Atypical Monday

Woke up at 8 and spent the next hour getting ready in my usual, slow morning fashion. Same breakfast as yesterday plus a cup of coffee (with milk and sugar - Joelle's coffee is SO bitter!) Left just after 9 and walked to school to drop off my computer before walking to the studio to do a make-up art class. (The teachers are going to Venice next week with the full-time art students and we have to make up the hours that we'll miss while they aren't here...) Noticed an adorable little girl in red, skipping down the street holding her dad's hand...

Arrived at the studio at 10:20 to find it locked... the morning class must have gone out to do landscapes. Spent the next hour taking pictures there, enjoying the sunshine and tormenting the cat with my camera. No one showed up so I went back to school, taking pictures the whole way. Got a call from Blake saying the travel agency canceled our trip to Barcelona this weekend. (Oh la la - that sucks.)

Got back to school around noon, ate my Balance bar and a small apple for lunch while checking e-mail and updating my journal online. Went to French History at 2 - discussed what happened in Rwanda and then covered Post-WWI France and how dictators rise to power. Went with Blake to the travel agency after class to check out our options. Offered discounted trip to Venice, but we still really want to go to Spain so we decided to look into options online. Found out that there was Phonetics homework I didn't know about, borrowed the text from Blake and went to the Cave (student lounge) to transcribe it into the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Went to Phonetics from 5:30 to 7:00 - spent the entire time discussing when liaisons between words must be pronounced and when they're optional. Came up that the President is considered a representative speaker of the French language as far as linguistics/pronunciation goes - thank God it's not the same in the States!

Left school and decided to take the bus since my shins were still tight. Saw the little girl from this morning, still with her dad, still skipping in the other direction. Got a call at the bus stop - "Hello?" "Bon soir, Ashley." It's a guy - what French guy has my phone number... maybe it's Jean-Michel calling from Joelle's phone. "C'est Benjamin." "C'est qui?" "Benjamin." Oh yeah... he's not even in Aix anymore, why is he calling me? We talked for five minutes - he said the same things he told me in his e-mail last week and asked how I'm doing. As I got on the bus, he ended the call with "Ok, well I guess we can keep corresponding over e-mail." ok - weird. Got home around 7:20 and found Joelle on her way out. Aurore's dad is in town from Toulouse and even though she didn't want to, Aurore wanted her to come over for dinner. She didn't go the last time he was in town so she felt like she had to go tonight, but she had already made dinner for us...

Erin and I had our dinner of salade (lettuce) with balsamic, radishes, tomato/zucchini tarte (which had the strong taste of the vinaigrette salad dressing - ick!) and, of course, cheese and bread. Tonight's pain (bread) was one of the best baguettes we've had yet... it's ok if I'm not a wine connoisseur - I know my baguettes. ;) Somehow we got on the topic of junior high and spent the next half hour reminiscing about dancing to Boys 2 Men, watching cheesy TV shows and weird halloween costumes. I had a viennois for dessert (essentially a chocolate pudding cup with whipped cream-like stuff on top).

Spent the rest of the evening catching up on e-mail and working on pictures from yesterday and today. (Perhaps the only typical Monday thing to happen today besides afternoon classes - most of my friends seem to catch up on e-mail on the weekends so I get a ton on Mondays!) Finally went to bed around midnight.