Good Days Galore!

Hello everyone!

So I got some really good news this week! I was accepted into the PhD program at the University of California at Davis--my top choice!! I am so, so, sooo happy! Haha some of you have been witness to how nervous and stressed I was about this.  Whenever the subject would come up I would feel sick to my stomach and my blood pressure would skyrocket.  Shows how well I deal with stress.... ;)
Anyway, this whole week in general has been really good.  On Monday I received a book in the mail that I ordered from Amazon.fr.  It was just one of those that amazon recommends to you based on your previous purchases, and I got it because it was only 3 euros (including shipping/handling).  So I got it on a whim, but I am loving it--I am trying to put off finishing it because I don't want it to be over! Then, I had a really good workout Monday night. For a long time I have been wanting to add running to my workouts, but because of a bad experience involving trying to go for a run the morning after my senior party in high school, I have been hesitant to commit to running.  Anyway, I started to integrate the treadmills into my workout three weeks ago, and I was surprised at how much I have been enjoying it! On Monday night I managed to run about 7 miles at a fairly good clip, then went to a boxing class.  The 25 minute walk home was dreadful because I was so hungry and tired, but it felt pretty good overall. Then I got an e-mail from UC Davis saying that they were in the process of making a decision on my application, and I could view the application after 8am Pacific time (5pm my time!--yikes!) on FRIDAY.  Cue in the stomachaches, naseau, etc. I was already dreading all the anticipation of awaiting that decision...

I had high hopes for Tuesday, since 3 of my 6 classes were canceled (yeah, yeah, I know...I work too hard).  My second favorite step class is on Tuesday night from 7:15-8:15, and it was one of the best classes I have ever been to! The instructor had us doing some outrageous moves that involved dropping it low, then shimmying up rather ridiculously.  We were all cracking up the entire time--it was really fun!  When I got back to my apartment, I checked my e-mail and saw the word "congratulations" in the subject line of an e-mail from Davis and just freaked out like I have never freaked out before.  My roommates can attest to this....jumping, screaming, maybe even a tear or two, hugs, etc.  I was (and still am), so, so, soo happy!

The week before, I had found some cheap train tickets to Paris, and I had thought that this week would be really hard because of my anxiety about hearing back from Davis, so I went ahead and booked them for Wednesday.  So coincidentally, I was able to celebrate the news by going to Paris!! I had nothing planned for the visit and I was going by myself, so I decided I was just going to do whatever it was I felt like doing that day to celebrate.  

 I knew it was going to be a perfect day when a hot French businessman sat next to me on the train to Paris. But he spent the majority of his time on his cell phone, so unfortunately my friends I am still single. ;) I went to the Louvre in the morning because it was pouring outside. Since I am an "educator" in France, I was given a free pass to all the national museums and monuments in France....so I didn't feel THAT bad about only staying there for an hour and a half.... :) A highlight of this part of the day was seeing a guy wearing a "I <3 MILFS" sweatshirt inside the Louvre.  Hmmm...wonder where he might have been from?...

Next I walked around in search of the apartment that my family is renting for a week in May.  I wanted to check out the neighborhood to make sure it wasn't off the railroad tracks or above a brothel or anything.  It was actually in a really neat bustling neighborhood with lots of unique shops and tons of patisseries and fruit stands. Then, since this was a day of celebration, I went to the Latin Quarters to eat at my second-favorite kebab restaurant in the world (my favorite is in Florence, and I will be enjoying that in less than a month!).  It was freaking delicious and worth every one of its hundreds of calories.

A kebab from my second-favorite kebab place in the world

 Then I wandered over to Shakespeare and Company, a famous English bookstore across from the Notre Dome.  I think this is my favorite place in Paris.  I ended up spending 2 1/2 hours there.  The downstairs part of the bookstore is filled to the brim with new and used books for sale. Upstairs is like a library, there are thousands of books that aren't for sale and a few reading rooms and nooks.  Since it was drizzling a bit outside, I cuddled up in a corner and read for over 2 hours before glancing at my watch and realizing I needed to get a move on.  It was probably the best part of my day though...I miss going to bookstores.

