'Tis Mad Idol-atry

OMG!!! This is terrible, Kris Allen won American Idol!

That was not right! I'm an Adam fan and I'm here to tell you: Kris winning is the End of Life as we Know It. It's VERY bad.


Actually, I have a few very specific things to complain about:




-First of all, you know that song that they both had to sing at the end? The one co-written by Kara? The one that was supposed to be the big ending song? The one that was supposed to be the icing on our big, fat American Idol cake?
Yeah. That one.
It was really lame...



-Second, when he won and the confetti began to fall and the fireworks began to go off, Kris kind of went... " Really, I won? But Adam was so much better than me! Are you sure there's not a misake?"
His modesty is ...refreshing, but not very inspiring. And I bet his mom yelled at him afterwards for being a wimp and ruining his Big Moment.


-Third: Randy, what were you wearing?


And my last, but not least, complaint: KRIS WON


But there is at least one good side to Kris winning: Adam never has to sing that sucky song ever again!

I was sad when he won though, because I remember that at this same time last year I was ssooo happy David Cook won. And this year I'm really disappointed!

I never liked Kris. Not for one millisecond. I kept wishing that he would get voted off...but it never happened. And now...he's won.

I sure hope Nouvelle Star turns out better...

(FYI: The title of this post is a quote from Shakespeare 'The History of Troilus and Cressida' -Cool, non?).

Dancing Queens

I don't know if I already mentioned this in my blog (I'm too lazy to check), but I take dance lessons. Over the years I've learned many different styles of dance: I did seven years of classical ballet, two years of modern and one year of hip-hop.
And then I quit for two years.
When we moved back to France, taking dancing lessons again was the last thing on my mind, but there's a dance school about 6 minutes away from our house. So I said: "Why not?".

Well, 'dance school' is maybe a big word for it. It's actually just one teacher with her own little one room studio. It's entirely decorated with pink Marilyn Monroe-themed objects. Plus it comes complete with a little fluffy, moppy dog called Copelia.

What I'm taking now is a mix of modern, jazz and street dance. (Don't worry if you're confused- so am I..)

The other kids say the teacher has done some amazing shows with her students over the last few years. Last year, the show was all about fairies and magic! And I'm told that a couple of years back, she put on an 18th century-based show. (What did they do?! A dance interpretation of the storming of the Bastille? The execution of Louis XVI? Odd.)


Well, you'll never guess what the show theme is this year: Africa.

Can you believe it?

Africa?

You have to be kidding me...

My group dances the part of a bunch of African women. But I guess we're lucky. My poor little sisters (who also take lessons at the studio) have to be elephants.

Yes, ELEPHANTS!

All the adorable 9 and 10 year old ballerinas have to do an elephant dance. And you should see the costumes! A sad gray satin skirt and little gray rags that go around their ankles. And it's all topped off by a drawing of an elephant that the kids had to color in, cut out, paste onto cardboard and then tie to their foreheads. I am NOT kidding. It is seriously bad, bad, bad.

Did I say it was bad?

It's bad.

I think we all liked the fairies better.

Are you sure we can't do fairies again?

No?

ok. You're the boss.

'sigh'

Here's a dance-related question to end this post: Do you think dyslexic people have trouble dancing to "Y.M.C.A."?

My Many Excuses...And a Trip to Paris!

When we got back from Paris I was so exhausted that I didn't write anything right away. The big city is...really BIG, you know? Lots of walking and gawking.

Then I had a problem with my computer, who was feeling rebellious and didn't want to hook up to the internet.

And when that finally got fixed ( I don't know how, by the way...I didn't do anything. I just let it brood for a few days and it hooked itself right back up again. Total mystery.) I had my SECOND Brevet Blanc test! (There are two practice tests in the year and at the end of the year I have to pass the real test.)
That's all my excuses.

Paris was really great, though! The Louvre was completely amazing! Well, some bits of it were more amazing than other bits. There was the Mona Lisa surrounded by a sea of 50 Japanese tourists. We had a look at it and got on with our lives. It was not the most amazing thing at the Louvre, that's for sure. I liked the Hans Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleves MUCH more than the Mona Lisa.
We went there two times during the stay and it wasn't nearly enough time. We couldn't even see half of what we wanted!

We went to Disneyland Paris, too. I think I was more excited than my 11 year old sisters.
I was constantly squealing "We're going to Disneyland! We're going to Disneyland!" And the twins would be like: "Grow up already!"
My brother and I went on all the scary looping roller coasters that mom and the twins wouldn't go near.

