STUPID BLOGGER

That was a message from Caitlin; Blogger wasn't letting her upload photos. She's sent me a few to post which are downstairs at the moment; I'll stick them up later. For the time being, I'm going to be lazy and just post a few photos from House Swimming. You have NO IDEA how hard these were to get up here, there's a problem with the folder, which for some reason won't let me move/delete it. Not even my dad can fix it; that's how bad it is.

Sim and Elena try on every costume at once

Pacmen. Pacwomen? Be careful, one of them is a leper.

Tetra. I mean, er, genies voiced by Robin Williams, and occasionally Dan Castellanetta.

Backstroke! Woooooooooo


One of these days I am going to steal your sunglasses, Jess. Seriously.

The first march of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This is what King Kong would be like if Eric Carle wrote it.

Let's have a big hand for feet (with-out yer shoes on!)

Costuming during the spare. Also, proof of Marnie wagging. Look at her, eating her watermelon when she should be at physics. Shame.

My vote goes to Nicola's suggestion for Locksley's next costumes "Can you go as whitegoods? Please dress as a fridge"
House swimming was awesome fun. Seriously, we should be in Year 12 more often.

U R MR GAY

MY CATS ARE SICK

CLAIMED BY BOOGIE FEVER

THE ONLY CURE IS THE JUICE OF THE JUN-JUN FRUIT, FOUND ONLY IN DEEPEST SIBERIA

WITHOUT IT, THEY SHALL PERISH AND I SHALL BE FORCED TO DANCE ALONE FOREVERMORE

IS THERE NO HOPE FOR MY CATS? SHALL THEY BE FORCED TO SUFFER THE ETERNAL TORTURE OF THE ACCURSED ONES?

ONLY TIME WILL TELL.....

SHALL THE HYLIAN SHIELD DEFEND US?

Pho-toss!

So I thought I should post some photos or something. But most of my photos have taken up perpetual habitation in the memory card of my camera and are refusing to move, so you just can't have them. Seriously, they've got wigwams in a little circle and a Chief Shaman. You don't wanna mess with them.

At Disneyland! Mathilde, Penguin, Juliette, Penguin, Penguin.

Mathilde and Solveig, the adorable baby

Me, Louis and Juliette at Montmartre

The photo of Amelie in the restaurant from Amelie

Photos courtesy of Juliette

And! A vague not-held-back-by-15-minutes-internet-time-at-an-airport summary of the last few days of the 5 weeks! Aren't you pleased? If you're not, you should be. Turn that frown upside down. Alternatively, turn it 90 degrees, and you'll have a right parenthesis!

That's a smile, not an upside down frown!

Better.

First of all, plane flight update: We finally got to watch Sin City, and our reaction at the end was something like this - ???
Why is this so? I dunno. Was it the yellow man chasing Jessica Alba? Was it the plots that did not relate as far as we could see? Was it Not Matt Damon running around on rooftops killing red ladies for no adequately explained reason? Was it the guys who didn't die even though they had gun barrels sticking out of their head? Was it the fact that Elijah Wood ate hookers in a barn? Yeah, I think that may have contributed a little.
It was testament to how bizarre the film was that I didn't even blink at the last one. Oh, but I did laugh because he looked like Harry Potter. You know, evil satanic Harry Potter.

And the rest of the plane trip is blank for me, possibly because that is getting into "Have not slept in 22 hours" territory. I remember Italian Talon and quite a lot of glaring, the reason for which I cannot recall. We landed, we went through customs, we marvelled at the guys in the line behind us in boardies and thongs and singlet tops. We kept singing GCN Rainbow Road. Normal stuff.

Hell, that plane trip was nine hours and Sin City went for 2. What on earth did we do? That's going to bug me for ages now. Oh well. Onto... Wednesday?

