Can you teach me to be nice? I seem to have forgotten how.

my life has become a steady cycle of watching the ‘michael jackson live in bucharest” DVD 4 nights a week and getting felt up by a four year old. this is not entirely unpleasant. the first part that is. well. ok. so there’s nothing funny about children and sex and i’m going to stop right here.

also, i missed pi day. i deserve to have my imsa alumnus status revoked.

it’s really really gorgeous here. there are lemon and orange trees in every yard and old folks galore.  i went for a jog along the beach today and the sun burned my eyes, in that kind of pleasant, summery way. i was wearing sunblock and it smelled like summer camp. i could feel the freckles forming on my face.

i still don’t really understand how twitter really works, but i mostly use it cause reading Annie’s tweets is guaranteed entertainment, and Jordan and Jesse do it, so i’m down.

what do you think i should do this summer? if there’s anyone out there still reading, please direct my life. much love.

take up pilates

take more photos

do more guitaring

read read read dictionary dictionary dictionary

learn to surf, well

become infinitely more awesome

also, i really wanna see john mayer in concert. did we go back in time four years? yea, i don’t know, but i feel like i don’t want to miss the defining experience of our (female) generation, i.e. melting into a puddle at john mayer’s brand of ugly-sexy-corny-charms and sweating, screaming, as if the louder you get, the more likely he is to realize you’re his soul mate.

does john mayer get laid like 100 times after every show? i think so. he must be tired.

let me you if you wanna partake in this historic adventure. like woodstock, but more bras.

Paris has ruined me for all other cities. I’m making the move to this little beach town outside Monaco in a week exactly, so i guess i’ll give you some Parisian highlights.

these two are both Hannah/theatre oriented activities:

so you know that show where the little boy from Harry Potter plays grownup and gets all naked and rides on a mechanical horse? yea, saw the Parisian version on the Champs-E. me like naked theatre done in French.

mime recital at Hannah’s school. WHAT?! so sweet that i would come back to Paris just to see the Spring show.

prim, poofy gray-haired French teacher telling our class that “Voltaire, like all men, had his needs”

jamming with Erx

dinner chez Jacqui and Miranda

discovering Archards des Legumes

new year’s eve on the Champs Elysee, because, you know, ‘rock out with your cock out’

Chinese foods on Christmas Eve

miss Annie and all of her guidance and glory

finding out that true love is blind

sharing my anxieties about getting off the metro with Mariam, on a bus. loudly. because it’s really scary getting off the metro! it jerks about a second before it stops. one time i stood up too soon, and fell INTO A CHILD. not ok.

ramen. simpsons. nanna. TEA.

loving PEOPLE.

soldes. the sales here are INSANE. and it goes on for weeks and weeks, with all the stores, and tempts and gnaws at you until you empty your bank account. i am well on my way, but i have really pretty things to show for it.

seeing Justice on like my second night here. seeing Kiefer Sutherland at the Moose. seeing people in black, carrying baguettes, wearing berets, and smoking like they’re too cool for shit, every. day.

i’m bedding now, but if you’re the person who has me on your google reader, will you let me know?  somehow i think that’s so super duper cool.

new low: man in the metro telling me ‘je peux etre votre Bouddha”=”i can be your Buddha”

really? best pickup line yet.

mariam and i are going out tonight, because she’s back from brazil, and alllll tan. i bought a box of clementines yesterday from franprix for 2.98 euros; there must’ve been at least 30 in there, and i only have 5 left. sarah and justin came over last night and helped me with the citrus destruction. after justin took off, sarah and i played the guitar and sang a bunch of wreckers songs.

weeeeeeeeeeee. oh mariam is my lovely lovely british girl. she’s a corner of the triangle that is me hannah and m.

when she’s here, i light matches for fun.

i like the fresh feel of a new year. i cleaned my apartment today; i’m getting a roommate, which is exciting, but only for a couple of weeks, which is kind of heartbreaking. i hear she’s british, i like that. and since i am no longer seduced by their accents, things should go smoothly.

i’m in love with paris. i know there are a lot of people competing for his heart, but i think i stand a chance for a slice. at first i thought paris should be a girl, you know, fresh flower shops on every corner, jazzy cafes, couples snuggled, his nose hidden in the nook of her neck, the eiffel tower glittering blue through the night. but the more i think about it, the more it feels like paris is the smooth, fitted-trousers-wearing, well-coiffed parisian boy seducing us all.

i love my friends here. LOVE them. i love who i am here. i love the mental pictures i get to take everywhere i go, like on the street a few weeks ago, when i passed a baby in a stroller, who made the loudest gurgling/laughing noise, and made me wish i could go back in time to record it. or the other night when this boy in sweats got on and off the same three trains i rode, then exited at my station. maybe he thought i was following him because i thought he was cute. maybe i thought the same, a little bit. either way, paris is creeptastic, but lets you daydream like a child.

it’s also been insane here, and i have a BUNCH of stories to tell you. i’ll get on it asap. be back tomorrow.

love,

now that i’m all expaty, i mostly check two websites to stay connected to chambana:

CU missed connections, http://chambana.craigslist.org/mis/

and

juicycampus

which i’m not going to link, because it brings sadness and more stupidity into the world. whereas missed connects gives hope, warms the heart better than a cup of hot chocolate, and induces that annoying (but uncontrollable) ‘awwing’ thing girls do.

i also read smilepolitely.com from time to time.

went to lunch today with the lady i almost worked for, wish i worked for. we had the kind of conversation i always want to have: candid and meaningful, and realistically optimistic. if i write a movie about my life, i would make it so that i didn’t stay up until 4 in the morning the night before, getting near no sleep, and bumble through the conversation.

i asked her, is life just regularly being pushed down by tough situations, and you either get back up and be better at it next time, or get broken?

‘i don’t think you’re breakable’

she doesn’t think i’m breakable.

most of you already know that i got chucked out of the place i live with a day’s notice, followed by a string the length of the great wall of other horrible things that happened with the last three day. i have little interest in recounting them right now, maybe at a later date, when they will seem quaint and amusing. either way, 19 sounds too young to be a grownup, and i’ve always kind of treated myself as a grownup, and now i just wish i weren’t.

but i think this is one doodle that can’t be undid.

once they have your consent, you’re stuck in grownup land forever.

i’m going to find a really quiet church and sit, and maybe sleep, for a long time.

It’s been almost a month in Paris, but I’ve just begun falling in love with the city. I walked home tonight on empty Parisian streets, quiet, and old, and just beautiful. I’d been so afraid of something when I’d first gotten here; afraid to speak French, annoyed by the French google that now automatically popped up on my browser, afraid to venture outside without my ipod cozily plugged in.

So I got home tonight from a new friend’s birthday fete, and I realized that I adore her, and the other people I met tonight, and that I adore Paris. And so my Itunes went to shuffle and Carla Bruni’s La Noyee played like some sort of theme and I think this is home.

Hannah and I are getting haircuts soon. I’m going to chop off my hair, maybe color it, and maybe be a new person.

These are revelations I thought I was having simply because of the wine, and then I realized I’d only had a glass and a half, and maybe this is just me.

I’m not going to be afraid to be embarrassed. I’m going to do things qui me fait rigoler. Et c’est comme ca.