you that i've done them first hand :)

on the 24th, i also managed to survive my first day of level 4 classes and i was able to understand everything that was going on and even participate a little, so needless to say i felt quite good about myself. to celebrate this and my big purchas, i headed to o'kils bar with phoebe and alicia for the international night they have every wednesday. the bar is super cool and its always really busy with people looking to speak lots of different languages. (literally, you can wander around the tables and find people speaking french, english, dutch, german, finnish.. you name it. it's pretty cool)

the following day was thursday. which has become my new day from hell school wise. i've got two hours of comprehension orale, followed immediately by another two hours of grammaire (easily my two worst subjects) so by the time they are finished i am more than ready to head home and crawl back into my bed. but no, i get a half an hour break and then i'm off to THREE hours of civilisation and familar french. luckily my professor is pretty sweet, and well francais familier is usually always good for a laugh or two.
that night we hit up chez nous for a pretty quite night with the crew, although there was a fairly interesting band playing which made for good entertainment!

i had my first glorious friday with no classes, so i celebrated by doing sweet fuck all for most of the morning. followed by my previously mentioned pleasent experiences at the prefecture/ofii/and of course, my favorite place, the bank. eventually i went over to katherine and antoine's place so antoine could help me translate my resume into french (oh yeah, that's right, looks like its time to get a french job - wish me luck!) and then after dinner katherine and antoine, and benjamin and kasia came over to chez anges to hang out for a bit.

saturday the 27th was an early rise, and we were off on a bus to the champagne captial of the world - epernay! (thanks to my buddy elias who donated his ticket to me and saved me the price of 50euros that it would have cost me!) the bus ride was torturous, but i managed to sleep for most of it. it took about three hours to reach the chateux mercier, in epernay;

and then we had a guided train tour of the champagne caves,

and after the tour, was the champagne tasting!

we had an hour to walk into the city of epernay and find some food for lunch and get back to the bus. so we strolled down the richest street in the world (avenue de champagne - thanks to all the bottles of champagne they have for sale) and found the classiest kebab shop we could.

then it was back on the bus for another two hours to head to a town called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. this is where general charles de gaulle lived for most of his life, so naturally we visited the charles de gaulle memorial museum, whre you can learn about every aspect of de gaulle's life, admire an incredible view and also see the cross of lorraine (which is a symbol of the liberation of france from nazi germany after world war II)

once again, it was back on the bus for another two hours to head back on home to the good old dij.

we made it back to dijon just before 8 and it was a mad rush to get everyone fed and ready and off to chez nous for 9 for regina's last fete before she headed back to germany the next morning. everyone piled into chez nous and we filled the entire back room. it was a great turn out and the night was hilarious, with few tears shed. we made sure regina had a good send off and finished the night marching down the street with her flag chanting les marseillais (the national anthem for france)

the night ended late and the morning came early when we all had to get up and sadly bid our farewell's to regina. jeremy and i decided to try and improve the day by walking to the park since it was so gorgeous outside. walked for almost an hour to get there just to find out that the fucking park was closed due to a heavy wind storm in france. bullshit. (although the park did look really beautiful from outside the gate, so i will definatly have to venture back again when its not so windy). i smoked my pétard that i had brought in anticipation for seeing all the crazy animal in parc de colombiere and we headed off to chez benjamin for a surprise visit. ended up visiting for a while and watching american histoire X, thats right, american history x en francais. pretty sure that movie would be fucked up in english, its a whole new level when its in french. eventually jer and i walked home and called an end to the day after dinner.

monday wasn't anything special but we were suprised with a dinner with a bunch of anges' friends - always a delight. if by delight you mean the longest, most dragged out, uncomprehensible time of your life.

the rest of the week was pretty chill and i didn't get up to much other than classes and all that exciting stuff. then all of a sudden it was march....