A little corner in the upstairs part of Shakespeare and Company

The bookstore was pretty empty since there aren't many tourists this time of year.  But an awkward moment did pass when this self-conscious rigid-looking German guy started playing the piano (not very well) and kept awkwardly glancing at me to see my reaction. 
Finally, I went to Montmartre, an area of Paris that includes the Sacré Coeur and the Moulin Rouge.  There are a bunch of vintage and eclectic shops in this area that I wanted to check out.  I went into one of the vintage shops, and there was an American girl working at the store...so it was nice to be able to speak English (made me a bit home-sick!). 
Anyway, it was a wonderful day and a perfect way to celebrate the good news!  Today was also a really good day--I did another 7 miles on the treadmill and then went to a hip-hop dance class in which I probably looked ridiculous but eh, whatever. 
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! Thank you for all of your support and well-wishes, it means a lot! Miss you all very much! :)

Your French Disgusts Me

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a nice weekend! I am jealous of everyone who can watch the football games today, although I guess I won't be jealous if the Bears end up losing horrifically.  The only Iowa football game I was able to watch in France was the Iowa vs. Northwestern game, which was the beginning of their downward spiral. So, as my Dad would say, perhaps I am unlucky for my teams this year ;)

So I ended my last blog post with the exciting news that for the first time in my entire life, my French was actually complimented by a real-life French person! Well, the confidence gained from that wonderful experience was quickly smashed to pieces the very next day. Well, sort of, because the other person involved is a (okay, I just opened up Microsoft Word to use the thesaurus to find an alternative to the phrase "nasty bitch," but "no results were found." Sorry (but not really)). Anyway, I put off and put off my encounter with this individual until I could no longer avoid it.  I practiced the necessary dialogue three or four times with my roommate, and then I set off to this ordeal over with.

I managed to get 4 or 5 words out of my mouth when I first noticed this person's face contorting into the first of many grimaces. But this is the problem with having to explain this experience in a blog rather than face to face, because the grimace conveyed so much. For example, this was not the same "grimace" that naturally and instinctively overcame me when a poor teenage boy's voice went from baritone to soprano while he was speaking in my class.  No, that was more of a surprised "oh my!" sort of grimace.  Instead, this other person's grimace was one that clearly conveyed  a pure form of disgust.  The sort of disgust that you would feel if your son brought home his new girlfriend and it turned out to be Snooki.  Or the sort of disgust you would feel as you were listening to a mass murderer talking about the enjoyment that was derived from killing children.

Okay, that might be a BIT dramatic, but still, he/she was cringing (physically cringing!!!) as I spoke to him/her.  And I couldn't help myself--I started laughing.  I mean, for God's sake how many times in your life does someone cringe while you are talking?! What kind of person does that?! Its not like I was telling him/her I just murdered 20 of my students.  Anyway, laughing didn't help the situation out because I immediately lost my place in the memorized dialogue, and had to start over.  Ahh...such enriching life experiences I am having! :)

Anyway, I have to hurry things up because I have to be at another assistant's house for dinner in 15 minutes.  So to quickly summarize--on Friday night I went out with some other assistant's to an electronic music festival in Roubaix (just outside of Lille).  It was a lot of fun and some of the DJs were actually really good (the exception being the drunken, drugged up one who kept trying to dance on top of his equipment while he was playing and while others were playing).  I didn't get back to Douai until 7:15am though, so I spent most of the day out of commission.  But it was definitely worth it!
I don't work on Wednesdays, and today I found some really cheap tickets to Paris.  So I am going to spend this Wednesday in Paris! I am so excited! I need to figure out what I want to do! The Louvre...hitting up the sales...walking around the Latin Quarters/Shakespeare and Co, etc.  I can't wait!

Have a good week everyone! Go Bears!! :)

I Found Hell Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean

Well, I am back in France again after taking a wonderful trip to Iowa! It was so nice to see all my friends and family again, I have missed you all so much!

