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. :)