jeremy and phoebe have had some friends from back home stowing away in phoebe's room since wednesday (literally stowing away since we're not allowed to have friends over at all, and they've been here for about 3 days with anges having no idea about it - fabulous) so it's been a bit of an american/clark student overload for me, and i've definatly been outnumbered by far. but we've been having a good time regardless. we all went out on thursday night, starting off at katherine and antoines place for some aperatifs and then off to chez nous (of course). the night was hilarious and i managed to make a new pal with the young bartendar at the bar while he was off duty. and convinced him that it really wouldn't be so bad if we happened to drink our own bottle of wine we conveniently happened to bring to the bar with us. he did not disagree. hahahaha

obviously the night got sloppy and out of control and before we knew it, it was midnight and we were off to la salsa. it was pacckkkked since we showed up a little late and we couldn't all get in, but camilla and i managed. unfortunately it wasn't really as fun as usual and there were a lot of creepy old men hanging around, so before long i was heading off draggin my drunk ass home.

last night is a night to go down in my french history. i ate my first snail. can you believe it? needless to say, i ate one, and one was plenty.

(that's right, escargot here are essentially like chicken nuggets back home, buy them frozen, stick them in the oven, and they're ready to eat)





(oh, how appetizing)

everybody insists that they dont taste that bad at all and its really just like garlicy butter. this is true, until all the garlicy butter is gone and you're essentially just chewing on a slug. disgusting. something that had to be done, but i dont think its something that needs to happen again. next on the list, frog's legs.
after the snail eating experience a beer or two was in order so benjamin, kasia and ann came over to chez anges and off we went to chez nous, where it was far too packed for us all of us to sit down so we decided to relocate to bocadilla's for a pretty quiet night.

jeremy took off to london this morning and everyone else is off to paris for the day, so i've been taking advantage of having the apartment to myself - you know, walking around in the nude, doing as i please. and i think elias and ann are going to come over for a beverage or two (or a bottle of wine) and then we'll head to vieux leon where i get to be initiated by having to place our order with the nasty barman..... excellent. more on this later!

again, i apologize for the lengths of my posts lately. but procrastinating is so much easier than actually updating, i hope you understand.

a la prochaine fois mes homies, love ya's! xx

ps. 25 days 'til réunion bitches! fuck yeah

irrational feelings with positive endings

well where to begin this time.

i have been meaning to update everyday for the last week now, but everyday i have had to go to the bank and deal with the joys of finances in a language i barely grasp (when it comes to financial terms at least) and apres that my body was so filled with rage that i thought it would be in everyone's best interest if i avoided my blog. BUT after almost half a month of arguing with them i finally got my way, paid off what i owed them and convinced them to remove all the extra fees and unnecessary charges they had applied. however, i have STILL yet to receive the reimbursements that THEY have owed ME since november... oh how i wish i could charge them interest as easily as they charge me.

top four ridiculous things the joke of a bank, BNP, have told me:
1. "sorry, we're a bank, we can't accept payment by credit card or cheques, only by cash." (shouldn't a bank be able to receive money in any form, isn't that the point of a bank, to deal with money in various ways??)
2. "if you can make it in on monday, i will take care of everything for you and remove all of the charges" (oh geez, thanks bitch, nice to find out when i showed up that the bank is CLOSED every monday, fuck you and your family)
3. "oh, you want to deposit your cash? sorry, its 13h30, we only accept deposits until 12 noon, even though we're open from 9h-18h." (what exactly do they do at the bank for six hours if they aren't processing the reimbursements they owe me NOR are they accepting deposits?)
4. teller: "you want to pay off everything in your account to the penny?"
me: "oui"
teller: "but that's not possible, if your account is zero the bank will think you want to close it and we will automatically close it"
me: "what! why?"
teller: "why not?"
me: "that is NOT a real response"
teller: "oui"
(this is seriously the stupidity i have to deal with when i go to the bank. so needless to say i paid off my account + 1centime. so that i can continue to have a "functioning" account)

anyway, now that i no longer owe them anything i can joyfully go in everyday demanding why they haven't processed the money they owe me (even though everytime i ask "someone is on holiday and it will be done by the end of the month") and continue to piss them off as much as they pissed me off. oh how i love the french administration services :)