We also went on the Eiffel Tower- all the way to the top! Yes I did it ! Even though it took about 4 hours to get there!!! Everybody in the world was there on the Champs de Mars waiting in line to go up that thing. (And NO, it's NOT where they make Mars Bars, despite what my mom tried to tell us. She has a wierd sense of humor)

We made plenty of new friends in the Metro thanks to mom's Barack Obama bag. Sadly, they didn't always smell very good. Everybody loves Obama- even homeless French people. That's what you call wide appeal.

I'll write again soon! I promise!

En direct de Paris

What has been really fun here in France is watching Nouvelle Star. It's the français equivalent of American Idol.
Here are a few things about it:
It's season 7 this year and there are also 4 judges ...but they seem to change each season. In the picture above are the NS judges. Lio (the woman on the left) is their version of Crazy Paula. The woman in blue is supposed to be a kind of a Ryan Seacrest. Sadly, it's just not working. I think of her as a Ryan-wannabe, which is really pathetic.

None of them are as just and as harsh as Simon in AI. Maybe the one with the sunglasses (that he never takes off, by the way) has a bit of that vibe. But at least Simon is usually helpful with his rudeness- there's a bit of constructive advice in there somewhere. This guy is just rude.

Also, none of them are as surrealistically nice as Paula. However Lio ,who was a popular singer in the 80s, never has anything useful to say, which is just like Paula. And she has a tendancy to judge people by whether she likes them or not and not on their singing!


I would have to say that the one that has the most interresting things to say about the contestants is Sinclair (the guy laying on the floor) He usually has helpful comments. The other one are not very helpful.

The man standing in between the two women seems to have a personality crisis: he goes from aggressively rude (like sunshades guy) to kindly helpful (like Sinclair)... so I don't know what to make of him. I think he needs to increase his medications.


Other major diffs between NS and AI? First of all, the scale is way tiny - SO much smaller because we are dealing with France and not the USA! During the auditions they listen to 25 000 people! That's 4 times less than American Idol and they still send 150 people to Paris Theater (which is the equivalent of Hollywood week). This means that people that would have been crushed like bugs by Simon during American Idol Auditions get to go to Paris in the Nouvelle Star Auditions.
Another big diff is that most of the time, the people are NOT singing in their native language. Most of the people trying out for NS try to sing in English...and 'try' is the key word here. Sometimes it's so bad that it's very funny. Most people's 'English' is just a mishmash of syllables that they think sounds like English.


During the week at the Paris theater (which just started) we started to see the huge lack of a budget: the judges arriving in taxis, the shabby hotel rooms they have to stay in. They weren't even hiding it. I guess they don't know that on American Idol the judges arrive in limos and during Hollywood week even the contestants get a nice hotel room. That's right - during Theater Paris week, the contestants have to figure out where to stay all alone.


What is also weird on NS is the infamous 'Trios' trial, where the contestants get together in groups of three and have a day to prepare a song. In Nouvelle Star, you don't get to chose your group! You are put together randomly and than you only get like 5 songs to chose from.


Also, on NS the judges stay in power much longer than on AI. They choose everyone up to the top 15 and then only after that are the contestants allowed to sing live on stage and get votes! In contrast, on AI the judges choose 36 contestants, then America is in control from then on.


On the other hand, there is one REALLY great thing about NS: during the live shows you vote directly while you're watching the people perform and you get the results right after everyone has finished singing!! It seems much smarter and more fun than organizing a whole separate "voting off" show like AI does. I love me some immediate gratification!
I guess Nouvelle Star is dealing with so many fewer people that it's easier to get the results all in quickly?

I heard that last year on one of the NS shows, they gave the results and sent people home and then realized that a whole bunch of the votes had not been counted!!!! There had been a computer error. As a result they had to redo the whole thing over again the next night! The contestants had to sing again and people had to vote again, which must have cost a lot. Maybe that's why every thing is so cheap this year - they are still paying back what it took to make an extra show!


I watched the first voting show live yesterday and I got to (for the first time ever in my life!!) vote for my favorite singer! This year on NS, I love Camelia-Jordana. She's a bit weird looking, with big glasses. And she has a very particular voice-but her song "Quelqu'un m'a dit" last night was so beautiful and it perfectly suited her sound.
Her interpretation was much better than Carla Bruni's original version!

The audience put some pretty good singers through yesterday. The group went from 15 to 10 people. One of them doesn't sing very well, but he looks SOOOOO much like Robert Pattinson that you could be sure he would stay. All the Twilight loving girls must have voted for him.