The Chateau was full of allll the paintings we got in History, including the "Why the long face, Marie Antoinette?" "The peasants are revolting!" paintings. The guards must have thought I was crazy giggling to myself when I saw these, but, whatever, they get to sit in a giant-ass castle all day so that is their comeuppance. And then we went shopping. Shopping involving strange comic books, French Alice Munro, and the Best Thing Ever for one euro, which came with the World's Hugest Bag, which sent us into hysterics every five seconds, causing more French people to think we were crazy. And we bought chocolate. And then we went to see French Twilight, getting very confused by the ads ("Oh, this is that Largo Winch thing, it's like a cross between James Bond and Alex Rider. Gee it really looks like Terminator. See look, right there, Largo Winch is the Terminator. They're just copying this whole plot off Terminator! Oh, wait, it is Terminator") and the movie ("So has it started yet or is this an ad for the live-action Bambi?") and also getting highly distressed by my ringtone (she told me to turn it off. So what do I do? I say "I hope it doesn't, listen to how annoying it is" and then I forget to turn it off. And then I get a call. In the middle of the movie). I got really late home, but it was OK because we were going to get pizza. Juliette then decided she didn't want pizza, so we went to the Chinese place next door, Mathilde telling me that "If my dad asks, we didn't get pizza because you don't have Chinese food in Australia and you wanted to taste it." So I ate Chinese for the first time in my entire life. Cough.

Juliette's dad on the way to the airport spent the entire time telling me off about how I didn't immerse myself enough because I talked to my friends sometimes on MSN in English. The power of the remark was just a teensy bit lost because of the fact that he was speaking to me in English, like he always did (especially when Juliette wasn't looking). Oh well. If I gained nothing language-wise like he thinks, now at least I have a french SIM card that calls me at 5 every morning without fail to tell me how to call France. I think perhaps France is having separation issues. I'm sorry, honey, I'm married to the sea.

Miss you Juliette :)

Flying south for the winter!

We're totally in Singapore now and struggling immensely with qwerty keyboards. The asterisk does not have its own key! It's blasphemy!
We both had to get up at 6:15 this morning to meet at the airport at nine. And now it is 1:15pm Paris time (8:10 Singapore time). And we haven't slept a bit.
On the flight:
We concerned people. Emma especially. I talk too loud...
Watched X-Men for the shots of Hugh Jackman in stupid tight-fitting singlet tops. And Scrubs, My Name is Earl, The Simpsons, and tried to watch Sin City but failed.
Spent about half an hour in hysterics over The Kraken, and, er... saliva?
Drew on some converse canverse.
Discussed camel hats
Yesterday I (Emma) came back from meeting up with Caitlin (French Twilight!) and found Juliette in a neck brace from acrosport (acrobatics/gymnastics). Evidently I cannot leave her alone for a day, even if it is to go and buy a Hylian Shield. We heart Hylian Shield.
And I (still Emma) totally haven't lost anything yet. Oh, except for my passport, and the tickets right after I got them... I found them later though. Oh, and my sanity. Arguably we both lost that a long time ago though. Oh well. It makes things funnier.
Prepare yourselves, we're almost home. Go hide in the bunkers. Save the children!
BTW (Caitlin here) I totally got my Brownie yesterday. Mission complete.
--Emma and Caitlin

Self-Explanatory

Click and then click again and it gets to its proper size. I'm not used to such a small screen, pixel size kinda went out the window.

Stop asking.

Seriously.

I have Snowflakes in my Eyes

You better all be enjoying your holidays, cause it's back to school day in France. And isn't it lovely, the day we go back, it starts to full on snow. If there's one thing worse than leaving the house in the dark to go to school, it's leaving the house in the dark and the snow. Just hope I don't break a leg or something.

Sorry for not posting for so long (I'm sure you're all dying to know what I'm up to anyway), but it was hard to get on a computer during the holidays. It's in Marine's room, and she was working most of the time. I can't believe how much holiday homework they were given.

Anyways, last week we went into the Louvre. It was awesome, we were walking around for hours and still didn't see the whole thing. Afterwards we went out for dinner to a restaurant in Paris. It was, like, 10 pm and I was starving. The menus were weird, they were printed in english on the back, and down the bottom they had the "win of the day". I wonder if they even really get that many english customers. We had crepes with nutella for desert, man were they good.

I must say that Emma's family seems to eat very differently to mine. We have never had crepes for dinner (or even at all, at home), and no caramel either. And half the time we have fruit for dessert as well. That being said, yesterday we had the Galette du Roi, which is this cake, with a little thingie inside. Whoever gets the thingie in their slice is the king or queen, and they get to wear a paper crown. The little boy in the family, Jean-Edouard, was so excited about it, he kept asking everyone if they'd finished their dinner yet, so we could start the cake.

