10 cup o' culture christmas

before i leave.
this would be appropriate considering the time of year. 
sorry no pictures, but this post could visuals. 

1. there are hanging lights in pretty much every neighborhood.  think about the shopping centers with their pole decorations, except imagine that they are old parisian buildings and that there are lights strung from one building to another in the center of every town.  paris is very organized with the districts, arrondisments.  within each district there are major “places,” kind of like in italy, but there are actually stores and such there.  they are the center of the neighborhood, but there are many towns in one district, but still in the city of paris.  

2. no christmas cards.  maybe christmas cards, but not where half of your friends are sending updates and photos of your family. i seriously did not see any christmas cards like the ones in the states, but i will not say that they do not exist. 

3. stores are just as busy and packed with people. 

4. hot wine and alcoholic cider. 

5. trees are placed in a makeshift stump, a tree trunk cut in half, with a drill hole in it where the actual christmas tree is placed.  no water for the trees and they dry out quicker. trees are smaller, less decorated, but just as nice.  

6.  marchés du noel. 

7. more blue lights (like the ones at disneyland) than the white ones.  you dont find houses lined with lights.  thinking about that is just weird.  

8. sales everywhere, just the same. 

9. no carollers, but lots of churches have christmas specials, mostly classical and gospel choirs.  i like that. 

10. break out the mega ferris wheel down the champs-eylsées. 

 

ill try to find pictures from people, but right now as i write, i am tired and need to clean and sleep before leaving for fresno. 

bonnes vacances! bonne fete! joyeux noel.

cousin katy

Changed the theme of the blog (plus the snow because it snowed in Paris last week on Monday!)  Like the old one better?  I like the other because it goes all the way across the page and makes my posts seem shorter, but I felt like I had to squint to read the page.  Did you have to do that?  I like both, let me know which is easier for you. 

__________________

My cousin Katy, who is studying in Madrid came to visit me in Paris the first weekend of December.  It was quite the weekend trying to pack everything one should see in a two day period.  Which museums, which monuments are the best to see in Paris when your time here is so short.  We were able to get a lot done and see quite a bit.  She arrived late Wednesday night, where I waited at my metro station for an hour as she got lost in the metro.  Finally we met up after an anticipated reunion.

Thursday I skipped school and took my cousin around to certain places that her mom, my aunt, recommended that we visit.  One of her recommendations wasLadurée, infamous for their macaroons and hot chocolate.  It was all quite tasty and quite pricey, but it was all worth the calories and the price for a authentic Parisian dessert — for breakfast.  That was probably the more unordinary thing we did apart from the monuments we saw later that day, which included: Notre-Dame, St. Michel, St. Germain, Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomph, and the Champs-Elysées.  Pretty good in one day. 

Friday we went to Sacré-Coeur and attempted to eat at a Korean barbeque place, but to find out that it had closed out!  I just past the place the week before and I thought it was open.  Zut!  Instead we at the gourmet supermarket, Le Bon Marché and walked home in the rain.  Cousin went to the Louvre that night with a friend and after we met for dinner and watched Dexter. 

Saturday cousin went to Versailles in the morning while I went to Jean-Baptist’sspectacle where his school had their christmas performance.  Do you know what they did?!  They were mimes!!  Every Monday this semester they had “mime-time” (that’s what I like to call it) and I did wonder why they were learning such an activity.  It sounds pretty cool and I am sure I would like my kids to do it, but definitely not an American activity, so I definitely felt a little odd towards the activity.  The efforts of their miming changed my mind and miming is seriously cool.  It was so cute to see a bunch of three to five year olds performing these mime sequences about Christmas time.  They were all supposed to be les lutins, elves that were helping Père Noel prepare for Christmas.  The best one was when the class created a sleigh with their bodies for Santa Clause.  It was unexpected, looked really cool, and impressive to watch a bunch of little kids construct a sleigh with reindeer! for Santa Clause. 

Saturday afternoon, met up with cousin Katy and we attempted to go to the Catacombs, but they were closed, so we just walked around the bottom half of Paris until I had to go babysit that evening.  Not so great since my cousin was here, but luckily she had another friend here and they went out to dinner.  Sunday, was free museum Sundays and we hit the Rodin museum to see the Gates of Hell and the Thinker.  After, we went to Angelina’s, another aunt recommended eatery.  I think this place is the super place where they are known for their hot-chocolate.  I was kind of hot-chocolated out, so I went for the white hot chocolate and my cousin got the regular kind and I was able to try it.  My white was definitely not as great as regular hot chocolate and the hot chocolate was better than Ladurée.  In the afternoon, we went to La Marailles where we window shopped and picked up falafels for a semi-early dinner before returning to my house to watch multiple episodes of Dexter.  It was an early turn it because it was a Sunday (much is closed on Sundays), my cousin was tired from stuffing Paris in three days, and she had to wake around 500am for her flight back to Madrid.  We thought the metro/RER opened at a certain time, but alas, it did not open at the designated hour posted on the internet, thus my cousin had to the expensive cab ride to the airport after being rudely rejected at an information kiosk in the metro. 

Last week in Paris until I return to my comforts in Fresno. 

searching for motto 2009

searching for motto 2009. i am still in the works. its a little harder this year and i feel the pressure. 

 

written december 18 2007 via xanga with modifications

background information: since 2006 i have had one motto for the whole year.  year before that, i believe i had a small, but somewhat realistic list of new year’s resolutions.  i found that the list was still too hard to do, so i changed and decided to have one motto for the whole year.  the motto would be a self-improving goal that i would continue to work on for the rest of the year.  was this a better strategy?  i think so. 

be loving 2006.  i had a small reputation of not being so nice. maybe not that, but i might have taken sarcasm to another level that was not westmont friendly and then i also had my five year friend plan (probably needs a whole separate post).  friends did not like that, was given the nickname “two sizes too small” (talking about my heart) from how the grinch stole christmas, thus be loving 2006 inspired my friends to help me and to join me in trying to be more loving.  and overall, it was a fantastic and humbling year.  i felt the change and they saw me change. it was all good.  so this trend continued this year and will continue to the next, and not just for me, but for my friends too. 

live it up 2007.  id like to think i lived the year out well.  looking back, it was definitely a challenging and more emotional year.  im pretty sure i did not have emotions before this year.  despite how bad things may seem at the moment or how confused and full of emotions one might have, it always gets better.  our lives are too good to complain of anything.  that little spiel doesnt really explain if i lived it up in 2007, but i do think i was more adventurous, more spontaneous than i was in 2006. i  was pretty boring (much of a homebody), but i knew i needed to have a little more fun in my life than the interactions that i was having with my computer. aka: my literati games, aim, facebook, xanga…real life and real people are more fun.  this motto was way better than the initial no expectations 2008. :)  

dont give up, embrace 2008.  i started conjuring up a 2008 motto during the summer at ausable.  yes, it was a tad premature to think of a motto when there were plenty of months to live it up; but i just get so excited thinking up new mottos.  people threw in their two cents, but unfortunately many mottos were rejected.  i cannot just pull a motto right out of a hat.  it is way more than that.  if i have to live with this motto throughout the year, it has to be good.  a friend threw the idea of embrace 2008.  i liked it, but it was not good enough.  i didnt have as strong of a meaning that i wanted it to have.  although as you can see, i kept it because it went very well with my dont give 2008 plan.  i had a very sad housing situation this semester and i was sad for a friend because she was easily giving up.  then i noticed that other friends being dreary about the school year, completing work, figuring out their life after school, financial issues, the hardships of being in our early twenties.  oh the melodrama. then i realized that this next year is going to be hard with so many changes that will be set before us: graduation, unexpected new friends and unexpected lost friends, jobs and careers, new cities, new lives, anything.  even from the small things like not wanting to go to class or doing a project well, but dont give up.  as a lot of friends are returning from abroad, things will change, but embrace and do not give up.  (and now i have a theme song: hope by twista)

where will you be september 2008.  as seniors we are getting that question a lot a lot.  we dont really know where we are going to be, but we do have a pile of dreams.  the last week before finals i asked any senior i knew or did not know, where they thought they would be september 2008.  they could say where they thought they were going to be geographically, work wise, married, pregnant, whatever.  i thought it would be neat to see where we thought we were going to be in relation to where we actually end up, thinking that most of us would know where we would be come graduation.  so at graduation, everyone will get their three by five cards back.  my goal is to get seventy-five percent of the senior class by the end of january.  ps. at senior chapel i came up with a westmont motto: one family 2008. borrowed from mount hermon, but i didnt realize that until after i had said it. 

where will i be september 2008. i wrote down on my three by five card that i would either be in the bay area or somewhere near boston.  i love the eccentricity of the city and a couple of friends and i have vaguely threw out the idea. that was one idea amongst the other ambitions, but as for september 2008.  i have a feeling i will stay in california as much as i would like to serve elsewhere, but with my grandparents getting older and with losing one this year, some things can wait. you only get one family.

10 family highlights

an update on the cross cultural communications. 

