Wow. It feels like yesterday that I couldn’t wait to pick up my family from the airport, yet here I am on this rainy Friday morning and they are already somewhere in the sky on their way back home. I miss them! I know I only have four months until I see them again but saying goodbye was much harder this time than it was when they visited in Chile. I should have seen that coming though; my entire experience here is different than the one I had in Chile, and different experiences bring different emotions and what-not.
But boy, is missing them worth it! I had such an amazing time with them getting to travel a little around Europe and show them what my life in Paris is like. Me missing them really just means we had a lot of fun together hahah. :)
On Friday afternoon, I left for the airport early enough to pick up a pain du chocolat for Molly and flowers for them both. When they came through the gates, I couldn’t believe they were actually in France! It was surreal. On one hand, I was dying of excitement because I had been waiting for that moment for six months, but on the other hand seeing them felt so normal, which was strange but still awesome. We took the train/metro back to my house in Asnieres so they could drop off their things and relax a bit after their long journey. It was pretty hard for them not to fall asleep (especially Molly) but they wanted to wait until night time because they knew that the nine hour time difference was going to be tricky. We had planned to meet up with my friends that night, but a lot of my au pair friends weren’t going to get off work until late at night, and my mom and sister were hungry so we decided to go out and get a nice little dinner in Paris! I wanted to take them somewhere French on their first night in French, and my Iranian friend had shown me a really cute and suuuper French place a couple weeks before, so I thought it would be perfect! The experienced turned out to be extremely (and maybe even a little toooo) French! The waiters at the restaurant didn’t speak much English, which would have been fine except that the menu was entirely in French and food is very difficult for me to translate. We convinced Molly to try escargot, and we were very proud of her for eating two of them because she did not like them at all! When our food came, it was not prepared the same way it would have been in the US. Molly’s steak, which she had ordered medium, squirted blood onto her when she first cut into it, and the fish I had ordered came with the head, tale, and eyes! Hahaha. At the table next to us, a woman was eating what could only be referred to as “cow face fat” complete with the cow’s eyelashes! It was an entertaining dinner, to say the least! After dinner, we went across the street to split a milkshake for dessert, and while I didn’t care much for the milkshake, I am glad we went there because we laughed a lot while trying on mom’s glasses and posing for pictures. Unfortunately, the first day that had been so nice and so fun and so good did not end very well. On the metro home, there was a bit of confusion about the metro tickets and the metro police happened to be working in the station we were in and my mom and Molly ended up being fined. I was so sad for the rest of that night because I felt like I had let my family down by not explaining the system well enough to them. I wanted everything to be perfect for them in France and I had messed that up right of the bat! I apologized to my mom many times but she kept saying it wasn’t my fault, of course. That night, I got to cuddle my family to sleep for the first time in so long, and it felt so nice. :)
The next morning, my mom and I got up early so I could take her on the run that I go on about four times a week! I enjoyed having someone to talk to while running, and I could tell that my mom enjoyed running with me and seeing where I workout in France. After the run, we came home to have breakfast with Molly. I had bought lots of Fresh fruit in preparation for their arrival and also some brioche for Molly to try! Molls loved having the sweet brioche for breakfast, and both of them found it entertaining to drink out of the little espresso cups! We headed into Paris around noon, and spent the rest of the day walking EVERYWHERE! I took them up to Montemartre and Sacre-coeur where we walked along the little streets before taking a bus to the Arc du Triophe. We walked all the way down the Champs d’Elysee and then through the Tuilieries Gardens and down to the Louvre. We took lots of pictures together, and we were lucky that it didn’t rain that day as it had the entire week before. After the Louvre, we got some coffee and then walked all the way down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, where we arrived just in time to watch it sparkle! That night, my mom made a healthy roasted veggie dish with salmon and then we all watched a movie together before going to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up feeling super super nauseous! I felt like throwing up and dying and I had a low fever and I was upset becuase I wanted to be able to enjoy another day in Paris with my family. We had planned on meeting up with Christine and Anais to explore Paris all day, and I was excited because I knew Christine would be a great guide. But I was far too sick to go. It was hard for my mom to leave me at the house alone, and it was hard for me to bare the idea of wasting a day that I could have spent with my family in bed alone. I lounged around feeling sick until I finally began to throw up around 2pm, and then I began to feel much better! It was my first case of food poisoning, and it was awful but now I know what that is like, I guess hahah. I ate a bad crepe the day before when we were near the Louvre, apparently, and I am so glad that my mom and sister weren’t hungry when I got it because they got to spend Sunday in Paris exploring instead of throwing up with me haha. At the very end of the day, I decided to meet up with them in a cafe because I was feeling human again, but that ended up not being the best idea. The metro made me feel sick all over again and even though I really enjoyed drinking tea with everyone, I began to feel feverish and cold as we made out way back to Asnieres. My mom let me lean on her the entire way home, and I realized that I was kind of lucky to have her there to take care of me, so maybe my food poisoning actually had great timing hahah.
