THE BEST THURSDAY EVER!

Well, my lovely blog readers, I am writing a bit early this week, but for a very wonderful reason. What is that reason? Oh, you know, just that MY MOM AND MOLLY WILL GET HERE TOMORROW AND I WILL SEE THEM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ALMOST SIX MONTHS AND I WANT TO GIVE THEM ALL OF MY TIME AND ATTENTION! 

I don’t know if you can tell, but I am pretty freaking excited hahaha. 

I have been thinking a lot recently about my year in Paris because I realized I have just passed the half-way mark (about three weeks ago I think), and I have found myself comparing the ways I changed in Chile and the ways I have changed and am currently changing here. Of course there are many culteral differences between France and Chile, so I have had different experiences in that sense, but I think the emotions I experienced in Chile that changed me into a new version of Sally are very different than the emotions that changed that new Sally into whomever I am now hahah. It is a strange and complicated thing to put into words, especially for other people to read and try to understand, but either way this subject captivated me during the past week during many a metro ride, and I thought it worth blogging about. Now that I am so happy here in France, it is difficult for me to understand why and how I was so sad at first when I had managed to stay happy in Chile all year long. The most important thing I realized while thinking about all this is that no matter what my reasons for being so homesick and miserable were, I finally got to follow the emotional graph of the typical exchange student. I didn’t grow to be strong the way other homesick exchange students did in Chile, but now I know what it is like to feel your spirits have been so crushed that you will never be happy again and find a way to get through that, and it has made me a stronger person. I may have payed for that strength with about three months of what I now honestly look back on as depression, but the person that experience has helped me become is someone I would have looked up to five months ago, and that makes me happy. I faced a lot of difficult things in Chile, and my exchange definitely wasn’t easy, but I had the energy to be happy the entire time and enough hope to get through the year. In France, all I had was too much pride to return home early and rather than the “HOPE!" I had in chile, I had what I could at best refer to as “..hope?” in France, but guess what? I am still here, and now I am happy here! And tomorrow, I will show this beautiful city to my mother and sister and that makes me happier than I can express in just a blog post hahah.

Does this picture help?? Hahahah. I CANNOT WAIT!

The idea that my mom and sister will arrive on Friday sort of put the rest of this week in very positive lighting. On Sunday, after blogging, I had a lovely Valentine’s Day with Olivia and Maira! It wasn’t super rainy out so we walked about the city and stopped to get a coffee at one point and chatted for about two hours! We wanted to get hot chocolate from Angelina’s (supposed to be the best in Paris) but the line was about 45 min long and we were not down for that hahah. I had such a nice time catching up with them. I told them that I had decided that I am going to try to become a doctor when I get back to the US, and they were super happy for me and said they loved the glow in my eyes because it reminded them of being my age and having a fresh sheet of adulthood ahead! That might sound a bit condescending, but they are both 5 years older than me and I really do look up to them and I could tell they truly meant it. I finally got to give Maira the Tofiffee candy I got her in Germany. Apparently it was her favorite when she was an exchange student and now she hasn’t been able to find it anywhere else in Europe! She let me try a piece and it really was quite delicious! So delicious that I told Bianca to bring me back some when she goes home to Germany for the break hahaha. 

On Monday I was put in charge of baking a cake for Prune’s class at school for her at-school birthday party. Cecile didn’t actually ask me to do it, but she said she needed to make a cake and I know she hates baking so I offered, and Prune and I spent the afternoon making the COOLEST CAKE EVER. Okay, it was a pretty normal cake actually, but the inside we flavored to taste like strawberries and we played with food coloring until it was BRIGHT pink! Prune seperated all her left over birthday candy into different colors and I used them to write her name across the cake, and then we used sprinkles and a cookie cutter she had been given for her birthday to make a little magic wand on the cake! It came out looking pretty awesome, and Prune was super excited to bring it to school the next day! On Tuesday when I went to pick her up, the cake was completely gone (which meant they ate the WHOLE thing!) and the teacher told me it had been very beautifully prepared! The same day, Cecile had a parent/teacher conference with Prune’s teachers and when she got home, she told me that the school loves me! She said that the teachers told her that Prune and I seemed like best friends and that I am very nice and have learned an impressive amount of French! I think I blushed when Cecile told me all of this hahah it was so nice to hear! The teachers told Cecile that they hoped the next au pair would be like me, and it made her relieved that she had chosen Sarah (a friend of mine) to come take my place next year! 

