Dear Summer 2010

Bonjour l'été 2010,

School starts in eight days. I didn't get much of anything accomplished that I had set out to accomplish this summer. I spent time with friends but not enough. I got a piano but no stand (still!) and thus never finished learning a song. I didn't practice sight reading for choir. I never finished reading Wuthering Heights (I got bored after Cathy died...) or bought a second pair of jeans. Although to be fair, the jeans one will be cured in a few weeks. I don't have an awesome tan, and will yet again stand out like a sore thumb next to all the rich students at my school who spent their summers abroad or just vacationing in the states. I never got in shape, although I am going to work out today. I didn't find my job, but I am still filling out applications and turning them in. I didn't stick to my idea of being a choir director, but I'm not sure I want to risk not finding a job if I become a French teacher.

Thinking about all of this a few weeks ago, I was mildly disappointed in myself, but then I stopped to think of everything I did do this summer. I came to terms with quitting Synchronized Swimming. I improved my relationship with my parents. I discovered that Eminem actually has a song I like. I got to know my awesome friend, Kayla, better. I finally saw (and cried while watching) The Notebook, and P.S. I Love You. I got my license. I helped make my Renaissance Festival costume. I got in touch with an old friend of mine that I hadn't spent time with in years. I stayed in touch with a friend I've known since my early years in elementary school. I found a man who makes me feel beautiful, and as amazing as I think he is! I never gave up on getting a job, even though nothing has turned up yet. I learned how to cook French Toast and mini cinnamon rolls. I rediscovered my inner artist and discovered that I LOVE to paint. I managed to keep brushing up on my French, even though I've had no one all summer telling me to do so; I did it because I love the language. I've decided that I want to study in Québec, for sure ,100%. And, perhaps most important of all, I've worked to pursue my dream of studying in Québec. I've researched tons and I know I want to be in the Montréal area, and I have my first choice for a university already picked out. I know all of the legal processes I'm going to have to deal with when I do study abroad (Passport, Letter of Acceptance from a University, CAQ, Study Permit, but I don't need a temp resident visa). I've set goals for the coming school year (4.0 GPA, baby!) and you can be damn sure I'm going to do my best to accomplish them, even at the cost of my social life. I'm going to audition for every theatre performance this year because I'm *going* to get some sort of role this year. When I don' make it, I'll tech like last spring. I'm finally going to join Speech like I've always wanted. And, I'm going to join Spirit Players!

Yeah, I'd say summer 2010 has been a productive one. Much more than summer 2009, that was filled with endless partying and unfinished summer assignments. Now to go finish my summer assignments for *this* summer...

À l'année prochaine,

Mlle Delphine

Update: Studying in Québec

Bonjour mes amis!

I've already made it quite known on my blog that I really want to go to Québec for college (here was me excitedly talking about it if you missed that post) so this is sort of a little update as to how things are going.

The more and more I think about it, the more and more I find myself wondering: If I want to study music so badly, why did I completely drop it this summer like every other academic activity I dislike, yet continue brushing up on my French? I'm still not 100% positive where I want to go with that, but I'm really leaning more towards French. Even though I've been ridiculously lazy with incorporating French into my posts this past month (and a half..) or so, I have been doing other things related. I love French music! And I've been chatting online with people in French, and I've even taught my parents quite a bit of French. We'll see where things go, I have plenty of time yet.

However, I'm not quite so open with my family about how excited I am to go to Québec because I got a pretty negative response from my mother when I brought it up one evening. She's kept it in mind though, and I think the longer she dwells on the matter, the more she's starting to come around. When my aunt was over, she mentioned right away that I was thinking about Canada. She also must have brought it up at work, because today she said one of her co-workers recommended looking into a Canadian college (in Ontario, but the thought was still appreciated!) and instead of just ignoring it, she passed the message along. And then we were talking about the ACT versus the SAT (as most students here just take the ACT, but she wanted me to take both) when she asked me to see about the colleges I had been looking at. Which she of course knows, are in Québec. Mind you, I haven't brought this up to my father yet. I'm nervous about that because it will either be really easy and he'll be great, or he'll be very upset and will disapprove.

