For better??

Ahhh... deep breath. Right now is is sunday afternoon, and I am so glad to be writing. I no longer get any internet on my mac, so all my recent blogs have been written from the library at school. I miss blogging every night, it was theraputic to reflect on each day, and keep everyone posted on my life! Right now I am home bymyself, and I have no hurry, so you may want to grab a bowl of popcorn, because I am going to fill you in on absolutley every detail of my life.
Ill start where I left off on friday afternoon. Before I forget I want to metion, that friday for lunch I brought left over pizza. I forgot that everyone here eats pizza with a knife and fork, so I didnt bring any cutlery. I got so many strange looks when I ate it with my hands, I think I may have actually offended people!
In the library afterlunch, I made it through my first lunch perod in the library without getting yelled at by a lunch supervisor. Remember the lunch ladies in elementary school that made sure you didnt trade lunches, take off you jacket outside, or talk to loudly? The lunch ladies at this school are almost worse. You cant carry purses or binders in the library, if you are working at a computer, it HAS to be homework (they come and check. Luckily for me, everything I do is in english, so i can copy and paste my blogs from microsoft word and tell them its an essay for my online course) you have to ask for permission to use a computer, and they have to sign you in with a password. It is exhausting to try and learn all the rules!
Speaking of Rules, here are some more in-outs:
In
*Marie- ________ ( I have met 4 Marie- eve's, a Marie- pier, a marie-philipe, and a marie christine. I have also seen the names Marie- Helene and Marie- Michele. Im not sure why marie- ________ names are so popular, but they really are!)
* Tanning. (It is acceptable to be a toasty shade of brown, and no one will critisize. Ive honestly been considering it myself, and am inconclusive as to whether or not this is something I want to try. There are a lot of pros, and a lot of cons)

Out
*LuLuLemon (It makes me a little bit sad that no one is impressed by any of my LuLon stuff, but no one even knows what it is!)

Thats it for now! I think I have observed most of the popular and not popular stuff, and no new trends are starting! (I will mention that a girl tried to wear a hippie headband to school yesterday. She didnt pull it off, and it remains on the out. I also want to mention that scarves to not quite make the in list, but not quite make the out list. They are neutral, I like them, so I wear them a lot!)

