Bretagne

Hahahah, so yes, it is spelled “Bretagne” afterall. Not “Britanny” or “Brittany” or whatever I wrote before! That’s a little embarrassing. Oh well hahah. 

It is 11pm and I am back in my bed in Paris and I am pretty tired so this blog will not be very detailed, but I hope you enjoy it anyways. 

I just got back from a very interesting, beautiful, and relaxing week on the coast in Bretagne with Cecile and Prune. I didn’t know what to imagine when I was invited, so I tried to just keep an open mind and bring warm enough clothes so as not to freeze to death, and that turned out to be the best thing I could have done! Bretagne is a region in the North Westernish area of France and Fred’s mom owns a house there that the family likes to visit whenever they have a bit of vacation time. I knew I wouldn’t have internet, so I packed a lot of warm clothes and books and decided to spend the week living as “in the moment” as possible, and I am glad I did so. I don’t know what my week would have been like if I had used my phone every now and then, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything too important.

I am honestly about to fall asleep hahah oh my goodness. Okay. So the house that we stayed in was very very close to the beach (maybe a five minute walk away) and it was also close to a little trail that takes you up onto the cliffs above the beach, so I got up to run every morning and it was soooo refreshing. It was cold and windy and so so so clean there! It felt so amazing to escape the city for a week and breathe in super clean air and not worry about cars hitting me. Also, everyone in Bretagne would greet me with a nice smile and “bonjour” when I ran past them and I loooooved that so much. 

 

 

Other than admiring the spectacular scenery (which is probably how we spent most of the week) we also, of course, made time to eat churros by the ocean. 

 

And, pick blackberries...

 

And build sand castles...

 

And make daisy-chains!

 

During the end of the week, it got pretty rainy in Bretagne so we went to an Aquarium where we watched and octopus eat some shrimp, saw some sharks swimming around, and almost died on a submarine ride. Woohoo! 

 

 

The aquarium was near a city that Cecile said I absolutely MUST see since we were so close, and I am so happy she took me there! It was a really cool old city that is surrounded by a big wall so it looks like a castle and the whole inside is filled with cobblestone streets and adorable shops and restaurants. We didn’t stay long, but just being able to see a city like that was exciting for me because that is something I will never find in the US! 

We also went on a horse tour thing one day! It was all in French and I was pretty confused about what we were doing there or why the place existed, but the horses were pretty cool and the buildings were nice and from what little French I could understand of the tour, I learned some interesting things! 

 

 I hope you can tell that I had a great week. I feel like I got a lot closer to Prune this week too, for she began to make me pinky-promise her daily that I am her sister. I can’t believe how generous Cecile was to invite me on a trip like that. I don’t think she even realizes how much she does for me that isn’t at all necessary but makes me feel so at home. 

Also! During my week without internet, I managed to complete reading my first chapter book in French! It was probably written for fifth graders, but I managed to stay engaged enough to finish the book all by myself, and I feel pretty proud hahah. Learning feels so good. 

Tomorrow I will get up and take a train to the South of France with Prune and I am looking forward to it! Right now, however, I really need to sleep hahaha. Good night! 

 

 

 

Quick Little Post

Hello! So in about an hour or so I will be heading off to Britanny with my wonderful host family and I am super stoked about that! I did, however, just find out that I will have no internet access there for a week, which is fine except that I won’t be able to post a blog on Sunday, So I am doing a tiny one right now! 

I don’t have long to write, but I want you all to know that I have had a happy week here in my French world, exploring Parisian cafes and speaking in French to whomever will talk to me hahah. This week it began to get cold. I MEAN COLD PEOPLE. It was in the 40s for most of the week and I had to rush around buying whatever cheap warm things I could find because the first two cold days made it difficult to walk without curling up in a ball in the middle of the street and crying. With the help of my friends and Cecile, I was able to find some warm layers and a warm coat and the actual warmest gloves in the world. If I had a best friend this week, it was those gloves hahah. 

One nice thing about being cold in Paris is that you are only cold if you are walking somewhere. I have to walk to a lot of places, but where I end up is always warm and I am very grateful for that! And the metro is hot, which is kind of gross, but I am certainly glad its not as freezing as it is outside. 

