Almost Christmas

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! 

Geneva, Switzerland!

I am proud to report that last night I arrived home to Paris, safe and completely exhausted, from my first little weekend/European travel adventure! As you read in a blog I wrote about a month ago, my friend Olivia and I had made plans to go to Belgium, but due to the closing of the French boarders from the attacks on Paris, we were unable to go on our trip. Ever since then I had been itching to get out of France and explore other places in Europe, and this weekend I had the opportunity to do just that! Shortly after the trip to Belgium was cancelled, my friend Jess and booked some really cheap plane and hostel tickets for a weekend get-a-way in Geneva, and that weekend ended up being a total success! 

The adventure began for me at about 8:20am on Saturday morning, when I left my house to meet Jess at the Saint-Lazare train station. I had packed warmly but lightly and brought with me only a backpack with a change of socks and underwear, toiletries, my passport, a journal, some snacks, and some money. I had woken up not feeling sleepy at all, and it felt as though the only thing that wasn’t perfect about the morning was that I was starting to loose my voice a little and my throat hurt. I had been battling a cold the entire week before but nothing was going to stop me from finding my way to Switzerland hahah. Jess and I met up on the train platform and then proceeded to take two trains to arrive at the airport. I was bubbling with excitement and she was nervous that something would go wrong, which was hilarious for me because usually worrying is my job. I explained to her that I wasn’t sure that everything would go well, but I wasn’t going to let the possibility of something going wrong take away my giddiness, and she agreed that that was a good idea, so we ran through the airport like two very happy children, assuming everything would be amazing and beautiful and getting a lot of weird looks hahaha. When we went to print out our tickets, we all of a sudden got very quiet. The trip seemed so perdect that it almost felt too good to be true. The computer, however, quickly located our tickets and printed them out for us! We started jumping up and down because havign tickets made our trip extra official hahah. We were so stoked that we took pictures with them. 

Going through security only took about 10 minutes, and since everything had gone by so smoothly, we ended up with about an hour to kill before getting on the plane. We spent that hour sort of wiggling in our seats and talking about how happy we were to go. When we got on the plane, we realized that we were not seated together, but since it was our luckiest day ever, Jess ended up with nobody beside her so they let me go sit with her in a WINDOW SEAT! The plane took off at 11:15am, and once it was in the sky, Jess and I got out our packed lunches and munched away on baguette sandwiches. The flight attendents brought us coffee and juice and cookies, which went nicely after our lunches, but before we even finished eating the captain announced that we were beginning our decent into Geneva! It worked out so perfectly hahah we just ate lunch in the sky and then landed in Geneva. When we got off the plane, we spotted a machine that was giving out free train rides from the airport to Geneva, so we took one each and then headed off to find the train. We kept second guessing ourselves, so what should have been a 7 minutes walk to the train turned into about 40 minutes of walking in circles. But we weren’t irritated about this, because whenever something began to feel stressful, we remembered that we had no plans and that this weekend was for exploring and there was no way to mess it up. And yeah, maybe we were lost between the airport and train station, but we were lost in SWITZERLAND, and that itself was something to be happy about. 

Eventually we found the train, and we only had to ride it for about 10 minutes before arriving near the center of the city. We got off the train, and with nothing else planned, we began to walk towards where we thought the lake would be. As we walked, we commented on how different it was from Paris. The buildings were more colorful and the streets were a lot bigger and even a little cleaner. Before long, we arrived at the lake, and it was BEAUTIFUL. The city just sort of opened up around it and there was so much room! There was room for lots of sunshine and amazingly fresh air and you could see the snow-topped mountains curving around the city. There were lots of people out and about, walking or biking or boating around. 

