Updates on Life

Since Amsterdam I have:

Visited the South of France - Avignon, Arles, Marseille and Cassis.
Tried couch surfing for the first time in Avignon and had a blast.
Saw my first corrida (they didn't kill the bull) in Arles.
Hiked the Calanques of Cassis in Crocs. (alliteration...!)
Done so little school its too sad to be funny.
Had my first surprise birthday party (Thank you C, R and the MtA kids <3).
Had my first drunken karaoke surprise party (Thanks to Les MISS).
Visited family I hadn't seen for 14 years, and still felt like I was at home.
Played rugby in Belgium and partied in Brussels.

Man I should do more blogs like this. I've covered about 6 hours worth of blogging ;)

I'm Going to Miss the Skyline

I haven't written in ages. Now I kind of understand why people complain about their blogs, because you get this nagging little sense of guilt that you should be filling it for all the invisible web surfers that probably don't even read it and thus add more unnecessary stress to your life.

I just finished reading Kellen's blog and it made me want to write in mine. Funny how its always through reading other people's writing that the urge to write comes back to me. Must remember.

Today's my last day in Strasbourg. Tomorrow morning I catch the 06:45 train out to Paris to join my family for travels. I feel like the past two weeks of my life have been the conclusion to some kind of cheesy novel or maybe a sitcom, where everyone reflects about how far they've come in the last year.

I read over a bunch of letters my friends had written to me at the beginning of the year for my plane ride, all of them encouraging, telling me not to be sad that I was leaving, that it was such an amazing opportunity. I laughed a little while reading my own frailty between the lines - and I wonder if I'm at all the same person that stepped on that plane last September? I've changed so many of my perspectives on life.

The rush of words have stopped in my head, and unfortunately everything I try to write keeps getting muddled as I type it out, so I'm afraid that's all for today. Kind of sad, I missed writing in this thing.

Soon, soon, invisible web surfers, I promise.

Angry.

Mostly at myself. But waiting in line at Office Depot for twenty minutes (and for nothing!) doesn't help. Neither do classes run for idiots. (Phonetics class: "Repetez, Oh-Ou-AHH!!!!", Littératures déssinées class: 1 hr explanation of the following - Comic books = condensed novels.... REALLY GENIUS?!?! They should just hand me a PhD because my brain isn't made of mashed potatoes.)

I have been handicapped by the classes here. I can't write essays. I procrastinate. I don't do homework.

France has given me a lobotomy, and I handed them my brain on a platter.

Must.Try.Harder...

The Collective or Sub "Conscious"?

Weird moment today in class.

The teacher was discussing the Arts during the Renaissance, and the fact that actors would put on tragedies that corresponded with the tragedies of the time. Today, she said, they could put on a tragedy about earthquakes for example, as an allusion to the earthquakes in Italy.

Instantly I was reliving the dream I had last night, of being caught in an earthquake in the night, in a city that wasn't my own...

Truth be told I did have a newspaper yesterday, but I was reading all about the NATO summit. I merely glanced at the article about the Italian earthquakes, I didn't even get around to reading the sub heading or the text under the photograph.

So what is that? My subconscious pulling out a moment's thought from the day and turning into an entire logical and flowing dream? Or is there really such a thing as a collective consciousness, that we're all connected by this tiny fiber of awareness? Another thing, merely a detail that struck me, was the fact that my dream was set at night, not really the usual for me but nothing really out of the ordinary, but coincidentally the quakes started in the night on Sunday.

I'm not psychic, nowhere close. Its just that after suddenly remembering that dream in class today, I suddenly feel... connected. I know that I wasn't reliving what happened, because I was in a lake surrounded by apartment buildings (which you don't really see in cities) trying to keep from getting crushed by the falling buildings and debris. All I'm saying is that there are elements there - the flash of terror, the way the lights of the buildings look against the night sky, the screams...

Have you ever considered that? That maybe our dreams aren't just bits of hashed up things our subconscious feeds us while we're sleeping...? Maybe within those unintelligible narratives there are real fragments, albeit little ones, one someone else's consciousness. A moment, a thought, a memory that doesn't belong to you.

Maybe that's why so many people can't remember what it is they dream. Maybe we shouldn't.

[image from http://cs3143.k12.sd.us/year/menu.htm]

i amsterdam

[Work in progress because I'm a lazy bum]

Reminders to self: Van Gogh and journalism, Anne Frank House and museums, Kylie Minogue, Christian hostel, Red Light District, French Face = love, book store inspiration, missing street art exhibition, reminder to take notepad with oneself wherever from now on - finally understand writers, dichotomoy of neighborhoods...

Sunshine :-)

The power of the SUN!!! Not renewable energy, but in terms of happiness!!! Over the past few days everyone in Strasbourg has been reveling in it - and I've been trying to figure out its effect on my life and moods.

For example, there was a good month in between January and March where it just rained constantly. Honestly I couldn't bear it anymore, and I didn't realize it was the rain that was getting me down until the sun came out again for a day or two. I was so miserable whenever it came to doing anything - because I had to go outside, and rugby basically became a chore. NOW I remember why I love rugby again - its so much fun to run around and roll on the grass when its not too cold out and when the last rays of sun are hitting the uprights...

Another way I found the weather really effected me was during travels. As sad as it is to say I think (though I did enjoy myself) that Berlin would have made much more of an impression on me had it not been raining most of the time. I'm not complaining (because life isn't all sunshine and daisies, you gotta learn to enjoy the rainy days too), and Berlin was wonderful, but I know that the sunny days in Amsterdam really left me with this impression of being re-energized and invigorated by my travels.

I never really realized the effect sunshine had on my general outlook... Good thing I wasn't born in England or Ireland, imagine what a dour person I would have grown up to be???

[pictures are from Amsterdam trip]

Helicopters buzzing by my window....

I come back to Strasbourg and the first thing I see is cops. Everywhere. Then barricades. Then helicopters. Then buses with more cops.
They actually brought in police officers from all over France, because when I asked one of them how to navigate to my street with all the barricades, all he said was, "Ch'ais pas, ch'uis pas d'ici moi." (as in "débrouilles-toi dit donc!!!"). Thanks. Anyway it took me forever to get home. I'm going to bed.
All this because of the NATO summit. And tonight Stephen Harper ate at the restaurant my friend works at. Fancy that.

(photo from LaProvence.com "Echauffourées à Strasbourg:
12 militants anti-Otan interpellés", 2 avril, 2009)

AND Obama gave a speech today in Strasbourg. For free. And I MISSED it. I was on a bloody train all day.

I'm in a foul mood indeed.