SPEAKING of french bureaucracy, i also had the pleasure of going back to the prefecture this week to find out why, after 5 months of waiting, i have still yet to receive my carte de sejour. when i went in december, before christmas break, they explained that there was "un petit problem" but it wasn't serious, (although they failed to contact me and mention that i had to return to the prefecture to sign a few things to apply again) but now that i had returned i should receive this infamous card within two months time. i explained that in a month my visa would expire, but apparently that's okay and as a canadian citizen i can chill here for three months as a "tourist". fine. well now that my three months is coming to an end and i'm on the verge of becoming vraiment illegal, i decided it was time for another visit. upon arrival, i had the pleasure of waiting in an overheated, body odor induced room, for a good hour or so. once i finally made it to the front of the line the pleasent lady informed me that my card is in fact ready! and it has been waiting there for almost a month now. HOWEVER, she can not give it to me, as i haven't passed my medical exam yet. i explain as kindly as possible that this is because they haven't sent me my appointment yet, and this is what i am waiting on. at this point, she did what all french associations do. shrugged her shoulders and gave me a pathetic, "meh, not my problem. ofii deals with that. you'll have to go to their office and deal with them".
so march on over to the ofii office, where they are closed for the hour and a half lunch break. wait, wait and wait some more. to finally find out that they haven't sent me my appointment because they have no idea who i am, they have zero records of me and this is all "very bizarre". i'm about to completely lose it, so they explain to me not to fret, head home and they will contact me soon with more information. i give them a strong warning that they have two weeks to contact me or else i will be back feeling even more irrational.
i think i have finally managed to express my sheer anger to the french though, because about 2 hours after leaving the office i received a call from the ofii office explaining that the prefecture had forgotten to send my file along, and they were sending it now and ofii would have it in a week and would call me with the date of my medical exam. (marvelous isn't it? how they just conveniently forget to pass things on? no wonder nothing ever gets done in this country!)
THANKFULLY, i received a phone call this evening, letting me know that my medical exam is scheduled for next tuesday. so as long as i don't manage to aquire tuberculosis in the next week, i should (finally) officially be legal in this country! WOOHOO!

i believe that is all for my irrational feelings for this week. and i feel like this rage filled post is long enough. and that, although i have had a great week aside from all this i think i should end this post here and start a new with the glorious details of my last week! i promise the prochaine post will be much more contente :)

until next time, gros bise

i will make my mistakes, and from them i'll learn

so yesterday after class my profeseur pulled me aside and told me that she thinks i should skip niveau trois and go straigt to niveau quatre! can you believe it? this is exactly what i need to do so that i can actually get some real credits from this year back at dal instead of essentially wasting my time. fantastique! i think it's going to be dur comme couilles (hard as balls) to catch up and know whats going on, but it should be possible. AND i have fridays off! can it get any better than this??
i had my first day of class in niveau 4 today, and i actually understood everything and was able to participate in conversation and the likes, so i felt good. although it will probably be a different story when it comes to grammaire class! we shall see

after class yesterady i had the extra boost of french confidence that i needed to feel capable to go and argue my way with the bank. pasquel (une vraiment salope) was as pleased as ever to see me and couldn't wait to explain to me that a "credit card" in france is not the same thing as it is in canada, even though it is described the exact same way and you can use it when there is no money on it. apparently its meant to be used seulement in emergencies and to be paid back immediately. if one could pay it back immediatly why would they use their "non-credit card-credit card" why wouldn't they simply just pay for it right away? pasquel had no answers to my genius question and i did not feel like trying to explain that me going away on february break truely was an emergency, because if i had stayed here while all my friends left i would have died. instead i decided to negotiate with her, and tell her that when they pay me back the money they owe me, they might see the money i owe them. so hopefully they continue to take their sweet old time reimbursing me for the things they owe me and in the mean time i can figure out my brilliant plan to come up with all this money before they try to send me to french prision. psssh. piece of cake.


