I'm baaaaack

Jardin du Luxembourg on a beautiful spring day

I'm horrible, I know! Okay, so I have had entries written out, saved for later to be finalized, and then sort of..forgotten. I witness potential blog entries nearly every day, and then I get home and catch up on e-mails and eat dinner and zone out...you know.

Anyway. The last month. So, I had this whole long entry written about how I had too many choices for the next year and I just didn't know what to do, quarter-life crisis business, etc. Here's the abbreviated version since I know I get long-winded:

I seriously have considered moving to:

--New York

--Florida

--Germany

--Korea

--Paris (staying)

All would be for studying, or working for a year and then studying (to get in-state residency, for first two). All of these possibilities sound just grand, and I like each one for different reasons--New York for the budding journalist in me/big giant city, Florida for the warm weather and really good program at UF, Germany for an exchange through my old university and friends that live there, and Korea for ridiculous good money (teaching English) and a totally different culture for a year.

Ultimately, I've decided to try to stay in Paris. For a number of reasons. The first being that I'm already here. Hardest part is crossed off the list. Add to that that:

--I have a valid, renewable visa

--I have a job for the next year

--Grad school costs a whopping 231€ per year

--I speak French and know the culture well enough to get around comfortably

--World's best health insurance

--There are a few programs that I really like that I have yet to see in the States

--Did I mention that it grad school costs 231€ per year

--Traveling is easy and fairly cheap

Of course, there are some downsides to it as well. I'm committing for at least two years, maybe more. This is the hardest part for me--to know that I won't be near my home country, friends, and family for long stretches of time. I'd say I'm a pretty good expat; I don't really get homesick much, and I think I've adapted well to living in another country (most days). But I am missing out on life at home, too. Siblings and cousins will have grown and not only be taller than me, but closer to adults that I feel like they should be. I remember this being a weird sensation when I came back home in 2007--as if the world I left in the US was going to be exactly how I'd left it 18 months before. But my little sister had gotten older, her face longer than I'd remembered, the "baby" roundness diminishing with each month. New stores had popped up in the former cornfields, my university had changed the names of its buildings, and music I'd never heard was on the radio. It was surreal, as if my own country were foreign to me, kind of. I coined it "reverse culture shock," but I doubt I'm the first person to ever use this term.

There were stories that I wasn't a part of, most of my friends had graduated and moved on, and I had to start from scratch--new job, new apartment, new roommates, new friends, new classes. That first summer back was tough sometimes--I missed Paris, I missed speaking French, and I missed the family I had worked for. But I survived. The American in me came back, with maybe a little European flair for fun. I had a really great last two years at college. I have to think about the amazing opportunities I could have here, too. I'm always going to be missing something, somewhere. All I can hope is to catch enough good from both places.

This isn't a finality--I haven't yet been accepted, and I'm not necessarily a shoe-in just because I'm a foreigner who speaks English as a mother tongue. The programs I'm applying to do have limits of how many people they accept, but I haven't seen anything seeing exactly how many people apply. What am I applying for? In general, international media/culture studies. There are a few tracks, one being more focused on culture, one more on media, and one on the creative industry--page layout, websites, etc. The cool thing is that they are bilingual--and I won't be signing up for the English/French program. I'm (eek) trying to get into the Spanish/French program. The application process is a pain, especially the part where I have to fork over tear-inducing amounts of money to get my transcripts and diplomas translated. In addition, I have to write a detailed cover letter and CV (in French), and give a 20-minute interview in French and Spanish. But the scariest part? A three-hour exam where I'm given documents in Spanish and have to write a 2-page resume in French. I've been putting off studying this because it scares me..but I need to get my ass over to the library soon and get to work. It's not just the Spanish that I'm worried about that--I can study that and prepare answers to potential questions. I'm actually more worried about the format and way the French write their essays. They have a certain format--ie, this piece of information is presented here, transitional phrases must be used in certain places, blah blah. I'm giving myself an ulcer so I'm going to stop thinking about it for tonight.