We crossed a big bridge and then ended up finding a map. The map showed an area called what in English would be like “Old Town Geneva”, and that sounded cool so we headed over there. When we got closer to the Old Town, the streets became smaller and the buildings really did seem older. The streets were all cobblestone and the curved up hills. We noticed that a lot of other people were heading uphill to the center of Old Town, so we decided to follow them. As we wandered, we noticed that some of them were wearing funny little white bonnets and some kids were dressed up in strange costumes. Up ahead we could see crowds of people watching some sort of demonstration, and when we pushed through to see what was happening we discovered a bunch of men wearing military-looking uniforms doing some sort of march with spears. Around us were all sorts of booths set up where people wearing traditional Swiss clothing were selling vin chaud (hot wine) and chocolate and sausages. After watching for awhile( and having no clue what we were seeing) Jess and I decided to walk down some smaller streets and just explore Old Town some more. The thing was, we couldn’t go five minutes without running into different grouple of people dressed in the Swiss clothing, or children running aorud in strange costumes with pieces of paper, looking alert and excited. We weren’t bothered by this at all, but we began to realize that some sort of important festival was going on and we wanted to know more. Up another hill, we heard musket shots and people cheering, and we ran up the hill to see what was going on up there. Up there, there were more people dressed up, but they also had cannons and muskets and they were announcing something in French that we couldn’t quite pick up with all the other noise. At some point around then, we found a pamphlet that was written in both French and English, and we learned that they were doing an annual festival that celebrates a night, a long long time ago, when Geneva was invaded in the middle of the night and was nearly taken over, but all the townspeople woke up and were able to succesfully take back Geneva! Jess and I felt pretty lucky to be there on such an interesting day and it was fantastic that we got to witness so much of their history on our short trip! We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the festival, drinking vin chaud (which tastes like yummy apple cider but smells kinda gross), and taking lots of pictures! 

When the sun began to set, we walked along the lake and out to a little lighthouse. There were groups of people all around us, sitting on rocks or benches and waiting for the sun to set. There were birds flying all around and the lake was so still and peaceful. We decided to stay there until the sunset because the pictures were gorgeous and we couldn’t think of anywhere prettier to be. When it grew dark, we decided to find our hostel before dinner just in case finding it ended up being difficult. We had some trouble, but after about 45 minutes of wandering around we were able to find it, and it was very nice! Geneva is a LOT colder than Paris, so it was nice to arrive at the warm hostel and sit down for a bit before heading off into the cold to find dinner. In our room, we met a girl named Lael and invited her to get dinner with us. She said she would be delighted to, and had even heard of a cute fondue place we could go to. Lael was pretty cool! She comes from upstate New York and is just finishing a semester abroad in Madrid. She came to Geneva for the same reason we did; because why not hahah. The three of us bundled up and headed out to find the cute fondue place, but when we got there it turned out to be suuuuper expensive, so we found a somewhat cheaper Italian pizza place to eat. I liked it there because it was so warm inside and the pizza was yummy! We sat around and ate pizza and talked for quite awhile, just getting to know each other. I, however, did not do as much talking as usual because my voice had pretty much completely dissapeared by then and talking took so much painful energy that most of the time my comments just weren’t worth the effort hahah. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and sat on our beds talking and laughing. We met the other girls in our room; a grumpy Canadian skier girl and two super sweet girls from Colorado. I told them about Cherish and they said a lot of their friends go to Boulder like she does. I would have investigated more but I felt creepy because my voice was weird so I just sat on Jess’s bed with her and smiled a lot. Some of the girls wanted to go out to a bar and explore the night life of Geneva, but we decided to stay in because it was freezing, expensive, and well, I personally was still kind of sick and thought I should rest. We were in bed falling asleep by 11:30pm with our alarms set for the next morning so we could wake up early for the complimentary breakfast that ended at 9:00am. 

The next morning, we woke up and stumbed sleepily downstairs for our breakfast. The hostel served yogurt and cereal and toast and coffee and juice and it was yummy! After breakfast, we went upstairs and packed up to leave the hostel and see more of the city. Lael decided to stick with us for the day, and she even had some ideas of things we could do! She wanted to go see CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and an Italian market that was just a tram ride away! The hostel gave us cards that made all transportation free, which was awesome, and we set off to find our way to these places. The tram system in Geneva was completely foreign to us, but it didn’t take that long to figure out! We got to the CERN dome thing, but it was completely closed off hahaha. Soooo we took pictures with it and then jumped on another tram to get to the Italian Market. The Italian market was really cool! There were lots of homemade soaps and treats and chocolates and wool things! We walked around taking pictures. Oh, I forgot to mention, that morning my voice didn’t come back AT ALL, so I was doing a lot of listening hahah. After some time, we got hungry, so we headed off to….MCDONALDS. I know, and I am sorry. But Geneva is sooooo expensive! It is ridiculous. Even McDonald’s was pretty pricey, but it was the best we could do. It was actually pretty funny because we sat there, eating our burgers, and saying how much we missed “cheap ol’ Paris!” I always thought Paris was expensive, but being in Geneva made Parisian prices seem very reasonable hahahah. 

