rebecca_in_blue: (photographed by Eva)
Various countries recognize February 5 as International Pancake Day this year (it's held on the same day as Mardi Gras, don't ask me why). I found this out yesterday and got a craving for pancakes, and since I can make some pretty delicious pancakes in the United States, I figured I could do just as well in France, right? Wrong. I realized halfway through that I had used crepe mix, not pancake mix, and apparently dressing a crepe up in some extra flour does not make it a pancake. If I had been the only one to eat them, I wouldn't have cared, but I was cooking them for the other assistants, because we decided yesterday to have breakfast for dinner (Mariana made French toast, which was as good as my pancakes were bad). The results were not pretty, but Heather and Marlene ate them anyway, which I appreciated.

I'm behind on e-mails to several people, and it looks like it may be a while before I can catch up. The school computers have all had very sporadic e-mail access lately. We think 1) it's a problem with the computers themselves, or 2) the school's internet provider (the Académie of Amiens) doesn't want us accessing our e-mail. If it's the latter, then I'm going to have to find some way to get in touch with the Académie and ask them what moron said, "Hey, the school computers are used by foreign assistants who are miles away from their family and friends, so why don't we block their e-mail access?" Right now it breaks down like this...

There are six computers in the school's computer room.
One can access both Google Mail and Hotmail.
Two can access Google Mail but not Hotmail.
Two cannot access Google Mail or Hotmail.
One is only for decoration and has not worked the entire time I've been here.

And I can't forward my Hotmail e-mails into Google Mail account because that would make things too easy. But fortunately I can still access this journal from all of them and YouTube from three of them, so all is not lost, but I sure am homesick for the LSU computer lab right now. Hundreds of computers with Photoshop and Windows Movie Maker, so I could scan photos and make icons and YouTube videos to my heart's content.
rebecca_in_blue: (red riding hood)
Well, I'm still exhausted, because Heather and I woke up at 6:00 to go to Laon for our medical exams this morning. My appointment was at 8:15, and hers was at 9:00. I couldn't understand why she left with me instead of sleeping in an extra half-hour and leaving later, but it's a very good thing we did go together, because by ourselves, each of us would probably be wandering around Laon lost. I have never seen a city with such a confusing lay-out. We had to take a bus and a trolley to get to the hospital. (Well, it wasn't exactly a trolley. It was actually a lot like a roller coaster. I enjoyed it, but I think Heather was terrified.)

I'm leaving for London tomorrow (Friday), so this will probably be the last update I make until then. I know I'm going to have a very good time, because I'll be in the heart of JM Barrie country and I'll be visiting family (however distant), but I am really going to miss being at Grandma's house on Christmas Eve. I hope the box I mailed arrives before then, but it probably won't. Until then...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 

Oh, it's all right, it's gonna be okay.
'Cause next year I'll be home
Come a Louisiana Christmas Day.
Oh, let the good times roll,
Les bons temps roulez,
'Cause next year I'll be home
Come a Louisiana Christmas Day.
rebecca_in_blue: (dishevelled hair)

Well, Rebecca has some bad news. There's a chance I might not be able to go to London for Christmas after all. A pretty big chance. It breaks down like this: If I leave France, I won't be allowed back into the country without a valid visa or a carte de séjour. My visa is going to expire on December 14, so to go to London, I need a carte de séjour. But getting a carte de séjour is turning out to be a much longer and more complicated process than I thought. The main holdup is that all foreigners staying in France for over three months are required to have a medical exam with the ANAEM, and you have to have had this exam to get the carte de séjour. For whatever reason, the ANAEM seems determined not to give me an exam (Heather is having the same problem, so maybe they hate Americans). I have all the rest of paperwork I need for the carte de séjour, and right now I'm really hoping that I can get at least reci-passé. A reci-passé is proof that you are in the act of getting a carte de séjour and allows you to leave the country. If I can get a reci-passé without an exam, I think I may be able to go to London after all.

It's hard to be depressed about this, because I had really been looking forward to going to London, and I feel bad not giving Laura a definite answer about whether I can come or not. Everything is just so up-in-the-air right now, which is frustrating. It's difficult, but I'm really trying hard to not give up and to be persistent about getting a reci-passé. After all, in the words of one of my favorite Christmas movies (Home Alone):

This is Christmas! The season of perpetual hope!

In other, more immediate, bad news, I've been having dull aches and pains all over my body. I can't figure out what's causing them -- the cold weather, maybe? -- and nothing I do seems to relieve them for long, although hot water helps. Most of them seem to be in my joints, and my right hand is hurting the most, which is very bad because I'm right-handed. So I've been trying to get lots of rest, and I hope that that will eventually make the pains go away.

rebecca_in_blue: (worried eyes)
I was online yesterday when I saw a news headline that made my jaw drop: "Which Harry Potter character did JK Rowling reveal as gay?" Of course I immediately clicked on the article (my first guess, by the way, was Sirius; there are huge rumors among fans that he was gay and in love with James or Remus) and my jaw dropped again as I read it. It wasn't Sirius – it was Dumbledore! Apparently Jo Rowling was at a press conference with her fans, and one of them asked about Dumbledore's love life, and Rowling came right out and said that he was gay. I was so shocked that I sent a text message of the news to Sara, Adam, and Athena. (Athena texted back, "You mean the actor who plays him?") Today I checked my e-mail and discovered that both Sara and Adam had read the article before I did and sent me links to it. I wish I coud talk to them about it. What's ironic is that when we discovered in the seventh book that Dumbledore and Grindelwald used to be friends, I made jokes about how they met when they were young men working as ranch hands on Brokeback Mountain.

Anyway, after I got over that shock, Heather, Nakeisha, and I went to McDonald's yesterday. It was a long walk, especially in the cloudy, cold weather, but we were desperate for some familiar food. And since we knew we wouldn't be able to come back for another week at least, we decided to make the most of this visit. We stayed in McDonald's for over an hour, spent about ten Euros each, and stuffed our faces. They played American music inside the resteraunt, and we heard "Wake Me Up When September Ends," "How to Save a Life," and a fairly recent song called "Hey There Delilah." This last one came on while I was eating my chicken nuggets, and I suddenly remembered one hot day when I worked at the bookstore and drove to the McDonald's across the street to eat the same meal of chicken nuggets, French fries, and Coke, and I heard the same song on the truck radio. It made me more than a little homesick to remember the heat, the sun, and driving my truck, and being in a country where I spoke the language, then to look out the window and see that I was in France, where it was cold and people usually spoke too fast for me to understand.

A thousand miles seems pretty far,
But they've got planes and trains and cars.
I'd walk to you if I had no other way.
Our friends would all make fun of us,
and we'll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way.

Profile

rebecca_in_blue: (Default)
rebecca_in_blue

March 2013

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 26th, 2025 06:00 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios