Honestly, Now

Cue startling revelation: (why did God invent denial?)

I made it through the first month.

I made it through the first month.

Read it again.

Read it again. You're not thrilled enough.

In celebration, I've had a rotten day and the heavens have opened to pour water down upon the earth in what I can only surmise is nature's way of laughing at me.

Well, you can't have everything.

In a tangent completely unrelated to happiness of any kind, I could begin mentioning school now. Mind you, this is going to sound a lot more interesting than in actually is. I wish my life was as cool and neatly compressed as my blogs are. You read through them and I sound like some sort of French-American superhero. Battling culture shock, one villainous emotion at a time!

(Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh. Um. Yeah, it's a plane. Nevermind.)

Anyway, school.

I suppose the first thing I should mention is that no matter how much sense it doesn't make to you, it's even worse for me. The exchange students here sort of have a motto: "Just go with it." You're not going to understand it right now, if at all, but you'll probably have a blast doing whatever it is. If it's not illegal, that is.

So the first event that springs to mind is how my entire class, boys included, ended up in the girls' bathroom. There's a story to go along with this, I promise.

So what happened was this: yesterday there was a strike. A big, fat, whole-country kind of strike. Naturally, everyone in my high school loves it whe this happens. About half my class was "on strike" themselves, but the half and I attended most of our classes that morning, with the exception of French class, which, as luck would have it, combined with our free periods at 1 to give us a three hour lunch. (I went down to the bakery with some friends and bought cheese pizza. So doing that again soon.)

Naturally, none of us wanted to stay for the afternoon, but our math teacher wasn't on strike, and we were obliged to stay. After math, a few kids went down to the office to ask if we had our next class, TPE, after the free period we were on at the moment, and they told us yes. Cue collective groan. (That class starts at 4 and goes until 6. Yuck.)

So, being the good kids that we are, we dutifully stuck around until the class was supposed to start. Then we waited in the hallway. And waited. And waited. Finally we all decided that enough was enough, and everybody was just going to go home. This worked out splendidly until we got outside, stopped to say goodbye and talk for a little bit, and saw our teacher walk out the front doors. Before he could see us, the twelve or so members of my class that were still there crammed ourselves into a stairwell that has a door leading to the outside. We booked it up the stairs and ran out onto the second floor, then quickly hid ourselves in the first bathroom we saw, and closed the door. After about five minutes of waiting, we decided it was safe, and snuck our way down the stairs, checking around every corner and looking through every window. The second we got outside, everyone broke out into a run to their bus stop.

And nobody thought it was at all strange.

-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-

It's tomorrow, and I've had an even rotten-er day. (Proper spelling and grammar have no place in my mind today.)

So, it's medical. And if you're squeamish, go away. Seriously. Go away.

I had this bump on my toe, which turned out to be a wart (which takes its place as number three on my list of totally gross words). It hurt like crazy, to the point where I was starting to develop a limp so I wouldn't have to walk on it. So, I finally pulled up the courage to tell my host family about it, and we went to the doctor this morning. He took care of it, and can I just say OW. I can safely tell you it will take a broken bone to force me back into that room.

The ending to it all is that I'm lying in bed cursing my misfortune and my body's inability to stay whole and healthy. My toe is throbbing, and I have a newfound respect for chemistry and why my teacher always told us not to let the chemicals touch our skin. Unless, apparently, you've got a PhD. But seriously, not doing that again without either anesthetic or alcohol (which I'm assuming from books and movies preform the same general function.)...

Oh, and I'm not walking anywhere any time soon. Hopefully this will get in the way of my school plans? (Not likely. Irony hates me.)