If I'm not accepted, I'll have to reorganize my plans. I don't know if I want to live here another year just as an elementary school teacher making a piddly salary per month. From what people tell me, it's not as hard to get in as they make it out to be--some departments really need students to keep up the quota, and in general, French universities are not nearly as competitive as their American counterparts (except the elite "Grandes Ecoles"). I also have advantage already speaking English, since a lot of the programs strongly recommend a good level of it to apply. But I'm not going to let myself think I have any better of a chance than anyone else. I've already finished my CV, half of my cover letter, and my transcripts are in northern Paris being read over as we speak. More than anything, I need to work on my skills reading and resuming texts, and of course, my Spanish. I bring my Spanish grammar book with me everywhere, and I'm reading Camus' famous L'Etranger (The Stranger) in Spanish (El Extranjero) since I know the story and can understand it a bit easier.

Alright, so much for not being long-winded. I hereby promise to not suck so much as posting. It's my 25th birthday resolution (as of yesterday..I'm offically old). I recently went on vacation, and I will soon post pictures of my little escapades around Europe. Paris isn't too bad, either! I was out and about in Paris the first week of my vacation, when it actually felt like spring here. No such luck since last week--I've had to (re)pull out my winter coat and make pouty faces on my way to work in the morning (as if 7:15 am wasn't bad enough on its own).

Seriously lucky.

Cherrio, mate!

Happy late Easter to everyone. I had a three-day weekend (not Friday, but Monday--strange) and decided that I should make a trip up to London. It's close by but I doubt that I'll have another window of time to be able to visit before I leave. Even though May is full of plenty of bank holidays, they almost all fall on the weekend this year. How unfair! There goes my long weekend jaunts to the French or English countryside.

When I've taken the bus on previous trips, I've always had at least a stretch of 12 hours to waste on the bus. So even if I don't sleep the whole time, I still can sleep half of it and be okay to walk around the city the next day. Not so much for England, for a few reasons. The biggest being that it's really not that far away. In total, I think about 6 or 7 hours by car (90 minutes by train but I'm cheap). And hey, there's also a large body of water in between France and England. So we had to stop and get on a ferry to cross what the French call la Manche (the sleeve). So that blew an hour and a half of precious shut-eye. Also, the UK border control is almost as bat-shit crazy as their former colony across the pond. I don't know what it is about the English language but whatever country uses it seems to be overly concerned with security. I know we got attacked. I know that Britain had a bomb go off in their subway. I know Australia has body scanners for who knows what, but mannnnn seriously? It's 2am and I have to stand in line in TWO border controls--one for France and then one for the UK? And since I'm one of those dirty Americans without the coveted maroon-colored passport (EU), I had to fill out an extra form to prove that I wasn't going to kidnap small children or sell fake Prada bags on the streets or apply for British welfare. They asked me all kinds of questions, and my interrogator was curious as to why I was only staying for two days and was traveling by myself. Okay, lady, you got me! I'm a drug mule and I'm carrying a whole smorgasbord of drugs in my bum. Don't jostle me or I might die of a coke overdose! Nah. Not really. I gave that up. She seemed somewhat relieved by my official French visa and finally let me go on my way.

The ferry wasn't that cool. It was in the middle of the night and I was way tired, and the ferry was kind of gross. It felt like a riverboat casino from the 80's. Lots of little shops and whatnot. Everything payable in pounds, so I had to convert my money at the onboard bureau de change, with "no commisson," which I think is a trick. No one just gives money away for free, and their trading prices weren't at all close to as what I'd checked the day before. How is that legal? Oh well. Luckily, the euro is pretty strong right now against the pound. Makes me want to never go back to the shitty dollar exchange rates!

