Caramel Macchiatos and a Walk in the Park

                                        Le Parc de la Tête d'Or, Lyon

I'm sad to report that vacation is officially over. I received a message during my lovely holiday that school was to start Wednesday, not Thursday, like I had originally thought. Now that is exactly the definition of a cruel and unusual punishment. Who takes away vacation days? That's just like the Grinch canceling Christmas in my opinion. I was in a melancholic, depressed mood for a day when I received this news, and what made it even worse was when I discovered that it wasn't going to be my average, 3-hour Wednesday school day. No, out of all the days, we would be having Friday's schedule repeat itself today. Yay for an extra 3 hours of French class.

It was unbelievably difficult to wake up this morning. I set my alarm for 6:30 and I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed, and ate breakfast. I was all ready to go, but Anne wandered in the kitchen and asked why I was up so early. Turns out, I forgot to change my clocks and had been wandering around in a different time zone than everyone else. Quite upset by my shortened sleep, I was stuck in a cranky mood for the rest of the morning. And instead of doing the smart thing and changing my clock and alarm (so it wouldn't happen again), I poured myself a big cup of espresso and turned on an episode of Desperate Housewives.

School passed in a blur today. During my classes, I worked on the equivalent of a psychiatric patient's artwork in my notebook, and it'll probably still take a couple of days to finish it. I've been working on it on and off for a couple of weeks now, and it'll look ridiculously awesome (in a pathetic, crazy kind of way) when it's finished. I'm thinking that after this school year, I will probably belong in a psychiatric hospital. Good thing my host mom works at one. On a side note, after school, I went on my first run since I've been in France. I'm not sure how much I ran, but I know it was definitely over 3 km because Anne showed me a loop that was 3 km and I ran that plus some more. How much more, I have absolutely no idea, because I'm really, really bad with distance, direction, and perception, but it was enough to leave me with soreness and a blister.

I suppose I'm working backwards in time with this blog because I forgot to tell you about the last couple days of vacation. Considering I'm too lazy to rewrite and change everything so that it's all in periodical order, we're all going to pretend that it's vacation again (insert longing sigh here). Marie, my older host sister, invited me and Charlotte to stay at her apartment in Lyon for a few days on Sunday. We left that night for Lyon on the train, and I was excited to get my mind off of returning to school. Marie worked all day on Monday, so Charlotte and I stayed in the apartment all morning watching shows on an internet streaming network. That afternoon, we went shopping and later met Marie at her biology lab before a movie night with candy and pizza.

Tuesday was one of those days where everything was just right (made up for Wednesday when it was the exact opposite). We woke up late, watched Desperate Housewives after breakfast, and went into the city. We stopped at a Lebanese Restaurant for lunch, ate by the river, walked through a park with an alarming number of carnivorous plants, slept on the lawn, did a little shopping, ate chocolate cheesecake and drank caramel macchiatos/ frappuccinos at Starbucks, and returned for a movie before leaving on the train. It was a nice, relaxing mini-vacation, and getting away for a little while before school was exactly what I needed.

Now that I'm back on a strict schedule, life's a tad bit depressing. I like being spontaneous and lazy at the same time, and going to a French high school definitely doesn't allow for that. It's tedious and strict, but I must admit that all the time spent sitting with nothing to do has made me a more creative thinker. When you have only your mind, a pen, and a piece of paper in front of you for 8 hours a day, you learn to think outside the box and come up with things to do for your own entertainment.

Well - that's it for now. I'm in much too much of a lazy mood to think of some clever ending for this entry. Maybe the run really got to me, because now all I want to do is watch t.v., eat, and sleep. So, to keep things short and sweet, Happy November!