Meet Danielle

She is officially going to kill me for posting this as her introduction picture.  I am sorry, I just adore this picture.  Yes, it is totally dorky.  Yes, it is an unflattering angle.  And, yes, everyone should know that this girl is drop-dead gorgeous and could woop anybodies butt most any day of the week.  So, don't be hating on this picture.

Okay, okay, introduction time.  Danielle and I met...well....actually, Danielle met my dear friends the Richardson's (whom you will meet soon) on a train where she gave them her phone number.  This transaction occurred before I met the Richardson's, but upon meeting them, Andrea (Mom Richardson) gave me Danielle's number for a potential au pair friend. 

Boy, what a lifesaver.  Danielle and I played phone texting for a while, not meeting up for a month or so.  Finally, we got together in La Defense, and, as she describes it, there were fireworks.  Immediate connection.  No awkward what-shall-we-talk-about, can-I-leave-yet, this-is-exhausting moments, just pure awesomeness.  And this is how I would generally describe Danielle: just pure awesomeness.  She is courageous, strong, blunt, bold and full of so much self-respect.  I would be quite lost and lonely without her here in Paris.  Without her just a few stops away.  Without her being my au pair cousin (our host-moms are sisters).  She has listened and scolded and consoled and advised and laughed with me.  For that I am extremely thankful.  Just wanted to introduce you to this rockstar that I call my friend.

Boat Ride on the Seine

I decided to do some catching up on some special events that happened during my first couple of months in France.  Hence the previous winter wonderland post.  Arriving in France, I got the rather special treat of meeting, working, and living with Magi.  A Russian beauty, born and raised in Germany, she worked as an au pair for the Russ family before me.  We got to work together for about a month and a half before she packed up her bags and moved back to Germany.  (Important side note: this girl and her family are incredible.  They let me stay with them for a week and fed me while I took an intensive German language course.  They spoke to me in Russian accented German and shared their home with me.  I could never be thankful enough.)

Before Magi left, Demet and Roland bought all of us tickets for a lunch/boat ride on the River Seine.  Absolutely amazing!  It was a clear and windy day, cold, but who cares if you are sitting inside, eating and listening to live singing and accordion accompaniment?  That's right, no one.  We ate reasonably tasty food and watched the beauty of Paris pass peacefully by.

And then there was that music.  Music that was just to movement inducing.  Wiggling in your seat and watching lustfully as a beautiful couple waltzed and glided down the aisle between sitting customers is just too much.  I threw caution to the wind and got those girls up and dancing.  We all held hands, and spun, and spun, and spun a bit too much, but it was thrilling and exciting to stand in the middle of everyone and be serenaded by Mister Accordion Man.  So we kept spinning, even though we had no other steps and no other moves but the ones that just came from holding each others' hands and letting the music move us. 

 Thanks for the memory, it's a favorite.

Reminiscing About Snow

It was early on a Saturday morning when I woke up and saw that the world was covered in white.  Admittedly, the white was not very thick and I knew it was going to last maybe a day, but my heart leapt into my throat and I ran down the stairs.  My stay with the Russ's had perhaps reached its one month mark and when I saw my two little girls, Aylin and Melis downstairs, the excitement could not be contained.  "Schnee!!  Snow!!  Schnee!!  It snowed!!!" ensued by lots of jumping and waving of hands and squealing.

That afternoon we all took a walk together down to the forest that is situated right next to the Saint Francis Domain where I used to live with the Russ's.  We reached the pond at the bottom of the hill, in the middle of the forest, and discovered a frozen skating rink, slightly iced with snow.  Roland and I made a skating "line" where we could take running head starts to then hit cleared runways where we would slide until the end.  We made snow angels, drew hearts and wrote our names in the snow with our feet.  It's one of my favorite memories with the Russ family and looking back nearly a year since then, I am grateful for such a wonderful, white, and Christmasy memory.   

Giving Thanks

It's Thanksgiving.  Actually, my Thanksgiving day is almost over.  Perhaps it just started for you?  Probably.  I have to admit, though, I am thankful.  I am thankful for the community automatically created from being an American, living in France.  I am thankful for my family who has not forgotten me, even though I live thousands of miles away.  I am thankful for friends who spend time with me on Skype.  I am thankful for the post office.  I am thankful for the beauty of fall. 

You know what else?  I'm thankful for being lonely.  No, seriously.  Loneliness sucks, and wow, how it shows me things that I would never have seen if I was not lonely.  I'm also thankful for not knowing what I am doing with my life.  I mean, I pray, every day, for God to show me what the plan is, where my life is heading, what-in-the-heck my purpose here on earth is, but what an awesome opportunity.  An awesome opportunity to explore myself, to explore the world, to explore what there is out there in the wide unknown. 

A friend told me recently that I am a free spirit.  I am thankful for that spirit, that God-given freedom to know that I can go and be anything that I want.  One of my current favorite quotes, by George Bernard Shaw, says, "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

As you look at everything you are thankful for today, don't forget to send up a little thanks to the Big Lady Upstairs for the freedom to choose, the freedom to live as you decide, and the freedom to be a force of nature in your own life, instead of complaining and sniveling about the (lie) that you have no control over your own life.  Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll!   

Culture Shock

Yep, it sucks.  I know it sucks because this is my third time around the block of culture shock.  So, my last post was about missing home, and then I didn't write again for nearly a month.  Or was it a month?  I'm not exactly sure anymore.  My days seem to whirl by and at the same time continue to increase the amount of time that has passed since I've been home.  The feeling is unsettling.  What is also unsettling is that the "honey moon" feelings of the first two to three months that you are in a new culture and language are beginning to make their exit.  Or they have already left the building.  Dangit.  I was living off of their don't-worry-this-is-exciting fumes to numb out the I-haven't-been-home-in-nearly-a-year blues.  

