dimanche

This weekend is the annual swap meet in Bordeaux, and Joana has been REALLY excited (they have others once a week elsewhere, but this one is different because instead of antiques it's literally like a giant garage sale). I didn't find anything yesterday, but we're going to a different part of it today, so we'll see.

I've been feeling guilty lately about not traveling enough on my weekends. But traveling is really tiring/I'm scared to make plans. I've been to Lourdes, Toulouse, Sarlat and Arcachon, but that's it, and I won't even be leaving the country until Spring Break. And after that I might not have the time/energy to travel any more anyway.

I think it would be different if there were more to do here on the weekend, but on Sunday EVERYTHING is closed, AND I don't have a noticeably amount of homework to keep me busy with anyway. From Bordeaux, Ryan Air flies to Edinburgh, Porto, London, Bologna and Brussels. But all of them either 1) don't work when I can go, 2) I already have plans to go nearby those places and I don't need a separate trip, or 3) there are other places I'd prefer to go more.

And I find that EasyJet is a pain too. WHY do I like to complain so much??? The two places I REALLY want to go are Scotland or Ireland, but I DON'T want to go alone, and I don't know if Kayla will even be able to come with me because I'm visiting her when she's in school, errrrrrrrrrggggggggh.

I'm very quickly running out of weeeeeekeennnnnds. I have this upcoming weekend, where I have potential plans to visit a castle with my host family (which I don't want to miss), plus it's less than a week away AND it's Easter, so it will be hard to book anything. The next weekend Kayla is coming (which I AM really excited for and that should be really fun), then I have ONE MORE WEEKEND (where I just found out that I might be able to meet my aunt in Paris, which would be reeeeally fun). But if that doesn't work, I think that most people want to stay here and get work done because it's the weekend before the last week of school, so I probably wouldn't be able to find people to travel elsewhere with anyway.

What have I been DOING for the past many weekends?? Not homework, that's for sure, haha. I seriously don't know where the time has gone.

I've been thinking about it, though, and I think that I would have a hard time studying abroad for an entire school year. My French would improve, obviously, because I would know that suffering through not understanding anything for a whole eight or nine months would be more miserable than suffering for four and a half months (which is actually doable, I've found), so I would HAVE to get better right away. But besides that I think I would miss home/the dollar too much.

I love being here but I'm definitely getting REALLY antsy. In addition to the obvious things, I miss a lack of wind, Yogurtland, American Way, jeeeeewellllry, specific people whom I miss especially, my roommates, sorority, BEING ABLE TO RUN ERRANDS ON SUNDAYS, filtered coffee, student life on campus, Trader Joes and English. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Really antsy.

However, all of this feeling antsy/not having daily homework to do has made me decide that I want to read something substantial (in English) that I haven't read yet while I'm here. Probably Dickens/Elliot/Gaskell -- recommendations pleeeease?