Bye Nantes!

(note: This is part 6 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface", "the tables gonna turn", "We are talking!" and "Traumatic memories" to get the whole story in chronologic order)


Day 6; 7th May
This is the last day in Nantes, kinda sad really since I just got to know everyone (my family and the other french students). I still regret until this very day that I didn't take a picture of the family, I couldn't find the right oppurtunity (blah, whitewash). After breakfast we took my luggage to school, his mother woke up to say goodbye and then we went by car to school. I didn't even say Goodbye to his brother and sisters! (They really are the cutest siblings ever XD)
At the school we jammed all our stuff into this small room by the reception and then we had free time until 12 o'clock when we were taking off to Paris. So me and a couple of us decided to go into town one last time.

It turned out that Kristine, who we went out with, had lost her camera since yesterday and she suspected that it was when we were at the grassplot. The stores weren't open anyway so we decided to have a look, I thought from the very beginning that there were no chance at all that we would find it but I had to be encouraging anyway. XD We looked for anything shimmering on the grass and suddenly she burst out THERE and pointed in the grass, one of us were even about to step on it. LUCKY! Omg, if it would have been me, never that we'd find it. XD Then we continued walking around in town, being very very careful while crossing the streets.
Walking in the centre this early was really nice, not many people were out yet and we could take it easy.

We came back to school and said goodbye to everyone. I wanted to take as many classmember+frenchman pictures as possible I was like hunting everyone down. Then we went out to the mainstairs to take pictures, which is a tradition for the SPEU classes. (the first picture)

I think the whole exchange experience have been great. I've done language travel and that's also with host family and that but this is pretty different, you get to know the host family so much better with a exhange student about your age (hmm, he was 15 going on 16 but anyway..XD). And you know that everyone with you are there on the same terms. Everyone have their own french exchange student, it's cool because everyone has their own story to tell and it's cute in a way. :D At first it's really awkward and all but that's the interesting part, really. Prove to yourself that your'e a grown-up that can handle tricky situations and practice to be open-minded and polite.
It was also specially fun for me to see how my friends get along with their frenchman, I don't know why really it was just cute. :D

Then it was BYE Nantes and HELLO Paris again. It took forever to come back to Paris and it didn't help when we drove right through the whole city while rush hour!
Luckily we (me and my friends) still had time to go out before it was too late. We went out to Hôtel de ville again to go in BHV(big mall). My friends found a couple of things and about 9 o'clock the thought came to our minds: Shouldn't we eat? Basically we hadn't eaten anything since the baguette for lunch (around 12 o'clock).
We looked for places nearby and it was just like fancy restaurants but we thought since this was our last evening in Paris we deserved a fancy meal so after some minor quarrel we decided to for a restaurant.
It took some time to order, we were figuring out what was on the menu. XD I took a pizza just to make it simple. The food was ready surprisingly fast and we could eat almost immediately. It was great! It was long time since we had a proper meal.
(the third picture is the view outside from our table) And how about Richard talking from the toilet, huh guys? XD

After the restaurant we just walked for a while, strolling the streets of Paris in night time wonderful as ever. We somehow found this Irish pub and the boys insisted that we'd go in. Lucky for them the pub was about to introduce their Live band and that was what I thought would be interesting. It was much like how I always imagened pubs would be, loads of older people and football. XD The live band however was kinda awful. XD Yet quite an experience. After a while we began to go back to our hotel.

This time three of us had to share a room and it felt p-r-e-t-t-y crowdy but it was ok. After watching some TV we all fell asleep.

Traumatic Memories

(note: This is part 5 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface", "the tables gonna turn" and "We are talking!"to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Guys, you must feel like this is a never ending story. I myself feel that way but anyway I've started this series and I am going to finish it, one way or another!

Day 5; 6th May
.......(man I really need some thinking to remember it all now..XD). Oh yeah, todya we came to school and it was the day for our presentation in front of the frenchmen. A presentation of our project work in front of not caring and not so english skilled frenchmen, felt like we were going to make a success (not).
We had the morning to prepare and I guess every group was panicking a bit. XD First up was my frenchman's class, which I knew a bit now and knew that they're not exactly "engaged" in the classes. Anyway, our group was first and here goes "Japanese cultural influences in Malmö", either have class already fallen asleep only during the headline or decided not to listen to some freakin' geeks. XD From our side it felt like it went very well (only that we explained "hard words" in simplier english all the time, like increase XD), but from the very beginning I felt this thick invisible wall between us and the class, they wouldn't care a bit.
Then the teacher tried to start a discussion which ended up with only the swedish students were takling, yeay! (Are there unusually much irony in this entry already? XD)
Blablabla....then after break we did the presentation a.g.a.i.n. BLAH is all I have to say. XD This time our teacher amde it even worse by dividing us in groups with french students to discuss, fortuante as I am I came togetehr with totally dead French students as well as the Swedish, hu-hu.

