A Salute to Latvia

Dearest blog readers,

I sincerely hope you are enjoying my blog. I know full well that most of what I put on here is me talking to myself in the hopes that someone will someday stumble upon this collection of my random ramblings, shout out loud, "By Jove, this woman is the bee's knees!" and then either offer me a book deal or turn my life into a sitcom destined to last less than one season. It's a long shot, I know, but if 50 Shades of Gray can leap from the depths of the internet to become a real thing, so can my life, even though it's decidedly less controversial and creepy.

A key part of my long-term blog/life success plan is Giving the People What They Want. I know how business works. You've got to pander to your demographic, and I'm not above selling out. And since half of my blog traffic last week came from Latvia, well...dodiet cilvēkiem, ko viņi vēlas, am I right?

So from now on until at least the end of this entry, the blog has a theme, and that theme is the glorious Republic of Latvia. Dievs, svētī Latviju!

The main problem here is that I don't really know very much about Latvia. So I did a little digging, and here are my favorite Latvian search results. Based on what I found, I think we can all agree that Latvia holds the coolness trump card for planet Earth. See for yourself:

Latvian Folk Calendar (for sale on eBay)

Obviously, I can't read Latvian, despite what my excellent (?) Google translating skills (see above, re: "dodiet cilvēkiem, ko viņi vēlas") might suggest. So I need to use context clues for this one. Based on the picture, it appears that this calendar features a Latvian folk tale about Rabbit, a school crossing guard who sneaks his friends Mouse and Royal-Yet-Nondescript Bug onto the school's track, where they hold clandestine dance parties and consistently outwit their arch-nemesis, the Dark Ethereal Shape ominously approaching from the right.

I think I might want this to become a TV pilot even more than my own life. I would watch the hell out of this show.

Coco the Clown (read more here)

Does this guy haunt your dreams? (He does now! Mwa ha ha.)

Well, you can thank Latvia. Or, more accurately, you can thank Latvia's Nicolai Poliakoff, creator of Coco the Clown. Even in the blissful years before reality TV, people liked to laugh at the misfortunes of others, and as a result old Nicolai took a whole bunch of custard pies right in the kisser.

Fun fact: his son (whom Wikipedia calls "a longtime circus 'Producing Clown,'" whatever that means) apparently "designed the post-1960s Ronald McDonald." Two dream-haunting clowns for the price of one! Thanks, Latvia!


Badass Fairytale Architecture (from Flickr)

This sort of looks like if M.C. Escher decided to design homes for woodland creatures in fairy tales. I need to move here. I need to live here. I need to have quirky adventures with singing animals here.

WAIT, hold up, it's a sauna?! I need to take a steam with Bambi or something! This is almost too awesome to exist. Latvia, prepare yourself. I'm coming over there.

So...that happened

1. I read The Hunger Games. I know, I'm like four years behind the times, but GUYS, that book is RIDICULOUS. I'm so addicted I'm a little ashamed of myself. Prepare for an onslaught of references in any upcoming blog entries.

2. Blogger changed its format. My quasi-luddite self is having some issues adjusting. This is just like when they changed facebook that one time...and that other time...and last week...and probably next week.

3. With this change of format came some stats about where my traffic is coming from. This led to two surprises, the first being that this blog actually has traffic aside from my parents and their friends (!!!). The second was that a chunk of my traffic is coming from Ivy Gate, which was...puzzling. Come to find out, there's a link there to my "In Defense of Dartmouth...and Greek Life" entry because, hey, I've been quoted extensively on Ivy Gate. Would've been lovely if someone could have dropped me a line about this (I'm looking at you, J.K. Trotter), especially since I was the only person called out by name. If only blogger had some sort of commenting function to facilitate that kind of stuff!

Anyway, although I'm still undecided as to whether or not the article is mocking me mercilessly, I'm rather tickled. Someone found my blog without me having to send them a link in an email titled "READ THIS, THANKS, MOM." So thanks for the traffic, Ivy Gate readers. Hope you've also enjoyed my thoughts on Christmas music and my haikus detailing my life as a supermarket cashier.

Dear Lord, I love the English language.

So. Today. C'etait pas mal. But it certainly wasn't good either.

Class lasted forever. FOREVER. We got there at ten and didn't leave until quarter of four, except for our hour-long lunch break. I went with five other people to a little café. They all got croque monsieurs, which looked delicious. (For those of you not familiar with French café food, a croque monsieur is a buttery ham sandwich with cheese melted on the top, served hot. It's probably the only sandwich you eat with a knife and fork.) I got a cheese sandwich. It was Swiss cheese, which is probably one of my least favorite cheeses, so that wasn't so great. But the bread was DELICIOUS. Toward the end I contemplated just eating the bread and leaving the cheese, but I didn't know if that would be some kind of terrible French faux pas. Oh, well.