After lunch, we decided to head back up to Old Town because we needed to try the Swiss homemade hot chocolate. We accidently walked all the way around where we were trying to get to before realizing that it had been pretty close the entire time, but luckily we got there in time to get some hot chocolate to go. We were trying to move quickly because while Jess and my flight didn’t depart until 8:30pm, Lael’s was scheduled to leave at 5:55pm so she would have to leave the city long before Jess and I. We took our hot chocolate down to the lake so get some pictures of the famous “jet d’eau”, which is this 140 meter high water fountian that just sort of shoots up lake water all day long and is really impressive and nice looking. After wandering by the lake for a bit, we ended up back over near the little lighthouse where we sat down on a dock and talked until it was time for Lael to head back to the train station. She promised to send us all the pictures she had taken on her fancy camera, and like that we said goodbye. After Lael left, Jess and I didn’t feel like moving. We still had a couple hours to kill, so we decided to stay at our cute little dock spot and watch the sun set there again. As we sat and talked, ducks and swans swam by us, and even some crazy humans too! We talked about how lucky we were to have been able to see Geneva and how excited we were to take little weekend trips in the future. As the sun sank lower and lower, we got colder and colder, and as the last bit of sun slipped away we decided to head back to the train station a little early because at least it was warm there hahah. We took our train back to the airport, where security took forever because France is still being very careful with security things, and then we sat down at our gate and ate pretzels and listened to music and closed our eyes. Our flight ended up being delayed by about 45min, so we stayed like that for awhile. My throat was killing me by then and I was pretty sleepy. The night before my throat had kept me awake for a lot of the night, but it was weird because I was so warm and comfortable that I felt like I rested well even if I didn’t sleep much. Still, now that the most exciting parts of our adventure had passed, I was ready to get home and curl up in bed and sleeep for a long time. Jess felt the same way. We got to sit on the plane together again, but we got the weirdest seats because we were on a huge plane and the emergency exits were pretty intense and we ended up sitting right next to one of them which meant we didn’t get little tables or places to put our bags hahah. I woke up a little because I felt like I had to stay alert if I was to be in charge of such an intense looking emergency exit. My mom had told me her flight to Geneva from Paris had been super bumpy and I wanted everyone to be safe so I stayed alert. The flight ended up being a lot longer than the first one because we had to do a bunch of circles in the sky because there was no room for us. After we got of the plane, my night was a blur of rushing through the metro and train stations until I collapsed into my big warm bed and slept for hours. 

 

 

Actually, when I got home, I discovered that a package had arrived for me from my Dad’s family! My birthday presen! I got an Amazon Kindle and a beautiful little card from Stella which is now haging in my room. 

This trip was a fantastic introduction to my traveling possibilites in Europe, and now I just can’t wait to book more trips!! I save all the au pair money I make to be able to do things like this, and I have so many people to visit and I am just so excited about how easy it is! 

I hope you liked my little blogblog. :)

I'M NINETEEN AND I HAVE BANGS

Oh my goooooodness, people, WHAT A WEEK! I have seriously had just the best week. To start things off, I am officially nineteen years old and I keep forgetting I am a year older and then remembering again and when I remember it makes me feel so interesting and wiggly and happy. It makes me kinda want to dance with my shoulders, you know? I am so glad to be nineteen. It feels like the perfect age for me, right now. :)

I had a fantastic birthday. On Tuesday morning, December 1st, 2015, I woke up early to skype my mom and Molly and Sky and Katie and Bella before school. It was such a snuggly and calm way to start my day, and it was so nice to finally open the package of goodies my mom had sent that had been sitting in my room for two weeks waiting to be opened! I recieved a lot of lovely presents in that package, one of my favorites being a little heart necklace that molly taped to a napkin on which she wrote a little birthday message before sealing the whole thing off with a lipstick kiss thing hahahah. I like the necklace because it has two little hearts and I like to think that I am one of them and Molly is the other and we are just kind of cuddled up together no matter what happens or where I go. I haven’t taken it off since I first put it on! After skyping my family, I took off for school. On the way to school, I bought my first French croissant  which was like every single other croissant I have ever eaten except for about 3 million times more delicious. It felt like a good birthday treat to give myself on my French birthday, and I had some subway coffee with it! At my French lesson, there was a new Italian girl in our class who ended up sitting next to me and we became friends right away. Her name is Alessandra and she is also 19! I think making a 19 year old Italian friend on my 19th birthday means we will be friends forever. After class, Alessandra came to get coffee at the Australian place with some of my friends from my old class. We spoke in French and laughed until lunch time, and then I headed off to meet up with some other friends. We ate a lot of really yummy sushi and got bobba tea for dessert! It felt like any old day, except I kept remembering that I was 19 and getting excited about that hahaha. After the tea, we went our separate ways because it was time for work! 