I finally got to sleep an hour before we got to London. I could feel the bus slowing down as we navigated through the south London streets at 5:30am, and I was so tired that I could barely open my eyes. Then we were at Victoria station, in the centre of London and voilà, trip over. Gah. I was so tired, and nothing was open. I couldn't take a nap at my hostel because check-in wasn't until 2:30pm, so I just dropped off my suitcase, drank lots of coffee, and walked around the barely-open Oxford street. Did some shopping (shoes are in my size!), drank some more coffee, went to a pharmacy to get some vitamins (the French don't believe in them), went to a bookstore to look around, rode around on a lot of buses. I love riding buses in cities I don't know very well. It gives me bearings for the city and I don't have to walk it all--which I like doing, too, but London is enormous. A few times, I thought I was going one way, but turns out was going the other way, but no big deal. Ended up in a few dodgy neighborhoods, but I just got out and walked across the street and took the next one back.

I know that it shouldn't be that hard to navigate London with the whole left-side driving thing, but it messed me up more than once. And even though the pavement is all clearly marked

<---LOOK LEFT or

LOOK RIGHT --->

I was still paranoid the whole weekend of getting hit by a ginormous red bus coming the wrong direction. I looked both ways at least seven times before crossing. Because a car might just creep up on you out of nowhere, you never know. There are quite a few one-way streets in London, so in that case, they actually are coming from the left, like in most other countries. So if ever in the UK, careful! Potential of getting killed from both directions.

It rained a bit this time, but I was actually pleasantly surprised that Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday, I could see a blue sky! SKY! In England! My last trip to the capital a few years back was totally ruined by incessant rain for four days. Awful. This time, though, I could see the city in the sunlight! Much better. I really do like the city. It's very European, but

kind of more modern and business-y looking. It actually reminds me a lot of Chicago. London, of course, had the chance to redo their whole city when it got burned, so it's got wonderful architecture, is well laid out and has plenty of public gardens.

And lets just talk for a second about British accents. I know that I'm being a typical American girl here, but I could probably just sit in a cafe all afternoon and sip coffee while listening to someone talk in an English accent. I tend to pick up accents pretty quickly, especially in my head. What I mean is that when I'm thinking, my thoughts get muddled with the accents, and when speaking, I find vowels slipping and saying things like "soh-ree" instead of "sar-ree" for sorry. If I lived in Britain, I wouldn't go as far as Madonna--speaking with a full-on English accent--but I know that my speech would become some crazy blend of American and English accents. It's like when I go to southern Missouri and come back using weird word tags like oh she has, has she? and words like keen and y'all. (Although I do not go as far as saying things like I reckon and youses and I might should go to the house. And I will always say pop instead of soda until the day I die.) I have a friend here in Paris that is American, but hasn't lived there for years. After going to college in Canada, South Africa, and Belgium, and working in South Korea and France, her accent is kind of a melange of everywhere. That's a world traveler for you!

St. James Park

Anyway. I finally witnessed the changing of the guards on Sunday morning. Last time I was here it got canceled twice in a row due to the rain. I had to wait in front of Buckingham Palace for an hour, but I was one row of people from the gates. And they happened to be French (I can't escape them!), so I talked to them a little bit and they let me sneak in for some photos. There were just masses of people. Craziness. I couldn't see everything, but I can tell you what happened: the guards changed. There. Now you know. Lots of marching band fanfare and anticipation, but overall, you know, kind of touristy. I felt so bad for the guards that have people taking pictures with them all day. I think I'd probably take a flask to work with me every day.

Natural History Museum

Went to a museum on Sunday afternoon, in South Kensington. Beautiful architecture. I walked through the exhibits and what's great about this museum is that even though it doesn't have all the originals of everything, it's had copies made of major things like skulls of a gazillion years ago, so it's really a complete history of the major things they've found around the world. It makes a prettttty good case for evolution. They recently opened the Darwin Centre, which is still getting filled with specimens.

