Poste le sixieme, dans lequel looking at the keyboard doesn't help me type bc it is a fricking french keyboard set to english.american.whatever, so the keys do not actually correspond to the characters printed on them. And I'm not fixing my errors. HQ!

helpful hint: q might = a

Editor's note: if you read this blog for the content (and not my DELIGHTFUL, LICKABLE (are you taking notes, M$?) user experience), this is probably not worth reading but it captures the moment pretty well (i was bored). I wrote it in the library at the stanford center the other day, hence the keyboard rage.

I don't actually have too much to say, other than that I should maybe learn how to type without looking at the keys and maybe use home row. but whatever. `actually this is going much better than I thought it would. I miss you all vey much and i hope you are all doing well. from lack of news, i will assume that no one exploded with rage during band run )because i wasn't there and that headline would have been about me_ come on parentheses! or got lostm drunk and naked, in the bushes (cuz that's happened...not to me though±_.You guys should all email me and tell me what is going on in your lives, because I qanna know! joyeux mercredi, and i hope you are better than i about knowing what day and year it is. You know the "on this day in 2009" thing on fb? well yesterday i saw one that said "on this day in 2011,,," it\s 2011 right now, |}"@#*&(#*&! i was tres confondu for a few minutes qfter that one.

I qill stop qasting your time with nothing to say and go eat un sandwich. j'ai faim!

bai bai!

Poste le cinquième, in which Katy Perry wrote France's national anthem

Amis, Romains, compatriotes, faites comme Van Gogh a fait et prêtez-moi vos oreilles:


As you may know, I arrived in France last friday morning. I spent most of the day traversing the city using various modes of transportation (unfortunately not including riding on some cute Parisian's cuter scooter (RHYMEZ)), so it is understandable that the French were not really aware of my arrival until some 12 hours later, that night. Since Friday, as I have been making my way about the city, I have been aware of the radio playing somewhere a total of maybe 4 times. This sounds like a low number, but being lost ("directionally challenged"--although the French don't really give directions, which I guess is the problem) in a foreign land tends to occupy one's full attention, and this seems to be a perpetual issue of mine. En tout cas, 3 of those times, it was playing Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night"! My friends, mes chers amis, I have thus come to the only logical conclusion: since my arrival, celebrating my arrival in fact, the French have adopted this current staple of American pop culture (and my super macho ex-officemate Eric's favorite song) as their national anthem for the week. They are a very patriotic* people, you know. And of course, since nothing that could possibly happen this Friday is anywhere near as exciting as my arrival à Paris, and because Katy Perry will not always be à la mode (chic), I predict that if you check the national anthem when Friday night rolls around, you will find it has gone back to whatever it was before I got here. I'd put money on it!


Your favorite intercontinental Big Deal,


Clare


* This is related to the word patriotic because it is a 4th of July video. I really just wanted to include it because I am a little** bit in love with Hannah Hart. If you enjoy smiling (and are you truly human if you don't?), watch her My Drunk Kitchen videos. Now.


** I lied. I meant a lot. Gramm'ar?

Post le quatrième (this blog is 0-indexed of course), in which je suis pleine, ou, every day is Thanksgiving when you're in France

Today at lunch, ma famille d'accueil and I had a discussion of eating habits in our native cultures, because apparently I am a slow eater, so they were done and were just watching me finish. In France, on ne grignote pas - people don't snack. But when they do eat, they mange! My host mother au père'd in the US when she was 20, and since she wasn't in the habit of snacking like her host family did, she felt she never got enough food at meals. As she put it (pretend this is in French): "I lost weight! I was never full! For months. And then it was Thanksgiving. And finally, there was enough food. We had turkey and mashed potatoes and marshmallow pudding and vegetables and I was finally full! And then all the Americans had to lay down and hold their stomachs, and I just thought, 'That was satisfying!'"


Meanwhile, I was trying to remember the correct way to say "I'm full" in French, because the literal translation, "je suis pleine", has a very different meaning: "I'm pregnant." It wouldn't have been totally untrue, though, because I was pregnant just then... avec un bébé des nourritures (food baby).


J'ai bien mangé,


Lise

Post 11:11! make a wish!

Bonjour tout le monde!

Warning: this is kind of long.

