The Last Day of Class.

On Friday, I had my last french class before the Christmas Break, I have been taking classes at the Institute Parisien <http://www.institut-parisien.com/ > three times a week for the past few months. It is a good course totally in French, and I am lucky enough to not be surrounded by English speakers. While most of the girls speak english, it is not their first language and so when they cheat and ask questions to each other, it is normally in German or Spanish so I am not tempted to listen. That's not to say I don't cheat and ask questions in English, but at least I am not surrounded by it. The girls and I went out for a crepe lunch after class because it was Austrian Sarah's last day in Paris.

The place we went to lunch was very cool, it was like the interior of a tall ship and I felt like a sailor sitting amongst my classmates. Becca, my Latina friend was taking pictures and the result is as follows:

Me, playing with my food.

Our booth.

We had really a really good crepe meal, including a lunch crepe (onion, cheese, and tomatoes) and a dessert crepe (L'Italienne, with Marron Cream and Whipping cream) and some hearty Cidre for the holidays.

Annika getting creative with her second chocolate crepe.

She had a tummy ache.

Civilization Christmas Party

The Cafe de Commerce

Last night I met up with our family friend Keith and I was able to show him around a bit and talk about myself way too much. I really give him props for putting up with my teenager rambling for a whole evening. We went for a walk to Rue de Commerce where Keith showed me a beautiful, three floored balcony restaurant.

Cafe, photo from website.

 
Their wesbite: http://www.lecafeducommerce.com/. It was very cool and my first time in a real restaurant in about a month. Keith and I both had the French Onion Soup, and it was definitely the best french onion soup I have ever had. With baguettes, onions and cheese inside and a layer of cooked shredded frommage on the top it was incredible. I had Raviole for dinner and we still don't know what Keith ordered. It was solid cheese in a cylinder shape with red leaf lettuce on the top. I hope he will send me pictures and I can put them up. It was great. 

It was so nice seeing someone from home and it was just a taste of what the next fews weeks will bring. Julie, Terri, Mark AND Kaitlyn, in three weeks?! Incroyable!

Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Blogging again from my phone because I left my laptop upstairs while babysitting. So I am currently watching Alvin and the Chipmunks and Frankenstein and I am playing the part of lightening the mood because it's a bit scary for my 6 year old.

Updat on the movie: Frankenstein just brought back Theodore's teddy bear. The chipmunks just rapped about monsters, Alvin is the Bart Simpson of the Chipmunks, and their dad-figure is pretty good looking for a cartoon.

I think I am going to go pick up a Camus book from the hallway and try to translate it from French. But if it is anything like the Metamorphisis from last year... I don't think I will get very far.

The Doctor's Appointment.

I just got back from a doctors appointment at the office located in our building. Now, this whole time I have been feeling pretty good about myself, living in my own place, watching kids regularly and taking care of the few bills I have. But today, more than anything I felt like a second grader. I have a sinus infection, which isn't that big of a deal, and my host mom has been helping me so  much with it. She has been buying me pain killers and treatments and she set up my doctors appointment for me.

I won't go into the details of my cold like I did for my dear friend back home, but I will say that this cold has made me realize how unexperienced I am in life. At the doctors today I really wanted my mom there. Right when I entered the receptionist looked at me very oddly like I was lost and I had to repeat myself three times to have her understand me. (This, I am blaming on my clogged up nose voice). I felt so idiotic making the doctor repeat himself once or twice because I couldn't understand him and I knew he just looked at me as though I was some stupid American teenager, which I am. But it wasn't nice to be reassured of it. Just this little experience made me feel so ridiculous that I have returned to my little abode (where I have spent the last two days while not at work) to hopefully skype someone and complain a bit on the blog.

Disneyland Paris.

Yesterday, four British girls and myself went to Disneyland Paris and if I had not known these girls better, I would have scared them off permanently with my Disney facts and comparisons. The entire day I tried checking myself so that I wouldn't keep saying "THIS is not how it is in California." "Oh, at my Disneyland this is how it is." Unfortunately I was probably pretty annoying regardless. It was very hard not to say anything though because it was as if I had come back to my room which used to be so familiar, and someone had rearranged all the furniture. It had all of the little areas, but the locations were a bit off and the decorations were different.
My comparisons will really mean nothing unless you are someone like Amanda Schwab or Kaitlyn Goodman, but I will put them up anyways.