oh and for any of you interested in learning the essential terms in the french language check out this site:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3939944/French-Slangs
(maybe not ideal for you, mum or dad)

lundi, the day from hell

oh sweet merciful jesus, can i just express my sheer hatred for mondays?

there is no better way (and by better way i obviously mean worse way) to start off the week than with 9am class for THREE hours straight, followed by lunch at the resto u, followed by two hours of civilisation which is quite possibly the dullest class known to man including a bunch of (probably) made up facts to make france seem like its the best. and THEN every second lundi we get to follow this wonderful course load up with ANOTHER two hours of class right after civ, for cour de litterature. probably the worst class known to man. let's just say today (and for the next two classes) we did POETRY, in FRENCH...... could there be anything worse? i don't think so.

though somehow i managed to make it through the day and now i'm a little buzzed after a good old night a chez nous with mes amis. definatly needed and definatly improved the evening

mais je dois changer l'eau de poison rouge maintenant et apres, je pense que je me dois coucher
donc, bonne nuits mes amours and here's hoping tomorrow is better than today!
mad love! biz

first week of second semester

so i had to head to school on friday the 12th to pick up my new schedule and find out what my next semester was going to look like. luckily things don't look to bad at all, and i only have class from 11h-13h on fridays which is all that really matters because this means i can sleep in after our raging thursday nights yet not have to be stuck at school all day long.
the first weekend back was pretty quiet to say the least. having camilla still not back from norway until tuesday things we're pretty dead. and i think i'm still trying to adjust to life without danielle, which is proving just as hard as i had expected it to be. however, there are a shit load of new kids at school and a bunch of people to meet and greet, but nobody can replace.
i think this month has been the absolute poorest i've been to date, which also didn't help with the lively-ness of the weekend. having not really been able to afford to go away on february break in the first place, i now owe le banque bnp my life and soul. so when a bunch of people were taking advantage of the 15euro train to paris i decided to pass it up and have the house to myself for the weekend.
on saturday there was un grand spectacle down my street in celebration of le carnevale (or mardi gras as we know it)
i decided to follow it down to place de la libertation and watch in awe along with all the terrified kids who thought it was some kind of bad trip they were having. this would have been an ideal day if i've ever seen one for trying acid or some kind of psychedelic drug of the sorts.

the pictures don't really do it justice at all, but it really was a pretty cool show.

sunday was valentine's day, so i decided to sleep as long as humanly possible and then hit up the fabulous flunch with some friends for an all you can eat type of lunch. we decided it was only right that i accept to be elias' valentine since he lost his girlfriend earlier in the year and all (please do not feel sorry for him in anyway shape or form). then later that night i met up with a bunch of the girls from school after dinner for some drinks at the sushi bar, osaka, just behind my place (don't worry, i haven't broadened my horizons enough yet to enjoy sushi)

monday morning i relentlessly started classes again, and waking up for 9am class has never been harder knowing that you have to sit there for 3 hours straight learning grammaire and sentence structures and the likes, followed by another two hours of civilisation. monday's are going to be brutal.

tuesday marked camilla's LONG overdue return back to dijon. i think i may have died if this girl came back any later. once classes were finished we spent the afternoon veggin' at her place and catching up on everything we'd missed. it seemed like i hadn't seen her since before christmas break, which is just not right.

wednesday was pretty dull with classes and just trying to get my body used to the fact that i actually have SOME responsibilities in my life again.

and then thursday (the big night to go out in dijon) was brought back with a bang when we all congregated chez camilla's (of course) to pre-drink for the long anticipated night. after a litre of wine and a interesting drinking game or two, lauren and i decided we weren't fit for the bar just yet and it would be wise to head to the epicerie du nuit to get another bottle to split. from then on the night obviously proceeded to become hilarious. we met up with everybody else at la salsa (our favorite bar where you can dance ontop of whatever you like, tables, the bar, anything you can find) and it was PACKED. immediately a sign for a good night. i remember dancing the night away and having a grand old time, and apparently i met the love of my life... who may or may not have turned out to be gay? or i might have just been bitter because i was too drunk to convey any kind of romantic conversation in english, let alone french at that point. hahaha a good time was had by all, and then once la salsa closed we continued on to le jamaquie. wisely the bouncers would not let some of us in, which i found hilarious while others were not so pleased, but i took this as a good sign that it was time to head home and walked back to my place with emily.
upon my return chez moi i decided, as i always do, that now would be a fabulous time to call everyone i know back in canada, so that i did. ended up chatting away with emma on the webcam until about 5am when she insisted that i really should probably go to bed. i can only imagine how enjoyable that conversation was for her.