After class, I went to the store (I forget the name, but it was a super-store type: clothes, groceries, cosmetics, stationary, etc.) to get notebooks and folders for class. After that, Amanda and Kelly and I went on an unsuccessful quest for chocolate. (I know, you're saying, unsuccessful? In France? How can that be? Well, I didn't want to pay like €4 for a piece of chocolate, that's how.)

I returned home, once again struggled with opening the front door, managed to open it this time, and gracelessly blundered into the apartment to find that there was company. I probably made a fantastic first impression, what with my hair all crazy from the strong wind and my face all red and sweaty from power-walking from the opposite end of the Presqu'île, but whatever. At any rate, I went to my room to do some work. That was, oh, four hours ago, and I still haven't managed to accomplish much in the way of homework. To be fair, some of that time was taken up by dinner. The company I mentioned earlier included three young kids who are staying here through next week. They're really cute, but they totally own me in terms of the French language. (Sorry, Nicole, if you're reading this. I know you hate that phrase - "in terms of" - and I totally didn't use it on purpose, I swear.) The oldest, Edgar, corrected me at dinner. It's depressing and inspiring at the same time - depressing because this nine-year-old speaks both French and English and can correct my French grammar, inspiring because if he can by bilingual at the age of nine, then by God, I can accomplish it at age 20.

The two girls are younger and SO CUTE. I was sitting in my room doing work and they came in to see me. Brune, the six-year-old, was enjoying making the cursor move on my laptop, and she was having a ball when I let her type letters onto my desktop stickies. (If you aren't familiar with Macs - hi, Mom - stickies are like virtual post-its on your desktop.) Anyway, Brune was loving that. She also seemed to enjoy asking me who the people were in the pictures on my desk. Meanwhile, Olympe (4) climbed right up next to me on the chair, and both girls recited their full names for me. It was adorable.

As far as improving my French goes, I'm still trying. At Corinne (my host mothers)'s suggestion, I write down new words every night - sometimes things I heard during the day, sometimes things I wanted to say but didn't know the words for, and sometimes things I just find while flipping through the dictionary. It's come in handy a couple times already, but my reading last night nearly doubled the size of the vocab list and I can't remember half of the words. Or, worse yet, I see a word and realize that I know what it means, but for the life of me, I can't remember. Of course, then I just look in my notebook again, so ce n'est pas grâve, I guess.

This weekend (Easter weekend), I'm traveling to the south of France with Kelly and Amanda, two other girls in my group. (Amanda is actually one of my sorority sisters; we were in the same pledge class.) It sounds like my family in the States will be having nicer weather, though - the forecasts for Arles and Avignon call for rain and temperatures in the 60s. Temp-wise, it's not bad, but the weather could be nicer. But the forecast has said rain for the past three days, and while it does rain hard at times, it's just cloudy for most of the time and sometimes the sun even comes out (sometimes at the same time as the rain, which is what happened this afternoon. I looked for a rainbow, but no luck.). Either way, it's gonna be roughly ten degrees warmer than Lyon, and I can definitely get on board with that.

Unfortunately, it's looking like pretty much all the hostels in Arles are booked up, what with it being a holiday weekend (a long weekend here in France - we get Easter Monday off. Hooray for Catholic countries!) and Arles being famous for its bullfights (particularly its Easter bullfights, I understand). We've got Friday and Saturday covered, but we still need one for Sunday night. Got any ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I'm not sure how I feel about the bullfights. It would be cool to see one, I guess, but I'm pretty sure I'm morally opposed to them. Plus, I don't want to make Amanda go by herself (Kelly's not sure she feels up to seeing the bullfights, either). But still, moral opposition is a pretty legitimate trump card, right? It's why I've gotten away with not trying any meaty food here.

Besides, Amanda says that the Arles bullfights don't kill the bull (which I definitely would not be able to handle), but still, the idea of antagonizing some animal just for fun...I don't know if it's something I can get behind/monetarily support (with my €16 admission fee).

Arg, it's 23:03 (11 pm). I should really get to work on my grammar homework and then go to sleep. As a reward for getting through another day without any major incidents, I'm going to allow myself to read one chapter of my book. I was reading 2-4 chapters a night, but I realized that at that rate I'm going to run out of fun (read: English) books really quickly. So one chapter it is. I doubt I'll stick with it. I was thinking of maybe trying to find a French translation of a familiar English book in a librairie (here, a librairie is a bookstore and a bibliothèque is a library) and reading that. It would be educational but kind of fun, since I'd already have a basic idea of what I was reading and I wouldn't be getting graded on it.