Probably the coolest changes DisneyParis made were: making Space a better roller coaster by adding loops and corkscrews, adding a dragon beneath the castle (you can also go in the castle to see the Sleeping Beauty story untold through mosaic windows and statues), and Indiana Jones was a roller coaster instead of an indoor ride. They also added some cool locations like Captain Hook's ship, Skull Rock, an Aladdin Walkthrough and a Wonderland Maze. The castle is much more beautiful in my opinion because they designed it trying to impress Europeans, who see castles every other Friday and not Americans who only dream of castles.

They kept the cheesy wild west feeling on the train around the park, and even have the model of the Grand Canyon and the stuffed animals, but it was a totally different experience to see snow on the ground and feel my toes catching hypothermia while being in "New Orleans."

I didn't have a camera with me but I might steal some photos from my friend Charlotte and put those up.

The Comedy Show.

Just got back from a very hilarious one man show called "How to Become Parisien in One Hour." It made fun of Parisien people almost as much as it made fun of Americans. It was very funny because he took everything that I have noticed as an Ex-Pat and as an American and dramatized it.

With that and finishing Sense and Sensibility, it was a very nice day.

The weather.

I have never lived in an area where it snows. I have vacationed in the mountains, I have skiied and snowboarded, but I have never lived in it. So you can imagine my excitement when the first snow of the season came yesterday on Thanksgiving for a whole minute.

It is funny how excited I am by the cold weather. I know in a couple months times I will probably be sick of it and wanting my sunny February Orange County weather, but right now it is just thrilling. Walking down the street yesterday when it started getting dark, I saw the Christmas lights being put up and shops posting Pere Noel in their windows. The frosty air nipped at my face and I felt like I was in a movie in the beautiful surroundings. To be honest, I actually felt like I was in New York, not Paris, and my brother Matt pointed out that this was probably because so many movies are set in New York for the Holidays.

It is getting so cold that I started sleeping with two blankets, and a radiator on. Before I would occasionally wake up with a shiver down my spine because of the cold, and it would just remind me that I am in a place so different from my home, it would get me really excited. With the blankets and radiator it is so toasty and I can cuddle up with hot chocolate and watch an old movie or read Sense and Sensibility ( I have become obsessed with the classics lately). Plus, I have been become very fond of coffee, so I can drink a warm mocha in my room, or go to a cafe and just sit and read for hours and just enjoy the warm seasonal happiness that you get from watching people outside in the cold with their shopping.

My host mom has been so nice to me, she bought me a huge white pillowy jacket that is super warm, because she knew I didn't have any warm clothes, and they have been very concerned with how my rooms deals with the cold.

It is also the start of Museum Season, where there are fewer crowds, and because it's too cold to go outside, you can find peace in a Museum for a few hours. My friends have just got here and now we are off to the Rodin Museum and if time allows: Les Invalides.

Ciao!

The Orsay.

After class today I met up with Laura and Hannah outside of the metro to spend a couple of hours at the Orsay. I thought that it might be free for us, but it was only 5.50 euros so it wasn't too bad. I am not crazy about sculptures but the whole bottom floor was covered in them. It was a lovely picture though because the roof is very high and made out of glass.

We finally got to the impressionists and that was what I really enjoyed. The light colors, the friendly faces and the details forming the farther you got back were great. My favorite were by far the pastels of the clouds by Monet. I think he got it right. Nothing is more simple and more beautiful than clouds on a warm day.

At the back of the hall there was a doll sized working replica of the Versailles cut in half, so you could see the inner workings of the shifting ballroom/opera house, and the various rooms of the Palace. It was very cool having learned about the floor at the palace and coming to the Orsay to see the mechanics behind it.

Museum count: 8

My immediate life in pictures.

View from my window.

 My adorable lock.

 The hallway outside my room.

 My sketchy elevator.

 From the roof. :)

 Also from the roof.

 The Marionettes show on the Champs des Mars. 

Monday.

Oh, I was just googling for somewhere to develop my disposable camera film in Paris and I came upon a horrendous blog of a teenage girl just posting the same thing over and over again with a million pictures of her in the same pose (overexposed, holding the camera so it looks down over you head).

Anyways, tonight I am sitting here babysitting and really enjoying my chat with my mother. The boys went to bed without a fight and it's great having my mom online because if I want to say something out loud I can, but we don't have to keep up a constant stream of conversation. I don't feel like I am entertaining anyone. :)

Also tonight while I was mulling around online I saw that one of my au pair friends booked a flight back home for Christmas, and how she is counting down until March. I feel so grateful that I have not had a ridiculous urge to count down my time here and am really enjoying this. While I might not always be out and about, I always enjoy just looking outside my window and seeing the city. So glad I have a window, because today it was much too cold to go outside and enjoy the streets. Freezing rain drops and wind chill are definitely not something I am used to. I guess I will need to buy a coat...