miraculously i still made it to class on friday morning, semi-functioning, but i got by. as soon as i made it home though i slept for the majority of the afternoon attempting to sleep of the headache and hangover. needless to say i did not get up to a whole lot for the rest of the evening.

saturday camilla and i went to monoprix (grocery store) and picked up some stuff to make tacos for lunch (best idea ever.) a chez camilla's we faired our tacos and made some brownies as well. we continued to pass the following 6 or so hours not moving from her couch and watching movies and dave chappelle. perfect day if you ask me really.

today it was GORGEOUS outside (i hope that means spring is on its way) and i decide that it was time to stop being such a lazy slob so i went out into the world and found a bench in the sun where i sat and wrote some postcards and read my book (time traveller's wife, so good!)
now that i've fully caught you all up on my life i guess it's probably time i should take care of mes devoirs..................

i appologize for the gargantuous posts lately, and i promise to do my best to make them much shorter and to the point from now on.

bisous mes amis! x

better late than never - spring break, part deux

alright, where did i leave off on the last post....

so i got a few hours of sleep my last night in prague and then woke up at about 5am to realize that my ipod had been on all night long and the battery was now dead as i'm about to board a bus to travel through three countries for 8 hours. delightful. headed to the reception desk to try to give it as much life as i could in 15 minutes before heading out into the cold early morning to go to the bus station.

turns out the bus ride wasn't nearly as bad as i had expected it to be, and i survived sans ipod for the majority of the ride. i got to watch a random sandra bullock's movie that i still have yet to learn the name of, many episodes of friends (amazing) and an episode of mr. bean in french (which needless the say i did not understand). i also slept alot. on the way we stopped in brno, czech republic; bratislava, slovakia; györ, hungary and then finally we arrived in budapest (around 1:00pm). i attempted to be coherant as we came into the cities we stopped in so that i could see as much as possible. but the view from a bus window really does not justify the city in any way at all.

when i got off the bus in budapest (literally in the middle of NOWHERE) i experienced my first dose of culture shock when i realized NOBODY there spoke english, at all. i needed to find a bank machine so i could withdrawal money to buy my metro ticket, but there was no machine to be found and nobody able to help me. i also had my first experience with a scam artist who tried to convince me that if i "just walked down this little alley with him he could get me some money". i'm pretty sure this was the only thing he could say in broken, terrible english and all the flags and red lights went off telling me this is exactly what i should not do. welcome to budapest.

i eventually managed to buy my ticket with my credit card with astronomical service charges but then i was off on the metro to downtown budapest.
as soon as i arrived, i was in love with the city. it was so beautiful. the directions to my hostel were a piece of cake and i found it no problem and checked in and dumped all my stuff. then as per usual, it was time to explore! on my first day wandering i managed to do a pretty good general tour of the city and saw charles bridge,

the parliment buildings,

st. stephen's basilica, the opera house, the first mcdonalds in eastern europe (hello western world take over),

and many little parks and lots of statues and monuments.

that evening it started to snow pretty intensely, and the lady at the front desk of my hostel informed me that they were expecting 20cms that night! i did not let this deter me and continued on with my sight seeing anyway. however after being outside in the cold walking around all day i was literally a popsicle when i returned and was completly beat from my day of traveling. i headed up to my room in the hostel, where i realized i was staying with 2 french guys, a canadian guy (who showed up after i already passed out) and 6 people that didn't speak any english at all. the six people who i can only assume may have been russian (??) decided it would be a great idea to stay in the hostel all night instead of going out and have a party until SIX THIRTY AM. i'm sure you can imagine how much i appreciated this, but its hard to tell people to fuck off in a language they dont understand.