Darwin Centre "Cocoon"

The two-story-high concrete structure houses a lot of specimens and also has research centers. I didn't walk around in the cocoon, but I'm not sure if it's open yet. The center itself just opened up last fall, and it's not totally filled. There were still lots of empty shelves in the back. In any case, it looks pretty cool. I'll have to return when it's all finished and get the whole evolution effect. Science rocks! (The chemistry equations, however, no thanks.)

Portabello Market, in Nottingham

Took the bus back on Sunday night to avoid paying for another night in the hostel. I wanted to stay an extra day in London, but the bus schedule was totally at the wrong times. I'd have gotten back on Tuesday morning at 6:30am and had to go straight to school from there. No bueno. At least I got two full days in the city, and had an extra day to recoup on Monday. I slept fine on the way back, go figure. Still had to get off in Dover to go through border control, but the French are much more laissez-faire about entry requirements. Visa? Check. Thud. Stamp. Next, please.

I'm quickly approaching my last vacation before I'm finished with teaching. One more week of classes and then I'm free for two weeks. The long stretch will be from May 3-June 30, the last day of my contract. Like I said, France usually gets a lot of bank holidays in May, but we're screwed this year. I think only one falls on a weekday. Boo. I'm likely going to visit my friend in Bern, Switzerland, and then I'll probably pop over to visit some old friends on the French/Swiss border from my first job in France. (Ha, I will NOT be visiting my former employers, aka the family from hell.) I really wanted to go to Barcelona for a few days, but not sure that it's going to be possible because the family in Paris needs me. I'm trying to negotiate a few more days of vacation because I'm not sure how much time (or money) I'll have right before I leave for the States in early July. Still deciding on next year, I'll be sure to write about it in the near future. Many decisions are coming up as I approach my quarter-century birthday.

In short, London is a beautiful city. And it was kind of like being home for a few days. English bookstores, Reese's Peanut Butter cups, cheap discount stores (think Dollar Tree)--what's not to love?

More photos here, although I was admittedly lazy this trip. (Too busy drinking Diet Coke and eating donuts.)

Frozen Time

The weather was off-and-on rain, but for a few hours at the end of the weekend, I found myself enjoying the brief moment of sunshine. Spring officially started on Saturday--signs were in the metro and on the info boards, wishing travelers a joyeux printemps--and the weekend certainly seemed to follow suite. Rain came in short spurts, but never let up enough for me to put my umbrella away for good. And so, in one of the few sunny moments late Sunday afternoon--my favorite day of the week in Paris--I ran across a brocante in my old stomping grounds, near la Tour Montparnasse (Montparnasse Tower). I haven't lived there for a few years, but it still very much feels like chez moi. Every corner, metro stop, and movie theatre brings back a memory. I'm vividly reminded of my time here before, when I had much more free time, and subsequently, much less money. To make up for being incredibly poor, I walked everywhere. I remember walking the streets with my iPod, often just walking for walking, enjoying the scenery along the way. Certain songs still bring very particular images to my mind; I sometimes hear a song and am immediately at a certain place in the 14th or 6th [arrondisement]. This was one of the hardest parts of coming back a few years ago--it took me months to be able to listen to half the songs I have in my music library. Too many memories tied to songs. I don't live particularly far from Montparnasse now--I could walk there in 25 minutes--but with my schedule, I'm in "my" neighborhood less and less.

The usual suspects were at the brocante--the man who sells mini-drawings carefully crafted on metro tickets, the hippie woman trying to sell her acid-induced paintings, the DVD "pirates," always looking around to make sure the cops aren't close by to ruin the 5€ movies that are still in theatres. Along with this were the piles of rubbish--frames, vases, coins, lamps, books, tins, baskets, armoires, and any other random item you could think of. I perused through the goods--flipping through books and magazines, running my fingers over embroidered tea towels, and holding up knock-off designer bags to my arm, hoping to pull of that fashionista look the French women seem to be so good at. (Fake bag or not, I still fail.)

And then I came upon a stand on the corner, photos strewn across several tables. Boxes, crates, and huge piles of photos, to be exact. Some were new(er)--B-list French celebrities and recent politicans; others were older, from the late 19th century to the 60's.

