I am Back!!!

After one tiring week in Italy, I am more than happy to be back in Toulouse, in my own place, sleep on my own bed....pheewwww....

The trip was enriching, tiring, exciting, culture-shocking and burning (literally, it was bloody hot in italy that i am super tanned rite now).

- Italians are so grumpy and unfriendly! (at least, that's my impression of most of shopkeepers and restaurant's waitresses/waiters. They have issues! PMS or menopause maybe)

- Italians trains are brutal! (the regional train and the city metro) Seriously, when it comes to stop, the driver (or maybe the locomotive) cannot brake properly ah, everytime we almost jatuh lah!!! ISSUES man!!!

- Mister Gladiators that we took pictures with were cheaters!! I think most of them are, the ones that hanging around outside Colosseum.

- There are gazzilions churches in Italy!! Like, seriously, every corner you go, you will definitely see one! I know that Christian used to have huge power in Italy, specially during Renaissance, but I have never really imagined the number of church going on there...

- The place is jam packed with tourists!! Oh dear..... I really wanna know what's gonna happen in the next ten years.

Me:

- is recovering from fatigue of TOO MUCH walking!

- is recovering from too-much-train-ride (20 hrs to return to Toulouse from Rome) syndrome.

- is recovering to reality (the fact that I have to put my nose onto the screen and be done with my memoire).

More stories on next posts.

Yahoo!

Hip Hip Hooraaaaayy!!!!!

I am SUPER excited, I am half-packed and I am planning what to wear, HAHAHA!!!

We are leaving to Italy in 12 hours time. We have been looking forward to this trip for like....FOREVER!!

First plan was kapoot, due to inconvenience of time (school schedule). But now, we are really leaving!! We are gonna have to endure about 20 hours of train, of course with few stops in Nice and Milan, all the way to Venice. I am prepared with thick novel of Sophie's World in french (if it becomes boring in the middle of the way, it's ok, at least I can use it to put myself to sleep)

Hope everything goes well.

We are travelling in cukup-cukup-budget sort of way, so....don't expect shopping trip or restaurant meals. We are doing it the hard way!

Au revoir, a la semaine prochaine!!!

Pierre-Louis and I are currently in Tours, at his parents' house, yes. Our petite refugee is due to:
1. One of his brothers and the girlfren came over to Toulouse for holidays, so we lend them our apartement ,cuz seriously, if all FOUR of us stay in that tiny weeny unit, we are gonna end up suffocated.

2. It is more tranquil to work on our memoire here in Tours, no need to bother about meals and more over Pierre-Louis needs to conduct an interview in Blois (pas loin de TOurs) so voila, tout est explique!

3. I need my "small pieces of heaven" of those heavenly Brioche Chocolat....to motivate myself to work. yum...yum...

4. Need I say more?

I just hope that by the end of this week, when we return to Toulouse, we will find our apartement as clean as we left it, still in one piece, cigarette-smell free (she smokes), no funky stuff found in funky corners, bla bla bla....

I am reading Le Monde du Sophie (Sophie's World) en francais bien sur car le bouquin, il est a Mdm Genier. Mais, en fait, je l'ai trouver facile a lire surtout pour un roman de philosophie comme celui-ci. Donc, je vais essayer de le finir, en meme temps de travailler sur mon memoire......HAHAHA!! Si, ca marche niquel....

Bon, je termine la car il faut que je lache ma paresse.

Bon courage a moi!

I found my people!

I decided to go to the indonesian cultural show today, though I was lazy at first.

What an adventure it was to get to the venue because we did not take the right bus line, it was not a mistake, it's just that the bus line we took goes to the same direction but NOT really to the exact place and the bus leaves one hour earlier (mind you, in France public transport gives less service on the weekend), so we thought we were just gonna haf to walk a bit more than we were supposed to.

So....what happened was....we weren't exactly sure in which direction we were supposed to walk...results....we got lost! Long story short....we found a nice man who showed us the way on the map and things became clearer, et voila! we reached the right place.

It was a cultural show much based on, well what else, Balinese culture (surprise surprise! yea, we ONLY have Bali on our gigantic country). The show was just OK, good effort but it was not interesting enough, same old same old.... I mean, we used to have the same thing in Kuching last time, Balinese dancer, food-tasting, bla bla bla.....


Ok anyway, a part from Balinese dances, there was this petite drama, it was quite funny and interesting besides the problem of audio system. Then, there was this "tari piring" and "tari merak" which could have been better.



Then, there was the FOOD!! Yeeeyy!! Not bad, not bad at all, it was worth paying 10euros (for charity, so that's fine). We were full, there was lumpia goreng for appetizers, as main dish there were "nasi putih" of course, then "semur ayam" which did not really resemble semur ayam, there was "tumis buncis" which was not bad and "bakmi goreng" which was classic... It tasted quite food for me who has not eaten Indo food for a while.

But the highlight of the day was the "rencontrer" with many Indonesians reside in Toulouse. I was quite surprised by the number. There were about ten students and quite a number of Indonesian women married to french. We talked, shared stories, laughed. It was definitely a very nice afternoon to have met all of them. At least i know im not alone, ANYMORE!!! Haha! And they are nice people! Cool!

If I get A, i'm a genius?

My mum just told me that my dad and her were totally dissappointed by my brother's exams results. I knew it before cuz my brother told me that he was going to get quite bad marks for the last exams.

I did not know what was really going on there, maybe it was my brother's faults who did not work hard enough or it was just because the questions were too tough to handle because apparently he was not alone in the class who got bad marks. No comments on this one. But I think we have always been, at least me and my brother, pushed by our parents to perform better in school, academically, I totally understand, parents only want the best for us. And I know that this is the only wealth that our parents can "leave" for us, I mean I can imagine how much money they spend for us every year to pay our school fees.

But as I grow older, and the fact that now I am here in France, I really learnt that super duper marks are not everything. Of course, theres a lot of consideration to take in order for you to pass, the first one is our mark, but then there is this calculation thingy going on where you combine the first and second semester, then few subjects under the same category, bla bla bla..... ok fine! I don't get all that.
My point is that, just because my brother did not get A or B for english or physics, does not mean that he's stupid?????? or does it? Just because I obtained 7/20 for my Geography paper and Accounting, does not mean i'm stupid, or does it??