After lunch the programme was to go to a wineyard. Yupp, our bus took us like half an hour into the middle of nowhere and there was this small wineyard. Pretty nice actually adn it turned out that one in my class lived here, that is her frenchman lived here. Hohoho, I felt really bad for her I lived like 10 minutes walk from school and she lived like 10 minutes with car to the nearest bus station. XD (Hoho, somebody's lucky)
Here we are on the wineyard (picture one), the owner (the father) talking about how to make wine and picture two is taken from the cellar or whatever it's called, thought it was kinda cool. :D

When we came back to civilization (XD), me and two other friends decided to go down to Commerce (the centre) to check out the shopping there. The french students had, aparently, planned a dinner together at a crêperie later this evening and we thought we could as well stay in Commerce until then.
We took the tram out there and tried to remember where we went with the group yesterday. XD I think we did a pretty good job after some time.

Maybe you can't see it on the picture but we walked and walked, then we came back to this square and just as we come in we see these 50-60 people stadning dead still in the middle of the square. We were like, Whaaat's uppp? Then we saw a cameraman going around filming them so something commercial was it anyway. It was a pretty cool feeling, like someone froze time but you were not. (Watched to much Heroes?)
Around 8 we were supposed to meet everyone at the tramstation, for the tramline going from school (which is line 2 for your information XD) and there we met some familiar faces. While waiting for some late students. Something tragic happens....

Here I've drawn a picture for you guys to understand the situation better. On the picture I am the red cross and I'm standing on the pavement the square opposite me is a platform, also the stops, for the tram going the other way. The rounded squares are trams.
So we, my friends and some frenchstudents were waiting for the late ones, it was probably a quarter past 8 now. I was standning with my back facing the street and suddenly I hear this "thuump" sound behind me and when I turned around I see this woman (the circle on the pic.). She's shaking, really shaking all over and looking towards the tram on her side. She was terrified and didn't know what to do. Then more and more people starts to gather around her, before I could even react some of my friends have gone over there and when they rushed back they said that a person had been run over by the tram and was stuck under it. YIKES! Then even more people came and some fo them asked us what was going on and everyone was in shock. Luckily, where I stood you couldn't the the person that been hit because all of the trams had stopped. I could however just step out and see for myself but I know that I wouldn't be able to handle such a view and after certain descriptions from my friends I was sure that I didn't want to see.

You can not possibly imagen how's it like if you haven't been in that situation, it's not real until it really happens. It gave me the chills, this person was just 3 metres away from me it could have been any of us. It gives you a whole new perspective in life, life is only for once there's no do-over when it's over. Several students were horrified and burst out in tears and I could understand them, that's why I chose not to look it would get more personal that way and I didn't want that.

After a while the police and the ambulance came. The french students couldn't believe either, what was the odds that this would happen exactly when we were there, and exactly where we stood? We had to get going, the longer we stayed the worse it would have felt. It was easier for me to drop it and not think about it but for some it was much harder.
We came to this kinda small cozy crêperie and all the guests must have been kinda surprised seeing 60 teenagers strolling across the small restaurant, luckily some french students had booked a table, or really it was more a entire room downstairs for us. We went down there and sat down some even had to sit in the smaller room next to this.
We had a great time, honestly it was as if the accident never happened. Really awesome! Only that it wasn't before 10 o'clock we got the food, which meant that I haven't been eating in approx. TEN HOURS. Huhu.
Afterwards some of us (the ones that didn't go home) went to this grassplot and just sat down and socialized (XD?) A drunk man (if not more...) came by and started to talk to us and he had this reggea music on his cellphone and soon some of us started to dance with him. XD

Then after a while Louis father came to get us adn then we went home...to his place.

Here we are playing around in the grass XD

We are talking!