I feel like I should be writing this in French, but as one of my favorite Amelias pointed out, "How can I understand your blog if it's in fucking french?!?!" A very good point, especially considering the state of my French. However! I dreamed in French last night, and that's only ever happened once before, so at least my subconscious knows what's up.

I arrived in France on Friday morning, with just the scribbled addresses and suggested metro stops for the places I needed to find (a storage locker Stanford rented for our luggage and then a student hostel for the first day and night of orientation). I think my mom may have been a bit worried about me, which was obviously unnecessary given my natural ability to beast at public transportation. Using my masterful charades skills and somewhat less masterful French, I managed to get on a bus headed to within a block of the storage locker and then took the metro to the hostel, which turned out to be very close to Notre Dame. After half an hour or so of wandering the neighborhood I located the hostel and buzzed myself in through the imposing blue doors, to what felt at the time like the Garden of Eden. There was a quiet, shady courtyard and a room full of welcoming (temporarily English-speaking!) faces, free water, and croissants. So as not to defile this paradise with l'odeur de métro, I took a sink shower and collapsed into a contented stupor for the rest of the day.

There are 27 students, only one of whom I was friends with before this weekend, all of whom I'm friends with now! :D (kidding.) Yesterday we did orientation stuff at ISEP, the engineering school where the Stanford Center is located, and then were let loose upon the city like spawning salmon in the waterways of the world to swim upstream and find our way home.

I am living with my host mom, Guillemette, and her 23 year old daughter Lucile. Their colorful apartment is about a 20 minute walk from ISEP, in the 15th arrondissement. Last night we went to see a movie, "Habemus Papam", which was in Italian with French subtitles, and it was miraculously understandable! I was happy to realize I understood a fair bit of the Italian from my limited knowledge of Spanish, which sounds pretty similar, and the Italian I picked up when I was there in June, and that plus the French subtitles was definitely enough for me to get the gist.

My family and I are going to le Jardin de Luxembourg this afternoon and I need to run some errands. The weather is unseasonably warm and sunny, and I just wish it wasn't going to change!

Homemade blackberry jam for breakfast, BOOYAH!

Clare

also: Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" is playing on the radio in the kitchen. :)

Post le premier! Dans lequel, je suis sur l'internet gratuie (15min) en CDG!

JE SUIS ICI! Je vais prendre un bus (je pense) et puis le métro pour aller au "storage place for my luggage" et puis le site de mon orientation. J'ai une carte donc j'espère que je peux (pardonnez-moi, j'ai oublie le subjonctif) faire cette voyage sans me perdre.


Je vais écrire (?) plus quand j'ai plus temps avec l'internet. Au revoir!


Je vous aime,
Lise

Post 0, in which I am slightly out of order but I code and this is just an off by one error, maybe.

Hellooo,

I did the thing that people do when they are going away and want to talk about themselves and what they are doing so people at home will listen and remember them and be impressed/amused/envious (not to imply that those were my motives, of course I have much nobler reasons and am really only doing it for myself, etc.): I made a blog. It is called Lise Overseas, because Lise was my French name in high school and I feel like that is a chic name and is befitting of my chic French alter ego, which will surely (chic-ly) emerge from its long (chic) dormancy in my (extremly chic) soul once I arrive in (the Capitol of Chic:) Gay Paree, and because France is overseas (overoceans?) and IT RHYMES. And it is sort of a play on words, but unless your brain already made that leap for you, don't give yourself a headache trying to figure it out. It's a stretch.

Words of wisdom from the Queen of (Chicness) Run-On Sentences...

Lise

Post the First, in which I exercise my right to speak English in Amurrica

In approximately 79 hours (interestingly (or is it?), 79 is also how many bugs I have logged so far this summer) I will be departing this fine country for the land of boots and jackets! At least, based on my recent research and shopping adventures, that seems to be what the French are known for, and what one must have in order to be mistaken for just another classy French person in Paris. I think I have done things backwards, since many people go to Paris to shop, but I seem to be shopping to go to Paris. However, when half your clothes are from the Columbae free store and the rest are rummaged from your mom/sister/roommates' old things and Value Village, you sometimes need to go to real stores and buy things. After all, you don't want to give the French any more reasons to judge you.


And in approximately 8.5 hours I will be leaving for work, so I better put myself to bed. Woohoo kitteh cuddle timez!


Northface and flannel (which according to my workflowy list are "#american") love,
Clare