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Published: April 4th 2011
Yes it has happened. VCU is beast. As I sit here and type this VCU is showing the world that we want it more. I hope we win cause if we don't then this will look so silly. There are so many freaking commercials for these games. I never knew just how many there were until I watched a game here and found out that they only did 2 minutes of commercials at halftime and that was it. It's even worse because these are all the same commercials over and over again and at the most random times throughout the game. I've been told by the Appelbee's lady to stop watching my laptop and go down to my local Applebee's about 5 times so far. The nearest Applebee's? Uhhhh the closest Applebee's. Riiiight. I told her to hit me up in two months.
It's ironic that my mom was the one to tell me how to watch the games on the internet. It's always been me telling her how to move the mouse or how to exit out of a screen or that yes you can be on two different pages at once. This time, however, it was mom telling
me, "go to CBS sports and click on this link..." what is this world coming to? For this blog I will try to go by what pictures I have taken to help me remember what I've been up to. Since my last blog I got the flu and was pretty well sick for almost two weeks. Right before I got sick, though I did manage to get into some mischief. Let me explain....
It was windy out and Jesse had coerced me into a walk with Ellen. I wasn't feeling that great though (this was the beginnings of my flu) but I was thought maybe Jesse was right and a bit of fresh air would do me some good. A few days earlier, Ellen and I had been walking on the prom and we had decided to try some of the Vélobleu bikes that are for rent at various places throughout the city. You must be wondering what I mean when I say "try" them. The way the bikes are set up on the street is with a cord that is attached to the machine that you use to pay for the bikes. Lots of times when the bike
cord is put back into the machine it isn't done well enough and anyone can come along and pull those babies out and get a free bike. This is how Ellen and I acquired our first bike and we decided to leave it at Jesse's so no one would steal it (since we can't lock them because they're stolen). We took that bike with us with the intention of taking turns, but when we got to the prom we decided to try our luck again and see if we could get one. We did even better than that and got two. All three of us rode up and then back down the prom on our "hot" bikes. It was really refreshing even though the wind was really harsh and made our ears hurt. We took a break and sat on some benches then took the bikes back towards Jesse's house for a photo op. We decided to put the two we found back because it would look a little suspicious if we brought back three stolen bikes. The French are many things but stupid isn't one of them (well at least in this case) because they know the bike's are
stolen because we can't lock them and because it would be insanely expensive to keep a bike like that for a long period of time so it would be obvious that it was stolen if it sat around for more than a few hours.
After that I got sick and barely left my room for fear of an embarrassing moment. After what felt like decades of getting to know my toilet better I began to slowly feel better as did the weather. How convenient. Once it felt safe to leave my room for extended amounts of time I went to the beach for the first time to lay out. OH EM GEEEEE! It was the best!!! It was so nice to just lay down in the sun and feel the vitamin D soak into my pale as death skin. I didn't stay out too long the first couple of times but as we all know the burn was bound to happen. Jesse and I stayed out one day for close to 4 hours just reading/listening to music/sleeping. We both didn't have class in the afternoon and so we met at 11 am and got lunch for the beach from
the bakery by her place and headed out early. We both roasted. We would have left earlier but we waited for Ellen and Marissa to get there but by the time they both made it we had to get out of there because we could feel out skin sizzling. I was sure to put lots of after sun lotion on and I am proud to say that I did not peel at all and that I am now a nice shade of brown (well brown for me anyways).
About a week ago Jesse's brother and her best friend from home came to Nice to spend a few days with her. Jesse and I met them at the airport and then proceeded to entertain them. Saturday night we went out for some drinks and dancing and ended up staying out til the wee hours of the morning. That night there was a time change as well and so we lost an hour. Good thing the next day was Sunday. I had a blast with Conor (Jesse's best friend) and Robin (Jesse's brother). We had fun with a shopping cart and even got the boys to get into the freezing sea
Mirror fun
And me being Chinese.water. They claimed it wasn't nearly as cold as Ireland, but does that really matter when it's that cold to begin with? The answer is no. I made the three of them watch the final 8 game for VCU with me. They didn't like it too much saying there wasn't enough action, the floor was too small, the commercials were too frequent and too annoying and that the game too WAY too long. While they were here I learned some useful slang words in Ireland. We all had a time comparing English in America and English in Ireland.
Conor left at the beginning of the week, staying for only a few days, but Robin stayed until last Thursday. One night, Jesse, Robin, Ellen, and I went out for frog legs because Robin was feeling adventurous and wanted to try them. I was a little hesitate because when I think of frogs I think of them peeing all over my campers or swimming in sludge, but I wasn't going to baby my way out of it. We all went to this restaurant and spilt a plate with 6 frogs on it, in case we all hated it. They appeared as
half a frog laying in this red sauce that smelled really good and garlicky. We each took a frog and dug in. It was weird because the meat on the frogs was a cross between fish meat and meat meat (well in my opinion). It had a slight fishy after-taste and the meat was kinda chewy in a gross way. Overall it wasn't that bad. The only thing that creeped me out was the fact that all the legs were so huge. It was like they were all on steroids in life. When I was done with my frog I made him dance as seen in two photos. On Wednesday the three of us went to Monaco. Jesse and Robin went ahead of me because I had some visa stuff to do before I could leave town. I met up with them in the city and from there we attempted to go see some sights but by the time we got to them they had all closed. The city itself is really gorgeous. There's lots to do there and even more to see. It's not that large but it doesn't need to be in my opinion. Even the ride to
Monaco was really beautiful. It's only one euro by bus and it goes along the coast the whole way towards Italy. You can even see how to get to Elton John's pink castle house...I know right. On the way you pass by the tiny town of Eze which has a Roman/Greek city in ruins or something. Once we got back from Monaco we went out to celebrate Robin's last night in Nice and had some fancy drinks during happy hour.