(note: This is part 4 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface" and "the tables gonna turn" to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Day 4; 5th May
I woke up several times during the night. What a sleepless night! I went to the bathroom and had to like sneak out the quietest as I could not to wake anyone up, especially Louis who slept outside just outside. XD

Anyway we got up 7 in the morning and the thing is he takes a shower in the morning, and I don't. After I was finished dressed and all that I had to wait for him in the showers to brush my teeth, I couldn't just go down to the kitchen by myself (!),so I had to like pretend to have things to do until he was finished.

Eventually we went downstairs to eat breakfast. His father was up (can you imagen what a great memory I have? We came home from France like 2 weeks ago XD, or maybe I'm just making everything up ;)), anyway we sat down still not talking to each other which made me not wanting to talk either (I was like maybe people don't like to talk in the morning XD).
They took out so much to eat for breakfast, cereals, baguettes,yoghurt and so on. They had bowls, I thought it was for the cereals so I didn't think more about that. Then Louis started to pour orange juice in it and drank from the bowl. I was like: WHAT? But I tried my best to be casual. Then I saw his dad driking coffee from a bowl too and I realized that it was something they did. His father had made tea, which was clearly that he had made it just for me because I told him yesterday I drank tea and none of them drank the tea.
So I have this dilemma. I had gotten a glass which I had drunk from and if I wanted to have tea, where do I pour it into?I was thinking like for an entire minute or so, I just took the tea pot and pourred the tea into my glass. The father immediately reacted and he was like: No, put it in the bowl...if you want. Must have looked ridiculous!

eWe walked to school and I saw this oppurtunity to talk. Finally he talked back. Relieved! XD Coming to the school I immediately felt that I was starred at, was it really that obviuos that I was an outsider? XD I had no idea where to be, they hadn't informed us only that our class was having a intrduction meeting at 9 o'clock, that's still an hour until then! I neither my frenchman knew so we just wondered round in school and I finally saw some from my class. They didn't know either and then some of their frenchmen said that we could attend their class. After running around for another while we walked into their Frenchclass a bit late, making everyone stare at us even more. We sat there, me trying to make out what they were doing and what the teacher was saying. XD
At nine o'clock, coming a bit late for the introduction meeting, I was really happy to see my friends again(friends as in the people I usually hang around with). We had so much to talk about, it was like Gossip Girl-the frennchmen verision. :P After a small "breakfast" treat we were assigned to take part of our frenchmen classes until 2 o'clock. I was thrilled to see that one of my friend had a frenchman going in the same class as mine, which was a great relief from my side. XD We went first to their English class, which I really looked forward to because it was finally a subject I knew I could understand. It turned out that their teacher was a total psycho XD and she sucked at English too. EN-cour-rage, right? XD Then it was history lesson, which was just like detention for us.

Then we had lunch on the school, their food are like restaurant food, it's delicious! (But they also pay 50€ for it, each semester).
After lunch it was chilling at the school yard until 2 o'clock when we were given a guided tour around the city. So we sat there in the school yard and got starred at some more and then we went with the tramway into town.
Strolled down by the river and seeing things like that robot elephant (picture 1) and this castle (picture 3).

Then at 5 we came back and I had no clue where my frenchmen was and freaked out. Didrik know how I was XD. It was a such odd situation I kinda freaked out but luckily he was waiting for me in front of the school (which we went by but didn't see anyone XD).
I calmed down and we went home to his place, he had some home work to do and I read Manga on his bed while waiting. We chatted and I was really glad that we had breaken the ice now.

He suggested that we'd go down to this place to bowl and play pool. I didn't want to be standoffish so I said okej, still I thought it was a bit weird just hanging out the two of us. XD We met some of his friends on the way and that was the first time I had a cheek kiss (I think?), chchch anyway she was nice!
Then we went bowling and after that we played pool. (...........) Whe
n we came home it was time for dinner and I thought that this was a great time to give them the present I have bought for them (which took 1/3 of my whole suitecase).
They seemed to love it, genuinly, his siblings (2 sisters and a brother, they're SO CUTE!!) really liked them. Did I tell you guys what I bought? It was two cups and a light holder. His mum thought the light holder with moose motive was cute, I was so glad! And the present seemed perfect, they had no cups, so here you go! XD Then we all ate together (7 at the table XD), they were all so nice and sweet. This is family is tight, really! The siblings talked about their schoolday and everyone listened to them, it's cool.

What I liked most from the dinner was when, the youngest sister asked me if I had seen High school musical (we somehow came into the subject high school) and I said yes and both fo the sisters became all excited and the brother said (translated): Oh no it's so lame!