My so-called trip to Germany Part3

It must have been about midnight and I woke up hearing voices coming from our tiny balcony. It was our second and last night at the hotel and we had a room on the bottom floor with a balcony.
I was so tired, it took me a moment to realize that the people talking out there were the 3 divas that shared the room with Laura and me. And it took even longer to realize that they were talking in English to a bunch of German guys that were down in the street!
I caught them in the middle of their conversation. One of the girls said:

-You are très beautiful.

I had to smile to myself. They were flirting in English, and not very good English, either!

The guys said something to each other in German and then one of them said to the girls in English:

-What room are you staying at?

The girls were quiet for a moment and then one of them said in French to the others:

-What did he say?

-I think he asked us what room we are staying in, one of them guessed.

The first one adressed the boys again and said:

-Bedroom 15.

-Non, non, it is 13. corrected the other girl.

That's when I realised, even if the boys didn't, that their romance was doomed. There WAS no room 13. Our room was the first one: number 15. The second girl just didn't want any visitors, which was a huge relief. I had been kind of worried about where all this was heading and if I would have to do something drastic.

-All right we will come. The boys said happily.

Suddenly all three girls started talking at the same time:

-Non, you cannot, par-ce-que our teachers are looking at us!!!!

I'm pretty sure she meant our teachers were watching us.

After that I think they left because I didn't hear anything more and the girls came back inside and fell asleep again.

The next morning we had breakfast for the last time in the good old dungeon and made our lunches for the day.
We left Munich again to visit The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site:

On the gate was written: "Work makes you free"

It was a huge courtyard, almost deserted and very, very quiet:

To my surprise and great relief, everyone in my class was very calm and respectful, even the dumb boys didn't find anything to say. Something about the place just made you calm when you walked in though the gates. It was hard to imagine that 43, 000 people died there.

We only visited the Maintenance building that now has an exibition. There's a small movie theater were we wached a film about the atrocities.

Across the top of the building was written:
"There is one path to freedom. It's milestones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, diligence, orderliness, sacrifice, truthfulness, love of the fatherland"

Talk about twisted.

Unfortunately, we had no guide but at least we saw the exibition about the camp's history. You could read the descriptions it in English or in German, but no French. So I had to do a lot of translating for other kids. After a while, though, I was far behind everyone else because I was actually reading all the panels. A teacher finally had to come back and ask me to hurry up.I hate being rushed though a museum or any other interesting thing!
The camp was supposed to be the main point of our trip but we acually didn't stay that long-only about two hours...

We headed back into Munich and visited the Deutsches Museum:
It's the world's largest museum of technology and science. And the largest museum in Munich.
We divided into 10 groups, each with a teacher and kind of wandered arround.

It was so huge that we didn't get to visit much in the hour and a half we were given. My group saw the sections about hydraulic engineering, aerospace, bridge building and marine navigation. Not my favorite things, let's say.

It was about lunch time so we stoped at a beautiful little park near the river to eat. There was a fountain but it wasn't on, so we kind of perched on in. It was very funny seeing my teachers and classmates sitting amongst the stone naked angels and men!

After our lunch with our stone (NOT stoned!) friends, we headed back to the shopping district to visit the Munich Residence. It was built from an old castle by the Wittelsbachs in 1385 and for 4 centuries it was the seat of government of the Wittelsbachs Dynasty -until 1918.

We had a guide, a woman that was actually from Annecy, but moved here when she married a German. So it was nice to talk to someone from our region of France.

We visited the Ancestor Hallway, which was more like a room, with the familly tree and portraits of the members of the Wittelsbachs familly.

We also saw the Antiquarium that held about 300 ceramic busts of famous people that belonged to the Duke Albrecht V:

After that we were given free time til 8pm and it was only

4pm. We had 4 hours to do what we wanted!
My friends and I finished our last minute shopping and took
final pictures.

At 8pm all the classes meet up in front of the Marienplatz and we headed to the Hofbräuhaus. It's a brewery in Munich owned by the state government.
Hofbräuhaus litteraly means "court-brewery"

The Hof (court) comes from the brewery's history as a royal brewery in the Kingdom of Bavaria I'm sure our pal Ludwig spent some time there!

Our whole group of about 80 people got a private room prepared just for us. It was a brewery but no beer for us. That wasn't the case for the teachers, though. They each got a huge mug of beer! We had a really fun time, after we ate we orgnized games to pass the time and exchanged e-mails addresses.