On Tuesday not much happened, but during Prune’s bath, Prune finished washing my hands (a game she likes to play) and asked me if she could wash my feet! So “work” on Tuesday was actually more of a “spa day” as Prune soaked my feet in warm water and then cleaned them with apple scented soap hahah. She kept tickling me which made me laugh a little and her laugh a lot! It was a perfect game for both of us! 

Wednesday morning was my last work day before the vacation, and Prune and I spent the hour we had together before her gym class making a cool little paper theater that she had been sent in the mail from some magazine. It was pretty fun, and Prune was in a very happy mood because it was a special “bring your parent to gym class” day and Prune’s favorite thing in the world is to spend time with Cecile. I had planned to go to the library to check out some books for the vacation, and my job was to bring Prune to the gym class where Cecile would meet her afterwards to participate in the class. On the metro, however, I got a message from Cecile saying she was completely swamped at work and wouldn’t be able to make it to the class. In family movies, there is always that parent who is too busy to spend time with their kids, and I just want to clarify that Cecile is NOT AT ALL that kind of parent (neither is Fred btw). Her favorite thing in the world is to spend time with Prune, and that was the first time since I have been here that something like that had happened. Because Cecile is such a dedicated mother, when I told Prune her mom wouldn’t be coming, she thought I was kidding, and then got mad at me because she thought I was lying. She wasn’t even upset when I dropped her off at the gym because she was so sure that Cecile would show up. I went to the library to get my books (which I found extremely quickly) and then got out my phone to set a timer so I could read calmly before going to pick up Prune. That is when I saw I had a missed call from Maggie (Jade’s mom) and a text from Maggie asking if I could come to the gym because Cecile had apparently forgotten. When I saw those messages, all I could imagine was Prune being super sad because she was the only kid whose mom hadn’t shown up, so I sent maggie a message saying I was on my way and ran back to the gym with all my books. When I got there, I saw that only three other moms had shown up to be with their kids, and Prune wasn’t sad at all, but she was SOOOO happy to see me! She ran up and hugged me and wanted to hold my hand during all the games hahah. I was happy to be there for her. I love that little child. 

That reminds me; I have a story that I wanted to tell you in my blog last week but completely forgot about! Last week I was walking through the metro with Prune on our way home from school when we saw a young woman begging for money. Prune and I both smiled and said hello to her as we passed (we like greeting people haha) and the young woman smiled and said hello back! Once we had passed her, Prune began to ask me questions about her. Why was she there? What does she want? Why was she sitting on the ground? I told Prune she was asking for money because she was hungry, and Prune this information made Prune’s entire face light up. Prune said that was perfect becuase she had a back-pack full of afterschool snacks, so we could easily solve her problem! Prune, very sweetly, asked me if we could give her one of the snacks, and when I said yes, she went on to make me even more proud of her by choosing her absolute favorite rasberry cookies to share with the woman in the metro. We walked back over to where the woman was sitting and Prune handed her the cookies, the woman thanked her very politely, and now the three of us are kind of friends! We greet each other each time we pass through the metro, and every day after school, Prune chooses a snack for her. I am so proud of the person Prune is becoming. She is so generous and caring and sweet and every kind thing she does, she does as if it is the most simple thing in the world. Prune isn’t trying to cure world hunger, you see, but every day she makes that woman’s day with rasberry cookies. 

 

 

As I said before, Wednesday morning was the last bit of time I had to work before the vacation, but I have been quite busy preparing for my mom and sister’s arrival! I spent all Wednesday afternoon organizing and cleaning my already pretty clean and organized room, and making everything look extra nice! I washed the sheets of the bed my mom and sister will share because I know clean sheets are one of my mom’s favorite things, and I even wiped down the baseboards because my mom doesn’t like it when they are even a little bit dirty hahaha. Today after school I went grocery shopping so we would have a bit of fresh and yummy food in the house for tomorrow afternoon after the airport, and now that I am about to finish blogging I have nothing to do but watch movies in French and get more and more excited about tomorrow!! Goodness gracious, I cannot believe they will actually be HERE! I am going to go now, for I have noodles to eat and movies to watch and I want to go to bed early so tomorow will come as fast as possible. Happy Thursday, everyone!

I am pretty sure today is the best Thursday EVER! 

Happy Birthday (Party) Prunette!

As an au pair, I shouldn’t have been excited about the almost-five-year old who I take care of five days a week inviting 9 other loud, giggling, rule-breaking five-year-olds over to our not-so-gigantic house to eat lots of sugar and be crazy for three hours, but I really was! Prune’s actual birthday is February 22nd, but since she will be off skiing that week, we decided to have her birthday party a week early and that meant my participation was both welcome and extremely necessary. I knew what I was walking into hahah and I knew it would probably be a nightmare. Cecile and I agreed that while we couldn’t wait for the party to start, we would be even more excited for them to leave afterwards, and boy was that true! 

