Oh Hey There

I haven't been especially motivated to blog these last couple of weeks. Some of it has been just plain busyness; I had to write a ten-page paper in French for one of my classes, and I was filling out summer internship applications at the same time, so most of my writerly energies were focused elsewhere. This past week I've been putting last-minute details on a loose itinerary for my mom's visit. She arrives early Saturday morning, and we'll be spending eight days together in Paris, London, and the Netherlands. I'm very excited, but it is a little stressful to plan things out like this. Still, I imagine we'll have a great time, and I'm bringing my laptop, so hopefully I'll be able to give plenty of blog updates on our travels!

Other things:

• So I've lost a lot of weight lately. Last time I checked, I was eight pounds away from my ultimate target. I'm happy about this, but I'm not used to how different my body seems. It's sharp in odd places, where I can actually feel the angles of my bones. Is this how skinny people feel all the time? There's also the small problem that none of my clothes fit anymore. I have a pair of jeans that never fit spectacularly well to begin with, but now can't even be worn with a belt; I threw them on yesterday to go grocery shopping and ended up spending the entire time holding them up with one hand. My appetite has been weird, too; I'm constantly hungry, but when I actually eat, I get full very quickly.
• Went to see Mirror, Mirror in French with Eva on Tuesday. It was a very pretty movie, but a little light on substance. I haven't been able to get that final Bollywoodesque number out of my head, though, which is slightly frustrating. Interestingly enough, the dialogue was dubbed, but the song was still in English. Most songs in movies here are in English, actually. Most songs in general are in English, really.
• Korra continues to be my latest obsession, as anyone who follows my Tumblr can attest. New episode on Saturday! I hope iTunes has it up quickly, so I can take it in in all its HD glory.
• Not sure if I've mentioned this, but I'm going to Scotland in May! Along with the south of France and Ireland. Eva and I are greatly looking forward to it!
• The weather has been rainy and cold as of late. This is making me quite envious of my American friends and their 80+ degree temperatures. Speaking of which, I still think in Fahrenheit after nearly four months in France. Wish Celsius came easier to me!
• Fair-trade salted plantain chips from the Carrefour market across the street have become my latest crack. I've always loved plantain chips - they're widely available in Puerto Rico - but I've discovered they're the perfect snack for France in springtime. It's too cold for ice cream, I don't particularly care for potato chips, and they remind me of home. 
• The dryer downstairs is broken, so I've had to hang up all my wet clothes around my room and hope they're not still damp when I pack my suitcase tomorrow. I wish they didn't smell so weird.
• Jackie linked me to this blog yesterday. Glad there are others out there who understand my plight.

Disneyland Paris, Part Two

Went back to Disneyland today, this time to see my supervisor at my work-study job in Virginia and her family, as they happened to be visiting Paris for her children's spring break. Leslie's kids are some of my favorite to babysit, and it was really fun just to hang around with them for the day. They're both still relatively small children, so they said and did a lot of inadvertently cute things.  I also started to understand some of the things my parents told me when I was little, about making faces and calming down and how silly I would look whenever I threw a tantrum. I've always wanted to be a mom someday, and that hasn't changed, but I think I'm just now starting to appreciate how much work it is. Kids are so full of energy and need lots of attention, which I knew, but now that I'm not the kid anymore, and I'm getting older, I'm beginning to look at things from the parents' point of view. I can see why my parents would lose their patience with me sometimes, or why what sounded perfectly reasonable to my five-year-old mind was sometimes annoying or vexing to them. I don't know, food for thought. (And this is not to reflect badly on Leslie's children, who are adorable and who I may have successfully gotten hooked on Korra. They are clearly normal kids, though, which in this case means that lining up for rides with them is a challenge because their idea of keeping themselves entertained is to pretend to pick each other up and laugh about it.)

Took my first ever cab ride in Paris to get to Leslie's once my train got in this morning. It's really quite fun to see the city by car, though I doubt very much my mom and I will be taking many taxis when we go in a few weeks. Still, a nice experience.

Winding Down

There isn't much happening in my life right now. Nearly all of my classes are finished; I'm just in the process of writing three final papers, and I'll officially be done with the academic portion of my semester abroad. I've also entered my second-to-last month in France, and when I consider that I'll be traveling for the better part of three weeks in late April and early May, the time seems to be going by that much more quickly. My thoughts have started to turn to the summer; I have an internship interview via Skype next Wednesday, and I'm hoping to hear back from a couple other places in the next few weeks. It looks like I'll be on the East Coast again, which I am okay with, though it occurs to me it's been a long time since I spent more than three weeks with my family. Well, I guess this was just part of the deal when I chose to go to college on the other side of the country.

In the meantime, here are some Citadelle pictures:

And because I assume you must appreciate my dorky fangirl tendencies at least a little bit, or you wouldn't be reading this blog, here is an incredibly nerdy picture of me with Korra hair:

Now I just need my Mako. Let's be real, though, I am actually an older Jinora, except I would want to waterbend instead of airbend.

Ahem. Anyway, off to Disneyland again tomorrow, since Leslie and her family are in Paris. Au revoir!