1. ambroise left me a little present on the floor: his poop.  it was gross, it was funny, it felt like deja vu with my dog. but its not something i want to see again. 
2. the whole family and i sang “sur la pont d’avignon all together holding hands and walking in a round. it was so great! 
3. the boys say: i love you.
4. jean-baptiste can say almost say fork.  it comes out like f*ck.  it was funny at first, but now we are really working on the foRk part.  he cant be going around saying fork out loud.  he can also say the basic table settings.
5. we sing: twinkle twinkle, mr. golden sun, happy birthday, and the intsy wensy spider.
6. everything we eat is “bon pour le sante,” good for your health or is at least questioned if it is good for our health. 
7. the boys love the elevator. 
8. the best part of my day with the boys is picking them up.  they get so excited and love their smiles when they run to greet me. 
9.  jean-baptiste teaches me a lot of vocabulary words and corrects my pronunciation when i read. he is three and half. 
10. pomme, the grand mother, got her name because she bought too many apples. and now patrice is mr. carrot because he buys/bought too many carrots.

10 tv shows

tv shows i have watched (because they are over)/watching

1. heroes (b)
2. house (b)
3. csi (n)
4. weeds (sn)
5. america’s next top model (done)
6. project runway (done)
7. the office (n)
8. dexter (sp)
9. sex in the city (mom owned the series, i took it; done)
10. tudors (done)
11. grey’s anatomy (n)
12. law and order: svu  (alb)
13. ugly betty (n)
14. samantha who? (b)

close enough to ten when you take out the done ones. but really, too much tv. but i can happily say that the last three shows are the shows that i watch when theyre isnt anything else to watch or at least there isnt a hurry to watch them. 

done
n: wasnt an devoted watcher from the beginning, but pick up on the new season and maybe a little bit of last season
b: from the beginning
alb: from almost the beginning/been watching a long time
sn: from the start of series to now/up to date until new season
sp: from the start and still trying to catch up/progressing

falling in love

this evening i fell in love with paris.
it should have happened a long time ago, but im ready.

there is a marché de noel at the church across the street from where i work and they open tomorrow.  but tonight they celebrated its opening with a choir.  we could hear it from the flat.  i went down after work and perused the cabin shops and immersed myself in the classic songs of christmas, this one particular icky cheese smell, the flavored maroons, and children’s toys.  i felt nostalgic for being young again.  after all, this is my first parisian christmas.  i love it. i love this city.

paris knows how to do it right for christmas.

with love, my developing sentimental heart.

box turkey

It is an American tradition. Go big or go home. 

Thanksgiving 1: at Katie’s, Thanksgiving day.  Thanksgiving is a little more special for Katie for whatever reason and she made the all-American traditional Thanksgiving (minus the yams).  There was the turkey pieces (whole turkeys are not hard to find, but just unnecessary for a whole turkey) with trimmings, the stuffing, green beans, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and something else I cannot remember.  She invited all her Domincan Republic friends and in all there were about nine of us.  It was pretty fun, but they spoke Spanish the whole night.  I am pretty used to it, they all know me, and I can entertain myself fine, so I did not mind at all.  It was nice seeing Katie’s friends again, it had been a while since I had been out with them.  

Thanksgiving 2: at my work house, Friday.  I did everything pretty much day of, hoping that everything would come together ok.  I did not want to make this not so important holiday to me a big deal or stressful.  Plus, I was not making anything elaborate that needed preparation.  I got most of my recipes from wholefoods.com, and since this was a sit down dinner I did not feel the need to go super all out.  At least at our family Thanksgivings in the states, we do the ‘i have to get everything in the line because it tastes so good’ buffet style.  So good. I went in the morning to the marché to get the vegetables and fruits I would be needing.  Then I picked up the box turkey! from this gourmet frozen only market called Picard.  Gourmet frozen food, ha. Seriously, it is a fabulous store despite that it is all frozen food.  The box turkey was stuffed with maroons and mushrooms and it actually turned out really good, thanks to the grandparents who came and helped me out with the directions for the turkey.  I tried to ask the housekeeper, but I just shook my head up and down smiling that I knew just what to do.  He was helpful and I understood pretty much what he said, but if I had listened to him, we would have had an overdone turkey.  Other than the turkey, I made brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes (with garlic and french cheese), and a salad. Not that much, not that conventional, but it was a good dinner.  And apart from the food, the company was great: the whole family, even the boys for a little bit, Bénédicte’s parents (love the grandparents, plus the grandmother made me the poire tarte she made for my birthday!), Katie, and a surprise guest, Elizabeth.  We spoke French most of the night and I was glad that the family could meet my friends.  We all had a good time and I believe we really appreciated everyone’s company of the mix between the French and the Americans. 

Did not know Elizabeth was coming on Friday, thought she was coming on Saturday.  She was supposed to meet up with friends here, but the friend is in the hospital with pneumonia, so things were kind of frantic for her to find a place.  But it was good to have her at Thanksgiving.  

Elizabeth leaves on Tuesday for the south of France and then cousin Katy will be visiting! Then two more weeks and I am home!

It has gone by way to fast.