Recap

This is pretty sweet. It's 9am and my host parents are AWAKE AND OUT OF THE HOUSE. For those of you who don't know...I always wake up before they do on weekends. They never get up before 10:30, and sometimes it's closer to noon or 1 if they had a dinner party the night before. They went out to do some food shopping, which means that I can play music and clean my room. Woohoo! It's pretty much a pigsty. I haven't cleaned up my stuff from my artist's date on Thursday and I went shopping yesterday. Plus when I was gone on Thurs, the housekeeper moved a rack of my laundry into my room and I haven't bothered to put it away yet. So yeah, I gotta take care of that stuff.

This is my last weekend of true vacation. I know you guys don't feel sorry for me, and you really shouldn't, but I don't want to go back to doing homework, minimal as it is. I don't even remember what I was supposed to do over break, so today and tomorrow are the days that I'll be cleaning, writing, probably some scrapping, doing some yoga, and a bit of homework to boot. So do you want to hear about Thursday and Friday? Of course you do. Here we go.

First of all, I just wanna say that Thursday was AMAZING. I was a tiny bit apprehensive just because I didn't know the town where I was going at all and I was going to be spending a whole day there by myself. It was actually a piece of cake. I went to the tourism office when I got there and asked for directions to the outlet mall. The nice lady there pointed me in the direction of the bus and off I went. Granted, I almost got on the bus going in the wrong direction, but that was ok because I had nothing but time. Nothing that had to be done, no one I had to meet, just a whooooooole day to do whatever I wanted.

When I got off the bus, this is the sign I saw. Isn't it glorious? "Marques" means brands, by the way. Four whole buildings filled with nothing but outlet shops. I spent more than half the day there, but amazingly enough, I didn't buy anything. The problem with outlet shopping is that they have a lot of ugly stuff that people didn't buy last season and won't buy this season either. Or they only have size extra extra small, which even the French women can't wear. There were a couple of things that tempted me, mainly a gorgeous black and white dress and a purple, black and white skirt, but they only had one size and it was one size too small. I think if I had sat down the dress would've ripped in two. But it looked so good when I was standing up!! Haha. I just couldn't justify it.

After I was done wandering the outlets, I took the bus back into town and wandered around taking pictures. I went into a bunch of little shops, found some churches and interesting doors to shoot, and then bought a sandwhich for dinner and ate it in the park. The weather was perfect - it was sunny and warm with a little bit of a breeze. I got a lot of funny looks when I was walking around with my camera...I don't think Troyes sees a whole lot of tourists, not compared to Paris. I think what drew the MOST funny looks (you'll appreciate this, Mom) is when I was practically lying down on an island in the middle of a traffic circle, trying to shoot a statue and also get the flowers at its base in the shot. I was doing that with the 35mm, so I'll let you know how that turns out.

Yeah, it was pretty much a perfect day. And yesterday wasn't half bad either. My friend's dad had commissioned me to do some family portraits in front of the Eiffel tower, so I went and did that yesterday morning. Her siblings were really cute, even though the 3 year old was afraid of cameras. I'm sure I got some good shots of them. It was really fun...definitely challenging for me but really enjoyable and a good experience. I'm really excited to see how the shots came out. Gotta finish that roll this weekend to get it developed on Monday.

After that, I dropped off my camera stuff and headed to the mall. SHOPPING SHOPPING!!! I had budgeted a certain amount to spend at the outlets, but after about half an hour in Promod it was all gone. I ended up buying two skirts, a tanktop, a pair of shoes, and a pair of earrings. You have got to see these skirts, they're the most adorable things ever.

I am so loving this style. It's not tight and it's good for short people with stumpy legs. The only thing you have to be careful of is wearing a shirt that's really long, as is in fashion now. If you wear a shirt like that with a skirt like this, it makes your butt look like it's about 3 feet wide. Trust me, that's how it looked in the dressing room.

Anyway, I met up with a couple friends after I was done shopping and we took a nice stroll around Paris, bought some stuff for dinner, and made salad and pasta. Mmm. We went to the movies after dinner...Ice Age 2!! I would highly recommend this movie. Hiliarous. It actually seemed kind of scary for a kids movie. There were definitely some sinister elements there. But yes, you should go see it. Pixar makes amazing movies and that's all there is to it. The Incredibles? Anyone? Anyone?
**eta**thank you whoever pointed out that Ice Age 2 is actually NOT a Pixar movie. Oops lol. One of my friends told me it was and I don't really pay attention to stuff like that.

Alright, I gotta clean my room now. And I have an announcement! TOMORROW will be the launch of my brand spankin' new typepad blog. You all better go see it, 'cause I gotta start paying for it in 3 days. I figured there was no sense in not using it once the free trial expired. So yes, check back tomorrow for a brand new blog, including a brand new scheme, seeing as I'm incapable of not fixing what's not broken.

Oh, ok, just for good measure, here's the shirt I bought.