On Monday morning, my mom and sister were exhausted from walking allllll around Paris with Christine (who is super lively and never tired) so we slept in and rested and had a late breakfast. In the early afternoon, Molly and I headed off to a cooking class we had signed up for where we learned to make three different French desserts with two other Irish women. Taking that class was hilarious with Molly! She was making everyone laugh by being cute on accident all the time and making snarky comments about my cooking skills hahah. After that, we went home and packed up the house to head off to North of France to Bailleul to visit Domi and Phillipe. We rented a car at a place near my home in Asnieres and then took off on the two and a half hour drive. We didn’t get lost and there wasn’t much traffic, but we arrived late and went right to bed because we were feeling pretty sleepy.
Tuesday was all about walking through the farmer’s markets in Bailleul and taking time to enjoy the little city. My mom and sister agreed that it looked nothing like Paris, and they were pleased to discover how much nicer strangers were in the north of France! Domi prepared a delicious lunch for the whole family and Molly was much more impressed with Domi’s cooking than the food she had tasted in Paris hahah. Domi is a great cook! Before dinner time, Molly played a lot with Domi’s grandchild, Gabrielle, and then we went walking around the town some more. For dinner, we had a bit of a party! Domi invited a cousin that my mom had been somewhat close to while she was in Switzerland, and he came with his beautiful wife and Molly and I couldn’t stop marveling over what a pretty little doctor family they made! During the dinner, I translated a lot for Molly because most of the conversation was in French. She teased me for accidently translating things people said in English too, sometimes hahah. Dinner went really late, so after helping clean up a bit we went upstairs to go to sleep. In Bailleul, I shared a bed with my momma and got to cuddle her all night long! I didn’t miss sleeping alone during the past two weeks, and I miss having people to cuddle now hahah. But it’s okay. Four more months!
On Wednesday morning we had planned to leave early to spend the day in Bruges, Belgium, and I was super excited to do that because I was going to get to see my Belgian friend Michael again! Unfortunately, we left about an hour behind schedule and then proceeded to get lost in the Belgian countryside for a few hours and I had absolutely no way to call Michael and tell him what was going on. Getting lost would have been fun, but I felt so guilty the entire drive. We had planned to meet up at noon and didn’t end up arriving in the city until 3:30! I searched for Michael all around the city center but I couldn’t find him, and I figured he had taken the train back to Brussels after not being able to find me. I felt guilty for the rest of that day, but I still tried to have a fun time with my mom and Molls. We took a boat ride along the canals and everything was soooo beautiful! It was such a quaint little city and even though we didn’t get to spend the entire day there, I felt lucky to be able to see it at all. That night after dinner, we returned to Bailleul to spend the night before heading off to the Netherlands! When we got back to Domi’s house, I was finally able to communicate with Michael, who apparently had wandered around looking for me until a little before 4pm! That means we could have actually been right near one another! I apologized a million times, and then promised to visit him in Brussels soon hahah.
