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Told you there was nothing interesting. :P

Jessica wrote home at 12:48 am

It's breaktime again, hurray. I bought a microwaveable lunch yesterday so hopefully I can save money on lunch. I am SERIOUSLY running low on money and there is no way that I have enough cash for Paris, much less the next two weeks. And I've already racked up a huge phone bill calling my mother. Plus Theresa smsed yesterday saying she just started playing Animal Crossing and got me all excited replying. :P

Speaking of Animal Crossing, I play it everyday. I was wrong about my journal though - I have no idea how it's going to last till the end of my trip. I've been writing so much that I only have time to write and play Animal Crossing before going to sleep. I haven't even read a word of Rebecca.

Today's a Friday which means we have our free afternoon, which means SHOPPING...even though we've been shopping the last two days too. We went to an art museum downtown yesterday and shopped after that. :P The school organises excursions on Saturday but we've yet to ask where we're going. I hope they'll organise a trip to Mont St. Michel or we'll (meaning the 5 of us who started school this week) will have to find a way there ourselves. And it's far away. :P

Anyway, time to go. It's the last day today for the big group of Singaporeans who arrived 2 weeks ago and they're driving me insane with jealousy discussing their post-immersion travel plans.

Well, see you.

Jessica wrote home at 5:13 pm

Bonjour tout le monde! Je m'appelle Jessica Yeo et j'ai vingt-et-un ans. J'habite à Singapour: Je viens de finir ma première année à l'Université National Singapour, où je suis étudiante en histoire. J'apprends le français parce que je trouve que la langue français est très belle. Aussi, je voudrais apprendre la culture et l'histoire de France. Ma famille d'accueil s'appellent les Stephan. Je pense qu'ils ont de la chance parce qu'ils habitent près de la mer! Les Stephan aiment les fleurs et ils ont un grand jardin. Il y a beaucoup de fleurs dans leur jardin. C'est très jolie! La famille n'ont pas des chiens et des chats, mais ils ont quatre perroquets - trois perroquets gris et un perroquet vert. Les perroquets sont très bavardent! Mais ils sont très polis aussi parce qu'ils disent souvent "Bonsoir!".Je suis arrivée à Brest il y a trois jours. Je reste ici pour trois semaines. Jusqu'ici, il faissait très beau et j'aime bien Brest. Je trouve que mon cours à CIEL est intéressant et le professeur est très amusant aussi. Si seulement mon cours français à Singapour était comme ici!

Jessica wrote home at 9:06 pm

Despite the fact that 1) I leave later tonight, 2) I haven't brushed up on my French, and 3) French is my worst subject (AND I AM NOT LYING. WHY WOULD I LIE ABOUT THIS???), I just decided to spend a few hours playing Uno and Checkers online with YQ.

And just for the record, REVERSI IS BETTER THAN CHECKERS. :P

Oh yeah, and my mouse isn't working. Or rather, it works for a few seconds, gets my hopes out, then stalls. Rinse and repeat. Sigh. How timely.

I've mostly finished packing, by the way. It took me about a week to decide which clothes to bring. For the past few days I was trying to choose two tops to bring out of a shortlisted three. Considering the state of my luggage now (and I haven't even left, which means I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN ANYWHERE NEAR A H&M OUTLET), it looks like I can only choose one of them anyway. Sigh. It would be a lot better if I didn't have to bring homeclothes and an extra pair of shoes. Well actually I don't really need the extra pair of shoes, except that I might prefer something a bit more rugged on days when I have a lot of walking to do. Say if my host family wants to go for a long walk, or on the day we're visiting Versailles. Or something. Either way I've always found it a huge chore to bring an extra pair of shoes. And they take up so much space - space that could be better used for, say, more cup noodles. Or a NEW pair of shoes. :P

I find the fullness of my luggage rather foreboding. It's never good, especially if you're me, to leave with a full suitcase. Who knows how I'm going to fit everything back in when I leave Brest, especially since I don't intend on taking my extra bag out (because it'll be bloody inconvenient to lug everything around the Metro, especially in Metro stations that were NOT built with travellers in mind) but expect to have bought more than enough stuff already - not to mention nothing is actually leaving my luggage for good, except my present for my host family.

Anyway, because my luggage is so full, I can't bring my big fat France guidebook along, which may be a good thing because I don't really need the Paris section (I have nice smaller Paris guidebooks for that), the Brest section is insanely short and pointless (because it is an insanely boring place, apparently). I may need some info on other parts of Brittany, and herein lies the problem: I don't know which parts. There are so many little towns in the region and I have no idea how many of them I'll be able to visit anyway. Plus all that info is scattered in like 30 pages and HOW AM I GOING TO COPY IT ALL???