As for actual colleges go, my first choice all around is McGill University in Montreal. It's world renowned for being a great international school and it's made it into the world's top 25 university lists multiple times (the only Canadian school to do so!) among Harvard and Yale. It also offers courses that are in French but designed for students who've only learned it as a second language, along with English courses and whatnot. Very versatile. My other two universities I've looked at would only be if I indeed decide to pursue French as my major, which are UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) and the University of Montréal. My concern with these two is that while they are excellent schools, the classes are only taught in French, with little no help for English speakers. You also have to pass a test to prove that you are proficient enough in French to go to these schools at all. It's a little daunting, but either way I'll probably try. After all, my French comprehension is very high- it's just lacking more when it comes to writing and especially speaking. But I could stumble through a conversation. Let us hope I get to take French at the local University next year, or I'll never make it.

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Balance

Bonjour mes amis,

Purpose. That was the word a woman once gave me to focus on. I don't know how she knew I needed a purpose, as I only saw her for a few hours out of my whole life and I never really spoke with her, but she was soooo right. That was probably one of (if not the) hardest year(s) of my life, and I still think about it pretty often today.

Success. This is my motivation, the concept of being successful. It is my reason for living and pressing on, no matter the circumstance. More for me than for other people I know, because my family is quite unsuccessful. My mother, father, and step-father are high school drop outs, my half-brother and brother are high school drop outs. My sister graduated high school, but failed out of college and has lived in her fiancé's parents' basement ever since. She has no job. I WILL make it farther than them. Let them laugh after I've gone and made myself who I want to be.

Balance. This is a new word I found today. I'm a hopeless romantic, when someone catches my eye, I get tunnel vision. Which kind of takes away from the concept of "success" and "purpose" especially with the guy I've had feelings for for a long while now, because he's one of those people you can just totally be yourself around and they always make you happy. However, no one can be happy with just one area of their life, you have to work on your work/schooling, your family life, that sort of thing. Oddly I have to thank Yahoo's horoscope for this word (and even Weird Al, since he prompted me to go check what my horoscope was).

So here's my effort to balance:

School starts on September 7th, and I have put a lot of thought into AP French and the things I need to do and work on, etc. But I need an actual plan. I'm an organized person, but I'm a lazy person, and without a plan I know things will fall apart by the second or third month of school. So you, my lucky readers, get a post filled with fluff you probably don't care about whatsoever. But if you do, feel free to comment or add suggestions!

[Week One]

9/7/10 (Tues) - Nothing. Use today to chat with people you haven't seen in ages since you're not going to after today. HW: After school, visit Mme Hanson, ask for the textbooks she mentioned.

9/8/10 (Wed) - Scan through textbooks for ideas on weekly vocab lists, begin HW. HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

9/9/10 (Thurs) - Review tenses! Passé Composé (participes passés irréguliers), imparfait, conditionnel, subjuctif, futur, imperative, reflexive verbs HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

9/10/10 (Fri) - Review lui/leur/en/y, conjugations of avoir, aller, etre, faire. HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

[Week Two]

9/13/10 (Mon) - Go over conjugations of List 1 (present, p.c., imparfait, futur, conditionnel) & make some flash cards using them. Review other areas again based on need/time. HW: Print out 1 news article en francais (France/Quebec/Other).

9/14/10 (Tues) - Review List 1 flash cards. Spend hr in labs chatting onSharedTalk/LiveMocha. HW: LiveMocha complete lesson.

9/15/10 (Wed) - Review List 1 flash cards. Read article 1... a) WITHOUT resources b) looking up main words essential for understanding c) any other words you do not recognize. Summarize en Francais. HW:LiveMocha complete lesson

9/16/10 (Thurs) - Review List 1 flash cards. Search French About (Quebec!). HW: None.

9/17/10 (Fri) - Review List 1 flash cards. Journal 1 about your week en francais. HW: Watch a film in French you have already seen, without subtitles.

Basically each week during my open period I'm going to learn another list of vocabulary, read a news article switching off where it's from (France/Quebec/Other) each week, mix in other activities like chatting online with native French speakers in the computer lab, and end each week writing a journal using every vocab word I used. I'll be exposing myself to French music and movies as often as possible, and once I get a webcam I'll be able to practice speaking French more than just reading the paragraphs at LiveMocha to work on pronunciation.. What I do work on for actual speaking French will be at home. I'm too self conscious to do that at school.

