Somehow Erin Manages To Distract Me From Working Even When There's An Ocean Between Us

Every time I relocate, I always tell myself it will be warmer and sunnier than where I was before.  I don't know why I bother to do this, because it never really is.  Moving from Maine to Washington was basically a shift from frostbitten toes and sun to shivering through cold rain and cloudy skies all winter.  From Washington to Oregon there was no real change; although the rain was lighter it became nearly constant.  But jumping from Oregon to Maine in France in the space of a month promised some drastic changes.

We have had some truly beautiful sunny days here, but it's been really cold the entire time.  Today was possibly the coldest yet, and I spent it berating myself for wearing a skirt and tights instead of a nice warm pair of jeans.  As soon as I arrived home from my traduction class, I changed into sweats and a hoodie and then spent a lovely afternoon in my bed watching Inglourious Basterds (which is technically in English because the subtitles are in English, but much of the movie is actually in French and German).  In the evening I hung out downstairs while I worked on my homework and chatted with my host sisters and host mother.


I'm now back in my room gearing up to read a concordat for my religion class and write a summary of it, but I'm not quite in an academic mindset yet.  This is mostly because the lovely Miss Erin helped me create the playlist that I'm listening to right now, and therefore I just heard Smooth Criminal, The Final Countdown, and Super Bass all in a row.  There's no way I can understand or write something intellectual, in French no less, while under the influence of horrible pop (which I totally love...don't let me convince you otherwise). 


Speaking of music, I've been discovering a lot of cool music that I actually already own.  The joy of having two very musically knowledgable brothers is that I have gigs of really awesome music on my iPod that I've never listened to.  (And I'm still not now.  Swing by Savage just came on...thanks Micaela.)  But whenever someone recommends a musician to me, I immediately check what I already have.  Low and behold, I have a lot of the stuff that my friends around here like...I just need to listen to it all.

I really want to find some cool French music while I'm here, but so far I haven't really had a chance to talk to anyone about good French music.  I've seen one live local band that was really entertaining, but I don't even know what they were called.  To be honest, it's the street musicians and people randomly playing in parks that I've been enjoying most.  Yesterday a friend and I settled ourselves on the grass a few yards away from a twenty-something guy who was playing really mellow music on his guitar.  When he got up to leave after about thirty minutes, we thanked him for playing and had a short conversation about how beautiful both the music and the weather were.  I'm really enjoying all the tiny interactions I'm having with strangers here.

I suppose it really is time to get some work done.  I guess I have to change playlists now.

À toute de suite!