Final Days

So,

I have the hiccups. I wouldn't mind having them if mine didn't sound obnoxiously weird. Like some walrus moaning from being stabbed in the throat by a unicorn. Some people have cute hiccups, you know the little tiny cute polite hiccups? Mine are just like..."Trogdor has arrived inside Mel! Prepare for the impending war on her intestines!"

Yes, I know, incredibly obnoxious. If you don't know who trogdor is your missing out and you should youtube him right now. Don't even bother with the rest of my writing, Trogdor is way more important.

I'm totally serious.

He's incredibly important.

Like, Obama important...but...more.

Anyhow, now that you know who Trogdor is I have to say that it is coming down to my plane ride.

Farewell Annecy! I will not miss you small town that is fun for the first day or two. More like, day. One day. Farewell massive amounts of bread and cheese and noodles. Goodbye forever.

I will be flying to Ohio on Sunday (France time). Time should fly like tea time with the Mad Hatter and then I'll be off to Hawaii after a week. Yippee! I get to see my boyfriend! I get to find an apartment! I get to attempt to have a business of my own! I get to fail at creating that business and then find any job that I can! Yayyy!!!

I really do hope my business actually works out. As long as I can get it up and running it'll bring me a ton of money. So, at least there's no cost to me unless I can actually get it up and running. That's a good thing. =)

What else is happening? Not too much. I'm wondering what Ohio will bring except a lack of internet connection and a "hello" to my cell phone which has been out of commission ever since I left the US.

Oh, I was stumbling yesterday (if you don't know what that is check out stumbleupon.com I guarantee you'll love it) and came across a website that said you can diet just like the French and lose massive amounts of weight. It said to do all of these things and while I was reading it I realized...this is not what the French do at all. It was saying to eat less protein and lots of other weird things that should actually make you just a really strange person. It said nothing about gorging yourself with bread and cheese, walking everywhere, drinking a lot of wine and champagne or smoking until your lungs are black. Strange how that happens. My host mother here in France smokes at night in the bathroom. Why? I have no idea. She literally sits on the toilet for 20+ minutes smoking. Then when she's done of course that's the only bathroom in the entire apartment so when I gotta go it reeks. It's like I was just rolled up and became a cigarette myself. Talk about nasty.

Well, that's about it. I'll update when I'm in Ohio if I can catch a sec of internet or when I'm in Hawaii!!!!! Wahoo!!!!

I had a dream

that my mother read my blog. Maybe it was a nightmare. Just the fact that if she knew where it was located that she could and would actually read it.

Some things I like to keep to myself and my friends and not my mother or my grandmother (on my mother's side).

So I'm starting this new weight loss program. Go me for joining in with the rest of America in wishing to be thinner. I'm going to start on August 20th. I'm hoping to be 50 pounds lighter by my birthday, February 14th. Yes, valentines day. Also it'll be my 21st so I'll be celebrating my weight loss journey by going to Vegas, drinking and gambling my heart away with the love of my life.

So this isn't the first time I've tried to lose weight. The first time was in high school I think. I had gained fifty pounds in a year. That's really insane if you think about it. I have no idea what was going on with me. I remember distinctly the first time I was truly concerned with how heavy I was though. I was with my neighbor in my tree house in my yard back on bainbridge and we

were talking about losing weight and how to do it. We both had this plan to ride our bikes around the park like 2 times every day. Of course that really doesn't do much at all for you. haha. After nothing happened with that I did weight watchers with my mom. I think that was my freshman year of high school. I lost twenty pounds then. My heaviest was 180lbs and since then i've kept off that 20lbs and am now at 160lbs. But this, this 50lbs will be the most I have ever attempted to lose a significant amount of weight as well as a) living in an apartment and b) following my own designed weight loss plan. There was weight watchers, dieting, Atkins diet, and lastly a personal trainer. I can honestly say that I am incredibly healthy, strong as a horse but not at a healthy weight. Which, doesn't make any sense at all to me honestly. How can you be healthy but not be healthy? My trainer said that I am perfectly healthy but I guess just not at my ideal weight or at society's ideal weight for me. So after spending lots of money on learning how to workout I now have the knowledge to design my own plan. One that might actually work. I couldn't lose weight with a trainer because I wasn't eating right and it wasn't even possible for me to eat right. In fact, my whole entire life it has been impossible for me to eat right. Someone else is always there to mess up my "perfect, should be" diet. But I'm going to try to lose this weight the correct,