Apart from trips to various places around Versailles and Paris, most of my holidays were spent reading and playing Wii. I've now read the first three Harry Potters in french. I can't get over the fact that Fawkes the Phoenix (that's his name, right?) is called Fumseck. It cracks me up as much as that Super Mario Galaxy thing. Yes, Emma, I know it's dumb. I spent yesterday playing like ten rounds of Wii bowling with Jean-Edouard, because he was trying to get up enough points to be at the Pro level. As it turns out, I seem to have a knack for the hula hoop game on Wii Fit. Which is probably for the best, I need to work off all the french chocolates I've been eating. Their grandparents gave me a box of them for christmas, they're so good. I've also been trying to help them play Wii boxing, but I'm not sure how to properly explain how to dodge. It's hard to talk with Jean-Edouard, because if I'm saying something that's only vaguely correct, it's harder for him to guess what I'm trying to say.

Well, there's only three days left, and then we're heading home. I know, just as you were enjoying being well shot of us, too. But if we stay here much longer, I actually think we'll see another ice age.
--Caitlin

It's a world of lau-ghter...

Disnélond!
That is how they pronounce it here. We (Me, Juliette, Mathilde and their friend Phillipe) finally got there despite the snow on Friday, the metro accident blocking the route today and the Noticeable Lack of Bus.

But, before that, I shall just state for the record that sushi (yes, maki, Juliette) tastes nowhere near as bad as I thought it would. It actually tastes pretty good. We had Japanese last night, and we got served the maki by a Japanese lady (Asian count = 6 now!) in little wooden boats. Very cool.

So! Disneyland!

We went of Space Mountain twice, and the Indiana Jones ride (on which we put our hands in the air on all the downhill bits until we realised they were crap. And now I think I have frostbite on my ungloved hand) and It's a Small World, which cracked me up so hard. The freaky dolls! The annoying song! The aborigine hitting the dingo on the head with a boomerang! Steve Irwin!
Evidently the makers of the ride never learnt from Naomi Robson that dressing things up as Steve Irwin is Not Okay.
We took pictures with like 20 Disney characters in costumes as well, but not Donald, because Donald had a bodyguard, an angry British woman who jumped in front of him like she was taking a bullet everytime anyone got too close, yelling "GET BACK" in cockney french and english like we were fat people at boot camp and Donald was chocolate. I think she made some little kids cry. All they wanted was Donald's autograph!
I was going to buy my brother an ugly Goofy (here called "Dingo") hat but then I saw an even uglier one. So now his Christmas present is a 'coon hat, for whenever he feels like looking at home in a log cabin in early America. With pilgrims. On a prairie.

Breaking news!
Yesterday the two (one?) of us met up with the express purpose of eating Tim Tams. It is sunny, it is 4 o'clock, we have the entire of Paris at our disposal! So what do we do? We put Vegemite on a crèpe with a phone card.
Mmm.

--Emma

Emma+Juliette= ♥

Emma, I loooooove you (l)
&don't delete that post

Or,i'll kill you

I like to move it...

You thought I'd forgotten, Sim. But I keep my promises. Even if there was a slight technical problem of Flash not working off my USB anymore.

YOUR MAGNIFICENT PICTURE

Happy birthday!

Don't worry, I have your proper picture all drawn out and ready to put into Flash when I get it working again.

Last night we had CREPES for "dinner" as Juliette's aunt, uncle and three little cousins were over. The two eldest were about the same age as Little Caitlin, and they sat in my room for hours asking me questions and not-so-subtly hinting that they wanted my Australian money. And the littlest one took all my valuables and dismantled/hid them in various ways before taking the pot pourri and spreading it in the corridor. Surely this is why the sports textbook tells us that corridors are a source of danger. Little kids speaking French is like the most adorable thing ever though.
We were going to go to Disneyworld today but when we woke up it was mega-snowing. So no Disney for me until Sunday. It had better not be mega-snowing Sunday. Instead we went to a cinema, and saw one of 'em gosh-darned fillumajigs Mr. Hutchison's always talking about.