This was the first birthday party Prune had ever had, which meant it was also the first birthday party Fred and Cecile had ever thrown for their daughter. They wanted it to be amazing because they love her a lot, of course, and they did their absolute best. Cecile spent months coming up with a treasure hunt that the kids would split into either Fred’s group or my group for and then go through a bunch of obstacles before they were led to the treasure! Cecile made sure to explain the whole thing many times to Fred and me so that we would be able to think clearly as we each attempted to keep five children focused on a treasure hunt in a house filled with toys and sugar, and Cecile acted as sort of a game-keeper who floated between the two groups and set up all the activities! She gave all of us (Herself, Fred, Eden, and me) blue and white striped shirts to look like sailors, too! 

On Friday night, Fred, Cecile, and I stayed up late blowing up a million balloons and trying to get as much as we could ready for the next day. It was a lot of work, but we were so happy to do it! We wanted the party to be awesome and we reallly thought it would be! That kept our spirits up and made the work exciting! :D

Before the kids arrived, we spent the morning decorating the house and getting the snacks ready. The snacks were mostly my job, for I told Cecile that I could make cake pops which I THOUGHT would be super easy hahah. Noooope. If Fred hadn’t jumped in and helped me out, I don’t know what I would have done! Everything went wrong with those cake pops. First, we messed up the dye so instead of a nice pink they ended up kind of grey… Then, we couldn’t get the coating right so some of them were wayyyy too thick and some of the coatings were just super runny and THEN a bunch of them wouldn’t stay up on the stick hahah. I don’t know how, but by some miracle, exactly 10 cake pops turned out to be pretty and presentable, and that was the exact number of party guests! 

When the first four kids arrived, I couldn’t help but think “oh no, this is a lot of children and they keep running around and OH THIS ISN’T EVEN HALF OF THEM!” As more and more children arrived, the house just got noisier and noisier, but the good thing was that that meant the children were having a good time! When everyone arrived, Cecile gathered them on the couch and began an introduction to the treasure hunt which she read from an “old paper” that Cecile had asked me to burn the edges of so that it would look authentic. To say the least, I made the paper a little too authentic-looking. I burnt a big whole in it and for a few seconds I thought I was going to burn the house down (becuase I was doing it in my bathroom with the window open so that the house wouldn’t smell like smoke and I couldn’t go outside becuase it was pouring rain) when I couldn’t seem to put out the fire I had set to that paper. Nobody was mad at me though, and apparently I only burnt off three words! Cecile’s introduction was super entertaining! She read in her scariest voice possible about how there was a lost treasure that nobody had ever been able to find, but if the kids could work together and defeat the obstacles, they would be the heros of the treasure! She said they had to be brave enough to explore deep waters and not be afraid to make “all the heads fall” and that they would have to encounter a great beast! The kids were super into it hahah. 

We all headed down to the bottom floor where the room was filled with balloons. The kids had to go around popping the balloons to find the balloons that had the clues in them. Other balloons were filled with pirate tattoos (which the kids LOVED). A few of the kids hated the noise at first, but after a few minutes they just got used to it. When all the balloons had been popped, we went back up stairs to draw straws for the teams and read the clues. We had agreed that I would be on whichever team Prune was on so that if I didn’t know how to say something, she could translate for me hahah. She has gotten sooo good at English! It is hard for me to talk to little kids in French becuase I never do it, but I got by okay during the party. My team’s clue said we needed to go fishing upstairs, so we went up to Fred’s office where an ocean had been set up and the kids used little make-shift fishing poles to grab little presents that were in the “water” which was a blue bedsheet. When they finished getting all the presents, they got to unwrap them and discover they had won little stamps and bouncy-balls and puzzles. In one of the presents, however, there was another clue that said it was time for us to go make the heads fall down. This clue took us downstairs to the laundry room where the kids had to use balls to knock down towers of cans that had princess and pirate heads printed on them. When the kids found knocked down all the heads, they discovered another clue, but they weren’t allowed to read it until they played two games! 