Also, by the third week I should have my book, The Story of French, which I'll give myself a couple days each week to read it. It's in English but it should still be interesting, and hopefully I can get some French or bilingual books for Christmas since it's really only a few months into the school year. :)

Now that I'm sure you've either left my blog or fallen asleep...

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Paranoia or Genuinely Creepy?

Bonjour mes amis!

I got home today around 1, 1:30pm after spending all day yesterday with my friend and going back to her place for the evening, which was all very eventful but will (maybe) have to be put in another post. You see, when I got home I was quite tired as we had stayed up late and did a lot of running around, etc. So I sit at my computer.

My little step sister, who is 11, is the only other person home with me when she decides she wants to use the toaster (regardless of the fact I asked before we left if she wanted toast, of course) but my mother is weird and puts it away in the cupboard. So I'm halfway down the stairs to get the toaster down for her, when I hear a little squeak from my sister in the kitchen, and I ask if she found it.

"No, the construction guy just scared me," she giggled, still frozen in place from being startled. Confused, I then notice the man standing outside our kitchen window with the hard hat and shiny vest on, watering the bush with a garden hose. Very confused, but tired and thus not giving it any thought, I chuckle and get the toaster down, plug it in, and walk back upstairs.

It then occurs to me that not only is he supposed to be working in the road, he was using OUR hose and OUR water to water said-bush. Standing by OUR window, with two relatively young females home alone.

I went back downstairs and locked the doors and windows.

I texted my step dad about it and he went and yelled at him for using our water, but the guy claimed to have knocked on the door but no one answered, said he has daughters of his own and my step dad was convinced he only wanted water. Yeah, maybe if he knocked on the door with his finger nail...

À demain (I hope!)

Mlle Delphine

Painting My Face

Bonjour mes amis!

Non, before you flip, I'm not literally painting my face. Or caking on makeup.

The first part of my day consisted of anxiously awaiting my friend's phone call to say he got the gift. I was so nervous that, no joke, my palms were sweating. I mean, what if the painting wasn't as good as I thought it was? Or it was damaged during shipping? Or it gets there whole and he just plain and simple doesn't like it?

Boy was I wrong. He LOVES it!! I was SO relieved. He was talking about how it's the "nicest gift anyone's ever given me" and how it'll be the only thing he has hanging on his walls and how talented I am. But I think the best thing he said, was later when I told him I had just one more question that was important.

"Did it make you smile?"

"More than smile, it's nearly brought a tear to my eye. You made my birthday."

I think I did good. :) And as promised, here's the painting from a low-quality phone camera:

As for the second part of my day, my aunt came over to give us some free samples of Mary Kay products and talk about them, etc. It was actually really fun! The lip .. gloss, I guess? It's not super shiny though, that she had me try on looked really nice, and it's still on two hours later after I've drank and eaten a little bit. Same with the hand moisturizer stuff, and she said it also works wonders on feet. I really liked the foundation, but wish she had cover-up/concealer to try since mine doesn't work as well as I'd like. She had a lot more stuff she left at home, so my mother and I will have to visit her to try eye shadow colors and the like.

I don't know, typing about it here it seems silly, but this stuff just makes you feel good! And that's what make up is for, right? I'm crossing my fingers we can order the lip gloss, once we try one of the cover-ups, concealer, and moisturizer for my face. I have just normal Neutrogena cleanser that works really well but I can tell it dries out my skin. I know we probably won't, but maybe at least the lip gloss. Realistically you could probably get a cheap moisturizer at a department store, and my mother doesn't understand the importance of cover-up and foundation.

Oh, as a side note, I've noticed she's not only bad with technology, she's not the best with reading things in general. A few days ago on Facebook I posted about a few books I wanted to buy from Barnes & Noble and one of them was Princeton's ACT Review (2010 edition) and today she asked me why I'm thinking about applying to schools on the east coast because it's "so far!" Yeah, so far.. *cough* .. and then my mother told her I was thinking Québec. That was fun.

All in all, I've discovered that despite her bluntness, I really do like my aunt. What I don't like is my aunt and mother together. My mom gets much more, how do you say, aggressive? Attacking me for not doing chores well enough, making fun of the hair on my arm, saying I only want to go to Canada because it's cheaper, so on and so forth. Sigh.

Still, the reaction from my friend about the painting totally made my day. Maybe my week!