Then there's still the lists of helpful French words and phrases to copy down, along with stuff from my textbook - all the stupid complicated tenses and expressions and whatnot.

Just thinking about it makes me sleepy. Now you know why I'd rather play Uno. :P

Other than that annoying problem, though, I have decided which book and which portable gaming system to bring. Well the latter was no decision at all, since I finished Supernatural 3 but can't be bothered with The Tudors until I return. Anyway I can only fit ten episodes into the memory card. :P On the other hand, I have to water my flowers everyday in Animal Crossing, so too bad. Oh, and The World Ends With You is horribly addictive.

As for books, I had to think of other alternatives to The Sunne in Splendour since that book is actually BIGGER and HEAVIER than my big fat France guidebook! So on Monday I dropped by Kinokuniya and ended up with another two (much smaller) books, The Daughter of Time and Rebecca. I originally wanted to bring the former, because it was surprisingly thin (205 pages) but looking at the very big font I decided that I could probably finish it in a few days. Which I just did, in two days. So Rebecca it is. :P

Speaking of Monday, that was just one day after I had, at 12.30 a.m. on Sunday morning in the middle of Bedok Interchange, realised that I had missed 1) the last city-bound train, 2) the last bus 30 to Harbourfront, and 3) the last bus 16 to Bukit Merah (which had just pulled out of the berth). And so, being sadly homeless and unwilling to spend on a taxi, Sam let me go back to her house and I did. I had originally planned to leave her house at 6+ in the morning, and I actually managed to wake up on time, but as I stared at the darkness I decided to wait for another half an hour till the sun had risen.

And then I left. And it doesn't matter that Sam was too tired to go for breakfast, since I wanted to get home ASAP anyway. :P

Oh, speaking of breakfast, on Wednesday morning I dragged myself up early to have breakfast at KFC.........................and they had run out of practically everything!!! The only breakfast items they had left were one serving of waffles and one serving of the A.M. burger. Sheesh. So my mummy and I waited for lunch instead. :P

And now, after having spent half an hour beating around the bush, I finally get to my main point of this post. Basically, I just realised that I never did reply YQ about Chinese Studies being really my major. Because I thought it was very obvious I was being sarcastic!!! And haven't I said before that I don't even meet the REQUIREMENTS to take the exposure module. :P

Anyway, as for my REAL major, I kindly redirect you to my Facebook profile. Apparently it was not very obvious all along which major I was going to pick. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmph.

Well, now that I'm extremely sleepy, I will go off and.......not sleep. COPY COPY COPY. I have to COPY COPY COPY. So, au revoir everyone! Perhaps my host family will, after all, have a computer and I can blog like once or something. :P If not, please wait for my return at the end of June. I am NOT looking forward to doing the whole journal thing. In fact I don't expect there to be tons of interesting things happening every single day for the first three weeks (I don't think anyone wants to know exactly what I did in class and exactly what I ate every single day), so (lucky me!) I may just do a Paris journal instead. We'll see.

NOT MUCH LATER: Here I was minding my own business and suddenly this loud screech and a definite CRASH sounds from outside. How exciting. I went to the window and saw people getting out of their cars at the intersection, as well as some random jogger (jogging at 5.30 in the morning???) slow down to look. Unfortunately the intersection is covered by the branches of huge trees so I can't see much. Lucky people in the SBS bus that just passed by got to see what was going on. :P Anyway, how do you manage to crash your car when the road is practically empty? And why are people always crashing their cars at that intersection? (Oh okay I don't know that there've been a lot of accidents there, but screeching and crashing is quite a common sound from my living room. :P) Whatever it is, I am OFF to COPY COPY COPY. For real this time. :P

Jessica wrote home at 4:35 am

Jessica demands that YOU read this post!

So apparently my long-awaited return to blogging lasted for all of, well, one post. :P

I could say that I didn't have time to blog after that post (which I notice I used too much French in - I didn't mention it but I had just had my French oral earlier that day, so excuse me!) because I had exams to study for, but that would be lying since I didn't really study. I spent most of my study week napping. :P

I didn't enjoy my exams. And I don't mean that as in "OBVIOUSLY I didn't enjoy my exams, who does?", but that it could've been much better if.............(more about it below). I did actually have fun during my first exam (Nation-Building in Singapore), where I got to rattle on and on about public housing policies implemented over the years. That's like my pet subject now. Isn't that so sad? Sigh.