When Robin left on Thursday, Jesse went to pick John her boyfriend. He's staying with her until next Saturday. Once he leaves Jesse will only have 10 or so days until she goes home for real at the end of April. I booked a flight to go visit her and her family for mid-May for 7 days. I'm really excited to go back to Galway and really see it for what it is. When I went as a senior trip to England, Ireland, and Wales there wasn't much time to really see much of anything or take your time. This time around I plan to do just that. It'll be grand.
Today was my most eventful day of
the week. I woke up ON A SATURDAY at 845 AM to go meet John and Jesse to take a bus to Menton. Yes people I woke up that early voluntarily on a Saturday and YES I finally went to Chin aka Menton (Menton is French for Chin). Needless to say I slept the whole way there and when we got off the bus I had a nice wake-up to an open market. They were selling all kinds of stuff from food to clothes. Jesse and I immediately noticed that there was way more Italian being spoken here. Chin was pretty and had actual sand beaches which was a surprise to us. I was dying of hunger so we stopped at this place that claimed to have lasagna for only 6,50 euro. That was apparently a good price so I waited to have it prepared and had it as take out. Wow. Shittiest lasagna I've ever tasted in my life. First of all we were laughing for a good minute when I got the thing because they gave it to me in the box it came in. Yea it looked like it was from the freezer section. It tasted horrible
and there was tons of gristle. I couldn't even finish it. Such a disappointment. Jesse and I tried to erase that bad memory from out heads by getting a new type of ice cream that we thought looked good. It was semi-froid (partially cold) and looked like icing in the case. Yet another disappointment added to the town of Chin. At least the ice cream looked like it would be good.....
We hopped back onto the bus and headed to Monaco. Once there we rushed up this huge mountain, taking stairs as well as elevators to the top so we could make the next tour of some caves (or grottes) by the next hour. These were particularly interesting because they used to be inhabited by Cro-Magnon men. We went really far down into the grottes and had to slip down lots of wet stone stairs to get to the bottom. They were really really beautiful, but our tour guide was an asshole and barely said anything about the caves compared to the tour guide Jesse had had another time. All he did was yell at a fat guy a bunch for taking pictures while walking. He heard us speaking
Chinese face
I'm not this pale anymore I swear. English and asked if we wanted to have a description of the caves in English too and we said yes because John doesn't know French. Let's just say he should have stuck to French. I barely understood him and I had just heard the same thing in French. So we pretended Jesse was the tour guide and she told us all about the caves. It was strange because I was used to the Luray caverns that are chilly when you go into them but these caves were humid and uncomfortably warm. This was because the caves were warmed by the sun from the outside of the mountain and there was no opening at the bottom to help cool the air. After the caves we explored the cactus garden that surrounded it where I ended up getting pricked a lot more than I thought I would and then moved on to the adjoining building to tour the Anthropology museum on early man. There were actual dead people there and you could touch some of them. It was weirdly random to see lots of stuffed animals hanging around and we found out that they were actually animals that the Prince of Monaco
had shot all over the world. Don't worry he appears again later on in my dialogue.
At this point we were all on the verge of death by hunger (even me after my AMAZING lasagna....NOT) so we went to the local Carrefour and got some supplies and went and sat in the sun for a nice late lunch/early dinner. I had a salad and a ham sandwich with a cheese spread on it and juice. It was refreshing as well as good. Once we were replenished and refueled (I'm really getting into my prefixes in this one) we headed for the Napoleon museum. Now I'm not that into Napoleon, but a certain bestie of mine (Nathan Clinton Clark) is OBSESSED with that tiny man and I was looking for a souvenir (French for "to remember") to bring back to him. We went in and suffered through endless boring facts about Napoleon and, who would have thought, the past and present princes of Monaco. I mean really this guy is everywhere. His face is plastered all over the city and he even has a freaking huge castle that we're not allowed to walk near. Ok so we get to the
end of the tour and I'm getting nervous because there's no gift shop in sight. I asked the lady at the front desk like a complete tourist if there was one and she told me no that it was a private collection. Seriously? Don't worry though cause I'm still on the prowl. By the time we had exited the museum, everything was closing so we caught the bus back to Nice. Once in town we said our goodbyes and I headed home to watch the game. I now concede that we lost. Sad face. That's okay cause we had a good run. Sunday I vegged out all day and watched Star Wars for the first time and I don't hate it like I thought I would but I still don't see what the big fuss is over these movies. They're so....gay. Well now I want to know what happens so I will watch all 500 of them and finally figure out why Darth Vader breaths so heavy.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that Aloewishes passed away today. It was really sad to let her go but it was her time and she will be sorely
missed. She was an amazing cat and I love her so much. Miss you kitty.
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Galadriel Johnson
non-member comment
YUMMM
I am so glad to know that you are enjoying authentic local cooking (even if its from the microwave). I remember eating something, when I was really small, that Grandma Stella said were frog legs. I liked it cause I kept eating it and it had a tomato based sauce on it. Somewhere along the way I decided that she was teasing me and I was eating ravioli or something like that. Mostly because I will occasionally eat fried frogs legs now if they are on a seafood/fish buffett, which is pretty common here in the south and I dont think they taste the way the stuff Grandma Stella gave me did.(that is one of those run on sentences I am legendary for) Well anyway the cave pics are really cool I want to show them to step cause he will get a huge kick out of them, but he is in bed already. Maybe tomorrow. I am glad you are feeling better the flu stinks at the best of times I would hate to be sick when I was away from home so I feel for ya. I am really sorry about Aloewishes. ((HUGS)) to you. I saw your twinkies and the note Grandma sent, she has the prettiest handwriting!! Well I have rambled enough for now. Love ya!