SALUT ENCORE!

Salut mes amis!! Summer is here back in the land of er...hamburgers and Benjamin Franklin. Alors, so, what in the world do I say? I think I may choose to be not so long winded as per usual.

I really have so many things to blog about my head may well roll right of my shoulders into the laundry bin. Anyhow! Some things I must quickly share with you:




1. I have completed my first Europe trip with one of my bestessstt friends in the cosmic galaxy and had the time of my life. J'aime l'Europe! Beaucoup!! I may have even spotted the (biddie) president de la France.

   

  


      
2. I am presently working a lil internship in finance. Yes, it has precisely zero correlation/connection/relevance to any area that I am talented in. Mais non mon ami, I am not completely useless. I have contributed significantly in the reconstruction of many an office chair...I have resized the majority to oblige persons of smaller heights. I am not quite sure how the 80% male population in the office will react to this, but I am hoping for the best.


3. I have officially decided that I am marrying a quite famous international soccer, le football, player.


                                   


4. Am currently revising my brilliant plan de succès pertaining to #3.

5. Have been exposed the zany little world of modern art via NYC's MoMA. I do not say this with mockery, mes amis. I am personally very fond of brightly colored spheres and twirling bits of metal. A littlebiddie like moi may not fully understand the concepts, mais I respect those lil crazies anyway.

  

  

                            

6. Attended Renegade Craft Fair in the BK. If Renegade was a deli-esque item, it would be a crispy pastrami on toasted rye with oozey salty cheese. In other words, utter deliciousness.

 

  

  

  

 7. I have set out on a mission to show the world (k not the whole world) that New Jersey does, mais oui, have greenery and gardens and other such eco-friendly greatness! I am getting involved with an organization that introduces kids to cooking with organic fruits and veggies. YAY!! This may be the very biddie cause for my nerdiness, but I LOVE COOKING AND VEGGIES!! These pics are from Riverside School District in Princeton, where they have something similar to Alice Waters's Edible Schoolyard.

 

  

Et mainant je pense que ça suffit. I think that about does it for now, mes amis. I will try to be quite diligent about my blogging and keep my ramblings to a minimum. Whilst we both know the latter will not happen, I am sure I will talk to y'all soon. 

À plus!

      

J'ai fini!!!!!!

There is a few very delicious things about going to university. Do you know what the sweetest of the sweet is, though? Le drumroll s'il vous plaît...

I AM FINISHED WITH MY FIRST YEAR! and I am still alive and kicking, as my mama would say. (Or maybe a lot of people's mothers say that?) I am in love with the little fact that the school year is done by mid-April. Beautiful! I am a wee bit sad to be leaving my little biddie Montréal for awhile. However, I cannot wait to see what awaits me back in my little hometown, which incidentally, seems to be making like my little cousin and growing up quite fast while I am away. 

I cannot believe I survived the BRUTAL last months of my freshman year program. The thang nearly killed me. Really. I may, in fact, not be alive right now and just never realized I had passed on. 

See last post for explanation. 

Anyways, posting pictures from scattered, crazy, awesome, funny, random events since January. (Sooo long ago!)

Flitted my sneaky lil self away from February in Montréal to Arizona! Embraced a DAZZLING winter week in the desert. Sedona, Pinnacle Peak, Bell Rock, local hikes, and World Market (I may have to take up permanent residency in World Market). Spent an awesome, energizing, beautiful, yummy, peaceful, hilarious, cutie-pie filled rest with some of my favorite people in the whole wide world! I love you O'Neills!!

Tickets to and from Toronto

My friend and I went to see Living Proof Live with Beth Moore and Travis Cottrell!! We traveled like quite the grown-up-est of ladies on a train all the way from Montréal to Toronto. Rest assured, we did not, absolutely not cause any trouble by laughing obnoxiously at a multitude of biddie things. We may have almost missed our train and lugged our lil bags up and down every confounded street in north  Montréal, but we sat our little selves on that train, merci beaucoup. We met the two sweetest ladies in the lobby of our Toronto hotel and because we were lil chitlins all by ourselves,  they officially became our adopted mamas. These ladies were so fun. 