This week, I felt very close to Prunette and I think that is probably because we had to cuddle so much because of the weather. We still went to the park most days, but we didn’t stay long and on the way home I would give in and carry her. I think I really do love this child, because I can’t seem make myself stop letting her slip her cold little hands into the back of the neck of my shirt while we walk home from the metro. I just want to be warm and for her to be warm too.

I have had a lot of time this week, for some reason, to reflect on my childhood. I have decided that what I am feeling on some sadder days is not homesickness, but a sort of nostalgia for my childhood. I am 18 and about to choose what I will do with the rest of my life, and I have come to the conclusion that I want my future to be just as happy as my past. When I spend time thinking this way, it makes me realize that I am having a huge impact right now on how happy Prune’s childhood is and will be in her memories. I feel like I owe it to all the people who put up with me to give her a great one hahah. I know that me being the best au pair I can be won’t change her behavior at all, but maybe someday she will look back and be as grateful as I am now for those who did this for me. 

Okay so we are about to get in the car! We had a party yesterday at school where we all brought breakfast and I ate wayyyy too much and it was amazing. Here is a picture of my wonderful class! 

I HOPE YOU ALL HAD A WONDERFUL WEEK AND HAVE ANOTHER WONDERFUL WEEK THIS WEEK! I will update my blog next Thursday when I get back from Britanny and head off to the South of France! I love youuuu. :)

Birthdays and Parades in Paris

Hello, everyone! 

 

 

This week has been a pretty calm one for the most part, and I have enjoyed it! 

I find it hard to remember exactly which days my pictures are from sometimes, but I will do my best to explain the highlights of this week hahah. 

On Monday after school, I went and got coffee at a little cafe with Olivia, Maira, and Cameron. Maira always has to take a train and leave a little earlier than the rest of us, but she spends as much time as she can with us after school everyday. There is a small group of students from my class that always ends up circuled up outside the building and talking, and sometimes we go to a cafe or walk around a bit too! On monday we picked a tiny little cafe on the way to the metro and enjoyed some time together, talking and telling stories and laughing. After Maira left, Olivia and Cameron and I walked around and ended up at the sacre-coeur, which is that big white church with the great view of Paris! It was funny hanging out with those two because they are both from London and use a bunch of words I don’t understand. Also, they are both pretty hilarious. We spent about 2 hours walking around before I took the metro home so I could get some lunch and do a quick workout before starting work!

 

Tuesday was…well, a little embarrassing. Thinking about what happened to me on Tuesday has made me realize that I have changed quite a bit since I went to Chile. I have a lot fewer “awkward Sally moments” now, but believe me, they still happen. On Tuesday I had to get up very early and take a metro all the way to the very other side of Paris so I could see a doctor to get a certain stamp for my visa. My appointment was scheduled for 8:30am, but I was told I should get there early because the appointment would probably take forever so the sooner they could start the better. I climbed out of the metro at about 7:40 and it was pouring rain and still pretty dark outside. I walked around a part of the city I had never been to before trying to find the office and my feet became very wet from accidentally stepping in puddles I couldn’t really see because it was so dark. When I finally found the office, I was soaking wet, and after using some very basic French, the doorman let me into the office and a receptionist lady directed me to the waiting room. There were about four other people in the waiting room when I got there, but after the hour and a half I waited and read my book, about 18 more people joined us. At about 9am the power went out for about 25 minutes, and so the computers shut down and everyone knew we would have to wait longer and I became a bit sad because it was obvious I would not be making it to any of my French lesson that day. When the doctor finally called a group of us in, it was about 9:30 and I was really ready to not be waiting anymore hahah. The office was set up in stations, and most of them were pretty normal. There was a station where you had to pee in a cup, a station where someone took your height and weight, and a different vision test station. My embarrassing moment came at the station where I was told to go into a room and take of my clothes and wait for the doctor to come in so I could do an exam. I was told this in French. So, you know, I took off my clothes and waited. Time made me feel more and more naked and pretty cold, and then the doctor opened the door to naked Sally and immediatly turned away and told me to put on my pants. What? I didn’t understand what he had said because he said it quickly in French. So, in loud, slow, English, he told me to put on my pants because it was a lung/breast x-ray and I only had to take of my shirt! I started laughing because I was embarrassed, but he didn’t! He was annoyed. The rest of the appointment went by smoothly enough, except when I went to put on my shoes I discovere one of my converse had somehow ripped at the bottom which was unfortunate. My friends at school on Thursday found the story pretty hilarious, and it felt nice to laugh with someone about the story because to me it just made so much sense that something like that would happen to me! I know that doctors are professional and that it has probably happened to him before, but it happened and now its just a story for me to laugh about hahaha. 

