Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm rather excited by the premature arrival of my school holidays. Today, after the worlds most stressful, panicked filled day, I was informed that due to a cross-country meet, middle school play and high school internship, I'm free to start my Toussaint vacation 3 days early. That is to say that the stars have aligned to rightfully reward me for not giving up on my temporary chosen career, but primarily for not throwing problem children out of windows. I've been tempted. And on many ocassions it would have been justified. Anyways, I want to say something clever, but I think I'm too brain dead after 5 hours of class and 3 hours of prep work today. It's weird, I spent all day trying to teach people words, but at the end of the day, I don't have enough of them left over for me. I swear I can speak English, really. I just can't remember any of the words I want to use. Anyways...tired ramblings...now that I'm free (Free at last!) I'm attempting to come up with a plan for my precious hard earned extra hours. At the moment, the plan is to chill out here tomorrow, do laundry, fix holey clothing (holey not holy), research Belgium as much as possible and finally do a much needed pre-vacation room cleaning. Maybe I'll make it to Verdun for a couple of hours, for the usual, ever exciting train ticket buying and window shopping. I'm sure I'll regret the decision to stay in Stenay tomorrow, when it's noon and I'm already bored out of my mind, but at least at the moment, I need a little decompression time. But after that, Thursday, it's on to Belgium! The tentative plan is Bruxelles October 20-23, Bruges October 23-26. After that it's "home" to Frankfurt for the rest of the trip (October 26-November 2). That's a pretty big chunk of time in Frankfurt, considering all of my lovely friends are now responsible adults with jobs that require them to be physically and mentally present during the work week. But, there's always the option of day trips. So...we shall see. Hopefully in Frankfurt I'll be able to upload photos of my trips. Wish me luck!

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Why I don't run

I don't want to sound melodramatic, but i almost died today. Seriously. Ok, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it was pretty bad. for some reason I woke up early today; I mean REALLY early, and I thought, well...I don't have anything to do, so why not try to get in a little exercise. There's very little to do in Stenay and we seem to be all but banned from using the gym, so the only real options for exercise are doing crunches on our disgusting floor (because noone seems to be able to explain to me where I can find a broom or vaccuum cleaner) or going for a run. This morning I wasn't really in the mood to pick dead insects and mysterious fluff out of my hair and the weather looked pretty nice, so I thought, let's go for a run. For those of you who know me (pretty much all of you, I'd guess), unless I'm trying to escape a man in a hockey mask with a knife, I don't run. I don't find it to be entertaining, enlightening or in any way enjoyable. So the fact that, this morning, I willingly chose to do it, is a testament to how bored I am here. Anyways...I decided to go running, it was a little chilly out so I thought: should I take a jacket? No. Once I start running, I'll warm up a little and it won't be necessary. So I left the house with nothing but exercise clothes, keys and an ipod (Mistake #1). A couple of minutes into the run I thought, I'm feeling good, the weather is nice, I'll take the long way today (Mistake #2). A couple of minutes later it started to drizzle a little, I thought: it's just a little rain, it'll pass and kept running (Mistake #3). A couple minutes later, at the point of no return, where it would be longer to admit defeat, turn back and retreat to the dusty, but much warmer sanctuary of my apartment, it started to pour. Then it started to hail. Little balls of ice falling from the sky, biting my already aching naked flesh. Forgive me for waxing poetic, but it was so awful that it barely felt real. It was more like sometime you'd read about happening in some really depressing book to some really unlucky protagonist. And i'd like to point out that this is roughly an hour long run, so at this point, tired, cold and numb as I was, I still had a good 25 minutes left to go in the stinging cold rain and hail. Have I mentioned that I'm still recovering from bronchitis? And it was then that I slipped and twisted my ankle. I still don't know what I tripped over, but I do know that it hurt. So to recap: cold, wet, tired and in pretty severe pain. Obviously I gave up running, and opted for the more pathetic method of limping in the rain. It was then that my saviour found me. Apparently the universe decided that I'd been punished enough and allowed me a tiny sliver of good fortune. One of the teachers at my school happened to be driving by at that moment and thankfully she stopped to give me a ride home. So the moral of the story is: don't run ever. But if you absolutely have to, make sure you live in a place where people are nice enough to save you from yourself.