healthy way. The gym will be a close friend of mine with me going twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening. As well as my personal chef: my boyfriend. He will be making only healthy recipes for me and him to live with.

If your wondering how I figure out everything I need to do it just involves a little bit of math.

The first thing you do is find your BMR or your "Basal Metabolic Rate" there's lots of calculators to help you figure this out.

Next you need to figure out how much you burn throughout the day without exercising. Just walking around, going up the stairs you climb to your house, jogging to catch the morning bus, all the stuff you usually do. Or if you just sit most of the day. This is easy to figure out too. A lot of websites will give you all the necessary information.

You add those two numbers together and that number is how many calories you need to eat in order to maintain your current weight. If you eat 500 calories less then that or burn 500 more calories then that then you'll lose one pound in a week. If you eat 1000 calories less then that or burn 1000 more calories then that you'll lose two pounds in a week. Yes, that is every single day.

So my numbers are to reduce my BMR by 500 calories and to also burn an extra 500 calories a day with exercise. This means I can eat 1,385 calories a day and in order to burn the extra 500 calories I will be hitting the gym twice a day. In the morning--40 minutes of heavy cardio (go stair master! i love you but hate you at the same time) then in the evening there will be weight lifting (which I learned through my trainer) and another session of cardio for 45 minutes. Just light cardio. Nothing too bad. Walking for instance for 4mph. That's 2.5 hours at the gym every day about. Of course I'll have my day off or a light day where I only walk for a little or do something small. That'll probably be a friday since I'm going to be starting my business when I get back to Hawaii as well.

I know this all sounds very American. Weightloss...own business...etc. But, hey, i'll be able to live longer.

Some websites for my new diet:

1. http://www.hearthealthyonline.com/healthy-recipes/main-dish-recipes/cheap-dinner-ideas_ss1.html
2. http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus
3. http://www.womansday.com/Lifestyle/Food-Recipes/Healthy-Recipes.html
4. http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods
5. http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/Superfood
6. http://www.delish.com/recipes/cooking-recipes/quick-low-calorie-cheap-meals

I'm really excited to have my man cooking for me. I'm kind of worried though, too. I don't want him to lose weight with me! He's so skinny I feel that if he lost even a pound he might die. He's 5'10" and 155 pounds. I love him to death but I think I might be making crazy full fat snacks for him and force him to have 5 servings for dinner. Though then he might say I'm his mother and won't want to be with

me anymore. (haha)

So back to weigh loss my first goal is 24 pounds in three months starting when I get back to Hawaii. It's much to hard to even try to exercise here in France. It's raining so much and I don't think french people even know what a gym is. They all just smoke in order to stay skinny. I'm thinking they're all that "skinny fat". I know I'm not fat, I'm not obese, I don't really need to be on a diet and exercising like I will be but I think I will feel better about myself when I can look in the mirror and be happy. I was like that for awhile back in Hawaii but then summer happened and now I just want to be back in Hawaii where it's easy to focus on myself.

Right, France. I should be writing about that since I'm here after all. Like I said, it's raining a lot. Paris was wonderful last weekend. I saw the Louvre (amazing), Notre Dame (very dark inside), the eiffel tower (of course) and Harry Potter. I had too. I'm glad I saw it too. The movie was so sad I cried and the theater in Paris was...ginormous. Absolutely huge. It's the size of two of the biggest theaters in Hawaii. It's like...IMAX size. It's amazing. Oh, and props if you can say why I

took a picture of that red cafe which lies right next to the Moulin Rouge (one of my all time favorite movies).