thankfully the russians checked out the next morning and i didn't have to deal with them again. the second day there i took another free walking tour to see what was up with budapest. my tour guide (who's name i couldn't even remember if i had written it down) was a local from budapest and was hilarious. we started off in vörösmarty tér,

headed down váci utca,

checked out kiskiralylany (budapest's little princess - one of the first statues in budapest after the nazi's finally left them as a free country)

walked along the waterfront past charles bridge, up to st. stephen basilica,

down past the university, across the bridge from the pest side to buda to see the "0 km stone"

and then up the 100's of stairs to the top of buda castle. they gave us a sweet tour of the buda castle and the surrounding area and filled us in on lots of history along the way.

(this statue is "buda's cock" ... this is actually what they refer to this statue as. its the only statue that the communists made that is still standing in budapest. when they made it the communists said the "hat" ontop is to represent their empire. but the people of budapest left the statue there after the communists left because it reminds them of how blindly stupid the communists were.... because it obviously just looks like a dick hahhahhaha)

(this statue is also at the top of buda castle, and you are supposed to rub the horse's balls to improve your sex life)

then the tour ended and we were left to explore on our own. i literally spent a good 2 hours after the tour wandering around buda castle and admiring the view. after i wandered back down the other side of the hill

and meandered all around and through the buda side of the city i retraced the steps of the tour and checked out some sights in further detail. i went in to st. stephen's basilica where they actually have st. stephen's amputated hand on display from when he was cannonized like 100's of years ago. by far one of the most creepy and morbid things i've seen in a while. afterwards i wandered as far as my legs could carry me up andrássy út and then back to my hostel again, taking refugee whenever i could to take advantage of a heated building for free. when i made it back to the hostel i met my new roomates (a bunch of british girls) and a bunch of other people. the hostel has a great common room with a big projector screen with 100's of movies to chose from. so we ended up watching jackass before calling it a night.
my third day there it was actually sunny when i woke up, so i had to take advantage of it by heading over the the buda side and climbing up to the top of the citadel, which i like to refer to as "the top of the world". the view was spectacular and i couldn't get enough of it.

i spent a good amount of time up there checking out the fortress and the liberation monument

and the park at the top, but mostly just looking out at the view. the hike up was pretty trecherous, but not quite as scary as the hike back down. after all the snow they had got the trails and stairs were completely covered and had formed luge-like tracks going up and down.

and sporting the practical footwear of chuck taylors this made for an interessting journey to say the least! once i safely managed to make it to the bottom i went to check out the jewish synagogue (the largest in euroasia and the 2nd largest in the world)

as well as the tree of life in commemoration of the victims from the nazi take over. i then hiked across the city to find the train station so i could buy my ticket in advance to get out to the airport (having learned from my mistake before leaving for paris, i have decided its always a good idea to buy in advance). after struggling at the train station to find someone i could communicate with i managed to find a man that spoke french, and quite easily i expressed myself and got what i needed (this and the bus station were the only places i had trouble finding people that could speak english, go figure). i then journey to the other side of the city again to check out heroes square (also known as the millenium monument since it was built in celebration of budapest's 1000th birthday in 1896)

and city park.

in city park you can find the annual skating rink they build (which as a canadian i can say is really nothing to write home about at all, and definatly not worth the grotesque fees they charge to skate on it), the széchenyi-gyógyfürdő (also known as the thermal baths, which again, not really worth the price. after seeing the hotsprings in iceland and how natural they were and surrounded by volcanic tundra the széchenyi thermal baths just looked like an overrated swimming pool filled with really hot water),

and also vajdahunyad castle.

it was the perfect day to wander the park and i got to watch the sunset over heroes square.