ANYWAY, the end of the exams really sucked because I had to report early for temperature screening and the exam ended at 7 p.m., by which time it was way too late to do anything other than spend my time at Vivo.

The first thing that I accomplished after my exams (and, now that I come to think of it, the only thing that I've accomplished thus far) was to finish reading a book for the first time in like half a year. Unfortunately that good progress was not built upon because my next book was (and still is) The Sunne in Splendour which is about the Wars of the Roses in 15th century England and is sooooooooo verrrrrrrry looooooooong - 900+ pages and by that I mean BIG pages with MINUSCULE words, such that by the time I finish a page I feel like I've just read five pages and then realise that I've made ABSOLUTELY NO PROGRESS in the book. That doesn't mean the book isn't interesting, though. :P

I haven't really played much in terms of gaming, other than finishing Fire Emblem (which I suppose means that I've accomplished TWO things these holidays). I wasn't planning on buying anymore games since I have so many books to read, but.............(more below).

I have, however, had time to meet up with YQ and Sam. In fact, just last Saturday The Lumber Jacks FINALLY got to play as a band! And I realised that I really like playing La Bamba, because it's fast enough to be challenging without being impossible (*cough*Love Removal Machine*cough*). Unfortunately, our Wii session ended up with an ignominious loss to the computer in Mario Party 8. :P

In other more important news, I just cleared (well to the best of my abilities anyway) my closet. Okay, part of it. Things were falling out all the time (in fact a whole pile of clothes and shopping bags really did fall onto me) and it was getting impossible to locate certain tops. And besides, clearing = more space = more space for new clothes. :P

Another piece of important news (which I know doesn't seem very important but you'll see why shortly) is that my father just came back from the US/Japan with pressies! (As a matter of fact, I hadn't asked for anything, since I couldn't find anything more specific and realistic than "I WANT THE WHOLE OF F21!!!") Other than a tee with the words "Philadelphia", I got a fancy umbrella and new earphones. And to top it all off..................

I got a PSP 3000! Which is very random of course. And since it was the Japanese version, the whole manual was in Japanese and I had to get a local charger. :P For the latter I went to Funan.

After getting the charger, I browsed around for PSP games (realising that there's practically no PSP game I would like to play) and ended up stumbling upon The World Ends With You, which was on sale for $39! I had actually been contemplating getting the $59 from Gamescore, but then I decided that I probably won't have the time to play it anyway. But when I saw the offer price I knew I would forever regret it if I didn't buy it then, whether or not I have time to play now.

AND NOW, after all that build-up, here comes my most important update of all:

I WILL NOT BE IN SINGAPORE FOR ALMOST THE WHOLE OF JUNE.

Yup. You might already have had your suspicions. :P That at least explains:

1. Why I'm so bothered about not having enough time to finishing reading or playing anything before leaving,

2. Why I didn't go to the US/Japan,

3. Why I only enjoyed my first exam: because the stupid swine flu appeared during that weekend and for WEEKS AND WEEKS my trip was in serious jeopardy of being cancelled. In fact it really should have been, if I had listened to my mother,

4. (Partly) why I decided to clear my closet,

5. (Probably) why my father even bought the PSP in the first place - apparently for me to watch videos while travelling,

6. My new "borrowed" phone: I need to use the camera!!!

............it also explains a lot of other things that I can't think of now, but OH WELL.

Wait. I haven't said where I'm going. :P

Je vais en France!!!

.........for a 3-week immersion programme in Brest, which is in Brittany, which is in the southwestern part of France. The very tip extending out into the Atlantic Ocean in fact, if you bother to refer to a map. It's a homestay and my host family supposedly lives very near to the sea. Whee. Now if only my French wasn't so crap to begin with, maybe I'd actually be able to have proper conversations with them. :P

And THEN, to top it off, after the immersion ends we have the highlight of my trip (okay I know the whole point of going to France is for the immersion, but TOO BAD :P): an extra 6 days in Paris, where I can FINALLY GO TO THE LOUVRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

........And then I return to little old Singapore. So I WISH I could stay over at Sam's during her holidays, but the best I can do is 27th June (Sat) only.....and that's if I manage to finish unpacking (and I hate hate HATE unpacking even for the shortest trip) after I arrive on Friday morning. Sigh. :(

Well, so there you have it. More than enough news for one blog post. :P

Jessica wrote home at 12:39 am