And my English books are pretty much the only bedtime chill-out activity I have these days. Journal-writing is more of an exercise than a relaxing activity now that I'm journaling in French, and it takes me so long to look things up in the dictionary (yes, I'm old-school, no online-translator journaling for me - I learn better this way) that by the time I've done all the set-up for the anecdote I'm about to tell, I'm too tired (lazy?) to finish up. And then I proceed to read four chapters of my book. Bof.

Anyway, that's why I'm really liking the blog right about now. It's a nice outlet for my feelings/thoughts and a good record of my time in Lyon (more dependable than my journal, considering how terrible my French is). But now I really need to get to work, since there's only an hour left in the day and I still have some grammar work to do. (It's not a heck of a lot, but I should probably get started on my Thursday reading as well. And we still have to find a hostel for Sunday night. And I need to get back to Amanda about the bullfighting. Argggg, too much to do, too little time!!!)

The Secret Lives of Cats

Hi, everyone. This is Katie, Renée's cat. Renée is trying to recover from her day (doctor's appointment, complete with four painful shots; work, complete with difficult customers; and a dead car battery), so I'm taking over her blog for the night. No, I did not get this idea from author Meg Cabot's blog entries by Britney Spears. Anyhow, here's how my average day goes.

I woke up this early this morning. It was raining, and no one else was awake yet. Since that meant I couldn't play with/get food from anyone, I decided to go back to sleep. I must admit, though, that I first contemplated jumping onto Renée's bed, biting her, and leaving, which I've done in the past. (It was great fun, especially when she had to go all the way downstairs in the dark at midnight to find bandaids and Neosporin.) Unfortunately, Renée began sleeping with her door shut a couple years ago, and since then I've had no opportunity to bite-and-run. I do have fun slinking into her room before she goes to sleep, letting her get all cozy in bed, and then crying to be let out. She comes up with the most creative insults this way.

At any rate, I went back to sleep. Renée woke up to go jogging, and I saw my golden opportunity. She came down the stairs looking like a wreck (no contacts, hair in ponytail, wearing shorts and tank top with white sneakers and - gag me - black socks. I'm a cat, and even I understand what kind of fashion gaffe this is.). Anyway, I followed her, meowing. She snapped, "Not now, Katie, I'm busy." I sat on the stairs and offered up my most pitiful meows, but the cold-hearted witch was not swayed. She put in her iPod and left. I hoped that she got chased by every dog in the neighborhood.

I laid down on the stairs in the sun to heal my injured spirits. I was hungry! I hadn't eaten for a whole...three hours! I might waste away by the time she got back.

But when she returned half an hour later, looking even grosser than when she'd left, I meowed again. She cooed, "Hi, Katie Cat!" in the most irritatingly chipper voice possible. (I'd say it was because of the endorphins, but this is the voice she always uses with me.) She went on though, going, "Aww you hungwy? Oh, who's my big hungwy kitty?! Do you want some food? "

Wanting food? Me? Whatever gave you that idea? Was it when I sat by my food bowl and cried?!

She shoveled out a minuscule amount of cat food and patted me on the head before going off to take a shower. I ate half a mouthful of food and realized I wasn't that hungry after all.

When our paths crossed again, she was back in a bad mood. I was patiently waiting on the stairs to play our favorite game, one that I have entitled Slap the Hell Out of the Humans' Hands Through the Slats on the Staircase, or SHOHHTSS for short. She let me get a couple slaps in, but then lectured me: "NO. BITING. THAT'S. BAD. BAD CAT. NO." Then she left. She really ought to recheck the rules; if she did, she'd know that bites are worth 80 thousand bonus points. SO she really can't blame me for my mad skillz.

I didn't see her again until the evening, and her mood was back to annoyingly chipper. "Who's my pretty kitty?" she gushed as soon as she saw me lounging on the bed, resting from the exercise I almost considered partaking in today. "Who's the pretty kitty?!"

Um, I am. I'm the "pretty kitty" every time you ask this stupid question.

Every. Freaking. Time.

I think she may have a personality disorder. Why else would she switch so quickly from annoyed to loving? Maybe humans don't consider six hours to be a short amount of time. Maybe to them, it's a sufficient amount of time for mood changes. But that's silly. I mean, these are the same creatures that think eight hours of sleep is plenty. They clearly need to straighten out their priorities.

Anyway, I was sick of her mood issues and gushing, so I left. I'm now off to go sleep on the bathroom rug, right next to the door, so that if she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night she'll notice me and maybe feed me, play with me, or fill a Dixie bathroom cup with water and let me drink it/splash it all over the floor. First, though, I'll throw up right here next to the computer. On the white carpet. This will be EPIC.

Good night!