Four ladies+big rainy city+one map= hahahahahah

DELISH THANG (not the boy on stage.) (working on that.)

Snuck away to Vermontie with my family. It's so close Canada that I may have to periodically jump across that lil border when I feel that I am forgetting what America looks like. 

en route through Québec countryside

Stowe, Vermont

hahahah yes they are. And yes the factory is there. 

And yes I did go. 

And no, I couldn't resist. 

Graveyard dating back to Civil War

Back at school. Chocolate run. Elongated, sitting down, fruit fondu yumminess, nothing-to-do-with-running run.

Campus on a quiet spring night. 

Et voilà, mes amis. 

I have plenty more to post. But for now, I must soak up my last few days in la belle province, before returning for the summer to the place of my birth. I do so love being dramatic with my language.  

Maintenant, je suis fatiguée. LittleBiddie is ready to go home.

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me

your right hand will hold me fast."

Psalm 139:9-10

Le IRP

The paper was due at 5:00 p.m. sharp. It actually said "sharp" on the rubric.


I was furiously typing as fast as my lil fingers ever did type. A proper symphony of tapping, clapping keyboard letters.


Suddenly it was 4:36. Wait, WHAT


Fingers flying at this point, pounding on that poor lil biddie keyboard. Huffing, puffing, OKAY DONE. PRINT.


no paper. (obviously).


4:43. EMAIL TO FRIEND. Commence to RUN (SPRINT) out of dorm study room, still holding laptop. Was not at all wearing proper shoes. Amazing friend prints out paper and adds the name of my professor to the heading of the paper. I had written Prof. P. Thought (mistakenly) it was a bit humorous. I may have also forgot how to spell his name (Polish). Friend fixes paper. She is smart.


4:56. All the world is a blur. I am running my own personal Olympic 50 meter. (Except that it was a bit more than fifty meters, I should think.)


See classmates walking back from Director's office, papers already handed in.


"RUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!!!!"


Dodging trash cans, construction flags and small children. PROPEL SELF ACROSS INTERSECTION. BOWL UP ESCALATOR. THROW BODY THROUGH GLASS DOOR. YES IT WAS OPEN. SURPRISINGLY.


Tumble into Director's office.


Place paper in her hands.


Exhale.


Look at cell phone.


17h00.


5 o'clock. Exactly.

Oh lala

Salut tout le monde! My lil mind has been a tad askew as of late. This school thing is kind of hard!

The midterm exams for the program I am in, were oral exams. Just you and two professors. C'etait très stressant, quite stressful indeed. 

However, on a funnier note (well yours truly thought it was a teeeensy bit amusant) I caused a little unintentional ruckus in my professor's office building. While waiting to "do" my exam I was, I must admit, prancing around the deserted hallway, iPod plugged securely into the ears. If you sat in the waiting area next to the interrogation room (a.k.a. prof's office) you could actually hear the student scheduled in the time slot before you speaking. The whitewashed walls were so thin, I could make out every pause, every slight stumble over a word, every soft "uhm..."every shake of the voice.  Listening to a fellow captive struggle through her torture was beyond my capacity and so I took to my prancing. Somewhere along the way I decided I should go to the bathroom before my turn. I certainly did not want any kind of call from nature during my session, you understand. 

So off I went down the hallway through a couple of open doors, past some very busy, at-work-looking people. I found my way to a biddie little bathroom, clean and with a pink fluffy little mat on the floor. I decided that I must take classes in this building on account of it's matching hand-towel and toilette seat cover. When I walked out of this little box of cuteness, there were a wee bit too many eyes staring at me, however. I do believe it was the dean of the building who was waiting for me upon my emergence, and it seems that I somehow unknowingly wondered into her bathroom. I had an internal little Ohh lala! before my attention was directed to more important things. She was definitely the one who chose those matching linens. I could just see that they were a perfect personality match for her. Bravo, Madame! Je l'aime!  

After offering my humble apologies, I left the hallway in a minor cloud of fruity fragrance (I had helped myself to some of her cucumber-melon hand lotion) and scampered back towards the interrogation room giggling at my escapades. This little biddie can be quite a mischief maker,  I'll have you know. 