At about ten we headed down near the train station to take our buses. The way back was more relaxing. Let's just say we were all so tired we would sleep anywhere. Well that was my case - but some people, including Valentin and the girl sitting next to me, were not tired. I traded (temporarily) my DS lite for her travel pillow -an exchange that satisfied both parties.

When I woke up again, it was 5.30 in the morning and we were coming into France from Switzerland. 10 minutes later we were getting down off the bus in front of my school. We were much earlier than expected: my mom wouldn't come an pick up Valentin and me for another 2 hours! We started to see other people from the school arriving for class. When my mom finally arrived, we were the last ones left and tons of students were coming to school for the day. We had the day off to recover from our trip!

When I got home, I gave every one their gifts and told mom all about the museums and stuff we visitied. I was tired, but it was the begining of a long school holiday, so I had two weeks to rest from my trip!
So, there's my class trip to Munich. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it!

Also- please comment, even just to say "Hi". It encourages me to keep my blog going!

My so-called trip to Germany part 2

On the second day, my alarm clock rang at 6.30 . I was the only one who brought an alarm clock of course. The three divas brought half ton of makeup, shampoo and and least 6 different outfits for 3 days...but no alarm clock.

We kind of rolled out of bed ( except those who were like me sleeping on the top bunk) I got dressed pretty fast. In 5 minutes I was done and so was Laura. The three fashion victims took at least half an hour, trying on different outfits and asking everyone in the rooms opinion. After having assured one of the girls for the 30th time that her dress did NOT make her butt look big, Laura and I left to go have breakfast in the dungeon.. I mean "dining room". It was no use waiting for the others because they hadn't even started on their makeup. At the rate they were going, they'd be eating their breakfast at noon.

Laura and I ganged up with David and Valentin, who were sharing a room down the hall from us, and all ate together. After we finished, we were all given a paper bag to make our lunch for the day. I made a sandwich and stuffed a packet of chips that I had brought from home in my bag too. Maybe I'm not a Boy Scout, but "Be prepared" is one of my mottos.

In the bus, we were told that we were going way out of town to visit two of the castles that had belonged to King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria who reigned from 1845 to 1886.

We drove for about 2 hours and we arrived at the base of a huge mountain. Right at the top there was an enormous castle: Schloss Neuschwanstein. You can see it really was the model for the Disney Sleeping Beauty castle. It's almost too beautiful to be real:

We had to go up this really winding road to get closer to it. After a while we got off and we had to walk the rest of the way up! It was one mile, so I guess I burned off those potato chip calories.



The walk was nice and we had a beautiful view of the castle and of the whole valley down below.



The bad part was that Laura is terribly afraid of heights and this was VERY high. She had to walk between me and David, clutching our arms and repeating encouraging things to herself... In short, she was a bit stressed out.

The castle was quite beautiful inside and had lots of windows. Again , not good for Laura. She was still clinging to me and shutting her eyes every time we passed a window ... and that was about every 5 seconds. Too bad she had her eyes closed most of the time. There was lots to see. The rooms were very big with high ceilings and painted walls representing different Greek myths. The whole castle was decorated in that theme! But sadly we didn't get to stay there as long as I would of wanted because it was almost noon and we
had another castle to visit that afternoon.
The tour wasn't perfect though, because it was really crowded - there were SO many tourists. Plus we didn't get an actual person as a guide, only a recorded voice.

So we all left the castle and headed back down the road. But sometime during the last bit of the tour I had lost track of my friends. So David was handed the hard task of leading panicking Laura back down the steep road all by himself.


We headed down to the parking lot and because we were in a tiny village there was nowhere to eat our packed lunches. No nice park with picnic tables. So we ended up sitting in the parking lot, with only our coats to protect us from the pelting rain...Charming time.

The next castle we visited was my favorite and Laura's too. She liked it because it was solidly planted close to the ground, not at the top of a mountain. And apparently King Ludwig liked the place too. I quote from my Guide:

"The Linderhof castle was Ludwig's second castle and was also his favourite. It also tends to be the favourite of many visitors. (Like ME!) It is small and intimate as opposed to vast and heavy like Neuschwanstein. The king stayed there regularly."

When to guide said that Linderhof Castle wasn't heavy, I'm pretty sure that was meant figuratively because there was plenty of gold, which is very heavy.

The interior was so amazing!
This was the King's dining room! Yes, all the yellow stuff is gold!

The picture down below is the Mirror Room, which many consider to be the most beautiful room in the palace. It has a crystal chandelier, carved ivory and mirrors everywere and let's not forget the gold!

Our guide was great, a real person. Yay! And she spoke French quite well with only a slight accent.