For not making this entry too freakin' long (if it's not already) I'm just gonna summerize the evening.
-Lending their (slow) computer
-Shower
-Watching Indiana Jones with Louis and his father

The evening was great.

Stealers strikes again!

I'm blogging from school right now, hence a picture less entry. It's going to be a short one anyway. XD

School's not much better, I wonder if it hasn't become even more stressful. Yeah and I really should write the 3 freakin' essays I have for Europe knowledge but I am not as you see.
However we've managed to get even more things to do, it's insane!!! Still I'm not feeling the panic just yet, I should though ...I should. (I know it'll come back and kick my ass XD)
Yesterday I went to see an Opera. It was tickets from the school but it was optional and I signed up for that one month ago. I didn't know then that I would have thousands things to do, so tough shit. No, it was quite a experience I've never been to an Opera before. They were all singing in Italian! Without the subtitles I wouldn'y understand a bit, sometimes I noticed they didn't translate everything they sang, sometimes it was because (I think) it was jsut a long tone they're singing again and again but then in some parts they were singing whole sentences and there were no translation, great! XD

I had a concert with the orchestra I'm in, this Monday, it went pretty bad but anyway.
It was meeting the Prettyface for the last time, it is really over. (YYYYEESSSS) But don't worry you'll always be the Prettyface. ;)
Just before the concert I had a rehearsal for my theatre play which is to have premiere this sunday and it's still CHAOS! And I feel bad for not trying my best to make it work because innermost I don't like the play at all. (Okej, hope non of those read this entry or else they kill me XD) So this Sunday we have to be there like 3 hours before to rehearse....

You will not believe this but miraculously someone stole these rubber things on the ends of handlebar to my new bike. Does it say steal stuff from me, it's OKEJ on my forehead?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG? Am I some stealingmagnet or soemthing?
And the funny thing but bike wasn't even outside, it was in the basement! What kind of sick person steals stuff from people in your own apartment?! SICKNESS!
Why do you need those rubber handlegrips, huh?! You need them so bad you have to steal them?! OMG I just think it's insane, it really disgust me!

(the series about my trip to France will be continued in the next entry, hope you like it. :D Please comment)

The tables gonna turn

Day 3; 4th May
After a hectic morning with packing and not getting a wakeup call (!) we finally got to the Louvre Museum.
A mile long queue almost scared the whole class off but luckily it went very fast. I've never had good experience of queues, sometime had to be the first right? XD

Louvre was pretty much how I remembered it, I was here with my family and grandma like 8 years ago. Forcing a little girl of 10 years walking around in the Louvre is pure torture! Please, never do that to your children! XD
So from the very beginning I was very sceptical about going to the Louvre, again! I even made myself watch the whole "Da Vinci Code" movie to make the visit more interessting. It wasn't that bad as for 8 years ago, I've grown up now!
We went to see Mona Lisa,off course. It's totally insane how all the toursists shoves, pushes and fights to get a freakin' picture of the painting, insane I tell you! I'd seen it already so I didn't participate in the big mission to wrestle japanese people to get in front of that tiny painting.
Map of how to get around in the Louvre anyone? Seriously you CAN NOT go anywhere without the map, you'll get lost and you'll like die there you'll not find the way out without the map!

We whirled around the Louvre for 2 hours or we just ended up chilling on Starbucks. XD After the compulsory hours at Louvre we'd planned to go to Les Halles to shop just before we're heading to Nantes. We knew we didn't have much time until we had to go back to the hotel and get to Nantes.
To our surprise it was closed! Yeah, because it's sunday. Who the hell closes on Sundays? I was really disappointed, instead we hoped on the Métro again and went to Hôtel de ville and ate lunch (lunch as in a baguette and a bottle of evian water). We then just hung out by the fountains there, before going back.