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Microblogging

Bonjour mes amis,

microblogging: the posting of very short entries on a blog

http://newsfeed.time.com/new-words-in-the-ode/#ixzz0x5Ke4Mb3

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Looking to Buy Red Heels for $3

Bonjour mes amis,

For a while I've kinda lost the desire to get new clothes and all that fashion stuff. But someone on Facebook linked something silly from ModCloth so I thought I'd check it out. I ended up just browsing through all of the tops, bottoms, shoes, and dresses. I now really want these:

(http://www.modcloth.com/store/ModCloth/Womens/Hepcat+Dress+in+Black+Licorice)

(http://www.modcloth.com/store/ModCloth/Womens/Shoes/Picnic+Pinup+Wedge)

I don't have anything even somewhat close to this, but I think it would look adorable. Or even a pair of closed-toe heels, so you could have some fun with patterned tights! I've always wanted a pair of red heels/pumps/wedges... and yet the only heels I own are black. Why is this? Because I'm too cheap to spend my money on new shoes. I'd rather spend it on things like shipping surprise birthday gifts to other countries that may or may not make it on time and in tact, so that when I get two teeth pulled out of my mouth I don't have enough money to go buy ibuprofen....

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Mrwggeghblehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Bonjour,

Two teeth pulled. Paaaaain. Watch two movies to get my mind off it? Paaaaain.

Stupid love stories.

Mlle Delphine

RAWR!

Bonjour mes amis,

My current state of mind (media inspired by Two Beans or Not Two Beans):

I was checking the status of the package I shipped on Friday, when I saw a bolded word so I went and scrolled over it, and it said "Your shipment has experienced an exception. Please read the description below." I look to the description below. It's *still* trying to get clearance at customs.

IT'S A ***Surprise, remember?*** NOT A BOMB, YOU RETARDED PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I'm going to start needing to buy hair dye soon at this rate. I haven't even mentioned to you the monster of a story about getting the right address while blow drying it with a hair dryer with the "cool" button taped down so I could ship it on Friday to be certain it would make it there before his birthday.

All I know, is if it's late, someone's getting hurt.

À demain,

Une très fachée Mlle Delphine

Surprise!

Bonjour mes amis,

I. Give. UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, it's not what you think, I promise. See, there's this birthday coming up for a close friend of mine that I've been working my butt off the past three weeks or so to prepare for. He, however, is very observant and knows me like no other, so I was terrified he'd realize something was up and the surprise wouldn't be as special. But he also happens to be the person I go to to talk about things when I'm sad or angry or happy and excited! You see my dilemma here? So, now I'm going to proceed to rant about how amazingly wonderful it is, and if it's at all possible that you (you know who you are!) happen to read my blog, you'd best be clicking a new link before I count to 10. Or I will be unhappy. You don't want to make me unhappy, do you???

1........

2........

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10!

Oh my goodness, so at first I had NO FREAKING CLUE what I was going to do to make your birthday special. I have limited options seeing as you live so far away, and I wracked my brain for all sorts of different ideas, and yet nothing seemed fitting. Then one night on Facebook, I saw you mention wanting to get a new tattoo, a phoenix with Celtic knots. My readers, you don't know this, but I am an artist at heart. I've been drawing since I could pick up a pencil, but the past year I haven't managed to at all. Sure, doodles in my notebook, but nothing serious. I lacked motivation. And then I saw it: a bright red and orange phoenix shooting towards to stars with flames trailing behind its wings and tail, with the Celtic knots built into the bird itself. But it HAD to be in color, and I'm absolutely awful with my color mediums like colored pencils, markers, crayons, etc.

I also have a friend who has discovered she, too, is very artistic at heart, although she's been doing a lot of painting. So I decided that's how I would go about this project, although I've honestly never done much in the way of painting. Once or twice in elementary school, really was it. However, I get my visual artistic side from my father and he's always loved to watch that side of me grow, so when I was visiting him, I explained how I had this amazing idea for my new painting and I started telling him all about the colors and the design and everything. It worked. We ended up walking to my favorite art store ever, Wet Paint, and ended up spending way too much on paint supplies. We decided to settle on acrylics since I was pretty new to painting and oils take much longer to dry, not even taking into account how expensive oils are! There was also a big sale on canvas, so I got a box of ten for a great deal. (I love my stockpile of canvas sitting in my room, it's like it's waiting for me to get another idea.)