On Thursday morning we had a relaxing morning with Domi and her family before heading off to Amsterdam in the afternoon. On the way to Amsterdam, we stopped at a gas station and picked up way too many yummy snacks to eat on the almost four-hour-long car ride to Holland! We arrived in the early evening, and were very impressed with the very modern looking hotel room my mom had booked! We went up to the hotel restaurant to drink something refreshing after our long drive, and I tried Irish Coffee, which I hated. I thought it would taste like the coffee that Juliana and I used to drink at Charlie and Joan’s house, but it didn’t. It tasted like warm, milky alcohol, and I was not a fan. Amsterdam was windy, so we bundled up before heading into the city center to find dinner. Amsterdam was much dirtier than the other places we had been to, and my mom was not impressed by the weed smell that sort of hung around the city, but we were excited to be somewhere new! We got some yummy dinner at a cozy restaurant where the waitress made fun of us for not getting anything that we couldn’t get anywhere else, so while we ate we researched Dutch foods we could try the next day. That night, we walked around the Red Light District which was a place like no other I had visited before. I didn’t know how to feel when I saw the prostitutes in the windows. I couldn’t help but feel bad for them, but I didn’t want to feel bad because I didn’t know their story and what they were doing wasn’t illegal and I didn’t want to be judgemental towards a lifestyle I knew so little about. We went to a museum there called “Red Light Secrets” where we got to read about what it is like to be a prostitute in Amsterdam and what the rules are and all that. I learned a lot about how Amsterdam came to have so many prostitutes and what their average day was like. In the museum, there was a room that had a big video screen on it with men and women walking by. You could sit before the screen and see what it is like to be in a window with people staring at you. It was awful. Everytime one of the fake men looked at me I wanted to throw something at them and shout profanities, and that is how I know I could never be a prostitute!
On Friday, we got up at a reasonable hour for a day of exploring the city. First we walked around some shops that were near our hotel and then we took the metro into the city center. The metro system in Amsterdam was not too difficult to navigate, but I had to ask for help with pronouncing the names of the stations because I speak absolutely no Dutch! For lunch, we ate at a restaurant that served typical Dutch food, and it was so cute and such a fun experience! We had pea soup and stampott and for dessert we had mini Dutch pancakes with butter! That day we also went to the Van Gogh Museaum and walked around for hours looking at artwork and reading about Van Gogh’s life, which was interesting but a bit sad. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a grocery store right as it was closing to grab some food for dinner to eat in the hotel. We then had a fun and relaxing last night in Amsterdam.
The next morning, we got up earlier than we had the entire trip so we could get in the super long line to see where Anne Frank had been hidden while she wrote her diary. We stood in line for about an hour and took turns getting coffee and eating breakfast pastries. When we finally got inside, I couldn’t believe I was actually there. I LOVED reading her book in middle school and there was something magical about being where she was during those two difficult years. I think it was one of my favorite things we did during that trip. Later that day, we drove the five hours back to Paris where my mom was planning on staying with Christine and while Molly and I spent a night with Cecile, Fred, and Prune. It was dark by the time we got back to Paris, so Molly and I stayed with mom to help her drive to Christine’s house without dying. Parisian traffic is soooo scary, and I am glad we went with her. Molly and I took the metro back to the house in Asnieres. We had thought about going into Paris to meet up with some of my friends, but my French phone stopped working and I couldn’t get a hold of them and it was late and we were tired so we decided not to go. Fred and Cecile and Prune didn’t get home until midnight from their ski trip, but that was okay because Molly would be able to meet Prune in the morning!