 

 

On Wednesday, something very sweet happened! Anastazja, my Polish friend, had invited me to her birthday party, but she didn’t tell me that she planned on making it my party too! I discovered her intentions when she posted this one Facebook: 

 

And honestly, I kind of teared up a but because I felt so loved and taken care of. It was such a kind gestures and every word of it was so sweet! I can’t wait to meet all her friends because I am sure they are as amazing and thoughtful as her. :D

 

This Thursday was Olivia’s birthday, and since all of my friends here and I are far from home and clinging to the few connections we have, we decided to throw a couple surprises together for her! In the morning before school, Maira and I got to Crimee early and surprised her (because she lives in Crimee) with a ittle cake and some chocolate and a birthday sign! She loved it! After class, Monica and I arranged to meet up at the canal across the street from our class and there we surprised her with more cake and some of the other people in our class came along to sing happy birthday to Olivia. We then went across the canal to a cuuuute little cafe where we found this hilariously sized chair and made Olivia the Birthday Queen sit in it and drink her hot chocolate. We stayed there for like three hours just talking and laughing, and made plans to take her out to party a little bit on Friday night. 

 

 

 

On Friday night, I met up at a very cool looking bar with a bunch of Olivia’s friends to have a birthday drink with Olivia. It was cold outside, and it was late, but I had fun laughing with everyone and listening to everyone’s au pair stories. It was strange for me to be out at night in Paris where we were. We were surrounded by gorgeous Parisian twenty-something year olds who knew exactly what they should be wearing and looked like they were born to be photographed. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun, but as the night went on, I began to feel very young. Too young. I began to feel caught between missing the simple little ways my friends and I used to hang out back at home and wondering how many years it would be until I was missing being young and in Paris. In a year, maybe I will feel comfortable at bars like that and even prefer those sort of evenings to reading a good book at home. For now, I will keep going because I need to make friends, but these sort of evenings certainly put me out of my comfort zone. These feelings I have are probably normal, and I am sure a lot of people have felt them before and will feel them after me and maybe even some of my friends are feeling them right now. I think a lot of the people I see feel just as lost as I do for whatever their reasons are, though, and that if I spend too much time worrying about such things I will be wasting my time. I can’t help being so curious though!! I had a bit of difficulty getting home on Friday because the metro closed before I made it all the way home. I took my frist night bus with Monica (the Australian girl who lives right around the block) and I made it home safely and went right to sleep. I even enjoyed some cookies I had packed as a “just in case” snack on the bus ride home because yes, I still prepare things like that. 

 

Saturday was very calm. I did my laundry, had lunch with my family, and did some homework before heading out to meet a French girl named Louise who was an exchange student the same year I was! We met on the RYE facebook group, and had been trying to meet up in person for quite awhile but out schedules never quite ligned up. We met in Montmartre for a wine celebration parade near sacre-coeur. The parade was very cute and they gave us a lot of free grapes! Monica met up with us a little later and we got crepes and sat in the grass and watched the huge swarms of tourists and French people get drunk off of wine samples at a very beautiful church with a splendid view of Paris in the background. What an afternoon! Louise was very sweet and it turns out she actually met Onnovin when she was on her exchange in Taiwan! What a small world. 

 

 

This morning I got up early to help Cecile prepare a bunch of food. All the friends we had gone to Normandie with were coming over for lunch and she really needed my help. I helped her stuff mini bell peppers with goat cheese and cut up a lot of vegetables. She then gave me some ingredients and vague instructions and I made two beautiful apple tarts all by myself! While we were waiting for the friends to show up, I cleaned my room a bit and watched Fred do the sad task of boiling some lobsters alive so we could eat them for lunch. Despite watching the sea creatures die, lunch was delicious! I spent a lot of time finishing reading my book today while everyone else socialized, but I was happy that way. It is nice to read by the fire while other people are laughing and having a great time. It felt very home-like.  Now I am in my room, blogging before it gets too late. I have no idea if we will eat dinner tonight because we ate soooo much food for lunch! 