Australia had stupid session times (the word for session here is séance, which I must admit had me slightly concerned for a while until I figured it out) so we went to see Madagascar 2. Before the film started we went outside and ran into one of Juliette's friends. The conversation went something like "Hey, what are you doing here, COME AND SEE MADAGASCAR WITH US" which he agreed to. Then we ran into another of her friends and had the same conversation. He did not wish to come and see Madagascar with us. Man was that film such a Lion King rip. If Dreamworks had have made Lion King jokes it would have made the Lion Kingness more acceptable, but all was quiet on the Western Front. I saw the trailer to Despereaux and The Half-Blood Prince in French. That's, er, Despereaux and The Half-Blood Prince. Not the two together. That would be a disturbing film.

I badly want to go see French Twilight.

Cham-paggin?

It's been a while since I last posted so this post is going to be long, but will not include Year In Review like Caitlin Nimoy over there because I am lazy. Luckily for you I have forgotten stuff. Again. If you're not used to it by now...

VAGUE SUMMARY OF SOME DAYS

On Monday we met up with Juliette's "aeroplane friend" Louis at Montmartre. We had lunch in the restaurant Deux Moulins, which was in Amelie. And boy are they capitalising on it. Lunch for the three of us cost 140 Australian. And I just had badly microwaved vegetable "casserole." Someone really needs to teach them that pears are not a vegetable. Afterwards we went back to the apartment and played Interactive Qui Veut Gagner Le Million (Who wants to be a Millionaire?) and when that kept stuffing up we watched half of the remake of The Amityville Horror. Now Juliette and I really want to watch the rest but we can't find it. But I totally know the twist.
I went to two museums, Quai Branly, a museum of tribal history, and... another one, which was showing an exhibition of paintings by Anton van Dyck. The Another Museum is one of those old mansions from the Ye Olde Days that audioguides describe as "subtle and refined" but are covered in enough gold leaf and gigantic paintings by Venetian gods-of-art to pay the US Defense budget for a year. On the way back from Quai Branly I bought a packet of green tongue peas and 5 carrots. Mmm. And it snowed too. FRANCE IS TWO UP ON YOU, JESSICA CHARLESWORTH.
Yesterday we went to an ice rink which we later found out was a plastic rink, and no amount of salt baths will ever clear us of the shame. Quotes aside, the ice was synthetic and even the people who knew how to skate were having trouble, so we only stayed about 5 minutes. I didn't fall over though!

For New Years we went to an awesome party at Juliette's friend's house. And god, if Mrs. Smale would have had a field day at the last party, she would have exploded at this one. Actually physically exploded. But I really do not like the taste of alcohol (And it makes you thirsty! What is the point of a drink that makes you thirsty?) so I had my awesome cool rave party glass of water. And Pringles! People kept throwing lightswitch raves downstairs. Lots of fun. It was absolutely freezing cold though; whoever's idea it was to make people wear dresses to parties in effing EUROPE was an idiot. Ye Olde Dressmakers, I'm looking at you. And also whoever invented my stupid, stupid black shoes should probably get shot too. Juliette and her sister looked like friggin' supermodels though.

Being Australian starts the most in-ter-esting conversations:

(English)"Oh, you're Australian? So do you speak really good English, or...?"

"Oh, you're Australian? So what language does you speak? Canadian?"

(English)"Hey, could you take a photo for us? I love America!"
"She's Australian, she understands french"
(More English)"Oh, Australian? I love Barack Obama! Barack Obama is my god!"

And, everyone's favourite drunk french guy who sat down next to me and consistently started edging closer and closer until he eventually had his head on my shoulder. Extract from conversation:
Me: "But I don't get jetlag, so it's OK"
Him: "Don't get what?"
Me: "Jetlag"
Him: "What?"
Me: "Jetlag"
Him: "Jetlad"
Me: "No, jetlag"
Him: "Jetlag."
Me: "Yes."
Him: "What?"
Me: "JETLAG"
Him: "Jetlag?"
Me: "JETLAG!"
Him: "Oh, jetlag! Why didn't you say so?"
Me: "I did. Lots."
Him: "I'm sorry, I'm a bit drunk"

We all got shepherded outside at 5 to midnight for the actual ticking over, but they didn't do a countdown, only showered everyone in champagne. This I was not expecting at all and I happened to be standing in just the right spot to get the majority of it all over me. I was texting my family to say Happy New Year at the time and my text went something along the lines of "Happy French New Year... f***, I have champagne in my EYE"
I've taken a myspace picture of my morning-after hair with the camera on my phone and I'll upload it when I get back. It is quite disgusting.

