FINLAND!!

Salut tout le monde!!
Happy Valentines Day!
Just so everyone's on the same page, the title of this post is a reference to both my past week and Patrick Star from Spongebob haha. I'm sorry I'm late in posting!! I got really busy and then really lazy haha, but I hope you all forgive me!
So, to begin, this past week was my first week of my actual class load and holy buckets of bouncy balls I did not realize it would be this intense!! I have 9 different classes, some of which repeat during the week, and most of my weekdays begin at 8:30 and don't end until 16- or 17:30!! Some of my days, though, are a little lighter and we end around 15:30, which is nice.  We always have an hour for lunch so I've been coming back to my room and cooking lunch. If any of you have any yummy recipes that I can make on the stove top (I don't have an oven....) I would very much appreciate you emailing them to me! I'm getting tired of pasta even if I mix up the sauce every once in a while and add stir-fried veggies... Hopefully the recipes you send me will be easy to "vegetarian-ize" haha =] You can send it to morgan.livesay@my.und.edu or, if you already have an email of mine, send it to the one you have!
Oh, I was talking about my classes wasn't I? Woops! Anyways, I came here after hearing lots of stories about doing all the work in class and not having any homework, about the course load being pretty light and blah blah blah. All of these stories were LIES.  Well, for my level anyways haha. I already have quite a bit of homework (which reminds me, I should do that.... ;P) and the in-class work is pretty tough too, but I'm learning lots of new words! I'm still kind of nervous speaking French and I tend to trip over my tongue when I try to speak, but I've heard that that's normal so I'm just waiting it out haha.  I am getting better, though! Now, I can talk to the other students without sounding like a three-year-old at least! One really nice thing about my class load is that I have Fridays off! Gotta love the long weekend! That will make it a lot easier for me to travel around, too!
Since some of us have Fridays off, Thursdays have become the new party day and this past Thursday, we did just that! Meagan, Mira and I went to a free concert at the Cargo in downtown Caen.  It was a competition-type deal and they were down to the last 4 bands. I thought it was highly amusing that the performers described their sets in French, but then only sang in English! The sets were also a lot more mellow than we were expecting, so, even though the bands were very good, we left early because we were starting to fall asleep... We headed down to O'Donnell's to meet up with a few of our friends and celebrate Tyler's birthday! It was nice to just sit and talk after a long week of classes.. While we were talking, I met my first young French person! His name was Olivier, which immediately made me think of Oli, of course haha! I didn't talk to him very much, though, because he was a bit...um....attached to one of the other girls at the table... That night, I also met two Norwegians who were lovely! There was Sofie- who attends the University here, is really funny and very hyperactive haha but she was a lot of fun to be around- and Richard, Sofie's childhood friend who was visiting for the weekend.  I spent most of the night talking with Richard- we had a lot in common and lots of stories to share.  By the end of the night, he had invited me to a party that Sofie was throwing the next night at her house -- once Sofie invited me too, I felt a little more comfortable about considering haha.  Sadly, the party was one town over and I couldn't find anyone who would be willing to go with me, so I stayed home because I reaaally wasn't comfortable with the idea of traveling out of the city by myself, at night... I don't know how often Richard visits Sofie, but I find myself really hoping I get to see him again! ;D
On Friday, I went shopping with Meagan, Mira, and Jennifer.  We found a ton of little shops in back alleyways (like this perfect little boulangerie with the most delicious baguettes!!) and spent lots of time just looking through all of them.  Suffice to say, by the end of it all, I could barely stand in my heels! I did get two awesome new scarves for 3€ each though! And a belt to keep my pants up, since I forgot mine in the states haha.  That night and all of the next day, I stayed home and read because I wasn't feeling well - I let Tyler try a drink of my Embuscade (which I learned how to make and I'm definitely bringing it home to the states!!) on Thursday before he told me he was sick!!! I took lots of echinacea and drank a ton of tea so that I was better by Sunday, thankfully.
Every Sunday, at noon, a lot of the shops in downtown Caen put on an outdoor market! I missed it the last weekend, but this weekend I got there just after it started and it was amazing!! They blocked off an entire street by the docks and had everything from fruit stands, butcher stands, and cheese stands to shoes, jewelery, and hat stands! I could have stayed there all day but the market only lasts an hour every Sunday, so I'll have to go back next week to check out more! I wish more towns in the States did things like that besides just the farmers markets...After that, I was going to go to Carrefour to get things like chips and crackers but then I remembered...EVERYTHING shuts down on Sundays in France, which is why they have the market haha.  Instead, I'm going to Carrefour today with Mira after classes.  Later Sunday evening, I got to skype with Mum, which was really nice =] I needed to see a familiar face, even if it wasn't for very long.  After that we had Sunday crepes! This time, though, Mira made Finnish crepes! They're basically the same as French crepes, but a little thicker.  We spent the evening hanging out and chatting, we even took a stab at religion, which was interesting because we had such a range of beliefs! Towards the end of the evening came the really interesting part, though! We had gotten onto the subject of languages and how they affect our experiences and learning and found out we had a lot of different languages in the room, too! I'm not entirely sure what lead to this next event, but Mira turned into our teacher for a little while and we all learned how to count to 5, say 'hello' and 'goodbye,' and 'my name is...' in Finnish!! It was so much fun and Mira looked like she was having a blast! She kept saying we all had really funny accents haha.  She also told us all what the Finnish equivalent of our names were - my Finnish name is Moona (said like Mona but with extra emphasis on the 'o') =D So: Hyvaa paivaal, minun nimeni on Moona! I know we're supposed to be learning French but....Finnish is just so interesting!! Haha Mira took a few videos of us practicing so look for those on facebook ;P All that learning wore us out haha so a little after that everyone went back to their rooms to crash.  Of course, being the night owl that I am, I went home and got straight on skype to talk with ma belle pipelette Christine haha! I haven't talked to her much since I left so it was really nice to see her.  About 2 and a half hours later, I finally flopped into bed haha.
So that's my story for this week! I hope all's going well with you! Send me email's or snail mail or something so I can keep up with you guys too ;P <3
À bientôt, mes amis!! (Hei Hei!)
Bisous!!
Morgan

PS: Sorry for all the exclamation points... ! ;P