Luckily I missed all of the snowstorms in both Europe and the United States, so I had no troubles at all in catching all of my planes (6 in total, whew).  My seat-neighbor on the overseas flight to France was, erm, interesting to say the least.  I think she was probably a very nice woman, but she did not speak a word of English and she spoke French with such a heavy accent that I couldn't understand that either.  I guess now I know how French people feel when they listen to me try to speak French. :) Anyway, this is probably rude and tactless to write about this in my blog...but whatever, I found the situation rather funny.  To be frank, this woman was huge--I'm talking anywhere from 375 lbs --425 lbs. The tray in front of her could only come down to a 45 degree angle.  And, I feel like a horrible person writing this, but she smelled like 2 week old Chinese food. So, there is me in the window seat and her in the aisle seat. Except this is inaccurate, because technically speaking she had about 1 2/5 of a seat, while I had about 3/5 of a seat.  I knew sleep was NOT happening, so I decided to just watch movies the whole time.  About that same time, she decided to open up her Bible for the remainder of the flight, which was fine except she held it in a way that covered up about 1/4 of my television screen. Can it get any worse than this?! Why yes, actually it can and it indeed did get worse. About a half an hour later, a baby started screaming about two rows behind me and did not stop for about 45 minutes.  (Btw, my sister always accuses me of not liking babies, but on 11 out of 14 overnight flights I have had a screaming baby within a 4 seat radius of me. I will not say if this accusation is true or not, but let's just say you won't see me with a baby anytime soon).  Anyway, at this point I wasn't even mad or upset, honestly I just thought it was funny.  I was sort of searching for the hidden cameras that would reveal that this was all a setup for a weird new European reality show. 

So after crossing Hell somewhere over the Atlantic, I arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport...or in another dimension, the suburbs of Hell (I was ALMOST out, but not quite). I arrived at passport control about the same time as 1,200 other people.  There was a tiny little gate (it reminded me those gates that cattle/pigs have to walk through to get on the trucks to the slaughterhouse after the 4-H fairs), that about 800 people were "lining up" at.  "Lining up" is used really, really, REALLY loosely here, because in reality it was a donnybrook (GRE vocab word that means "clusterfuck") of people trying to cut off the 500 people behind them who actually were trying to create order out of chaos by forming a sort of line.  I had to catch a train in 2 hours, and just as I was about ready to call to switch to a later time, an official yelled out "foreign passports follow me," so I moved faster than I have ever moved in my life to follow him to a new line that had just opened up, and within half an hour I left Hell and its suburbs and found myself back in France! Whew! Quite an adventure!

It is so nice to be back in France! My first weekend back I manage to drag myself out of my jetlag stupor to go to another assistant's apartment for a "galette des rois."  This is a French cake that you share with friends or family, for l'Épiphanie, a Christian holiday on January 6th.  Inside the cake there is a tiny figurine of a king, and whoever finds the figurine gets to be king for a day! The cutting of the cake is done with a lot secrecy, either under the table, or in another room to prevent people from cheating.  While I was not the king that day, I did find a tiny figurine of a lamb in my cake... 

A "Galette des Rois"

Last Friday I went out with a friend and met some of his friends at an Irish pub in Douai, and he pointed out that this was my first time being out with only French people! Haha this was quite a milestone for me, as I am used to having at least one other native English speaker for support in social situations.  Anyway, it was a really fun night, and everyone was very nice. 

Finally, last Wednesday "les soldes" (the sales) started.  If I am understanding correctly, sales in Europe are regulated by the government.  So every winter, in the middle of January all of the stores have massive sales (think Black Friday in the U.S.). They continue for about 5-6 weeks.  Today I couldn't resist having a look, so I went to my favorite shop to have a look around.  My favorite shop is "Couleur Framboise," and it has sort of eclectic jewelry, accessories, and some clothing.  Unfortunately, it is on the route that I take to the grocery store each week, so the woman who owns the store knows me well :)  She asked me how my sister liked her earrings, and then she even complimented me on my French, and people this is HUGE!! My first compliment EVER on my French! Yay!! Anyway, to my surprise everything in the store was 30% off, so I got a few Christmas presents for next year, as well as a very beautiful turquoise and silver necklace and earring set for myself. :)

Anyway, love you all and miss you lots! Have a great weekend! Go Bears!! :)