miss list

so im not as homesick as i used to be. im not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. but i do still crave hearing the familiar voices of the people i love and seeing certain things. the old cliche "you dont know what you got til its gone" is so true.
i fucking hate cliches.
heres my list of things that pulls at my heart strings, in no particular order, except for the first.
DUH.

my dylie boo

mexicans!

mmm..number 16 with.. *DROOOOOOL*

and lastly but DEFINITELY but not least, TAPATIO.

i realized after i put these up that alot of the pictures are weird close up face shots. a littttttle creepy. yeah. sorry. and if you arent up here, then i probably dont miss you. nahh im kiddin. its just that all these were on my computer and im too damn lazy to troll through myspaces and facebooks for pictures.

GOD VERDOMMT!

God Verdommt=god dammit
translated literally from dutch, "god verdommt" [hot fer-domt], means 'god refuses flatly'.
i love literal translations.

me doing the touristy thing. thats the dordogne river behind me.

so i been workin my butt off here at camp moto, and ive already lost some of that nasty british weight! yay! in other news, i got dumped. aint no thang. really.
when i got here, i [stupidly] proclaimed that the only way i would get up on the bar and dance with the stripper pole was if i was 10 beers in and def leppard was on. well surprise surprise, friday night it just so happened i was TWELVE beers to the wind and my song came on. i of course honored my promise, but required martijn, a cutie patootie dutch boy to get up with me. soo fun. he stripped more than i did, and when i refused to take off any more clothes, renske jumped up and whipped off her top. pictures to follow.
yowza.

im very pleased my hair is getting longer. woohoo!

olly. cutest.dog.EVER.

dont mind the dead guy in the background.

on saturday, martijn and gerard [the dutch brothers] and i went to rocamadour. the road there is dotted with caves on either side, offering curious caves and undiscovered nooks and crannies. we passed one of these nooks, and sharply pulled over to explore. hidden from sight was a gorgeous oasis of red soil walls, ferns and ivy crawling up ancient trees. it felt like we were the first to discover this treasure, but the wall told us differently. we added our marks and continued to rocamadour.

yeah i did it. so what.

Bienvenus à la France!

i havent felt as giddy as i did the moment the plane left english soil in a loooong time. sure, i was on the cheapest flight available [meaning ZERO leg room and $5 waters], but it didnt matter. all that mattered was i was leaving england with its horrible people and weather.

i was so nervous about immigration.

when i went from dublin to england, there were these huge lines of people, hardly any of them spoke english, big men with bigger guns, drug sniffing dogs[!], and a bevy of immigration officials who hate their job. but the airport in bergerac [im not even sure you can call it an airport its so small], had none of that.

i stepped off the plane onto the [sunny and warm!] runway, followed the other passengers into what looked like a barn and waited in line. seriously, this room was about 20'x20' had black garbage bags for insulation, a slide from a window for the luggage pick up, and one immigration guy. there was NO security, NO police, NO cameras, and people waiting for passengers could walk in and wait in line with them. ive never seen a smaller airport or such a lack of security, even pre-9/11. but there was still the task of getting a visa. i obviously couldnt say i was coming to work, so i made up bullshit story about meeting a friend in marseille, then travelling through france. i said all this very quickly, very valley girl, and the immigration dude gave me a funny look and stamped my passport. i found out later that he doesnt speak english.

my gite and the surrounding 800 year old cemetary

the inside of my gite [its an old church]

the view from the patio, over looking the empty[for the moment] pool

pietier was waiting to pick me up. shoulder length hair, hip square glasses, he looked the type to run a motorcycle campsite. on the way to camp moto, he took me the backroads so i could see all the chateaus in the region. the land is absolutely breathtaking. we soon got to the site, and i met reinske, his wife. her english isnt that good, but everything she says is hilarious and filled with enthusiasm.

reinske, pietier, and the bar

lets see- im gona try an cliffsnotes this because im getting tired and so much has happened in the past few days it would take forever to type.

rocamadour

i went to rocamadour and saw the black mary. rocamadour is an old hermitage built into the side of a mountain, and the black mary is this really really old statue from 300AD. i learned how to roll cigarettes[not very well though], how to play darts with igor, their friend from holland[unlike rolling cigarettes, i am very good at darts], got into a bilingual argument with and old man[him speaking french, me speaking english, neither of us understanding the other] over who was next for the bathroom, and got really, really drunk. for free. a couple of times.