I love the family I'm staying with here except they left for a week on vacation and left microwave dinners for me. :/ I wouldn't be upset if I actually liked the majority of what they left me. But I have this thing against microwaved fish. It seems sad and usually tastes really nasty. If the fish was grilled I would love it no problem. I feel you should respect fish for giving their life to you to eat and they should not be put in a package for you to eat whenever you feel like it.

LoL

I want to start this post by saying how much i hate LoL and how even the name disgusts me. It has to have an acronym of the common "lol" to symbolize laughing however...LoL is no laughing matter. It sucks the souls of those you love and care about away from you. It creates breakups, fights, and lots of other things besides "lol"ing. I'm upset. You want to know why? LoL. Exactly. My boyfriend, countless number of times, would rather play this game then talk to me or spend time with me. At least that's how I feel. He feels i'm overreacting and he just does it when he has free time. Time to calm down after a stressful day at work. Time to just play with friends. Oh, I understand, however, when that's all you do after work, school, anything else, there's a problem. Our relationship is suffering because of it. So congratulations, LoL, if we break up it will be your fault. So mike, this one is out to you, think about that the next time your "winning" and if it's really worth it. Doubt you'll even read this because you'll be too busy playing. Cheers.

Parlez-vous l'anglais?

Oui! Oh my God. It had been awhile since I've heard a "Yes" to that question.

Today I ventured to Switzerland with my school group here in France. It was...boring actually. There's not much in Switzerland except a big fountain, lots of shopping, people who speak english (amazing), fancy schmantzy hotels and lastly the United Nations building. I kind of wished I had stayed home and studied for my test tomorrow. Who's brilliant idea was it to have a test the day after a national holiday? Not so smart. On top of that I'm really hungry and tired and need to learn to conjugate like...15 verbs. I am unhappy.

My host family is gone which is good and bad. I'm hungry so there's not going to be food until they get back (who knows how long that will be) on the other hand I can study till my heart desires because there is peace and quiet and no little girl bothering me every 5 minutes shouting "regard! regard!" at me. Which by the way means "look! look!"

Happy birthday to Elrik who's always going to be older then me and who will always have his birthday on Bastille Day (which if your in France is a really big deal). Fuck you.

There are a lot of fireworks tonight but I seriously need to study. So I may just go, buy a sandwich and then go back and study. I'm sad that i'll miss the fireworks but hey, there'll be a lot of them in my lifetime.

On a completely different note I really want to enter a word finding contest because I am like the shit at it. I'm super fast. All those plane rides I've taken since I was 4 years old have really paid off. Oh fun fact about me. I have been flying solo ever since I was 4. Pretty cool, huh? I was scared to death about leaving my mom the very first time and I remember these crazy airport dreams I used to have. Pretty wicked. One of them involved little people. But that's for another time. So really I'm writing right now to stall for A. getting food and B. hearing myself speak yet more french. Why can't the whole world just speak one language? Life would be so much easier. I mean, why do we need to have different languages? It just makes a huge issue for almost everyone. I say almost because sadly there are people who never even leave the US or their own country. For them language will never ever be a problem...unless they're deaf. That'd be the one language I might actually be good at. Sign language doesn't involve talking...I probably should've taken that instead of french. Hm...things to think about for the future.

Which reminds me. I have so much to do back in Hawaii. One of those things is learning how to have my own business. My entire family can do it and make a wealthy profit off of it I just hope I don't fail. That would be seriously humiliating. I also don't want to be working for "the man" my entire life. I sure do hope my husband is seriously wealthy or that I'm seriously wealthy. I really care about material things and traveling. In order to have both you really need to have good money. Is that shallow of me?