 

That is when we went back to the livingroom and met up with the other team to comptete in sack races and ball-on-spoon races. The kids enjoyed the games, but they were anxious to find out what the treasure was! When they finished the games, Cecile read them the last clue which said that the treasure was at the foot of the tree! All the kids ran to the lamp in the second livingroom which is shaped like a tree, and there they found a black box filled with chocolate coins! All the other kids started grabbing chocolate, but Prune grabbed  some weird object covered in tin foil from the box that nobody else seemed interested in. She unwrapped it, and inside was a note that said “congratulations, you have found the treasure! But, MWAHAHA, it is not the real treaure! You will find the key to the real treaure is being guarded by the beast!” The note was wrapped around a dog treat, and all the kids followed Prune as she ran over to Eden (our doggy) and gave her the treat and discovered that there was a key dangling around her neck! This part was cool because the other kids were scared of Eden so Prune looked like a total badass. With the key, they all ran up and began testing the doors upstairs, until finally they tried Prune’s room, and inside they found the big treasure box! Fred carried it down to the living room, and then Cecile distributed the contents. Inside there were paper and foam swords and tiaras and pirate masks and princess mirrors to be decorated! The kids were super stoked hahah. 

We then headed over to to kitchen table, where we sang to Prune as she blew out candles that were stuck in macarons hahah. The kids sat at the table and ate goodies and candy. None of them liked my cake pops, but they said they were very pretty! Cecile told me she wanted cake pops in the first place because she didn’t think the kids would eat a cake if she got one, so it wasn’t that strange that they weren’t eating them.

After that little snack time, Prune got to open all her presents! While she did that, I helped clean up the snack table and bring out arts and crafts supplies so the kids could decorate the treasures they had won/found. They decorated their treasure for quite a while, and then spent the rest of the party running wild throughout the house and making noise! 

Soon the parents began to arrive, and Fred and Cecile poured them glasses of champagne and offered them cake pops. Good news: the parents LOVED my cake pops! Hahaha. They said they were delicious. :D 

By that time I was so tired. I just wanted to get into bed and take a nap, so after helping clean up a bit, I went into my room to lie down for a bit. I was exhausted!!! Fred and Cecile thanked me over and over again for all my help, and I assured them that it was my pleasure. I really wanted to be there for Prune’s party, and even though it was a crazy and difficult thing to manage, I am soooo glad I got to participate. After the party, Fred and Cecile had another party they had to go to, which meant I had to babysit the sugar-crazed almost-five-year-old and find a way to convince her it was bedtime hahah. Before they left for their party, Fred and Cecile told me that next year they would invite less children hahah and I could just hear my dad’s voice in my head saying “this is why I only let you invite six kids to your sixth birthday, and seven to your seventh” hahaha. 

I really enjoyed getting to have that experience with my host family. It was so sweet watching them, as a young family, go through something like a birthday party together for the first time. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my Saturday any other way, which as I said before, is a ridiculous thing for an au pair to say! 

 

Other than Prune’s party, the rest of this past week was pretty ordinary. I started running again on Monday, which was a terrible idea hahah. I couldn’t make it 2 minutes without coughing, but as the week went on, running became much easier! One morning before school, Olivia and I met up to get breakfast together. We went to a cute little cafe near my school and her house and got coffees and a pastry each. It was nice to see Olivia, since it had been weeks since I really got to talk to her. And the breakfast was really quite delicious! I’m still not over how adorable her accent is though, which makes me wonder if I ever will be hahaha. 

The last thing really worth blogging about this week is that one day, I picked up Prune from school and she was wearing THIS:

And she looked like a little fisherman and it made me laugh a lot and I think she really liked that outfit because she wore it with so much confidence and it was just really cute hahaha. 

I hope everyone has a good Valentine’s Day! Later today I am going to get some hot chocolate with Olivia and Maira I think, which will be a lovely way to spend my afternoon. :) Good bye! 

Sick in France

In my last post, I mentioned that I spent quite a lot of time hanging out with a sick little Prune-Prune as she fought off a pretty nasty flu. What I didn’t get a chance to tell you, is that Sunday afternoon, when I returned home after blogging in that Starbucks, Prune gave me a little gift: HER FEVER! 

This blog post will be short because I was sick alllllll week! I am even still a little sick now, but I am feeling much better which makes me very happy hahah. 

I have always had this thing where the world seems extra beautiful when I don’t feel well. It makes it seem like the only problem in my life is that I am sick, and once I get better, absolutely everything will be perfect and it will be even easier to enjoy without a fever! This week, I had a little break-through when I realized that the reason I probably feel this way is because the people around you become such angels when you get the flu. Because of this, I have decided to make this blog about all the nice things people did for me while I felt like dying for the better part of the past week. 