When I got home, Prune and Cecile were there because Prune had had a fever the day before and was taking another day off school to get completely better. At that point, however, Prune had regained all of her energy and she made sure, since it was my birthday and everything, to direct ALL of that energy at me hahah. On a normal day, it might have been overwhelming, but I was in such a good mood that I just went along with it. She ran up to me with her arms full of presents and begged me to open them right away. Together we hurried into the livingroom and I let her unwrap my presents for me as I tried to read the card that Fred and Cecile had written for me in French! The family got me an adult anti-stress coloring book and some really nice hand lotion and lip balm. I really wasn’t expecting a present and I felt so touched that they had remembered my birthday! After opening the presents and everything, Prune and I spent most of the rest of the day at a nearby park. Since it was my birthday, Prune let us go to the big kid park because she knows that I like to go down the slide there, and we took turns going down the slide for well over an hour! When we got home, she asked me what I wanted to do, and I told her I wanted to workout but I couldn’t take her on a run wtih me because she would run too fast for me. She agreed, of course, and told me we could dance instead. So we danced around to Christmas music for a bit. At some point during that time it occured to me that I could just look up an at-home workout video on youtube and do it while she watched TV. I asked Prune if she was okay with this and she said no because she wanted to workout with me hahaha. So I changed us into our workout clothes and I spent the next half our doing a fitness blender workout with Prune at my side, doing her absolute best with a total game face on!! Hahaha she loved it. Ever since that day she asks me if we can workout when we get home from school, so we usually do! I spent the rest of my birthday making Christmas decorations with Prune and skyping my dad before going to sleep. It was a wonderful, wonderful birthday and I feel so lucky to have passed a birthday in France! 

 

So you know how had my first French croissant this week? WELL. My friends and I decided that I should have my first kebab as well! On Thursday, Olivia, Jess, and I went out to a super ghetto part of Paris to search for a kebab place that had super good ratings but ended up not existing anymore because the website we found it on hadn’t been updated since 2012 hahah. We ended up finding a pretty good place after awhile, though, and it wasn’t expensive at all! I was quite pleased with my first kebab experience and I look forward to eating others in the future. This is a picture of us at the kebab place and Olivia is making a really weird face but just ignore that hahah. 

 

On Saturday morning, I let a French woman who speaks absolutely no English give me bangs! My hair had been the same way for 6 years, and I was ready to change it hahaha. I didn’t care if it ended up looking weird, I just wanted to do SOMETHING to it. The lady who came to cut our hair is one of Cecile’s friends who used to be a hairdresser but is now retired. She still goes to her friends’ houses on the weekends, however, to cut hair for them and their families. So I got a super inexpensive haircut  and it was a pretty cool experience! She could tell I was a little nervous, but she was so nice to me and tried to make me relax by sort of dancing around while she cut my hair and I really enjoyed that. I am still getting used to my new hair, but I am very happy that I did it. I was so curious about how I would look with bangs ever since Katie Beth George told me I should get them, and now that I have them I feel like a new 19 year old with a cool new hair style taking over Paris hahah. 

 

On Saturday evening I met up with Jess and we walked around at the Christmas Market for a bit before going to Olivia’s flat to drink some wine and hang out. I had the absolute best time with them, just talking for hours at Olivia’s place and laughing and being silly! They are both so sweet and interesting and I feel like the three of us could talk about anything and I would have a great time because that is how cool they are. Later that evening, we went out to a Canadian bar called The Moose because Jess had been dying to go there for ages. We got to try Poutin, a Canadian delicacy that is pretty much french fries covered in gravy and cheese, that Jess had been telling us about. According to Jess, the Poutine served in France was nothing compared to the Poutin in Canada, but we all enjoyed sharing our little Poutin together and we agreed that someday we would meet in Canada to try REAL Poutin.  

 

AAAAND last but not least, today I went out to lunch again with Olivia and Jess and I ate a delicious chickenburger. We meant to meet up for brunch but we had some metro complications that put us bout two hours behind schedule. It was  a great burger, and by the time the waitress brought it to the table I was so hungry and it looked so good that I HAD to take a picture of it because it was so beautiful and now that I have a picture of it I feel like the right thing to do is blog about it. 

THAT WAS MY WEEK! I hope you liked this blog. :)