Le Fugacité de Temps

Hey everyone!!
I hope all is well with each of you! Things are still going well here; I'm finding a nice routine in my weeks, finally.  I just realized, though, that I have been here for a little over a month already!!! Holy buckets of bouncy balls, time is flying!!! (Thus, the title of this post =] )  There's still so much I want to do while I'm here and I feel like I'm not gonna have enough time! That means I'm kicking my butt into planning overdrive haha.  If you guys have any ideas of really cool places you think I need to visit, tell me!!! I only have a few vague plans in mind right now and I don't want to spend any more of my weekends in Caen!
This past week hasn't been very exciting - like I said, I'm settling into a routine by now.  There are only a couple of things - that I can think of at the moment - that would interest you.  Every Wednesday, I have a class called Simulation Globale, in which we create a French character for ourselves and learn about culture by "experiencing" it.  This past Wednesday was especially interesting... Mme Geslot surprised us all by telling us it was the "Festival of French Songs" in our made up town and we would all have to perform a French song before class was over!! Thankfully, we did it in large groups so it wasn't as difficult, but we went into the library and one of the more populated hallways and sang for practically everyone in the entire building!!! I am absolutely convinced that it is impossible to be nervous about public speaking in France...The profs make damn sure of that!! It was actually quite fun, though.  We sang a song that I know fairly well - Toi Plus Moi by Grégoire (In case anyone would like to take a listen to the original --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOru9ITtVIg) and we sounded pretty good! It was actually really fun, after we got over the shock of having to perform in public on such short notice haha. 
This week, I did laundry for the first time (in France)!!! Of course, it was much more complicated than it really needed to be, but what else did I really expect? It all went smoothly after I finally got into the laundry room (you have to buy tokens and rent the keys to the room and....oy).  On my way back to my room, I passed by the dog that lives in our complex.  He's a beautiful German Shepard and he has a nice fenced in area, but I never see anyone with him and it seems like he is always stuck in there! I see him there every day and I'm almost positive he spends the nights there, too.  Anyways, I was passing him on my way back to my room with my arms full of wet laundry (the dryer eats clothes, according to those who have gone before me, so I hung all my clothes to dry).  While I was passing, I made a quiet kissy noise to see if I could get the dog to let me pet him.  Instead, the dog jumped up and brought me his rope toy, then ran into the grass and waited for me to throw it!  When I didn't do it right away, he ran back, picked his toy up and dropped it again, then ran back to wait again.  I ended up playing with him for about 10 minutes and he looked so happy! Now, almost every time I pass, I throw his toy for him a couple of times- he's just so cute!
Other than that, my week was pretty boring.  Just the run of the mill school work (which I'm really beginning to resent...isn't this supposed to be my party time?!?! ;P ).  My weekend, however, was much more entertaining! Friday, Mira's friend Tia came to visit and we had a big dinner party with about 10 people.  It was supposed to be a girl's night, but we had a couple of guys crash our party and, honestly, that was totally fine with me.  We made veggie stir fry with chinese noodles with a soy sauce that Sarah sent me the recipe for.  It was DELICIOUS - a little spicy and a little sweet.  Everyone was raving about it.  We crepes for dessert (of course!) and we had a lot of fun with everyone for quite a few hours.  At around midnight, Mira and I tried to convince a few people to come out to the karaoke bar with us, but everyone was tuckered out so we went alone for a couple of hours.  This time, we didn't have any creepy men hitting on us and we each sang a Queen song ;D After we had been there for a couple hours, we decided to go sit by the water and talk for a bit.  We had only been there for a little while, when a couple guys came up and started talking with us.  Only one spoke English so we were kind of sliding between languages.  They were very interesting and nice and my French got even more of a workout! It was a lovely night.  =]
On Saturday, I went out with Mira and her friend Tia to see the sights around town! I finally got to take some time and snoop through the castle and we went into the museums! Everything there is so gorgeous... I have pictures up on facebook, if anyone is curious! While we were out, we decided to try speaking only French all day and we did a pretty good job of it! It was really funny whenever we had trouble finding the right words, though, because then we slipped into some really heady mix of French, Finnish, and English!! We also went downtown and walked around for a bit and had coffee together before Tia went to meet up with a different friend that she knows in Caen for the evening.  After that, Mira and I went home and got ready for another evening out.  This was the first time I've gone out two nights in a row and, let me tell ya, I am feeling it... This time, however, we were able to get a decent group to go out with us to karaoke!! (Yes, we spend most of our weekend at a karaoke bar haha, and we will probably spend a couple more weekends there before we leave!)  A few more people even met up with us there so we really had a good group! Only a couple of us sang though, and they never actually called my song (=[ ) so I sang We Will Rock You with Mira ;D (I put the video in, just above this paragraph...I hope it works!) At about 1am we wanted to go check out a couple other bars, but for some reason they were all closing, so we headed home.
So, that's all the news for now! Hopefully, next week's post will be a little more exciting than this one was but, until then:
Gros bisous!! <3
À bientôt,
Morgan