 

The first kind thing that someone did for me made me so happy that I turned it into a facebook status that read:

 

"So I am battling a pretty awful fever over here, and being sick away from home is never fun!
I couldn't sleep all night, so this morning I decided to walk down the street to the pharmacy to get some medicine that would reduce my symptoms and hopefully help me sleep a little. When I got there, however, it was all closed up! I felt shakey and cold and I wanted to cry because I could see all the medicine through the window but it was closed and that made me so sad hahaha.
All of a sudden, a lady appeared in the window with a concerned expression on her face, and she pointed to the side/employee door and then met me there and began to talk to me. She told me the pharmacy wouldn't be open until 2pm (it was 9am) and asked me what I needed. I told her I had a fever and what my symptoms were and she got all motherly and flustered and began to say some French version of "oh no no no! That is no good. Come in dear we will get you some medicine right away! I can hear your accent, you must be so far from home you poor thing. I am so glad I saw you outside! You would have had to wait for ages! Oh no no.."
She gave me some medicine and I thanked her about a million times for opening up early for me.
But can you believe that? She didn't have to do that! She doesn't know me and it isn't her job to care about me but what she did made me feel so loved and lucky.
Sometimes I cannot believe how kind strangers can be.
I love people a lot."

 

So that was super incredible and amazing!

 

It is super awkward getting sick as an au pair because it is not very simple for the families to find someone to take care of their kids. I can’t speak for all au pairs, but I felt terrible for feeling sick (even though I knew that was silly) because I didn’t think I could take care of Prune. I was sort of shocked when Cecile told me she would go get Prune at school for me so I could rest, and that even though Prune shouldn’t watch a lot of TV afterschool, we could watch movies together and just relax because anything else would be too difficult for me. To anyone reading this, it might seem like I shouldn’t have worked, since I had a high fever, a terrible headache, and I could hardly walk around without finding somehwere to sit down every 20 steps. But the thing is, Cecile making my job easier was a HUGE blessing! A lot of other families say “if you don’t have to go to the hospital, you can work” and it is difficult to argue with the people you live with about how sick you are, especially if you are a girl in your 20s who relies on them for a lot of things. So I felt very grateful this week that I was allowed to work at home and wasn’t forced to leave the house and take the train to get Prune at school every day!

 

Another thing that really kept my spirits up were all the messages I recieved. I got messages from all my friends in Paris, asking if I was okay, saying they missed me at school, and telling me to get better soon. Maira told me repeatedly that if I needed ANYTHING I could tell her and she would bring it to me, which made me feel a bit guilty for being so mad at her, but mostly just made me feel loved and taken care of. She said that that is what foreign friends are for when you are far away from home, and that we need to take care of each other, and she was right. I am so lucky to have her in my life.

Being so sick also made me remember the time I got sick in Chile and how well Lilian took care of me the whole time. She always brought me tea and brought my dinners up for me and even came into my room to hang out with me so I wouldn’t be alone all the time. Being sick and having to take care of myself in a foreign country made me miss her, so I sent her a message to tell her about all that and to say thank you one more time. She sent me back a lot of messages to say she loves me and would love to take care of me right now and other things and it was a very sweet exchange of words. I am so lucky to have that beautiful Chilean lady in my life!!

Then of course, there is my momma in the US. Something about being sick always makes me want to hug my momma and cry hahah. She sent me a lot of messages throughout the week to encourage me and remind me that I wouldn’t be sick forever. She also constantly reminded me that she would be visiting so soon, which made me very very happy too hahah. 

 

I also got to skype my beautiful Chilean brother Maxi this week! I was still sick when we skyped and my voice was terribly cracked and my Spanish has become… mostly French hahaha. It was so nice to talk to Maxi though. He is such a caring brother and he made my experience in his house so lovely. Talking to him was funny because we spoke a lot about awkward it is to be an exchange student. He told me how he never understood why I asked before I did so many things in his house (like ate the last piece of bread) and now he finds himself asking his host family the things I always used to ask! It is cool because now it is like he understands what it was like for me to live in his house. While we were talking, Cecile came downstairs and shut my bedroom door becuase I was speaking too loud, which made me talk more quietly, but made Maxi laugh a lot because when I lived in his house, he was always asking me to Skype more quietly! I am so happy to have my Maxi bro. :D

 

I don’t have any pictures to add to this blog because I really didn’t leave the house at all until Friday, when I decided to try to go to school again. My voice was completely broken and I couldn’t participate in class and paying attention was hard because I just felt SOOO tired still hahah, but since I pay for my own education now going to class seemed more worth it than staying home! I’m such a little grown up now hehe. 

 

So, as you can see, it really wasn’t a bad week at all. Being sick never fails to remind me of all the amazing people in my life and how lucky I am for always recieving so much support from those around me and those who wish they were around me. Life is good over here in France and my family is coming sooooon!! Loving life today. :) 

And I can breathe out of my nose now!!!