Ciao,

~mel

If you're sleepin are you dreamin?

if your dreamin are you dreamin of me? Give a hand to Blue October for making my life amazing when I'm in the weirdest moods possible.

Things I love:

• Blue October
• Emo-ness
• Hot pink
• Sitting criss-cross applesauce
• Applesauce
• Lukewarm tea
• Facebook
• Nicknames
• Salami
• Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ben & Jerry Style
• Being alone
• Laughing
• Smiling
• Throwing my phone
• Bipolarness
• Not knowing what mood your in
• Playing the Sims too long and thinking maybe you are actually a Sims character and there is someone clicking and telling you what to do next
• Taking pictures of strange things
• Winning things in spontaneous contests that you entered because there is nothing better to do in your life
• Being left alone
• The rain
• The sun
• The fall with all the leaves different colors
• Avril Lavigne when I'm upset
• Head banging
• Wet, curly hair
• Walking around in my underwear
• Chocolate
• Shoe shopping
• Eating chocolate, feeling fat but still fitting into skinny jeans
• Walking
• and walking
• Did I mention walking?
• StumbleUpon
• Google
• My crazy weird moods that occur when I do nothing with myself

Well, that's all of them...or rather most of them. Why am I telling you this? Because that last bulletin is me right this second. I'm typing but don't know why or about what.

Did you know that some buttons that you press do absolutely nothing for you except make you slightly happier knowing that pressing the button could actually do something? It's true. Scientifically proven and everything. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/

If you love me you'll buy that book for me. Send it to hawaii...oh wait. Don't. I'm homeless. As my mother says, "you'll always have a home here." Funny how I don't even have a room there. *sigh* I'll have an apartment in hawaii soon though. With my man. My man. Not really my man. I don't "own" him.

What's a soul mate? Why does Coca-Cola fuck you up? Why do important, amazing characters have to die in tv shows?

Things I hate:

• Not being able to leave a situation you really want to. This happened to me last night. More about that later
• Boyfriends who obsess over video games more then you
• Crazy girlfriends who are overly protective and treat their boyfriends like shit
• Loving people you can't have and don't want to have
• Loving crazy things
• and people
• Love
• Like
• Therapists
• Long fingernails
• Long toenails
• Running out of chocolate
• Not having enough money
• Having too much money
• Best friends who abandon you
• People who don't have a facebook
• Myspace
• Wall decals
• Pre-furnished apartments for rent
• Fish
• Blood, scary movies and bleeding
• Fainting, me fainting that is
• People who smoke and don't care whether or not the smoking bothers you
• People who don't answer questions fast enough

Trying to write and not being able to think about what to write about because your high on caffeine is pretty up there too.

So last night. I was kidnapped by my host mother. Like, literally grabbed by the arm and had me go with her to a birthday dinner party. They decided that once they were there it was absolutely impossible to be there without me and that I must join them. So they decided to get back in the car and drive back to the apartment and force me to go. By them I mean my host mother and her boyfriend. So that's where I was all of last night. Alongside people who don't speak english and were babbering in french all of last night. Mind you it's babber not blabber. So I was there till 1am and I had been finished and ready to go back before 11pm. It was awful. I was also in the rain today at a marketplace. It's enjoyable to be in the rain alone but not with another 300 people. They all start freaking out and your the only one not freaking out it makes you feel strange.

Well, that's all for now. I entered a photo contest. Results in December. I'll let you know what happens when that time comes.

Love y'all,

~mel

Write

Go, write...you said. Well, voila. I'm writing. Happy now? I'm sure your grinning right about now.

So, onwards. Ma famille en Annecy est interesant? Yesterday I tagged along with my host mother to a grocery store/shopping mall (two in one here). She told me she was going to the market. She should've said "epicerie" but oh well. It was interesting to see how very short french women shop. Instead of carts they have these baskets with wheels that have a handle that extend up so you can drag your basket with you. Kind of cool. The very first thing my host mother

put in her basket was two bottles of extremely cheap red wine. lol. In america when we think wine we think: "elegant, classy,

expensive" but these bottles were about $3 USD each. Cheaper then water in some places in the US. No wonder they drink so much wine. Ice cream is more expensive.