 

As for things with Prune, well, she is as sweet and complicated as ever hahaha. She is a clumsy four year old with good intentions and she is teaching me to be extremely patient. :)

Friends in Asnieres?! YESSS!

This week, despite being a pretty good one, went by very very slowly, and because of that I find myself sitting here infront of my laptop on a Sunday evening, having trouble rememebering exactly what I did every day. I think my memory is getting worse than it used to be, for I have absolutely no idea what I did on Monday! I do remember one thing about Monday, and that is that when I arrived at school, we were informed that our classroom had been changed to a different building around the block. We were all pretty confused, but as a class we succeeded in finding it and it turned out to be a cute little classroom right across the street from a little canal and I prefer it over the one we were in before. We were informed that out classroom might change every week, and we just have to keep checking each Monday to see if it has changed. I took a picture of the inside of the classroom so you could see where I have been studying all week. I have come to really enjoy the company of my classmates, they are all such sweet people! 

 

On Tuesday after class, I got to have lunch with Aloiis, one of the exchange students who came to our district in California last year! I was a bit skeptical at first about how lunch would go, for we were mere aqcuaintances in the US and I didn’t really know him that well, but lunch ended up being really nice! I met him at his high school which is in a very nice part of Paris, and we walked down the street to a cute little cafe to eat some lunch before he went back to class. He had a two hour lunch break, and we filled those two hours talking about our exchanges and coming up with different ways I could meet actual French people so I can practice more French. He said he would invite me to hang out with him and his Parisian friends if I wanted, and maybe someday I will go and meet them! He actually mentioned wanting to throw me a birthday party with his friends hahah. Like, I wouldn’t know anyone at my own birthday party but he seemed to think it was a great idea so I guess that might happen! I am glad I went to get lunch with Aloiis. It was interesting to hear about his problems on exchange. Like me, he ran into some trouble with Rotary during his exchange, and he ended up getting sent home. We talked for a long time about how scary it is to know you might get sent home, and how bad you feel for letting down Rotary and your family when you get in trouble. It was an interesting conversation, and it left me with the impression that Aloiis wanted to be a good exchange student and feels very bad about how things turned out. Anyways, I can officially say that I have an actual Parisian teenager friend! So that is exciting I guess hahaha. 

 

On Wednesday another exciting thing happened! I discovered a library near the place Prune goes to gym classes in the morning, and was able to fill the hour that Prune was working out with a lot of book finding! I got some books in English to read to Prune, and some very easy chapter books in French to read myself. I decided that I should try to read in French more, and this library really helped me out with that! I am glad that I will be able to go there and get new books on Wednesdays while Prune is in class. :)

 

On Thursday, one of my dreams came true. I have said ever since I moved to France that I really wanted to make a friend in Asnieres. Not Paris, Asnieres. Like someone I could hang out with without taking the Metro for a half hour. Cecile told me that the two au pairs before me didn’t know anyone in Asnieres, but it turns out that I will be different! As I have mentioned before in other blog posts, one doesn’t simply smile at people on the street and not seem like a total weirdo. After only a month here, even I get a little suspicious when someone I don’t know just smiles at me for no reason. But I was walking to school on Thursday, and I recognized a girl that I always see at the school picking up who I assumed were her siblings. We made I contact, and I smiled (because I forget to not smile all the time) and she actually smiled back! Not a little, uneasy smile, but a super friendly and happy smile! So I actually just walked up to her and said “bonjour!” and we both started laughing because at that point it was absolutely clear that I was not French and didn’t care. She began talking to me in English because she had heard me speaking in English with Prune on the playground, and I was impressed because her accent didn’t sound French at all! Turns out her name is Anastazja (Anastasia) and she was born in Poland but has lived in France for 14 years! She is 18 just like me and watches over children after school as a job in the afternoon and goes to college in the mornings. We really hit it off like right away, and after getting our kids from school, spent a long time talking at the playground. I asked her if we could try talking in French and she was very happy to help me! My French is pretty awful, but I was able to have a conversation with her for about an hour! During this conversation, I managed to communicate that I would be happy to help her practice English, but that it would be great if we could practice French for a couple months first because it is hard for me to live in France and not speak French very well. She laughed and told me that she doesn’t want to be my friend just to practice English, she just wants to know me because I seem very sweet and make her laugh and that she would be fine if we never spoke English again! I was so happy that I hugged her hahah. I am really happy to have made this friend, and I feel extremely lucky! She invited me to her birthday party at the end of November and told me that I should hang out with her and her friends so that I could be more emersed in the French culture. How to all these awesome people come my way?!