Then there is English.  You know, my native tongue.  But even as I attempt to speak it the few times that I can during the day, I recognize that I speak a very weird kind of English.  My writing skills are not much better.  The poor two older kids of my family have me helping them with their English.  Perhaps I am the one who needs a tutor now?  I don't know, but I do know that at times it can be extremely frustrating. 

Culture shock sucks because it's when you realize that you are a child.  A two year old, in a sense.  But, you are actually an adult, so everyone treats you like one in your new culture.  Which, can be extremely nice, and also make you feel like a complete idiot when you are, actually, incapable of acting like an adult in that culture/language.  And you really can't communicate beyond the day to day grind.  Which is all fine and dandy when you haven't been living in the country for 11 months, are single, and spend most of your days just wishing you had more than one true friend to hang out with.  My life is pathetic.  But I live in Paris!  >.<

Okay, thank you for reading my complaining rant about culture shock and feeling lonely and misunderstood.  I know, I know, things will get better, but at the moment, I just feel like time continues to increase and make me miss my family more and yet time should be increasing and making me feel more secure here in France/French.  *sigh*  Oh the complexities of life.

Home

I love being abroad.  Eight days from now I will hit my ten month anniversary of being out of the United States of America.  And I miss home.  The longest I have ever stayed away from my family is nine months, and maybe it was actually only eight.  Perhaps as we got older we start to realize the importance of our family, the fact that, in the end, they're most likely the ones who will still be around after everyone else has moved away and moved on.

I miss English.  Although I get enraptured in listening to French and German, I also cannot wait to step onto the street and only hear my mother-tongue.  For a while now, I have thought that I would like to travel and live abroad for years at a time.  But as fall is starting to make its way in, and the days get shorter, and the time longer since seeing the people who matter most to me, I think that, in the end, I'd rather be where my heart is.  And currently, my heart is a good 5,000 miles from where I am actually living.

My heart is sitting in the car with my mom as she drives to work, passing Baldy Mountain and the rows of fall-shaded trees that line the roads and hills in Idaho.  It's sitting on the floor in my brother's house in Eagle, playing cards with my three nieces and hanging out with my sister-in-law.  It's walking out back, past my grandma's house, onto the ditch road that lines one side of our 100-acre ranch with my dad and his dog, Abby.  It's playing garbage man with my nephew and talking about life with my brother and his wife.

Experiences are wonderful things, and I have had so very very many of them here in France.  I love my job, I am comfortable, well taken care of, and happy.  I also seem to recognize more and more, every day, that experiences are only as good as the people you are sharing them with.  In the end, I would rather have even just a few ordinary, run of the mill, experiences with the people who mean the most to me, than hundreds of thousands of extraordinary experiences without them.  Sending all my love to my family and friends back home, I miss you and love you lots.

Loud (and Proud to Learn Something New)

We are loud.  I mean, as Americans, we are just loud.  Whether we are in a public or private place, you can pick out an American by sheer volume.  It’s not something I have been very proud of as I have traveled abroad.  It is something that I have tried to suppress and have laughed at those “dumb tourists” who are more yelling than talking while they walk down the street. 

A wise woman once said to me, “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.”  Being loud is something I guess hasn’t left my still very American blood.  Hence, my first cultural blunder:

Five days ago I moved into my new house and job.  I have been settling in quickly and really love the family.  Because we are both trying to figure out this whole living together thing, there are a few kinks that still need to be worked out.  I have sketchy internet access in my room, for example.  Thus, after planning a skype date with a friend, I found myself sitting downstairs, in the kitchen rather than my room, skyping with said friend.  Skyping loudly and blissfully unaware.  For an hour and a half. 

Now, this new house is gorgeous, huge, and everything echoes.  The ceilings are the kind that if there were 1 ½ of you, you could maybe touch them.  And of course, being a European home, there is no carpet, adding to the general reverberation of sound waves throughout the first floor.  Ah, the blessings of being a very, very loud American. 

My poor host mom had her sister over and they were talking in the living room.  Yup, you got it, my Americaness was reverberating all the way to the living room, interrupting what polite conversation they might have been having.  Needless to say, my host mom came in after I was done and let me know that, in France, it is considered bad manners to have a private conversation in a public manner.  She said that it was probably a culture thing, and I would have to say, she is probably right.  It did not even cross my mind that I was having a loud, obnoxious, and intruding conversation in the midst of her home.

What also is interesting to me is that, the night where I stayed at Danielle’s house and had supper with Vanessa and Philip (mentioned in a previous post), I skyped in the house with my nieces.  Afterwards, Philip mentioned that they heard me loudly talking with my family.  Their guest gave me a disapproving look that I didn’t know quite how to interpret at the time.  Now, it all seems to fall into place that I was being rude in that instance as well, interrupting their conversation and get together by having my own personal conversation in a public setting (at a rather loud decibel). 

Ah, how fascinating and humbling to be reminded that, as much as I like to think that I am culturally sensitive and aware, there are still things that I do not know nor completely understand.  It is also nice to be reminded that my homeland is still a part of me, even, or especially, the loud and obnoxious parts.  Also reminds me that there are always new things to learn, new things to explore, new people to learn how to connect with, and that, although uncomfortable, messing up is a lot of times the best way to learn.  Here’s to blunders, to saying and doing the wrong thing, and to not being perfect, especially because nobody is. 

Happy messing up and learning in the process!