So then it began. Prior to this, all I had was a rough sketch. When I got home, I began working on transferring my rough sketch into a clean sketch to put on the canvases. Yes, canvases. See, I didn't exactly mention to my father I was planning on giving away this huge project of mine, so I'm making two. Sort of. I'll get to how that ended up later! (Edit: I never actually get to it later. Sorry, it'll come in the second post with the pictures!) But both sketches were on the two different canvases, fully complete about a week after I had started, only a few days before it was time to go to my father's house again. It was a grueling task, and I remembered why I hadn't found any motivation to draw anything in the past year. It's become too much work and not enough play. But finally, I got to start working with the paints.

I had to experiment quite a bit to figure out what I wanted to do. I had grown up hearing my dad talk about how it's better to have lots of thin layers than one thick layer, so that's what I tried to do. It was a slow process, although less painful than the sketching. After I had finished painting the bird's head, neck, and majority of its body, I was struggling to figure out how to give it a feathered appearance. Then I remembered what the woman in the art store had said....

*Wavey flashback*

She was still standing behind the counter, talking about the big options regarding different paints, "And Acrylics have some texture to them, you can really work with the paint."

*Wavey flashback ends*

That was it! I threw out my father's advice about the thin layers of paint and started mixing more paint together to get a small pool on the plate to dip the brushes into. I applied the colors with thick brush strokes, a little like Van Gough's Starry Night, and then would smooth out the edges to give it a bit of a softer, less dramatic look. This way of painting was fun. In a way, I sort of had my own impressionism revolution by breaking away from the rules about art I've learned. I was jumping away from drawing even though I was good at it, I was ignoring what my amazing artist of a father told me about painting, and I did what felt good to me. And you know what? It showed.

Not only did the painting start looking much more awesome and artistic, but I worked on it much more often and for longer periods of time because it was enjoyable. I finished about two weeks after I started, and I had spent an estimated 13 hours painting. During the process, I'd gotten paint quite literally everywhere. I had it smeared across my palm and elbow, I had paint on both of my cheeks, on my shoulder, under my nails, on my thighs and all over my clothing, carpet, and pillow that I'd been sitting on. But it was so much fun.

And now? The painting is finished. I bought his birthday card on Thursday, and mailed the present off on Friday. The expected arrival date is the 19th, which is perfect. The 19th is a Thursday, so it gives them two days for error before it could be late since his birthday is the 23rd, the following Monday. I am SO EXCITED! I love surprises and I really hope he likes it. I've shown several people a quick shot of the painting I took on my phone, and they've all been rather impressed, so I have a good feeling about this. Now I just have to hold up a little bit longer. I'm so tired of answering "pretty boring" or "I worked on some projects (implying homework projects. I don't like to lie!) today" when he asks how my day went. The painting is currently "IN TRANSIT TO E. SYRACUSE, NY US" and it's just a matter of waiting it out. I can keep my mouth shut a little longer... just a little longer.

And thank you, for rekindling the sleeping bed of coals into a living, breathing, raging, artistic flame.

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

P.S. I'll post a couple pictures here after I know he's gotten the present.

Khol's Contest to Help Schools Like Mine!

Bonjour mes amis,

Today I have to do something I usually wouldn't ever ask of the followers of my blog and the random friends who stop in on occasion. If you haven't heard about it, Khol's (the giant clothing store company) is giving away $500,000 USD to FOUR schools in the U.S. I'm asking you, my lovely, wonderful readers who so kindly comment and leave messages to let me know you enjoy reading my ramblings, to vote for my high school. The ad is posted to the right!

While it's true all schools are always in need of more funding, my public high school is taking a very hard hit. We're losing 8% of our budget next year even though we have a severe overcrowding problem that needs a solution. As a result of this, additional classes, extracurriculars, and our renowned arts programs are taking a hard hit on top of the normal cuts schools deal with. For example, if a class doesn't have at least thirty students register for it, it doesn't happen that year. For this reason I had to skip French 3, and there is no French 5. Our pianist for the choirs was cut, and now the choir director has to attempt to play the piano while conducting, listening for errors, and coming up with new ideas! The stage manager who creates masterpieces for our school plays, musicals, and one acts, who manages lights and sound systems for all of the community events our auditorium is used for, and much, much, more, also was only given the next year to be at the high school before he, too, gets cut.