Friday after school I was exhausted again, and it was not a good night. I came home to the sisters bickering. I dont know what they were arguing about, but it drove me crazy. Im sure they werent being unreasonable, but Im not used to sisters, and I have never had to listen to arguing like that before. After dinner, I had to shine my army boots again. I fought back tears the entire time. I was so tired, and to have to put so much effort into something I absolutley could not care less about was frusterating. I had to redo it like ten times, because it wasnt right, or a didnt shine one side with my breath. I then had to go get ready for cadets. Hair, band-aids the whole she-bang. I think I would enjoy cadets 100% more if it didnt take hours of preparation, ironing, shining, band-aiding, makeup removing. It is just too much for me!
Cadets wasnt that bad, for the first half we listened to presentations, and were given instructions for our assignment. Everyone has to prepare a fifteen minute lesson for the class. Everyones is on army things, but they said i could choose any topic I wanted. The presentations are my last week here, and I am not sure if I am going to do it. I was honestly kind of thinking I might honorably drop-out of cadets after the band concert in march, but this presentation could be a good goal to keep me motivated and excited to go. The people in cadets are all really nice, but I am in a lower class than all my friends, so I dont really get to visit them anyway. It is really weird, because Julie is my section sargent, so she orders my class around and does the uniform checks. PS. Uniform checks: Most intimidating thing of my life. They didnt check me on friday because it was my first official time as a cadet, but I almost cried watching it. You have to stand perfectly still, while a person with a clip-board 360s you. They then ask to see your belt and make sure you are wearing the right socks, tell you what you need to fix and give you a grade. Remind me to be sick for next week so I dont have to face that!! It was also really funny in cadets on friday, because they refer to everyone as Cadet ________ (last name). No one can really pronounce Schram, so I am Cadet Shrom. Hehehe, it makes me laugh!
After the class on friday, all the cadets had a paper airplane contest. I really dont know how i feel about it. It was a paper airplane contest. What can I say?? We then had a 'parade' which is everyone standing in lines getting yelled at to march here or there. Its tiring, and you have to stand perfectly still. I always feel clostrophobic, and it hurts my knees.
After cadets, I came home and went straight to bed, I was so tired and Saturday morning had to be up for Cadet Band at 9:00. I feel like Cadets ads 1.5 more days of school to my week. 3.5 hours friday night, 6 hours saturday. I think this could be part of the reason I dont enjoy it as much as I could. No matter how much you like school or work, you dont want to have to go for an extra 9 hours.
Band is good though, and I enjoy it a lot more than actual cadets. We are preparing for the big band festival in Three Rivers at the end of march (and yes, in true cadet style, it is 2 nights. Maybe the reason the cadets have so many ovenights is so if the grow up and join the army, they wont get homesick). The music is easy, but the band doesnt take it very seriously. It is fun to play in, because my music at home is so serious. Yesterday did get a little bit more serious than usual though, because I am taking a band test at the band festival. It is for my level three clarinet. Level three isnt that hard, but considering I only have 2 weeks to memorize 2 songs, 29 scales and a shitload of theory (which I am going to attempt to do in french- thats why im here!), level three is hard enough for me!
After cadets, I finally got in my good long run outside. I did nine miles, just kind of running around the suburb. It was a beautiful day out, so the run was really good, and my new coat was awesome. There are a lot more hills here than at home though, so it was hard, and by the last mile, I was dead! I have to say my favorite part was probably just the independance the run gave me. It was nice to be able to explore a little bit by myself and finally get my area in perspective a little bit.
Last night was Julies birthday party, so all her friends from cadets came over. It was a fun night because I knew everyone, and we sang Disney Karaoke. We laughed a lot and the only bad part of the night was a joke went very wrong. The guys went out to get drinks, and called saying theyd been caught by the police for driving drunk. They thought it was funny, but their girlfriends were in tears. Sometimes I just dont understand boys. . .
After that we watched high school musical 3, but I was falling asleep, so I headed up to bed! This morning, I woke up and went to the gym to cross train. I am so exhausted after two days of intense workout, but it feels really good to have such a big goal and be working so hard to acheive it. This afternoon, I had the option to go shopping and visit with the grandparents, but I opted just to stay home and relax. I just needed some good 'me' time to decompress after such a busy week and weekend. Tonight, Julie and I are going to her friends house, along with all the other girls from cadets, for supper. I am looking forward to this, and I am glad I've had the afternoon to relax, so I wont be exhausted tonight.
This coming week should go by fast, because Its only 4 days, and one of those days is the art field trip, and the other is Julies Birthday. I think maybe this week just because Ive been so tired, Ive been thinking a lot about when I get home. I just need to make sure that I have little things to look forward to in order to keep me going, and next weekend I am officially half way done! Time this first half flew by, and I live my life with the constant that the second half always passes faster than the first!
It is really weird, because I had a conversation with a girl studying here from the Maritimes that said she liked it here way better than at home. She said she missed her friends, but other than that she liked it better here. This struck me as really bizzare. I knew that for better or for worse, I am in Quebec for three months. But it never even crossed my mind that I could like Quebec better than home. I miss my family and friends to much to ever want to be able to stay here forever, but I wonder if other than that, It is possible for me to like it here more than I like it at home. I think maybe that will be my project for the week, to try and shake my bias and assess whether or not it is possible to actually like Quebec more than I like it here.
It felt good to write this! I don't really get to share silly little details of my life with anyone here, and I have missed doing it on my blog! ( I actually really hope that at least one person ate popcorn while reading this. To train for the marathon, I have cut all junk out of my diet, with the exception of one treat a week. Usually, I have a craving for chocolate this once-a-week treat, so I have not had popcorn in about 6 weeks. That is an all time record for me. I love popcorn.)

For better or for worse,
Carly