The Weekend.

I feel like I am in a routine. I have been wanting a routine for a while now, in my head I figured that would be when I felt at home. I do feel at home, and I am comfortable. And yet now I am realizing that in my routine, I am not doing as much as I would. So, I am laying out a plan of action for tomorrow. This weekend, while I am glad I did it this way, I did very little.

Friday night I went out with my Australian friend Liz and stayed out until breakfast. I slept for two hours, headed off to work, came back and slept until around 5:00pm. For three hours I mulled around cleaning and watching TV, left to go babysit and came home and went to bed at midnight.
Today:
I slept in until 11, I made myself breakfast, I wrote one college essay, I finished the state school applications, I finished a book then I went to babysit and made 40 euros. Not a bad day really... But it had nothing to do with Paris.

So tomorrow, after I drop the boys off I am going to head straight to the Musee de Orsay, hopefully find some inspiration, chill at a cafe and brainstorm Part 2 of the UC application before heading back to work.

I have written it down, it's going to happen along those lines.

AHHHHHHHHHH!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The City.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down.

No, London Bridge isn't that cool. Tower Bridge is where it's at. Anyways, I had a lovely time staying with a Miss Strupat over this past week and I was able to do all the possible touristy things London has to offer to a student with limited financial means. I began reading Great Expectations on my train ride over and am now almost finished. I have to say that it is a great book and it was made so much better by the fact that the main character arrived in London and was continually mentioning the places I was right by. Literally, he described the dome of Saint Paul's, and I happened to be sitting in a Tea Shop across the street looking at it. Possibly the best way to read a book.

I will post pictures of my London journey as soon as I develop my photos. Which could possibly take some time.

A long post about my first two days in London. Not a creative title.

So you know all those photos I was promising with my snazzy new camera?

My camera was stolen/lost today and now I am bummed and now there will be no nice photos of me with the Tower Bridge or with Peter Pan's statue. But I have already complained to my mother, my best friend and now my blog so I am officially moving on.

Other than that, my holiday has been going splendidly. I have been staying at Lizzie Strupat's and it is so nice to be with someone from home. When I first saw her I almost screamed. She has been keeping up her creative spirits (I mean, she is going to school for that purpose) and she has been coming out with great work.  I arrived late Saturday night and we stayed up late talking and catching up. Sunday we went to the vintage area to go shopping and we ran into the weekly street market which was very, very cool. Hipsters were selling things out of suitcases and people were selling DVDs for 2 pounds each. We walked past a picket line to go into a vintage store where I bought an adorable dress that hopefully will fit my sister.

Today was my second day in London, and yet I still expected it to be like Paris. I still said "Pardon" on the metro and I still call it the "metro." Yet, it is, obviously, very different from Paris. For example, the metro is called the tube... why? Because it is literally a tube and the car we ride in looks like a giant tube worm. Other differences that are very apparent yet not expected: London is much dirtier, the Thames is mud colored and my eyes sting after a day of tube traveling and walking. London is much bigger, four times the size of Paris. This may be the reason it is so much dirtier and definitely why it takes so much longer to get places on the tube than in Paris. There are many more large buildings here, whereas in Paris, there is one, and it stands out like a sore thumb and everyone hates it. People dress in brighter colors here. People dress warmer here. People speak English here.

Now these might all seem like obvious statements, but all of which have taken some getting used to none the less.

Tomorrow I do a tour of the major sights in London, which I guess I will buy a disposable camera for the occasion. :( and yet :)

Oh hey.

This week has been genuinely awesome. I tried blogging mid week but the post didn't save so I got frustrated and gave up. Great things have been happening this week.

My package arrived from the states bringing me Jelly Bellys, more black flats ( I go through about a pair a month because of all the walking), my new camera (which is awesome by the way, pictures will be up soon), and the Harry Potter movies, thank you Jones family. After the arrival of the package everything has been workign out great. I won't write in more detail because I have to go meet my friend at the Luxembourg Garden and we are then heading off to a museum.

Cheers.

The Shower Thoughts.

Life is what happens between showers, and you think about it during showers.

Love you Mom.

