Sunny Day

I always think it's silly to say that the weather has an influance on my mood, I guess I think that I should have enough control over my emotions that something outside of myself should affect me like that. But lets be honest, when it's rainy, cold and windy I'm less likely to be happy, unlike today and the last three days which have been sunny and warm (13ish C) and I've felt really good and like things are going well. Nantes comes alive in this weather, people eat lunch outside, musicans play music in the street and just walk in the streets. What's more there is a very intresting "show" going on in the store windows done by a theater company, you can check it out here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michel_craipeau/

so the idea is that the manniquens are revolting against the stores that they work for, and they change everyday, getting more and more bizzare, out of the 13 window my favorite so far is the one where they are growing butts, oh the French!

well I really should be listening to my history class...

yep I'm still around

I havent wrote anything in a while, I guess because I really havent had too much to talk about. Life continues here in France but I'm kind of used to it now, it is pretty routine, and to tell you the truth I've been homesick since Christmas. So what have I learned about homesickness in the past? boredom = homesickness therefore the solution is to keep myself busy. This is a little easier said than done here, but I'm going to try and see how it goes.

Continuing on here is a little french fact:
the dance craze sweeping the french nation is a dance style called "tecktonik" which is a very energtic dance involving large arm movements to electro music (how do you discribe a dance style?) here is a link to an example of one of the best known groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7EqlVqZY1c

this trend started last summer i guess and is quite popular here, i think it's kind of funny. On the streets at night you will sometimes see groups praticing, (the other day they were dancing in front of the Cathedreal in Nantes, yep only in France would you find gothic arctecture and electro music) they also have Teckonik battles where one group tries to out dance the other. the style that goes with it is, like in the video, tight pants, pointy shoes and zip hoodies in black and white or very bright colours.
so that is your french fact of the day...

The New Year

hey all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year even if i am a little late, I hope everyone had really great holidays. Mine were pretty good it is always a little odd not to be with my family for Christmas, but the little Christmas fairy (Mom) was here right before and we had a good time checking out Nantes and we also traveled to St Malo, a walled city on the north side of Brittany (I live to the south) which was nice but very very cold, there they have the second highest tides in the world (the highest it the Bay of Fundy in good old Canada by the way) and we ate some delicious (and other not so delicious) sea food. Here we are under the bridge by my house.

Mom left on the 20th and I hung out a home for Christmas, i went to Midnight Mass (it was at 8:00) and was with my host family to eat Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas day dinner. Last weekend i had a lovely time visiting my old host family (from when I was here in high school) which was much too short of a time. New Years Corrin and I babysat 8 kids that belonged to relatives of my host family maybe "babysitting" is a loose term because the parents were there and we had supper with them (the party was supper), so i would more call it crowd control. And that brings me to now where I am just chilling until things start up again on Monday (yes that was three weeks of vacation summerized). talk to you again soon

JY