The fact that it was November meant the gardens were not pretty, though, and most of the fountains were closed for repairs.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in a charming medieval village, where we were given an hour of free time to look around. It was beautiful because most of the houses were painted with detailed old pictures:

Once again thanks for reading, In Part 3 you will find out about the interesting last night I spent in the hotel, more museums, a beer restaurant and concentration camps.

So stay tuned!

My So-Called Trip to Germany, part 1

As you may have read here before, I took a class trip to Germany a few months ago. I actually take Spanish as a third language. In fact, nobody in my whole class is taking German. Whatever...

We went to Germany because we are studying the Second World War this year and the teachers wanted to show us concentration camps. That idea had me nervous. So many of the kids (boys!) in my class are idiots- even the teachers are always saying that ours is the worst 9th grade class at our school, ever! I could just see one of the really dumb boys making really dumb, disrespectful comments during a very intense thing like a visit to one of the camps we talked about in class...

Anyway, on a Monday evening my dad and bro dropped Valentin (my best friend) and I in front of the school. My brother told me to me to bring him back a bobble-head Hitler as a souvenir. Very funny... I hoped none of the boys in my class would ask for one during the camp visit...

First, there was much confusion and identity paper checking. You couldn't go without an ID card or a passport. I brought my US Passport, which was cool. Nobody else in my school has one!

Then we were piled into 3 huge buses and that was only half of the 8 ninth grade classes!

At first the seats seemed comfortable. But I revised my opinion after 8 hours of travelling, believe me!

We started off, at 10pm. We went thought Switzerland, Austria and finally at about 4 in the morning, Germany. I think no one got any sleep that night. We weren't over excited- just SO uncomfortable.

At about 6 am we arrived at the hotel... well, hotel was a big word for what it was: a shabby place on the outskirts of Munich with a kind of a prison air to it. (Not that I've been to prison!) We had been told we'd be staying in a three star hotel. I'd sure hate to see one star!

We were not allowed into the rooms to relax after the long trip with no sleep. We just dumped are bags in a pile and were sent down to the dining room to have breakfast.

We went down some stairs, and down some more stairs. The paint on the walls started to look more and more nasty and dirty the farther down we went. At the bottom, we went down a twisty hallway and arrived in the dinning room. I couldn't belive it! The dining room was in the basement, with no windows! And there were more tables crammed in there then anyone thought possible! A man gave us instuctions to serve ourselves...I think. He only said it in German... very useful. Luckily one of the teachers with us was able to translate.

We ate our breakfast, more sleeping than eating. (I'd say we were like zombies, but I don't think zombies eat toast for breakfast.) When we finished, we dragged ourselves back into the buses to go sightseeing.

They took us to the big outdoor shopping district! It was a beautiful day and my group had a great guide who spoke French really well. He gave us a tour of the district, pointing out the numerous cathedrals. It was great! Part of that district that you can see on the picture at the top.

At about lunch time, the teachers gave us free time and told us to meet back at the Marienplatz in two hours. (the Marienplatz is the square in front of the cathedral that you see in the photo)


We could wander around in groups and eat on our own! I set of with Valentin, Laura and David. We had sooooo much fun and we actually already started bying souvenirs on the first day! (no bobble-headed Hitlers, though...) That was when I realized that EVERYONE in Germany spoke English! That's how it seemed, anyway. I became my group's translator for our shopping expedition!

At the begining of the trip we where all given necklaces with a little plastic holder to slip a paper into it said (i quote):

I am lost; I am a french student. Please

help to me contact my teacher. The phone

number are:

Then after the phone number there was this:

Thanks you very much!

No kidding! I got quite a few laughs out of that. Too bad they didn't ask me to write the tags. Plus, there was also the same thing in German. I wonder how many faults there were in that.

The afternoon was less good. We visited the old Olympic park, the radio tower



and the BMW museum. So between sports and cars it was not a fun afternoon for me. I guess it was all to make the stupid boys happy. I sure wasn't. Not to mention the fact that we were all SO tired. By the end of the day I couldn't feel my feet anymore and I was glad to get back, even if it was a prison hotel.

I shared my room with Laura and three other girls I didn't know. Our room had 3 two-person bunk beds squeezed into 5 by 3 meters. there was barely room for five girls plus all our luggage. Not like Laura and I had much, but the others brought tons of clothes and makeup- for only a four day trip!

The room was tiny, but we did at least get our own bathroom and took turns having a shower. Then the other girls in my room spent half the night talking but I fell right asleep!

To be continued in Part 2...thanks for reading!