This last week has been very Holiday-ish and fun! It was my second week of not having school every morning, and I think I did a pretty good job of making the most of it. :)
Last time I blogged I wrote about how I had completely lost my voice while in Geneva, and Monday, since I was still feeling pretty exhausted and my voice still didn’t work, I spent most of the day cuddled up in bed and resting.
On Tuesday, I woke up early for what ended up being a very long day of baking a looooot of cookies. I had planned on making some chocolate chip cookies for my friends, and when I told Cecile she said she wanted me to teach her the recipe. We went out to get a bunch of cookie ingredients together in the morning and while shopping around, we found a gingerbread man cookie cutter and I told her I knew a gingerbread cookie recipe that would be fun to prepare with Prune! Since I only needed about ten cookies for my friends, we decided to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies to bring to a potluck at Prune’s gym class and a batch of gingerbread cookies to decorate with Prune so she could bring them to her classroom on the last day of school. I was able to hold off from eating a bunch of cookies while I baked, but dealing with so many cookies made me feel kind of sick hahah. It did, however, also make me feel very warm and christmassy and happy that soon a lot of awesome people would be eating all the yummy yummy cookies I was baking! When Prune came home from school (Cecile went and got her so I could get everything else ready) I had set up a cookie decorating station and we spent a long time drawing on the gingerbread men with frosting and giving them Smartie (kinda like M&Ms) buttons. Prune was really bad at decorating cookies but she is four and that’s okay because she will learn hahahah.
On Wednesday morning we took a bunch of the chocolate chip cookies to the gym potluck and they were a total hit! I think people ate more of my cookies than anything else and I felt really good about that! At the potluck, I also discovered that one of the moms who I thought was really friendly because she smiled at me all the time (and yeah, Parisians just don’t usually do that) isn’t actually a mom at all but another au pair from Spain! She is 27 if I remember correctly, and her name is Sandra and she is super nice! We talked in Spanish for a long time and when I mentioned how nice it was for me to be able to practice my Spanish, she said she has a whole Spanish speaking community here in Asnieres and that after the Christmas break she would invite me to hang out with them!! I was so happy to meet another very sweet au pair, and now I have someone to go to the library with while Prune is at gym class on Wednesdays!
On Wednesday night, Cameron, Olivia, Jess, and I got together at Olivia’s flat to do a little Christmas gift exchange. We each brought a gift to play White Elephant and I brought some cookies for us to munch on and it was a lovely little evening. I had mentioned to Olivia one day that I had never used a Christmas cracker before, so she got a bunch of those for us to play with too! They had paper crowns and games inside so after playing White Elephant (during which I, being the luckiest, won a little bottle of genuine Canadian maple syrup from Jess WOOHOOOOO) we put on the crowns and played the games and laughed and talked and enjoyed each other’s company. We knew it would be the last time we would all be together for awhile, so we enjoyed it as best we could. Cameron is moving back to London this break because his au pair situation didn’t work out, but we know he will visit us when he has time and money hahaha. Olivia is going back to England for the break but she will be back in January and I can’t wait! And Jess, well, her mom came to visit from Canada on Thursday and after spending some time in Paris, they will be traveling during the holidays, but Jess will be back after the break too! Anyways, it was just nice to have a lovely little evening with those three fantastic friends of mine. They LOVED my cookies, too! 
On Friday I woke up early to go to Prune’s school with Fred and Cecile to watch Prune sing with her classmates. Unfortunately, I thought it started at 9:00 but it actually started at 8:30 so I ended up being too late to go with them. I decided to go to the post office instead to pick up a package my mom had sent for me! Everything went smoothely at the post office, so I brought home the package and couldn’t wait to open it. I had, however, promised my mom I wouldn’t open it until we could Skype so she could watch me open it! Later that day, when my mom got home from work, we were able to skype and inside the package there were soooo many cute little gifts! I was so happy because she had sent Prune and I little Christmas pajamas (which is sort of our tradition) so we could wear them around the house and dance to Christmas music together. Hahaha, I miss Molly and Stella and Katie so much, but having a little sister figure in Christmas elf pajamas by my side made me feel a lot better, and I think that was my momma’s intention. :) Cecile absolutely LOVED the pajamas and made Prune and I take a bunch of pictures next to the Christmas tree hahah.
On Saturday, I went to Montmartre to meet up with Jess and her Canadian mom! I was honestly a little worried that seeing Jess and her mom would make me jealous and homesick, but it didn’t at all. Seeing the two of them together after missing each other for four months just made me feel happy for them, and excited for when my mom and Molly will visit. I also liked seeing how impressed Jess’s mom was with Paris, because I know my family will think it is a beautiful place, too! We wandered around Montmartre and Sacre-coeur and stopped at a crepe place for lunch! Jess bought a selfie stick from one of the street vendors, and we had a lot of fun with it hahahah. It was a nice evening, and I was home before 17:00 for an evening of babysitting the Prune-Prune.
This morning I slept in, had some granola, watched the office, went on a run, cleaned my room, and then watched the office until lunch time. My plan for today was to eat lunch with the family before going to my favorite little cafe to blog and drink a mocha, but that plan fell through when I realized it was 15:00 and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I casually meandered on into the kitchen to see if they had eaten without me or if I should make something or just what was going on. We have been putting off going to the grocery store in this household for about a week now, so there wasn’t really any food for me to work with. I decided to just read in the living room until someone brought up the idea of eating lunch. A couple minutes later, Prune came running downstairs, filled with joy, yelling that we were going to McDonald’s for lunch. Yayyyyyyyy. I considered staying home and eating the last carrot and some bread, but then I decided to be an exchange student and go out with the family and practice some French and live my life. It was pretty hilarious, watching eating a family meal at McDonald’s with these two suuuper elegant and classy French people and their daughter hahaha. I am glad I went with them, and I got back not too long ago and now I am on the couch writing this blog post for you! I will go to my favorite cafe another time and it will be okay.
I remember that when I was in Chile, Christmas completely snuck up on me. It didn’t feel like the Holiday season, because it was the middle of the Chilean summer and I was so busy all the time. Here, it has been a little different. I don’t feel very homesick, but I get sad sometimes worrying about becoming homesick hahah. I will have a lot of time over the next two weeks to be homesick, you know? Because I will be at the house with Prune and all my friends will be off with their families. My friends in the States are all posting pictures of home and soon all my friends here will be doing the same thing. These are the thoughts that make me sad. But then, I also have my happy thoughts, of course. I think about all the different things I could do with Prune to make her have great Christmas memories, and all the places I could take her. I think of how exciting it will be to meet Cecile’s whole Italian family and all the delicious food I will get to eat. I think of how lucky I am to be here, and how even though I don’t feel like I am “living my dream” 100% of the time, I am surely living someone else’s dream, and they would want me to be grateful to be here this winter.
Also, to make things even better, I recently booked some cheap plane tickets to visit Nigel in Berlin and my friend Michelle in Copenhagen in January. I have a lot to look forward to and a lot of be grateful for, and I don’t know how I couldn’t have a wonderful Christmas wtih a life like mine. :)
Next time I post it, Christmas will have passed, soooo MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!
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