Speaking of disgusting, I really, really pity whoever had to clean up afterwards.

At about one o'clock I started to get really tired (I was up half the night before, too) which was fixed for about an hour by a phone call from Caitlin, for which I had to lock myself in a bathroom to be able to hear. Halfway through some guy came in and threw purple up in the sink. There were guys playing guitar downstairs which we all listened to, and I closed my eyes to listen like I often do but 10 seconds later had someone patting me on the face telling me in English to "Wake up, you." I told them the proper phrase was "Wake up, Jeff." From then on I played with my phone whenever I started to get tired, which worked to a degree. There were lots of people smoking in the room though. My clothes smell like grandmas.

More things about France I have noticed. You are probably sick of these, but TOO BAD, because my New Year's resolution was that you all have to do what I say.

1. Patriotism. History here is the history of France. Once there was a map of Italy on the board but only for 5 seconds and then it was back to the map of France. People have the Declaration of the Rights of Man hung in their bathroom. Drunk people go on tirades against other countries.
2. Never dance with someone who has a cigarette. I have a burn on my arm and it hurts :(
3. They aaallll do stuff for New Years. No-one stays home to watch the fireworks like half of Australia does.
4. The French have good taste in english music. You don't hear Hotel California, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys etc. being played at raves here.
   
5. There is a concert on TV every New Years Day with the Viennese Philharmonic playing lots of Strauss and Radetsky and stuff and little boys dressed up like total tools doing ballet. One of the guys credited in the... er... credits... was called "Will Willerton." This is the world's second best name, the first being Mr. Shenanigans.

--Emma

A World in White Gets Underway

Greetings from the past! It's still 2008 here. All of you 2009 people are just jumping the gun. Ah, 2008, we shall miss you. You were a year of many funny things, which I shall not talk about for ages and ages and ages, because there were a lot of them. But there were things like these:

But why am I telling you these things? You were all there for them. I should probably bring some fresh news.

Okay, after all the massive Christmas shopping and feasting was over, we went into the Grand Chateau de Versailles. I've been into the park like four times now, it's so massive. But this time we were seeing the main bit. Man, were those people rich. Every ceiling is painted with some mythological figure, there's a massive chandelier in every room, everything is painted in gold leaf, it's insane. Right now, there's also an art exhibition there of this dude, Jeff Koons, who does all these weird statues. Like this, for example.That is a porcelain statue of Michael Jackson and his monkey, in the middle of the Grand Chateau de Versailles. The majority of Versaillians hate the exhibition. I can see where they're coming from, giant stautes of pink balloon dogs don't really match the decor.As I mentioned last time, I went to the Eiffel Tower. Apparently, at this time of year, and in this part of the country, the temperature is usually around 5-10 degrees. It is extremely rare for it to be as cold as it is now, where it is consistently between about -2 and 3 degrees. Lucky us. It is also extremely lucky that we decided to buy tickets that only let you use the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, and not the elevator, as the tickets were cheaper and the line was shorter. So we climbed all the 668 odd steps to the second storey. It was just about the coldest I've ever been. Especially since the sun was setting. Pretty, though. But it was too cold to keep climbing, so we snuck onto the elevator going down. We planned to pretend to be Finnish if they checked our tickets. Not my idea. Luckily they didn't.
We also went to see Australia the other day. Without subtitles, I didn't quite get the entire plot, I was just muchly amused to watch David Wenham and Hugh Jackman talk, with french coming out. Also, the number of times people kept syaing "Mrs Boss" with a french accent was funny. And the french voice-over lady trying to imitate Nicole Kidman trying to sing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. Oh, David Wenham, why you gotta be so shifty? It would've been nice to hear some good old Strine, but oh well.

The kids here got a Wii for Christmas. Some friends lent them some games, too. I come halfway around the world, and what do I do? I play Brawl.

We're going off to a NYE party tonight in Paris, man, it's going to be so freaking cold. But who knows, maybe they'll have brownies.
--Caitlin