This is only a small taste of the newest issues are school is facing, beyond the normal running out of paper and that sort of thing. Please, it's a really simple action to click on the ad to your right to vote for Prior Lake High School, and potentially help us win $500,000.

Merci beaucoup et À demain,

Mlle Delphine

An Unsent Letter

August 9, 2010

2:00 a. m.

Bonjour mon ami,

Today is the first day I have ever cried tears of joy in my life, and it was because of you. It was late and I had nothing to do when I saw someone mention Love Gives Me Hope so I went and read all of the cute posts. All twenty-four pages until I was caught up. I cried because not only were they as precious as ever, but I realized I no longer was envious of the love these people know. I have someone amazing who makes me feel beautiful and wonderful and loved, every single day. And you don't even know it.

Avec toute mon affection,

Mlle Delphine

Voyageurs National Park - Jour Deux

Bonjour mes amis,

If you missed the first day, you can read about it here.

Saturday I got up bright and early again, but this time not until 6:30 or so. It was still cloudy but wasn't raining. While my parents and I waited for our hosts to wake, we went for a little cruise on the boat, which was fun but chilly. When we got back, they started to wake up and delicious French toast was served!

Then began the grand tour, my favorite part of the trip. We got back into the boat we rented while the family friends climbed into their boat, and they showed us around. First we headed up to Kettle Falls, which was probably about an hour boat ride away. Granted, our boat only had 40 HP so it wasn't fast. I loved this part because we actually crossed the border and got to be in Canada!!! I know, I'm a dork, but I'm a daydreaming dork who got the tiniest taste of her dream. The cool thing about Kettle Falls is that you can *only* fly or boat in, or snow mobile in the winter. Anyways, we walked up the trail and it lead to an overlook of the dam (I assume this would be the "falls" bit), and thus a little more of Canada.

We stopped in the hotel at the top of the hill with an awesome warped room. The floor wasn't just normally warped, it seriously bent down and was all crazy, it's hard to describe without a picture. Anyways, we walked around the gift shop but there wasn't much interesting. However, there was another little store at the bottom where the boats were parked and I noticed they had the same pure jam there as at the hotel. Because I wandered to look at them, I noticed on the bottom shelf there was a white can with big red text, something "Canada's." It was jam again, but it really was a Canadian jam; the back of the can had English and French. I bought it. (Edit: The jam is AMAZING.)

On the way back, we went down the Ash River and stopped to eat at the Ash Ka Nam. It was okay, but it literally took them an hour to get us our food and it really wasn't busy. We went onwards down the river and saw there was a waterfall with a man on the top, so one of our hosts, Terry, asked if we wanted to go up. I said sure, but wasn't that enthused. We ended up having to park the boats on the shore and climbing up the side of the hill, literally using feet and hands to get up some of the steep rock towards the top. I wish I would have thought to get some pictures on the way up!

It was so much fun! I had a huge grin on my face, despite the fact I wasn't graceful crazy enough to leap off of the log that had been split and was therefore unstable onto the highest point. Still, I was close to the top.

After that adventure, we made one more stop at the Ellsworth Rock Garden. It truly was a garden of rocks! The pictures couldn't begin to bring it justice, so I'll hope that my writing and your imagination can work together a bit here. Firstly, it was built on a hill so it had things at all sorts of levels. This man spent 21 years of his life designing and arranging rocks to make statues that depicted things like Native Americans, ducks, whales, etc. They were shockingly easy to recognize. The part I felt was especially awesome was the fact that he had built little stone walls. Short enough you could step over, but they added almost an Irish feel to the area, and it sort of guided how he wanted you to see things. Unfortunately it's been vandalized a lot since he passed away, but there are volunteers working to restore it to its former glory.

We headed back to our tent and the other couple's cabin, where the husband, Terry, got a soda out of the cooler. I was just standing there minding my own business, when he flicks water at me! He was looking at me kind of sideways and sarcastically said, "Oops, sorry. Did I get you wet?" And did it again. I dove for the cooler and cupped my hands to get some, but he had already run away. I called him out for being a chicken, and then awaited my moment for revenge.

