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. :)
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