Speaking of ice cream, all I eat here is bread and ice cream. I think I'm going to become extremely fat. Just carbs and vegetables. Lots and lots of carbs and vegetables.

Last night my host mother made a weird combination salad. It had potatoes, green beans and ham. It was weird. I didn't like it too much but I didn't want to insult her. I just filled up on bread and said I wasn't very hungry. I don't like ham. I should've put that down on the "what don't you like" section of my application. Though I must say I like some of the ham here. The have ham with honeydew melons. Very strange combination once again but it's really tasty. Then for desert they always have yogurt or fruit, or a combination of the two.

I also went to the beach with my host family last sunday. I actually saw naked women! Two! I was so surprised. I know I shouldn't be because france is known for the topless sunbathing. But, I still was flabbergasted at actually seeing it take place. By the way, if you ever go to Annecy be

aware that the water is freezing. I stuck my feet in and said, "nope, not doing it" and ran out to fall back asleep in the sun. The coldness on just my feet was enough to cool my entire body.

So besides the explosion I wrote about in my last post nothing extremely exciting has happened.

Besides being on TV that is. Oh? I didn't tell you, did I? My back was on TV. Not once, but twice. How cool is that? They were announcing who was to host the winter olympics in 2018 in Annecy and I was there for it! Well, for the after part of it. They were discussing who won and how they felt about it and everything when I had arrived but I still managed to get on TV. Very cool. I actually managed to get lost on the way there too. I decided to try a short cut which ended up

being the opposite of short. Go figure. So I was wondering around for 20 minutes trying to find a place that should only take 10 to get to. I then managed to buy really expensive, really not so good ice cream. It was not a fabulous time. I then went to a chocolaterie that was out of chocolate. How does that even happen? So I ended up getting a peach milkshake there. 7 euros. Too expensive again. My salami sandwich only costs 3.60. Which means I could afford 2 sandwiches for the price of one milkshake. Crazyness.

It was a tasty milkshake but not worth it. Why did I buy it? To say that I have eaten at a chocolaterie. I didn't eat chocolate though...which is what I actually wanted. ='(

I don't know what to do with myself at nights here. I don't want to spend much money, I'm too shy to go out with people from Hawaii and my only kind of friend here doesn't speak english. So most of the time I just sit in my room waiting for my host family to get home so I can eat and watch some more "Six Feet Under." I am having a really good time though. I love to go out and take pictures of the town. It's incredibly beautiful. I really want to buy a super expensive camera. Or one of the old ones that take amazing pictures. It would be an amazing thing to have

for when I want to take a world cruise. It's expensive though. I figure for mon petit ami and I to go I'll have to save about 10 grand for an 18 day cruise to all the continents, or 20 grand for a month long-116 day long cruise. The 118

day one is ideal, especially during the summer. It would be such an amazing experience to see all the different places. I wouldn't be able to afford it until one or two years though. Maybe more. I'm going to work like crazy and save up in order to go on it. Here's the link to the 18 day cruise I'm contemplating:

http://www.hollandamerica.com/find-cruise-vacation/FindCruises.action?pageNumber=2&destCode=W&flexibleMonths=false&noOfFlexibleMonths=1&sourceName=byRegion&directionCode=W&displayMode=advertising

You can hardly call it a world cruise though because it doesn't cover the entire world. I really want to go to Antarctica too so I'm not sure if that's the one I really want to do. There's another one that is 50 days that I think I would enjoy the most and am planning on saving up for. Of course I wouldn't be able to go on this one because I'll be in school but if there happens to be

another one in the summer time that is similar I would love to go on it.

http://www.hollandamerica.com/find-cruise-vacation/CruiseDetails.action?destCode=W&flexibleMonths=false&noOfFlexibleMonths=1&pageNumber=1&sourceName=byRegion&directionCode=W&voyageCode=A210B&webItineraryIdForAudit=WWW250

All I know is that my boyfriend better love the socks off me if I can save up enough for us both to

go. It would be...amazing in so many ways.