The Champ des Mars.

You see the most interesting things on a daily basis in Paris. I saw these two interesting things (people?) while reading the firts Harry Potter to one of the boys I watch.

Now, it's difficult to see because I took this with my phone and then cropped it buuuuuutttttt: look closely. There is a very old woman wearing a hat worthing of Gaga on a sunday in the red oval. In the yellow circle you'll see (maybe not) a woman in a full ballgown doing a fashion shoot.

Just another day on the Champ des Mars.

Friday Night.

As I promised a Miss Goodman that I would set an alarm to stop ready at 11:00 so that I would get some sleep, I have stopped reading and will now blog. :)

This weekend was my first weekend off, and it was delightful. One Friday night we went to the Pont des Arts and shared some wine with some good au pair friends and met some new friends. Tipsy, we got onto the metro to explore some pubs. It was really funny for us. I am sure anyone around must have been pissed, but regardless we ran into one of the cars as the doors were slamming shut only to realize we left two people behind. We adventured around like this for a while, laughing our heads off the whole time when Meg and I decided to head back in order to not miss the last metro.

Waiting for metro as we waited for the rest of our party.

After we got back we sat down on a corner to chat for a minute before returning home and we had two french boys come up to us and hand us a DirectSoir, a free newspaper from the metro. They were bored and handing them out. We goofed around and passed them out as well when we got tired and sat down once more. At this point we had someone offer us marijuana. (Prop 19). We politely declined and shortly after we had several different groups of people ask us to come clubbing. We decided it was a little late for us and we headed on our way home.

Saturday was great as well, but now it's time for me to sleep for Monday.

The Plage.

Cuuuute. I have a sore throat, and blister like sores on my hands and feet which make walking around Paris very uncomfortable. Apparently I  caught the bug that only children are supposed to catch and adults with low immune systems. I am going to assume this is because I was still getting over my last cold. So tonight I am staying in, drinking fluids and sleeping.

The OFII.

After waiting for three hours to get my papers process for five minutes I found out that my trip to London is canceled because I can't leave the Schengen Area until after I have had my medical appointment which is scheduled for November. Run on sentence? Maybe. Regardless: sad day.

I can still travel because I have a week off at the end of the month, but now I don't have a destination or friends to visit. Looking for a travel buddy. :)

Last Set of Versailles Photos.

Camera camera camera.

Mother dearest sent me a package in the mail that I am very excited to receive. I should probably wait to blog about it gets here, but I am too excited because it has my new camera in it! The Sony TX5. Waterproof, shockproof and still cute. I will be able to put up more photos once I get it and I can bring it with me when we going skiing this winter or take pictures even whens it is raining out. YAY!

The rooftop, the phone and the Playboy Bunnies.

This is an exciting post for me. It's the first time I have blogged on my rooftop where I eat lunch because of it's superior view, and it is the first time blogging from my phone. Very exciting.
As I walked to the local Carrefour to buy my favorite trailmix cereal and soymilk, I sas this woman with a cheap looking blue dress that defined hips that were too large for paris and black heels. I walked on to the store. When I walked back from the store with my favorite trailmix cereal I saw this woman sitting in a cheap car with another tacky woman and playboy bunny stickers covering the car.
Unfortunately hookers actually exist here so I have not worn my red lipstick that I was becoming so fond of before I left.

The Puppy.

Today I saw a little poodle puppy standing on the street by itself looking around for love. It had no collar and it looked at me with such big eyes.

Saddest thing I have seen since I have been here.

Catacombs.

Dead bodies. Everywhere. Went down 130 steps and was in a tunnel 45 minutes long. It was a lot of fun going with friends, because we were able to make jokes and we had people to talk to. But I think that if I had gone by myself I would've been thoroughly creeped out.
Bordering the passageways of the tunnels were skulls arranged in a pattern and bones piled up according to type of bone. It makes you wonder who arranged them in the hearts and crosses we saw. Very cool experience.

The Fairytale Garden.

The garden of Versailles and Marie Anotoinette's village honestly felt as if it had come out of a fairytale. It was very weird that I had seen this type of thing before... at Disneyland, and here it was still running as a farm and garden. We met up with some friends and then shared some wine by the huge canal that Louis had built because he admired Venice.

 I hate pictures of horses. So I took one.

 Plants growing out of the roof.

 As a wedding photographer it's hard to get over these cheesy bridges.

 I am pretty sure that is where Cinderella or Snow White lived.