 

On Friday, after a great day at school, my friend Olivia (oh by the way she is new and really funny and from England) told me that she would meet up with a friend later that evening to watch a movie and that I should come. I spent the afternoon not really sure if it would be fun for me because I would have to take the metro into Paris and it would take a long time and I wasnt feeling like a crazy night out or staying up too late. When she sent me her friend’s address, however, I was surprised/stoked to learn that her friend lives about a 5 minute walk away from my house in Asnieres! So after dinner, I walked over to her (and now my) friend Monica’s appartment and we watched a movie and talked until like 1:30am and then I walk home feeling really happpy about my new friend who is also my neighbor! 

 

 

On Saturday I woke up at about 9 and spent the morning hanging out with with the family and watching cartoons with Prune. After lunch, Cecile showed me a little thrift store in Paris so that I could look around for some warmer clothes without spending a ton of money. Cecile couldn’t stay that long, and I didn’t stay shopping much longer after she left. I am hardly ever in a shop-ish mood, and Saturday was no exception. I did find a little warm jacket for 10 euros that fit me pretty well, but I will have to go back and look for more clothes a different day because otherwise I am seriously going to freeze in France. After my half-hour of looking through clothes, I took the metro to a train station so I could take a train to the Luxembourg Gardens to meet up with some friends from school. It was my first time taking anything but the metro alone, but I got through it pretty quickly and now I feel much more comfortable with the RER trains! There were some friends from school gathered at the gardens for a little picnic, so I hung out with them for a couple hours. It was a funny group because half of us spoke mostly English and the other spoke mostly Spanish, so I feel like I might have been the only person who knew what everyone was talking about the whole time. I did quite a bit of translating, which made me feel important and interesting hahah. That night, there was a huge event in Paris called “nuit blanche” that was like this festival that goes all night in Paris and is supposed to be super cool. A couple different friends asked me to go with them, but when I got home from the picnic I was feeling pretty exhausted and even a little sick and I decided resting would be a better idea. I reminded myself that in Paris, you will always be missing out on something because there is so much going on, so you just have to choose one huge event to go to each weekend and not kill yourself with FOMO. I think I made the right choice in resting, because Cecile and Fred prepared a pretty awesome fondue dinner and I got to tell them all about my day and feel like part of a family! 

 

Today was one of the laziest days I have ever had. I got up to run in the morning and put on my workout clothes, and then got back into bed and watched movies for an hour. Then I ate breakfast and hung out with Prune and played with play dough. We made an army of snails, and then ate lunch with Fred and Cecile, and then I went back in bed and took a nap and read a bit of a book. I got back out of bed at about 4pm to go running, but on my way out of the house Cecile told me that she was going to take Prune to the forest and I could run there instead. So I went with them! We went to a part of the forest I hadn’t been to before, and Cecile pointed me in a direction that would take me in a loop around a little lake so I could run a few laps before sitting down with them at the cafe. After only one lap, however, Cecile waved me over and asked me if I wanted a nutella waffle. So, yes, today I watched movies and then ran for 7 minutes and then ate a waffle completely covered in nutella, and to be honest it made me really happy that I spent a day like that hahah. I don’t feel bad like I threw away a perfectly good day in France, I feel like a very normal girl who had a lazy day and is starting to feel more at home in a foreign country. 

So now I am in bed, blogging to all of you and feeling excited to return to school tomorrow. It has been a simple week, but a happily surprising one, and I can’t wait to talk to my parents because tonight is Skype-night for the family. I don’t know why, but right now I just feel like saying that I really love my family in the US. I know that most of the people who read this blog are probably my family, but you guys should know that not one day passes where it doesn’t occur to me that I am incredibly lucky to have such supportive and silly people loving me even from all the way across an ocean. Thank you all for being there for me and making me who I am today. Really! You all are the best. :) Good night, now. :)