Here's the bus ride from Paris to Nantes.
-One hour to get the hell out of Paris (we drove right though the whole city)
-We made many stops with many delays
-The air condition stopped working half way

SOOO when we arrived half an hour late in Nantes we where all sweaty and bummed out. I didn't feel quite nervous before now. Maaann it was jsut 24 hours ago I found out that I signed to stay with a guy. That have been like the ultimate horror scenary me and my friend have imagen before the trip and it was about to become reality.
With lack of time and information (or whatever the teachers blame on) we didn't get to know who we were going to stay with before, which still pisses me off. XD Can you imagen all the frenchmen standing there starring and waiting and all of them just seem strange and intimidating. Really it was awful, for us to get off the bus, take out our luggage and face the frenchmen.
The french teacher, who's the one organizing this whole exhange programme, had this list and he asked our names and then paired us up wiht the correct frenchman. It was absolutely AWFUL! It was like first day in school mixed with blind dating or something. XD I waited as long as I possibly could but I knew what I had to do. Around the teacher was like the remaining french people looking a bit confused themselves. I looked at them discreetly and was like: Who is it , who is it gonig to be, is it him or him or him? I said my name and the teacher called for Louis, he wasn't really any of the guys standing there, the teacher had to like grab him from the back of the surrounding people. Then everything went so fast, I met his father, I tried to be nice and talk (in french), we got into their car and drove off. Mostly it was his father that spoke, if not it was me, I really tried to be very nice and social. It turned out they just lived like 10 minutes from the school but they had got me with the car anyway, that's so thoughtful!

Their house was spacious and old but in a good kinda cosy way. I met his mom and she didn't spoke English, at that time I didn't feel that it was a problem...YET!
They asked if I was hungry and I said a bit, translation; I was starved. We sat down and had a small dinner. They started to ask me what I ate and didn't eat and what i ate for breakfast and all that. It really flattered me and I tried, in vain, to say that everyhting was fine that I'm not very particular with food. It was really weird sitting their in their round table eating cheese (we ate cheese alot! XD) and I hadn't really directly talked to my frenchman. (Sry, if I refer them as frenchmen, it sounds kinda bad or rascist but I absolutely don't mean it in that way, I'm just used to it now). Later his sister and brother came down and kissed their parents and Louis Goodnight, this family was really tight, it's so cute!
Yeah and I forgot to tell you, they go around with their shoes on in the house. I know some people do that but I've never been in such situation, it was really weird for me. We went upstairs with shoes on, they showed me my room with shoes on. It was all new for me.
Okej here's the deal, they had given Louis's room to me and he was now sleeping in a bed jammed in the hallway outside the room. I immediately thought of my own apartment, never in a million years that we could give my frenchman a room fo his own, not even my siblings have a room of their own. XD ANXIETY......
I brushed my teeth and then tried to have a conversation with the guy. I asked something, he answered, I asked something again, he answered. It was like that, but I guessed he was just really shy or really uncomfortable around me. XD After saying goodnight I closed the door and went to bed, NEVER in my whole life I felt more alone than I did then.

Heavy rain started to fall and shortly the thunderstorm joined, perfect!

Game Over Prettyface

(note: This is part 3 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started" and "Are you hungry" to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Day 2; 3th May [part2]
We some how found the way back to the hotel and finally check in. Me and a friend got a room on the highest floor, typical! It was annoying waiting just like 20minutes for the tiny elevator to be available for us to use, and you know me I prefer the stairs.

So now we've decided to go some great Manga stores at 11th arrondissment and then China Town at 13th. Automatically we needed my cousin to guide us, I'm pretty sure I can find the way in China Town but just in case you know. XD
Some how my cellphone ahd died during the night and my cousin couldn't get in touch or anything, because I'd called her a week before and we've decided to meet today.
Clever me, I found a wall socket in that shaggy luggage space and charged my cellphone, mmaahhhaaa!

We came back as I said and then I found out that my cousin had textmessaged me twice saying she was waiting at La Défense for us! OMG! That must have been like one hour ago, poor her! I hurried up and called her, told her that I said that I'd call her when we were finished but she must have got it wrong so I told her to come to Gare du Nord.
After ten minutes I rushed out to the trainstation to fetch her, alone! We were absolutely not allowed to go by ourself in Paris, hhuhuhu, hush hush. XD
We both came back to the hotel and I introduced her to my friends and we immidiately had a communication problem. My cousin hardly speak any English and my friends hardly speak any french nor chinese, I had to play interpreter speaking Swedish then Chinese and vice versa. XD

We came out to Voltaire at the 11th (I think?) and I still recognized the place, I was here the frst since last summer so it was pretty cool. I analyzed the place better this time and came to that freakishly many alternative people hung out here. French alternative people freaks me out, really I get all intimidated by them. Believe me it's not like the Swedish ones, I make fun of those! It was just weird and we ditched the place as fast as we could, no I'm exaggerating.
I guess my interest in Manga/Anime have decreased (XD) in general making me not buy anything or so. A bit sad I must admit.

