I. M. N. France

I also CUP. I also think we can vaguely agree that France blowz. Just to start with, the q and a keys are switched and the w and z keys also. So I keep typing things like Deqr Friend, Frqnce blozw. Turns out that the French for "late" is "retarded," so my flight was retarded and my baggage was retarded, which hilarity really set the tone for the rest of the last two days. I hopped on the train to Lyon after I flew into Paris, and stayed at a hostel there for two nights. I met some pretty cool people, including three awesome Mexican dudes with whom I practiced my greatly-deteriorated Spanish and a really cute French girl who hung with us and also spoke Spanish. She taught us some sweet pickup lines for French femmes, and when we repeated them back to her, she told the Mexican dudes that their accents were "sexi" and me that my accent americain was "minus sexi." Man am I ever gonna hit it here.

Then yesterday I met this really loquacious Australian, who, despite talking my ear off about the zirconium his lab manufactures and how he enjoys "like, really old stuff, like castles and stuff," was actually an ok dude. It didn't hurt that his traveling companions were a giggly Australian girl and a pretty cool Canadienne. I ate a tim tam or three with them and they introduced me to "Vegemite," an extremely disgusting black, salty substance that they all loved to just pile on top of their bread for breakfast. Yikes.

Anyway, so today I had to check out of the hostel at 10. I shouldered my backpacks and moseyed down to the train station, where I caught the train to Vienne, a nice little town half an hour away. This is where I am now, and it's still an hour and 1/2 before the taxi leaves to take me to my site... so I'm trying to kill time without going absolutely crazy. This is one of many things I've lerned from Alex: just sitting there and counting down the minutes isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. However, beyond an hour (and without tv), I really have to find something to do with myself. Hence this internet cafe, where (do you believe it???) nerdy, out-of shape French dudes are sitting here obsessively playing gamez. Shouldn't you be sauntering around with berets and baguettes instead of sitting here with stringy hair playing WoW?? I don't understand France :(

well, that's all 4 now, I'll write more when I'm @ the site...... au revoir. (Engl: "I hqte Frqnce")