Sure enough, bright and early on Sunday morning, Molly and I awoke to the pitter-patter of little Prune feet running down the stairs! I went out and Prune gave me a huuuuge hug and said she missed me a lot! That sweet moment lasted about half a second, because all Prune wanted was to meet Molly! She had been waiting for months to see Molly and is always asking me to facetime Molly so she can see her. The three of us had breakfast together and then played upstairs in Prune’s room. Fred was busy getting everything put back in order after the trip, but Molly and I also talked to Cecile a lot! I could tell that Molly loved my little French family, and they really liked meeting her too! Cecile was excited to meet my mom and sister because I had talked about them to her soooo often over the past months! We even have a litle joke that they are my favorite subject hahah. At noon it was time for Molls and I to take the metro back to Christine’s for lunch, and time for Fred, Cecile, and Prune to take the metro to the train station to meet Prune’s grandma! We go hang out on the metro with my French family for about 9 stations, and that was fun! Before the last station, Cecile took a picture of Molly, Prune, and I together on the metro, and it is one of my new favorite pictures! Back at Christine’s house, a delicious lunch was prepared for us to eat together before heading off to Vannes. Domi had arrived by train that morning, and we all sat down to eat a rabbit! That was interesting hahah. After lunch we took two cars on the five hour drive to Vannes. In the car with mom and Molls, we talked a lot and sang a little and listened to the French radio. We had already driven a lot on that trip, but we decided that it didn’t count because we were driving in EUROPE which makes even driving for hours a fun and cultural experience hahah. We stopped at a crepe place for dinner before arriving at Domi’s cottage near the sea. It is a vacation home, so it hadn’t been heated in quite awhile and we had to put glass bottles of hot water in our beds to make it through the night!
In the morning, the cottage looked completely different! Light was shining thought the many windows in the livingroom and it was a beautiful day! We had all woken up pretty late, so we had a late breakfast together and then my mom and I decided to go on a little run in the countryside. When we got back, we all ate lunch together and then got some bikes and rode out to a castle about 3km away from the house. It was the first castle I had ever been to! We had fun walking about inside and outside and exploring the little rooms. In the Duchess’s chamber at the top, there were even dresses we could try on, so we did OF COURSE! After the castle, we rode our bikes down to the beach to watch the sunset until we were cold and then we headed back up to the house to make dinner. It was a really fun day, and we finished it with cups of tea in the living room, telling stories until we were sleepy enough to wander off to bed.
On Tuesday morning, my mom woke me up early to go running with her before breakfast. I wasn’t feeling up to a big run, and I told her to go on without me because she wanted to run all the way to the sea! Two minutes after she left, however, I felt terrible for giving up an opportunity to spend time with my momma so I threw on my shoes to catch up with her. I figured I would either catch up to her or she would turn around and I would catch her on the way back. I enjoyed running out to the sea so much. I was glad I went! I felt like my mom as I ran along the green fields, and I couldn’t wait to see her face when I surprised her by joining her on the run! I ran all the way to the sea and I couldn’t find her, though! I asked a lady with two dogs if she had seen a woman running along, but she said she hadn’t. The lady was very nice though, and said I had a pretty accent and asked me about where I came from and we had a cute little conversation. It was windy on the beach, and I decided to turn around a run home, knowing my mom had probably found some cool path in the middle of nowhere and decided to go on an adventure instead of running to the sea. I wasn’t angry at all, and I enjoyed the run back to the cottage. When I got back, my mom was in the kitchen having breakfast with Domi and Christine, and we all had a good laugh over my attempt to surprise my mom. Molly woke up shortly after and we hung out and had coffee before it was time to pack up, say goodbye, and head off to the Loir Valley! My mom was sad to say goodbye to Christine and Domi, they really are so important to her. We got to write in a little journal that all the visitors right in before we left, and I was grateful to have an opportunity to thank them in writing for there gracious hospitality. That whole family is so warm and inviting and good at making even the lonliest traveller feel right home. I couldn’t help but love them the first time I met them, and I hope I will know them for many years, as my mom has been able to.
After a three hour drive, we arrived in Amboise at our adorable little rental cottage! It was right on the base of an old castle, and the rooms were super cozy. We walked downtown to get dinner, where I ordered the most delicious salad in the history of the universe, and then cuddled up and fell asleep in our perfect cottage.