Everyone was sitting at the beach and the couple's daughter wanted to go swimming, so she ran to get her swimsuit on. Mel, Terry's wife, asked if I wanted to as well, and I figured that would be best since Terry was already threatening to throw me in the lake. I've never been thrown in a lake before, so I figured I might as well go in prepared. When I returned in my bathing suit, Terry was at the end of the dock with his daughter. Muahahahahahahaha! I walked down to the end of the dock before taking off the pants I'd thrown on over my swim suit, and set down the water bottle I brought with (Yeah I know, it's suspicious, but I was planning on him being down at the beach!). Then I took my pants and water bottle, and set the jeans down on the bench next to Terry and asked him a question.

"Do you have a couple of towels? Because you're going to need one!" and then dumped the water on him. He jumped up and threw me in the lake, as promised... and then threw my jeans in too! But that was fine because it was sunset and I wasn't going anywhere that night. It was so worth it.

That evening, storm clouds came in. We sat at the end of the dock to watch the lightning. Well, sort of. Terry's family sat on one bench while my parents sat on another on the other side of the dock, so I sat down between them. Once it was dark enough for the stars to be easily seen, I laid back and looked at them while everyone else admired the lightning and chatted. It was really cool to listen as the storm slowly made its way towards us. The water started out gently lapping at the dock and shore, but over the course of an hour or so, the wind picked up and changed directions several times, with the water becoming more and more aggressive. I can now understand why it's so easy to connect a storm at sea to anger! Water really is a physical form of passion.

Afterwards, we went in and chatted for a bit before heading to bed. I know it probably doesn't sound like that amazing of a vacation to you guys, but I haven't gone anywhere in five years and this place was absolutely beautiful! Everyone was happy and having fun or relaxing. It was a lovely weekend, though tiresome.

Hope I didn't bore you too much!

À demain,

Mlle Delphine

Voyageurs National Park - Jour Un

Bonjour, mes amis!

Due to my desire to ramble and tell details, I'm splitting this into two posts, one for Friday and the other for Saturday. We left early today (Sunday) so there's not much to tell.

Friday morning I woke up bright and early. Around four a.m., actually, although I didn't get out of bed until five a.m. We left ten minutes after six and during the five hour drive to Lake Kabetogama we stopped once to have brunch around ten or eleven a.m at boring old Perkins. We fueled up with a station that gets its gas from BP. I felt a little guilty.

As we turned onto the road that would take us to the resort we were staying at, my parents stopped at this giant fish thing. You know, one of those photo-op things where it's 9817392871928372 feet in the air and you're supposed to get on it? Yeah, no. I'm afraid of heights. They were kinda mad, I think.

Continuing on, we arrived at the little resort. When I say resort, I don't mean giant fancy hotel, I mean a cute little office building with some boats and cabins/trailer spots for rent. (Later it would prove to be gorgeous. You can see the live webcam of the dock I love here.) It was cloudy and drizzling as we put up the tent, and the rain kept building. I went for a little walk before we wandered into some tourist spots and stores looking for trinkets to buy. One of them had an awesome compass but I was talked out of getting it, and ended up buying a map of all of Voyageurs National Park. Pretty exciting start to my day.

Then we went to the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary. It was so cool! You get bused into the site where there is a two-story tall deck, complete with a gift shop, and then you can see the black bears that wander in.

There were five cubs in this one tree. So ador

able.

There were an estimated 30 bears in the area while we

were there. This was just one little section of the area.

Story has it, Vince was a logger who was just trying to earn some money for his poor family, and turned out to be very good at it. He'd hire loggers to work for him, and he'd cook sourdough pancakes for them in the morning. They then went out to work, but when Vince returned, his house was being raided by hungry bears! He shot hundreds of bears, so many he lost count. Finally when he thought they were all gone, he went back to his house only to discover more bears. So he changed his plan of attack.

Instead of trying to kill the bears, Vince set out some sourdough bread just for the bears, away from his home. It worked. He quickly became attached to the bears and kept feeding them well into his old age. As he got older, he started to worry about what would happen to his bears after he passed away, so he and some others founded The American Bear Association.

Since it was a good cause, I ended up buying a comfy new hoodie and a new book bag for the coming school year (Pray I never wear my sweater to school, with the matching bag!).

We didn't do much else that evening. We tried to have a bonfire but everything was too soggy, it rained literally all day. I went out to the dock and laid on a bench to look at the stars. They were gorgeous, and I saw my first shooting star! Four, to be exact.

À demain,

Mlle Delphine