Then after just 2 changes with the Métro we came up in China Town. I always feels so much like home there. XD We felt that we were hungry, not hungry hungry, but hungry then very hungry then not hungry then hungry, eehh you probably don't get it, me and my friends have discovered these many new stages in hunger while being hungry in Paris, I'll tell you later. ;)
We started to hunt down a decent restaurant that had good food still for a good price. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that we'd eated anything since breakfast, which meant a croissant and a juice. (Starved much?)
Everything was closed and we didn't want to eat at McDonald's! (picture one), apparantely they closed after lunch or didn't open before 6 o'clock, which wasn't until 20 minutes or so. After a while hunting for restaurants we just went into the first best that was open. We had to wait 15 minutes for our food but it was very good and I was delighted that my friends thought so too.
Unfortunately the stores in China town had closed when we were finished so we decided to head back to the hotel and rest (remember the 4 hour sleep I had the day before?)

When we came back I was dead tired and didn't want to do anything but to shower and go to sleep.
Anywho (wut?) the hotel had this small kinda cozy backyard (picture two, that's the stairs up to the rooms, you can not even see the fifth floor XD) and there we found our classmates not "completely sane", no clothes party and all that they came up with didn't seem very tempting....
I'm really glad I just took a shower watched some French TV and then just went to sleep.

How come everytime I have a concert, Prettyface is there? Do you know what? I was thrilled today to realize that it was Game Over for his sake, I'm so glad! I think I'll talk to him this monday, see if we could be friends wouldn't that be cool? XD
It's almost exactly one year since we first met Prettyface, how would I know we'd constantly meet the coming year?

Not about Paris

Haya guys, I'm really depressed right now so I'm just gonan write a quick blogg entry to get some of it out.
Once again sorry for making my entries about Paris so freakin' long I have to divide one day in two parts :'(, but I hope you read it anyway :D

Almost only depressing stuff have happened today, it started with me going to school. Finally my dad had fixed adn refixed my bike so I thought: YES now I'll finally take the bike to school again. I come down, look for my bike, where the heck is it? I just saw it yesterday being locked here.
Then I see a wheel and on it my bike lock was on it. I COULD NOT BELIEVE it.
I don't know why really, bike theft are really usual but I just never thought it would actually happen to me. Now I'm both mad and depressed and then even more angry when my mum had to lecture me about it. S I G H

Also the 2 places I applied for summerjob, through the municipality cancelled. Crap, no summer job! Feeling more and more broke....

We've suddenly have thousand things more to do in school. 3 freackin' essays (no joke), history questions, more french presentations, music test, civics (economy) presentation and probably dozens of things more I just don't remember.

Why don't you kill me and be done with it? XD

I'm drugging "Play My Music", I swear.

Are you hungry?

... S O ...

Day 2; 3th May [part 1, I'm so sry guys!]
We arrived in Paris about 6 o'clock in the (freakin') morning, after being up since 4-5 in the morning already.
Coming and seeing Paris again brought back so many memories, no matter how many times I have been to Paris I still miss it and becomes so happy being there again. :D

We rolled in from north Paris and drove directly to our hotel in Gare du nord.
For you guys who haven't been there, Gare du Nord is one of the trian stations in Paris and you all know what it's like around train stations (enough said..XD). But around here and the neighbouring 19th arrondissment (Paris is divided into 20 areas, suburbs not included) are the absolutely worst areas in Paris. So can you imagen the thoughts running inside all my newly-awakened-first-time-in-Paris classmates? And if you haven't been there for real or been some place with the same condition it's hard to imagen what we saw.

What really upsets me is that these classmates (can surely say about 90%) was so sure that whole Paris was so fabulous as they see on TV and all the magazines. With fabulous Eifeel tour, glamorous Champs Élysée and those other things. I can get that you have this picture of the way Paris looks and all that but how come they almost fainted seeing this part is Paris.
France haven't the same well-fare system as in Sweden where practically everything is clean and tidy. France is a Industrial country and all that jazz but did they for real think that everything was that glamorous? Paris is a huge million-city did they really think it didn't have bad sides too? Seriously, how are their concept of the world?