while walking back down andrássy út i stopped to see the terror museum (showing the history of the nazi take over)

and check out the inside of the opera house lobby. grabbed some dinner and wandered around downtown for a while, then it was back to the hostel to watch old school and drag me to hell (utterly terrible movie) with my new friends.
the following morning was my last real day in budapest so i did my best to make the most of it. i wandered back to the buda side and saw the famous gellért hotel

where the gellért thermal baths are. hiked half way up the citadel again to check out the view one last time and then headed to the GIANT daily market back on the pest side of town. the market was filled with lots of chili peppers and exotic foods you would never see back home,

and upstairs had traditional hungarian clothing and any souvenir you could possibly imagine.

i wandered back along the waterfront and then got a text from the girls from the cief saying they had arrived in town, so i went and met up with them at their hostel. we went and gathered some groceries so we could make dinner for the night, feasted and then got into the wine. a friend of a friends of a friend of lisa's (viktor), who lives in budapest, came over to show us a good place to go out. after we were all significantly drunk enough we headed out to gödör klub. viktor was buying us all drinks and needless to say the night got beyond sloppy.

since i had to leave to catch my flight at 7am the next day we decided to call it an early night around 12:30 or so. however, when i made it back to my hostel everyone was beyond drunk and there was alcohol everywhere, and i just could not resist the after party!

the night turned out to be hilarious, and apparently i became quite good friends with a british bloke i met. around 6-6:30 we all realized that i had to wake up in an hour to leave and i hadn't even gone to bed yet.... nor had i packed any of my things. so i called it a night, drunkenly packed my stuff as best as i could and passed out. approximately 45 minutes later i was waking up and checking out. fabulous! the rest of the days journey was absolute hell, not only was i severly hungover, but i also managed to get some bug bites on my wrist while i was sleeping. at the time of check out i figured this was no big deal (more on this later on in the post). i grabbed the metro to the train station, the train to budapest airport (where i had to wait a little while as my plane was about an hour delayed) and then when i landed in paris i had to take the metro to downtown paris and kill about 8 hours before my train to dijon. the entire day the bites on my wrist began to swell and swell until my arm had become about twice its normal size. there was nothing i could do and before long it was flaming hot, sore as hell, and starting to ooze some disgusting substance. it was completely gnarly to say the least. however, i managed to spend about 4 hours dragging my ass around le louvre trying to find the exhibit of lists for danielle (which was highly unsuccesful) so instead i wandered through the egyptian section.

after about 4 hours i couldn't handle living anymore and just went and sat in gare de lyon for about another 4 hours in the freezing cold (oh man, that bought back some terrible memories). finally it was time for my train and i was heading off on my way back to dijon.

when i arrived home i showed anges my fucked up arm and she seemed terrified (which really helped convince me everything was okay), but since it was already almost 11pm there was not much i could do about it until the morning, so as always after one of my excursions my bed and i become one for an unhealthy amount of time.

first thing the next morning i went to the pharmacy to see if they could give me something for my arm, and she insisted i go to the doctors immediatly. wonderful. headed to the doctors on campus where they do not speak a lick of english (thank god we studied medical terms during first semester!). when i was checking in and the receptionist was taking my information i showed her what my problem was and she immediately ran and got a doctor. when the doctor arrived she immediately went and got THREE other doctors to come and take a look as well. always a good sign right? as this point i'm thinking amputation is going to be necessary. but after they mumble to each other for a while in french and ask me a few questions they decide that all i need are some anitbiotics, to apply some rubbing alcohol and sport a sweet bandage on my arm for the next week. even though i insisted i had no allergies to medication the doctor was extremely concerned that i was going to have an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she prescribed me and insisted that i go back for another visit in the morning. luckily by the next morning it had already started to clear up a bit and wasn't nearly as hideous as the day before and the doctors gave me the all clear and said i should be fine in a week (turns out they were right as its pretty okay now, but i think i might has some nasty scars for a little while, at least i got to keep my arm though!)

anyway, i think this post is long enough, and it is definatly time for me to hit the sheets. i will update on the last week and a half back in mustardville at a later date. for now, i will sleep.

bonne nuit et a la prochaine fois mes amours! vous me manquez!