but this weekend was the weekend before finals. so obviously it had to be different. but don't by any means think this past weekend resembled a pre-finals weekend had i been in santa cruz. no no. going out still happened. enjoying myself still happened. oh yea, and i guess some studying happened too.
but let's start from the beginning. my weekends this semester start on thursday with the end of my salsa class. which means they essentially start at noon on thursday since i love my salsa class and dont even consider it school. when its cancelled, i am sad. but anyways. i went to my salsa class which as always was lots of fun. then i ended up going to chloes house and meeting up with zoe and her friend who was visiting (a girl who turns out actually goes to santa cruz!). we all ate dinner and chloe and i attempted to teach zoe and keya some salsa dance moves. which was interesting since chloe and i suddenly had to pretend we knew how to do the guys' part. but anyways, they weren't half bad :) that night we met up with patrick and went to mi barrio (the salsa club in town) and knew that some of our classmates would be going that night as well. after awhile we headed to barbarousse because it was keya's last night in town and we figured we should go to a regular bar/club too. once again the backroom was closed off, but it was fun nonetheless.
friday did actually involve some studying. i met up with zoe and chloe to go to a cafe to study for a few hours before we had our eap get together at 5pm to shoot a video. the studying wasnt all that exciting, but you might be wondering about the video i am talking about. if you have access to my facebook, there is a link there (i'm hoping i will eventually have a way to actually save it). but anyways. the whole point of it? an eap student studying in bordeaux had the brilliant idea that eap students around the world dance to the same song, and then that will be pieced together to form one video to show future eap students (at least thats what i believe this was for). well it was decided that the song would be "love generation" by bob sinclaire, and our lyonnais group decided we would be doing this dance in place de terreaux in front of the statue. thats right. a bunch of foreign kids dancing around for five minutes in a very public square. i have to say i was nervous going in, afraid of making a fool of myself. but it was actually a ton of fun :) people were taking pictures of us, and a few even biked through the view, but im glad we got a bunch of us to participate.
i was sad because i was actually pretty good at getting the ball into the cup.. yknow, before the game actually started. then i got my first ball in, and missed everything after. but it was still a fun evening :)
as it started getting time to decide if we were in fact going to take the metro home as originally planned, we almost changed our minds before deciding to be responsable and realize we needed to study the following morning. so we headed home. and that was friday.
saturday didn't start out with studying either. i mean it couldn't immediately anyways since i slept at home and my laptop and all my notes were at chloe's from the day before. but thats not the point. i had made plans to meet up with elliot so we could find this message wall that kirstin and patrick and milena had told us about awhile ago. technically we came up with this plan forever ago, but we were finally going to make it happen. so we got ourselves up to fourviere.. and then realized we still had NO IDEA where the heck this wall was. we made a good effort, and even found some beautiful path with views i had never seen before (and want to go back and see again), but we failed at our original goal.
when we finally gave up for the day, i headed to chloe and zoes to get my stuff. i picked up some beautiful looking strawberries from the marché on the way though since they were only 3 euros :) i had planned to study with zoe at some cafe, but with the stress i was suddenly feeling, i decided to grab my stuff (and by that i mean half of my belongings.. ok thats an exaggeration, but mannn had a lot of my stuff accummulated at their place over the last couple days) and head home to study by myself for awhile. they would come join me later for dinner since my host parents had left me a lot of food for the weekend and i hadnt really gotten through it seeing as how little i had actually been home. so i studied for a good few hours (didn't even let myself go upstairs where i get more easily distracted) before they came over. we ate our dinner and then decided to watch a movie on my computer before they headed home. we had decided earlier that that sounded like a better idea than actually going out since we all still had lots of studying to do on sunday. plus by the time they came over it was pouring and i decided i was perfectly happy to be able to stay dry!
sunday is when things started getting rough. well, i mean, everything started out just fine. i woke up. ate breakfast. and tried the whole studying downstairs thing again. i stayed downstairs long enough to let my laptop battery practically die, and then decided i would head up to my room and charge my computer. well that was going fine and dandy, up until about 30%, when suddenly, my charger decided it had had enough and wasn't up to the job anymore. which meant i had about an hour left on my computer. which i had actually been using for studying. awesome right? not really. of course i have NEVER had this issue before. and of course it had to happen when nobody i am living with has a mac (considering my last two years in school im surrounded by this kind of person). this meant i was suddenly without a computer seeing as it died. not ideal. and especially not ideal before finals. i got some studying done with my handwritten notes, but it was frustrating to not be able to look things up the way i like to. wikipedia is my friend, you know.
luckily, monday i managed to convince chloe and juan to move their study date to my place so that i could use juan's charger. by the time they arrived (which i had to push back because of lunch), i had been computerless for 24 hours. shocker. i know. i am definitely one who can live without my computer for a day. but i dont like it when that day is one when i actually need to use my computer for productive reasons. sure i felt distanced from facebook.. but thats not really what i was sad about. they were here long enough that i managed to get my computer charged back up to 98%, which gave me a few hours (the last of which i am using to write this blog.. obviously i am super dedicated to this studying stuff).
but i did find out there is some store called ephesus that is a legit mac store and hopefully i will be able to get a new charger tomorrow. i have no idea what i am going to do if i end up having to rely on friends to keep my computer charged.. that would be a huge problem. i guess probably spend way too much on a charger? im hoping my apple care plan will work for me in france to avoid this problem.
so obviously i had lots of fun this weekend with a little bit of studying on the side. in my defense though, i am only really studying for once class. i mean you can't really study for translation classes, and im waiting to get the paper for my creative writing class back so i can fix it up and turn it in again. it probably also doesnt help that i probably need a better attitude toward my psych class. i wasn't a huge fan of the class (im not a big cognitive person in the first place), and i found out about the date of the final very last minute. aka the week before. and i might point out thats not me being a slacker.. when i originally asked about the date of the final i was told it would be in may. meh. oh well. im a little worried about not passing it, but im doing my best to try and learn everything.. its hard though!
anyways. all of this will be over and done with in a few days and i will have about 44 days of freedom. yknow, to travel and finish my list of things i need to do in lyon before i head home. and to enjoy my summer since a week after my return to the states summer school starts. and i actually plan on doing well in summer school. which will involve much more reading and studying and test taking than this entire semester.
also. my 8 month marker happened to have passed yesterday. say whatttt?
i couldn't find the link. why don't you just post it here?
ReplyDeleteof course Santa Barbara would win... Virginia doesn't count.
if you ever want to feel better about your study habits and imminent work load, just call me up