Anyways, sorry for that random interjection. After exams I went off to AMAZING Phoenix, Arizona where I stayed with some of my FAVORITE people in the world! My Tia, Uncle, Nana and cousins! It was so beautiful and deserving of a full post in itself, but I just can't resist putting up a few pictures! Here are a few before I do a whole post on Arizona!

                                    "In one hand He holds deep caves and caverns, 

                                     in the other hand grasps the high mountains...

                                     His hands sculpted the earth!" Psalm 95:4-5,  
                                     The Message

                                                Have an amazing week mes amis. 
                                                           Bisous! À bientôt! 

Un concert!!!

Exciting news! Yesterday evening I pinched a celebrity.

Yes, you have read correctly mon ami, I pinched a celebrity. Let me explain.

At about 5:30 in the evening of January the 23rd, 2010, I was sitting in the study room of my dormitory located in downtown Montréal. I was studying none other than the belle langue of français. Unfortunately the topic of my studies was la grammaire. Grammar, though, has never been something dear to my heart.  I may even dare to admit to you that I actually do not like grammar in the least. Speaking? Love everything about that to pieces. Writing? Spelling? Conjugating? Mesdames at messieurs, mais non! 


In the midst of my er working very very hard on my grammar, I decided it was necessary to call one of mes amies to discuss strictly educational things. I was soon told that my friends were waiting outside a theatre hall for a Switchfoot concert. Ben Alors, my goodness gracious, did my grammar workbook slam itself so quick and shove itself into my bag so fast that you would have wondered if it was ever there.

According to inside sources, there was one ticket left for me being held by a kind dude at Le Studio Juste Pour Rire, where the concert was being held. BUT! I had fifteen minutes before the doors opened and if I did not get my little self over there in essentially the next ten minutes, he was going to sell the ticket to another willing buyer. When I tell you I ran, I RAN.

My coat was flapping crazily around me as I jetted it over four blocks of Montréal terrain and whipped past disgruntled passers-by. But, guess who made it and got that little biddie ticket? C'est moi!!!


Switchfoot was CRAZY. They played their entire new album and a bunch of their older stuff. The crowd was so intense, so packed in, so kooky crazy, that everything felt electric! Or actually that was most likely just just the numerous elbows thrown into my face (their elbow level=my eye level=ouchie) but still INTENSE!

At one point all these these french boys kept yelling about something and pointing to their friend, during one of the heaviest craziest songs. They were making such a fuss about it that finally the lead singer stopped and looked over. These kids wanted their buddy to get on stage and play. During the biggest song, of the biggest, most well known guitar solos in this band's history, this kid wanted to get up on stage and play.

So up he went. The kid got onto that stage, was given the lead singer's guitar and NAILED IT. Wow,  if I could describe the sound, sight and feeling of the entire room, as he played...it was nuts. Nuts!! It was awesome and I think I can speak for whole the crowd when I say we all felt a bit of pride seeing one of our own, a lowly commoner, get up on stage and totally rock out lead guitar! C'était super!!!!!!! 


After random bouts of jumping down and walking through the crowd (it was here I got in my pinch. I didn't mean to-I just kind of tried to give the lead singer a congratulatory pat on the back that turned into a semi-pinch), crowd surfing, throwing drumsticks, hats, towels and other articles into the crowd, and two encores, that Switchfoot finally said goodnight. And wow, what a night it was. J'aime Switchfoot!


I must confess I was squished half the time because of my vertically challenged stature (although it makes for good sneaking up to the front of the crowd!) and could not get quality pictures. Mais, here are some snaps that capture a crazy night in a crazy city nonetheless.

I have videos from the concert but, unfortunately, I cannot post them. You see, at the time, it seems I thought singing at the top of my lungs would make for the perfect addition to EVERY song, and, alas, nothing can be heard but something of a high pitched little scream throughout all of my videos. I do think I drowned out the entire band with my biddie voice. Anyways, BONNE SEMAINE!

be blessed mes amis!