ITS OVER!! FOR FUCKS SAKE ITS OVER!!!

England sucks
Its official
Bits and pieces of it are nice, but theyre like diamonds in a turd. Your excited to find em but youre still surrounded by shit.

When I got here, I would go out to the garage nearly every night and cry and cry and cry.
I didn’t know why then, but now I realize it was because something about this place reached into my very being and wrenched out every little bit of sunshine I smuggled in from California.

Bexhill nearly killed me. Granted, I did meet G while I was staying there. I guess you have to take the sweet with the sour.

The last three weeks while I was staying in Worcester [like the sauce], I slept in until about 2pm everyday.
Some people might call me lazy, but I call it relaxation. I was having a proper, peaceful vacation. When you remember that everyday for the past 7 months ive been getting up at 6 am to tend to little devil spawns, and for the next 4 months im going to be working at a campsite, those three weeks are well earned.
Im really looking forward to france.

At the moment im on the train to stansted international airport. Im not nervous about the flight, or the people im going to be working with or for, but im terrified of what im going to say to immigration when they ask why im going to france and how long I intent to stay there.
You see, the problem is, when I landed in England from Dublin, nobody at immigration looked at my ticket, let alone my passport, so I never got a visa stamp. Incidentally, it would appear on the pages of my passport that ive been in Ireland for the past 7 months. I sincerely hope nobody checks this, otherwise im probably on my way home. It wouldn’t be so bad. I know of a few people who would be over the moon at news of my return.
Im determined to get to france.
If I don’t get to france, the chances of me getting to Amsterdam before I leave are slim to none- and I aint settling for that shit.

dont scratch dont scratch

yowza!

its been ten days since ive posted and a whole lotta nuthin has happened.

valentines day was very nice. the fam left for vacation on friday, so G came over and spent the weekend. lil sweetheart got me a super cool andy warhol watch, a box of chocolates, and a rather sassy card. the mood was put off a bit because i had a strange pain on my side and back. that little pain turned into a full blown case of shingles!

woo hoo!

so at the moment im dealing with sporadic excruciating pain shooting across my back.

a bit ironic, seeing as at the end of next week im leaving the pains in my ass[the kids, not the boyfriend ;) ] but in exchange i get a pain in my back.

im going to the doc tomorrow so hopefully he'll hook it up with some sweet pain meds.

[no pics this post but stay tuned]

if this boats a rockin..

whoaaa.

way fun weekend!

went to shoreham with G to a crazy party on this famous houseboat. i met andys awesome chick alice, got rip roarin drunk, met a lithuanian pirate and surprisingly i didnt fall off the boat! woohoo!

there was a lot of gypsy like folk there. normally this wouldnt be my thing, but mel, my friend andy's roommate, is such a fantastic singer. seamus, the oddball owner of the boat was wildly playing his off tune piano while mel sang above it all. think coco rosie with janis joplin.

the next morning came unwelcome. G and i crashed in one of the rooms on the boat, and were abruptly awoken at the ungodly hour of noon by earsplittingly loud portuguese mariachi music.

so not cool after an entire bottle of jack.

hey that chick looks like me.

they gave me a sword.

tsk tsk.

hmm so not much goin on here. when youre flat broke its hard to be interesting. personality only goes so far. luckily my personality mileage is low with G, so he still foots the bill so long as i bring a smile to his face.

last weekend we went to this lovely [yes, LOVELY] hotel in brighton. lots of people were in town for the brighton tattoo convention [including us], so it was nice seeing some normal people about. i was little miss grumpy pants all day because again, im flat broke, and couldnt afford any new ink. :( it was fun all the same. the drinks were flowing and i made a bunch of new friends. while outside having a smoke, i learned how to swear in south african [afrikaans?], and that there ARE decent people in england, contrary to my popular belief. apparently, i also made friends with some hells angels! i didnt remember that at all until i was scrolling through the pictures. couldve ended badly, but im a total charmer after a few libations[see picture].

hah.

as soon as i stepped off the train from brighton, it started snowing like mad.

ugh.

it didnt stop until a few hours ago.

snow sux.

no word yet on any plans for jobs. my friend with family in london is checking stuff out for me, so hopefully ill find something. if not, then im either homeward bound or its off to france.