It's more like a stab to your gut...

Wow so the whole homesick is kicking in today. I think it has something to do with the weird dream I had last night that woke myself up from crying and I was still tired when I got up. We went to the Carnival parade which was cool, but was also cold and crowded which took away from me be happy to be there. Afterwards, though we went to a little cafe place and had some warm drinks which was nice and relaxing. I called my parents (or tried) when I got back, got to talk to my brother for a bit while they were on their way home. He forewarned me that my mom was considering traveling with me to Italy when I go over spring break, but my dad talked her out of it (she mentioned something about it to me, too, but I said, "Yeah, but that would be more expensive...and I don't speak any Italian...") I think she got it. But it was nice to talk to them.

I think it's been harder than I anticipated just because nothing's really going on right now. I have no work, classes, etc to distract me from the fact that I'm here and not there, and I really felt fine until today and it was just like BAM have some sad time. Hopefully I'll get creative this week and start actually planning things ahead of time instead of waiting to see what's up. I'm hoping to visit Versailles sometime this week with some of the other girls and figure out some more day trips since we're supposed to be on vacation. Anything to distract me from my own thoughts for an hour or two.

On a lighter note, I visited a museum the other day with my host sister and mother and enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed any other museum in my life, which surprised me. We went museuming because my host sister had offered to go with me earlier and then was feeling really bummed about a guy so I figured it would help cheer her up if we got out of the house. We went to the Musee Gustave Moreau which is just two floors, three large rooms, of Moreau's work. It was really amazing to see an entire room (well, 3+ rooms) of one artist's work together. Every wall was covered in large tableaus, smaller series, and in the middle of each room were cases with pull-out frames of more of his work. In two rooms, there were displays of all of his sketches, as well, which I really like, to be able to see the whole process right there... The works themselves were really inspiring, too. He was really into detail, so many of his paintings have ink outlines of things he was going to add later, especially bedazzled jewelry and embroidery. Mostly his work was realistic, well, the people looked realistic, the subjects or scenes themselves were mostly mythical or biblical, which I tend to prefer over abstract art, tho he had some of that, too. Mostly, I liked the intricacy of his details and his scenes (one painting was probably 10' x 6' and had over 50 different women and 3 different cities intermingled) and the colors were very bright. Looking at Moreau's work - the sketches in particular - kind of made me go, "What am I doing with my life that I'm not doing this?" I'll more than likely break out the sketchbook this week.