When we arrived we had to drag all our luggage down the stairs, to a shaggy luggage space. I can tell you it was FAR from everyone that had small suitcases like me, some of them were huge. XD After that 32 people had dragged down their luggages we had a programme to follow. Next stop: La Défense!
Everyone feeling really unfresh and tired the whole class stumbled to Gare du Nord to have some breakfast.
-You get one hour to hunt down breakfast...aaannd BREAK!
That was my breakfast that day, orange juice and a croissant. Don't worry I got used to being hungry all the time in Paris....
We took the Métro to La Défense (see picture one XD). As said before our original teacher who does all the Paris-Nantes trips couldn't come to in the last minutes they took 2 other teacher who've never done it before, so it ended up with that one of the teachers asked me to give directions in the Métro and such. Mahahahaa, I felt so powerful XD, no but it was really fun taking charge. (powermadness!)
We came to La Défense (with me on the lead off course XD) about 8 o'clock and it was really amazing. La Défense being on the outskirts of Paris gives the whole place certain clamness and peacefulness. I don't know really maybe it was only morning when we were there but it was very different from the Paris I know, where everyone rushes and shoves. It was a nice change though.

We came back to Gare du Nord to walk up to Sacré Ceur cathedral. Off course the teachers didn't know the way there and I had to ask for the directions, in French ;) oh yeah!
We came there after a while and jsut as we were going through the gates to the cathedral me and 3 other friends got attacked by these black men holding these strings in their hand wanting us to take our hands out. The funny thing is me and one friend just got passed them but we realized we lost the 2 others so we went back to see them. When we saw them, both of them were stuck with these black men and when we were heading towards them the black men got us too.
I didn't really know what they were gonig to do, but he kept saying something about their religion I think and that with this string I will be happy and fortunate and all that crap. I was holding a finger out and they made this beading with the strings and he kept talking and talking, then I see my friends take their wallet out and pay.
I asked the man, how much I had to pay, and he was like no no it's free (my ass). After like 20 seconds he was finished and he was like I need to have some reward, I laughed out loud right to his face and said you jsut said it was free and he was like looking away and shaking his head. I started to go away but he kept grabbing me and like no you have to pay. I dug out my wallet, he said he wanted fifty, I couldn't believe it. I gave him 1 euro and he was still going after me I gave him the last coin I have a 50 cent, then I just walked out of there fast.
I'm such a tourist!! MAN! XD

[end of Day 2, part1]

Me striking a pose at La Défanse! XD

Let's get this party started...

Okej, get this party startin'!! XD Huhu France feels like years ago now XD. I'll write everything I remember. ;)

Day 1; 2th May
The big day finally. I think I mentioned the freakin' problem I had finding a present for my hostfamily. (I'm really glad I did made the extra effort to find the perfect gift, they loved it XD)
So I came to school with my luggage, a smaller suitcase with wheels and one carrier bag (like sportsbag but fancy), on the bus (a bit problematic). I came rolling into school and I saw massive bunch of people on front a bus. I was like is that our bus? Our class are not that many, whta's the occasion?! XD It was the parents!
I hadn't expected this, really! Maybe it's just be that said Goodbye quickly to my parents before I went out but not kidding there were many parents crying there. It was actually some in my class going away somewhere without their parents for the first time.

I think that's kinda sad, I mean you're 18 now. You're practically a grownup you should gone somewhere a longer distance without your parents. How else can you learn to take care of yourself? I think parents like that, over-overprotective ones are more bad parents than good parents. If you don't let your child to things on their own terms, how will they survive the future?

The clock closes 12 and we were about to leave, off course plenty people was late. That's just how our class work, we can NEVER make anything on time, even when it's something like enjoyable like going to France. XD So when everyone finally had arrived, it turned out that 2 people had forgot their passports! (o m g) Their parents had to drive home and fetch them! Incredible! After another 20 minutes we were off on the road, with about one hour behind schedule.
First we came into Denmark then we took the ferry to Germany. I could see like everyone in the bus getting all excited over this and that, that was when I realized I was a experienced bustraveller. XD I've done like this exact same travel like 3 times now.
(The picture above is some classmates posing on the ferry ;))

After that it was basically motorway,cars and more motorways. At dinnertime we had come into Germany and we stopped for dinner. It was a pretty decent small road-resting place, they had some different restaurants (correction: hamburger place). I was really glad I had made some baguettes to take with me. And two of my friends were so stoked over being such a big help ordering food in German. XD Maahha, it made them so happy, which they reminded us during our whole time in France when they were useless and we other (me and some french speaking classmates included) babbeld in French.

Then came the night.......................