Besides all of this I'm worried about my friend. He seems so, sad. I really want to help him but he won't tell me what's really bothering him. His girlfriend and him are going through a rough patch and that might be what's wrong but I'm not sure. I don't think they're right for each other.

I don't think she's good enough for him but I doubt I'll ever think someone is good enough for him. I'm not sure but I guess he'll figure it out for himself.

There will be more pictures to come. I assure you. Annecy is gorgeous. My absolute favorite

picture that I've taken so far is the one above. I'll be going to Paris in two weeks. I'm pretty excited. I

plan to visit all of the places "Amelie Poulian" was filmed or rather a lot of them. Well I say adieu to you and ciao. Have an absolutely wonderful day or night. =)

France and all things frenchy

Today would be the first full day I am going to have with my host family. Yesterday doesn't count because I did not experience breakfast with them. Let me just tell you about what happened this morning which is the average day of a french family, or so i'm guessing.

So I get up, take a shower (very un-frenchy). The bathtub has no shower curtain. So I'm standing there, naked, and wondering what on earth do I do? Do I sit down and hold onto the nozzle and take a shower/bath, do I stand up and risk getting water all over the floor, or do I sit down and take a bath? I end up doing a mixture of all three. I haven't the faintest idea of what the french do though. I surprisingly did get myself clean...though it took maybe twice as long as it usually does. I just have to get used to it I guess.

I then exit the bathroom, into my room and get dressed. I go to brush my teeth but my electric toothbrush dies. *sadness* I don't think it charged last night and i'll just try again after I'm done with my computer. Here's the electronic set up I have:

European outlet--->european outlet converter plug--->converter--->us outlet plug--->extension cord--->toothbrush and computer.

it's tres complicated....complica i think in french. i know how to say it but not spell it. lol.

So then after attempting to brush my teeth, i brushed my hair successfully and then sat down to have petit dejeuner. or breakfast. it consisted of one slice of a baguette with cheese and confitture or jam, one slice of hard toast with cheese and honey or mais, one jasmine tea and one mixed juice thing in my glass. it was all very delicious. but...i didn't know my host mother was heating up water on the stove so i kind of waited there and then thought maybe they don't have hot tea so i grabbed the cold water off the table and poured it into my glass and put my tea bag in it. lol. so when she moved the pot over to me and i saw the hot water i said, "ooohhhh" and poured out some of my cold water into the sink and let her fill the rest with hot water. ooops my bad.

Then i'm sitting and eating my bread and suddenly "Oops I did it again" comes through the speakers. I started guffawing like crazy. It was super hilarious. Then, if that wasn't enough the entire family starts singing along with britany spears. It was the funniest thing of my life. the funniest thing ever. omg.

After breakfast while talking to my boyfriend my outlet converter set up that I told you about exploded. Like...the conversion thing...started smoking and sparked and it went crazy. so now i'm not sure what to do. I think it's because I had it set to the wrong setting when my stuff was emitting high amounts of electricity and i had the converter set to low. so now it's sitting outside and i'll throw it out once it stops smoking. talk about crazy though. and incredibly scary.

last night the family and i walked around the town and they showed me all the good places to have drinks or ice cream. haha. and what places are open at what times. right now they went to the market and i decided to stay here in the apartment. good thing i did too or else i wouldn't have seen the explosion. that could've been really bad. all the electric stuff still works so i didn't short-circuit the entire apartment which is very good. i'm happy i didn't do that. that would've been awful for sure.

well i'm off to walk around and see new stuff or old stuff or read or do something non-electronically because we all know how that turned out.