new season, new life

new season, back to main characters.

i personally view it the same was I few exfoliating. when dead skin builds up on your skin, it need to be sloughed off for the regeneration of new skin cells. this is a sort of mental/emotional/spiritual slough. i need to make room for new healthy cells!

there are so many new facets of life coming up:

-graduation
-moving in July
-hopefully visiting Prince Edward Island
-grad school!

but until all of those huge things, i need some tiny things to trifle with. weekend getaways, visits home, Door County, road trip? i don't know. help me think of ideas!

500 days of summer

i'm working right now...
i'm about to fall asleep at my desk.
there isn't much for me to do today.
luckily i will start at 8:00am instead of 7:00pm, starting next week.

the summer is going by quite quickly.
this weekend is the 4th of july!
next week i'm going home for all of erin's wedding celebrations.
i am excited. & i finally found an adorable dress!
there will be a lot of people at the wedding
that i have not seen in a long while.
i will be looking forward to seeing my family again.
(and dancing the night away with many willing dance partners!)

for the rest of the month, i'll be working like crazy!
it's good for me. it will keep me busy and active.
then i can breathe a little freer.

:)

?

after melissa left, i went back to the apartment and listened to "all by myself" on repeat for a while. when i got tired of that, i started to read a book, but i was too fatigued to read, so i set the book down and lay there. soon enough i was fast asleep, i awoke to my phone ringing- o'malley was at my door. i spent the remainder of the day with him. it was enjoyable-- a true summer day. we went to the art festival at stone arch, and roamed around up town. later, we sat in the park and made up songs with a guitar and my poetry books i checked out from the library. life is moving much slower now. so i need to move myself.

x

i need fresh, i need white, clear and empty. all of this stuff muddles my thoughts and contorts my brow. and none of it is really even out in the open--it's floating in the air, stuffing my ears, i can feel it with all of my senses but how can i describe it to anyone else.

all i know is i need a change.

i'm coming home

it's weird. i hope i can sleep tonight. luckily i've kind of gotten used to traveling and it doesn't seem like as big of a deal as before to get everything organized. i'm hoping they won't make me open my bag for any reason at the airport or i will not be able to close it once again. packing was a joke today. i tried every method known to man... looks like i will be wearing a lot of layers. i may look a little weird at the airport. don't care.

i'm actually strangely excited for my flight... more so the long one, so i can watch new movies and do some reflection on the past four months that have passed tellement vite.

i'm excited to have a latte again! :) and of course to see you!!!!

p.s. i don't want to shut my shutters tonight or my window!

enfin

tomorrow is.... CANNES int'l film festival 09! i think most of the films this year are foreign so i don't know how many celebrities i will actually recognize, but i'm excited for the big red carpet event and the PAPARAZZI! when would i ever have the opportunity to go to the Cannes film festival again, it's kind of a once in a lifetime thing. my host mom was telling me it's an old money type of place (it's on the mediterranean) and it's really ritzy, i guess many wealthy people retire there (like St. Tropez, Monaco, and Monte Carlo).

it's rainy, which is exceptionally uncommon in Aix-en-Provence. a few goodbyes yesterday, a couple today, more on sunday. i'm having dinner at chloe's house this evening with her host mother. :)

it's not really over.

today was the last day of class. i feel like i should be sad but i'm not, even though i had an amazing semester. i just think everything is good in its time really. i had an amazing language professor, i wish she was my aunt really. my classmates and i bought her a plant and a little card. she really liked it and went around the room giving "bisous". when i asked to take a photo with her, she pulled me really close so our faces are touching in the photo and then we said our little goodbyes. it was really cute. i think she liked me. i was always laughing in class (imagine that), and she would always say haha, alyssa your laugh is extraordinary, you have a very characteristic laugh!

there were a lot of dynamics going on with all of the foreign students and their responses to questions in french that you actually could tell a lot about a person. for example, today we had to pick out which family structure you liked the best and why (traditional, where mom stays home and dad goes to work, or hippy family that is always outdoors and surrounded by friends and family and listening to music, or childless couple that have good jobs and busy lives). just for reference i choose the hippy family. haha.

*goodbyes are weird. i think everything should end the day before it is supposed to so that you don't have to think about it as in-depth. because while parting, if you knew you were going to see someone tomorrow it's just "see you" but if you don't know when you will see someone again, you have to think about all they ever meant to you and it forces you to become too sentimental, when really some people in our lives are just instrumental (not to say they can't influence you are make an impact on your life) i just think back to jr. high when all of the girls cried on the last day of 8th grade. some people were moving away, others would change, etc. but the reality of it is that at the end of the summer they most likely won't even remember some of the friends they hung out with because it's jr. high! and you can be thankful for what someone was to you, but if you grip everything that comes your way, you might ruin the nature of what it is. For example, there is a teacher from high school that influenced me a lot, and i respect him. at graduations i go to at my old high school i talk to him and update him, and that works. but if i wanted to become friends with him, that would be weird, and not an acceptable friendship. another example, i make friends with a girl studying abroad and although i meet them and get to know them in class a little-- i don't have a lot in common with them. and you get to a point where it can't go any further because you truly don't have deep things you agree on. but maybe that's the beauty of these encounters... to talk to people you normally wouldn't, to be displaced so that you learn that the world is much bigger than you think, and to question what you believe and how you fit into the world. it is beautiful but it isn't always easy when you know you have a life somewhere else.