In Which Aida Flails Over The Legend of Korra

You should expect this to be a common theme for this year, by the way. I sincerely hope you're not casting aspersions on me for being this excited about an animated television show, but just in case, I'll remind you that animation is a medium, not a genre, that can be used to tell any kind of story, and good stories are not limited to a single medium. Nor does the intended audience automatically make a series less valuable or worthwhile; Korra may be a cartoon that airs on Nickelodeon, but if it's anything like its predecessor, it will have a complex, interesting plot with dynamic characters and inventive worldbuilding that appeals to adults and children alike. And if the trailers that were released this week are any indication, Korra is shaping up to have a maturity, and yes, even darkness that Avatar: The Last Airbender lacked.

If you're still doubting me, I challenge you to find a character arc in any live action show nearly as well-executed as Zuko's on Avatar, and we'll talk.

ANYWAY, MIND-BENDING TRAILERS OF AWESOME AHOY! WARNING FOR POTENTIAL SPOILERS!

Entertainment 2012: March 1 - March 31

Books
1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (reread)
2. Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (new read)
3. A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle (reread)

Movies
1. Tangled, rewatch, oh so wonderful
2. Gigantic, new, okay
3. Despicable Me, rewatch, adorable
4. Inception, rewatch, as fantastic as always
5. Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, rewatch, nostalgic
6. The Artist, new, decent
7. Game Change, new, interesting
8. Jefferson in Paris, new, sadly quite boring
9. The Hunger Games, new, really good
10. Thor, new, pretty standard hero flick but with some genuinely amusing moments

Goodbye to March in Dunkirk

Eva and I took a day trip to Dunkirk today. Dunkirk is a coastal town on the North Sea, right by the English Channel's narrowest point but too far away to actually see any England from the dunes. It was the first time I visited the beach since I've been in Europe, and while it was too cold and windy to swim, I did run up and touch the water and collect a few seashells. The weather forecast had predicted a clear, if not particularly warm day, but from the point when Eva and I arrived at about eleven to just after we finished our tea/hot chocolate at two, it was completely overcast. Luckily a few streaks of blue had appeared between the clouds when we were strolling along the beach, which made for a lovely contrast with the sea and the rocks sticking up out of it. I thought about the battle which made Dunkirk famous in 1940, where the Germans had defeated the French and the English were forced to retreat. It was eerie to think that men had fought and died less than a hundred years ago on that same stretch of beach, where children now flew their kites and people jogged and walked their dogs. History is always with us, but sometimes I wonder how and if it stays with the land.

Apart from the beach, Eva and I came across a huge open-air market in the city center, which sold basically everything under the sun, and we took a walk inside an old church and browsed the selection at the local mall. I didn't buy anything, but I was shocked to discover that at least according the stores we visited, I am now more or less a size 8, and am sometimes capable of fitting into a 6 with minimal discomfort. At this rate my entire wardrobe will have to go to the Salvation Army when I get home, although I can't really afford to buy lots of new clothes. I'm happy, though.

Nothing much else of consequence has happened. I've been having trouble sleeping lately, but hopefully after a long day of walking and sightseeing, I'll be able to get some quality rest. Going to Paris to see Leslie and her family on Wednesday. Other than that, it's paper writing and job application central for me!

Lost in My Own World

The past few days it's been very easy for me to slip into my own daydream world. My Tuesday class was cancelled (though I didn't find out until I'd already spent money on Metro fare to get to school, unfortunately), and every other day I was completely free. Sometimes I left my place to run an errand, and I did get some writing done on papers and internship essays, but mostly I think I was just having a week where I wanted to be lost. I don't mean that in a bad way, but I also realize that it's not completely normal. As I described it on my Facebook, a lot of it was "Korra-induced haze," because when I really like something, I often spend a few days utterly immersed in it. I was like that with Harry Potter, and Star Wars, and even on occasion with my own writing projects.

If you've read The Fault in Our Stars, the narrator, Hazel, talks about the kind of books you have a "weird, evangelical zeal" about, and then the kind of books that are "so special and rare and yours that advertizing your affection feels like a betrayal." I don't feel that strongly about The Legend of Korra, especially since there have only been two episodes, but it's been a long time since I've fallen for something so deeply, so quickly. This may sound very odd, but while I've never been in love with a person before, I imagine that it'll feel something like discovering a new work of fiction that inspires this kind of quasi-obsession in me. The other strange thing about me is that I rarely just "like" something; when it comes to fiction, I either have a weirdly-consuming love for it, or I absolutely loathe it. And when I love something, I have to know everything about it, right down to the minutest of minute details. Lest you start to worry, this is a trait I really hope won't carry over to my relationships with men.

But I think I was also feeling, as Vicky Austin would say, replete with very me. I don't think I'm depressed or anything - I've actually felt quite happy these past few days - but having a little retreat like this helps me to clear my head, to sort of step away from the world for a while. Soon enough I'll have to refocus my efforts on serious research and paper-writing, and I have several commitments in the next few weeks, but it's nice just to escape for a while. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it works for me.