The next morning (Wednesday) I had a bit of a rough time. I realized it was my second to last morning with my mom and Molly, and that made me very sad. This kept me up most of the night, so I woke up pretty tired and not in the best of moods. I didn’t want to think about them leaving. My mom begged me to run along the river with her, and I agreed to, but while we were running I broke down crying. I didn’t want to live in France for four more months. I was tired of being so far away from the people I love most and I was also tired and hungry for breakfast. My mom was running a bit ahead of me, but when she turned around she ran straight over and gave me a big hug and let me cry. Crying made me feel a lot better, actually. We ran back to the cottage and had a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit and yogurt with Molly. After that, it was time to explore the castle! Molly wasn’t feeling well, so she decided to stay inside and do some homework and momma and I went to the castle together. It was like the first castle, but about five times the size and the inside was furnished! It took us about two hours to see the whole thing, and it was sooo cool! Da Vinci lived there near the end of his life, apparently! After exploring the castle, my mom and I went walking around downtown to look around in a couple cute shops before going home to Molly. That night, we made roasted veggies for dinner and they were yummy and healthy as ever! After dinner, we walked down to a restaurant and got yummy French chocolate cake. It was the kind that is runny with chocolate on the inside, and it was heaven. That night, my cuddled me in my twin bed for a long time. I was trying to choose not to be sad, and it was mostly working. I didn’t want to waste the end of their trip with negative thoughts, I just wanted to appreciate what time I had left with them.
On Thursday morning, I opted to cuddle Molly rather than run with my mom. I snuck into Molly’s bed in the morning where I feel back asleep and then rewoke to the sound of my mom getting breakfast together upstairs. Molls and I went upstairs where my mom had fresh coffee and croissants and lots of fruit layed out for us in a beautiful spread on the table, and we spent wonderfully mellow morning eating our breakfast and talking and laughing. When we were through, we packed up out bags to head back to Paris so we could return the rental car and get settled into the hotel room next to the airport. At the hotel, we got in bed and watched a movie and cuddled. We wanted to soak up the last moments with as much love as possible! We got a call around 8pm from Cecile saying that she and Fred would be willing to drive out to the airport, pick us up, and take us to dinner so they could meet my mom. I was so pleasantly surprised. I really wanted my mom to meet my French family, but they were all the way in Paris and we would have to take a train for almost an hour and we were so tired from all our travels, so I didn’t think it would end up happening. Cecile and Fred really came through. I had told Cecile so much about my mom and Molly and I had told my family from the US so much about my French family and I just really wanted them to meet up and I was thrilled that it got to happen. They picked us up and took us to a Viatnamese restaurant near the airport where we talked and laughed and I got to watch two different groups of people I love get to know one another. Them meeting each other meant so much to me. In my short 19 years on this earth, I have met and loved so many different people in so many different places, and I am lucky for that but it also makes me feel lonely sometimes, because nobody every fully understands what different things and people mean to me. I spend so much time describing who I am to people who only see one version of me. When meetings like this happen, I feel like each party can understand me better. Now Cecile knows how blue my mom’s eyes are and my mom and sister have heard her say “it’s normal!!” in her adorable French accent. All these little things that were only stories for people who I am close, I no longer have appreciate alone, and that is refreshing.
The other really nice thing about Fred and Cecile driving out to meet us was that I didn’t have to return home alone on the metro. Saying goodbye to my mom and sister was hard, but it was easier when I had Cecile to distract me with questions about my trip on the way home.
I started this blog post around noon and now it is 6:16pm and I am only just finishing. This morning I went running and cleaned my room and did a ton of laundry. I feel a bit sad today, so I have been trying to distract myself, and I think I have been doing a pretty good job. Writing this blog has helped me look back on the trip and be grateful for the past two weeks and all the adventures they have brought me. Cecile had been checking up on me all day, too, hahah. She doesn’t want me to be sad, and I can tell she is a little worried because she is not old enough yet to deal with sad 19 year olds hahha. I am actually doing quite well though. Saying goodbye was the toughest part, and now I only have four months left, and one of those months I will be in Italy for three weeks! That is NOTHING! I have four more months to get better at French, and it is going to get warmer soon and I will book more weekend trips and visit more friends! Also, I get to see Prune again tonight and I missed her. Fred’s parents will be here all weekend, too, and I love them. So basically my life is perfect. I have people to love and people to miss and a million things to look forward to. Have a good weekend, everyone!
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