Can you just guess how many hours sleep I got? 8? 6? 5? Nope, about 3-4 hours I'd say. It was disastrous! (not mentioning 2 freaky classmates who stayed up all night because they wanted to see exactly when we entered France and the sunrise, which didn't came until we arrived in Paris XD)It was like just as I felt thta I was asleep, I woke up again because of something disturbing, either not comfortable pose or noise. It almost killed me, I was like a zombie that morning.

Okej this day was totally uninteressting but here you got a very detailed verision of it anyway. I make the other shorter. I promise ;)!

Picture of the day:

OH YEAH! ;)

What happens in Paris stays in Paris

Bonjour mes amis!! I've returned from France now. It have been crazy and it was absolutely wonderful! Our class totally gave "What happens in - stays in -" a new meaning. XD

After this amzingly amazing week we've been roughly thrown out to reality again. I have a standardized test in Maths the first thing on Monday, 8 o'clock! v_v And we have to finish our (freakin') project work in two weeks and I can tell you even now that THIS is going to stress the hell out of me. Not schoolwise, I have a concert (violin) coming up and a performance of our theatre.

B I G S I G H . . . . . .

I've missed JB so much. After the 6th day in Paris and Nantes, we left Nantes to go back to Paris. I put on my iPod and "When you look me in the eyes" came up, omg I felt so like home! I squeezed my iPod so hard, I've missed listening to them so much. I've figured out that listening to JB is something that will make me feel like home even if I'm thousands miles away...

Oh btw! When I was away, they released the music video to "Play My Music" by Connext Three (Jonas Brothers) in Camp Rock. It totally rocks, it gets so freakin' awesome the more you listen to it. Makes me jump and dance! :D

Don't worry guys I will tell you everything about Paris and Nantes, I just haven't the time och space right now. I have stories for at least one week blogging, so don't worry! I really have to go back to my Maths now. So I'll give you a sneak peak ;)

Picture of the Day:

French people that are always in our hearts!

Please Be Mine-cover by me

MMaahhaa, you guys can not, will not, imagen how long it took for me to do this freakin' video. And didn't even turn out great. Hope you'll make it through the video, without getting a heart-attack or something. XD

France here we come

Haya guys! First of May today and I feel really bad for the demonstrators in Malmö, it's raining and it's really cold. :(

Yesterday was a heck of a stressful day. I was on my way to school, thought that I'd take the bike. When I took it out I hear this funny squicking noise, the back wheel was all flat. Crap, I had to run back upstairs and fetch my sister buscard (mine has no money on it). A stressful morning followed by a long break before my last lesson, History. So me and a friend of mine went out to eat something and we ended up talking for a very long time. I look at the time, Oh we started one minute ago. XD Then we ran back to school, can you imagen how it's like running next to the most athletic person in your whole class? It makes you look like the silliest person in the world, I tell ya. It was kinda okej being late so it was cool.

I agreed on joining going out finding a present to the french family we're staying at, with 2 other from my class. Only that one of them wasn't finished with the History assignment we had to hand it back in today. So we had to wait for him to be finished, it was pretty dreadful. It made really stressful just looking at them trying to make it on time. Goossh! XD Have been waiting for almost 2 hours we were finally went out.
Both of them had bicycles, I would also have had...stupid wheel! It ended up with me sitting in the back of one of the bikes and she drove me. It was a blast! XD I haven't sit in the back of a bike since I was 4 or I wonder if I have ever done it..hm? Anyway it was crraazzy, the first 5 minutes I was convinced she would drop me and I'll fall or something but after awhile it was just fun.
We went to this souvenir shop, they found their presents almost immediately. I on the other hand, don't know what I was thinking. I bought some toffee things in a cone. I was going to buy something else also off course, but WHEN was that going to happen? My brain just didn't work as usual that day.

Later me and my sister went out. Everything was about to close and I panicked. I think when I panic or get really stressful, I just block everything out and I won't think. After a while I became a bit mad. Being as stressful for not finding a present on ten minutes, I came up with the craziest ideas. Like buying a cookie jar, bake cookies and give it to them. Buying a photoalbum and take photos of Malmö and put it in. A french-swedish dictionary. A travellingbook of Malmö (which does not exist). Flowers and fake flowers. My head was all messed up.
In the end I didn't find anything and I have to go out now and find something, if I can find some stores being open today.

Picture fo the day:

Guess what I found when I looked for a box to put my presents in?!

I don't remember having so many dolls, but after we found them all the memories came back again. It was pretty insane we spent like half an hour dressing them and stuff. Oh the memories. XD