These type of photo stands are fairly common in Paris. Old, canceled postcards and abandoned photos seem to pop up pretty often, especially on the banks of the Seine River. I'd never actually stopped to go through any for longer than 30 seconds, but since I had a few minutes, I decided to go through some of the piles, for fun.

Twenty minutes later, I had a handful of photos in one hand, unable to put them down. I kept looking through the masses of pictures--for what, I don't know--but for whatever reason, I couldn't stop. Were the pictures extraordinary? No, not particularly. Take this one. An old man and (presumably) his wife. It's simple, and they don't even look that happy. But it's so..ordinary. Real. I couldn't put it down. What were they thinking when they got this taken? Was the camera new? Were they annoyed? Was the man a farmer? Or butcher? And did his moustache naturally curl like that? So many questions.

The wedding photo was one of the first I found. I don't know what drew me to it, exactly. First of all, I love black and white photos, especially with lots of contrast. But I think what I liked most was the man's smile and slight dimple, the way his head tilts towards his new bride. For a moment, at least, he looks genuinely happy. Check out the unique photo studio design on the corner. Impressive in what seems to be early 20th-century wedding photography.

Funny thing about this one is that I immediately recognized where it was before flipping the photo over. I was in Fontainebleau the day before. It's a castle in the suburbs of Paris. I had a friend visiting and we went to see it on Saturday afternoon. I'm sometimes creeped out by how much my life overlaps.

These babies are probably at least 70-years-old, if they're even still alive. I love this photo.

Was this a vacation home? What does it look like now? And how many memories happened there?

This is my favorite find of the day. Look how happy they look. Especially the girl on the left. I like to create my own stories--the girl was goofing around and something funny, which made everyone laugh. Maybe she's crazy Aunt Mildred. I love how 1940's/50's the dresses are. They're in the country, maybe at a family reunion? Or maybe it's just a Sunday in France..the possibilities are endless. Just looking at it makes me feel, for a moment, like I'm there with them.

Thirty minutes after starting, I walked up to the man holding down the stand.

"Where do all of these come from?" I asked, shuffling through the photos, trying to understand them more with each viewing.

"Mostly estates," he said. "I buy them in bulk. They're the leftovers; no one wanted them." These are people's families. There are stories behind each of these photos.

"It's kind of sad, don't you think?" I looked down at the faces in the photos. I didn't know any of these people and probably never would. But I felt this connection to these unnamed people, stuck in the past forever on these little silver-emulsion photos.

He seemed to understand. I couldn't be the first person that had asked him.

"That's why I buy them. So they're not gone forever. People buy them for nostalgia, but at least they're not in a box somewhere, or worse, in the trash."

I handed him my money and smiled.

"I'll take good care of them."

Bonjour mon petit bureau de change

I've seen this video at least 10 times, and it still cracks me up. French mocking at its best!

Bamberg

So, Germany. It was beautiful. I was in Bavaria this time, and for you weak-in-geography types (I recently found out that Italy touches Slovenia. Hmm. College degree and all..), Bavaria is a state in the southeast corner of the country. It's actually a huge state; maybe the biggest in the country. A large part of it is rural, but it still has some big metropolises, namely Munich and Nuremberg.

I was in Bamberg, up towards the top. I befriended two German exchange students at MWSU last year, and lo and behold, they decided to move in together once coming back to Germany. Two birds friends with one stone visit.

Angie and Steffi graciously let me stay at their house, where they had an extra bedroom. Originally, the plan was to speak only in German, so I could soak up as much as possible, conjugate my verbs with perfection, leave after 5 days with a much better comprehension..

In theory, it sounded great. But the truth is that the Germans are f-ing awesome with languages, especially the far-inferior English. So most of our exchanges were a mishmash of English and German, heavy on the English. I helped them erase the classic foreigner mistake of pronouncing iron "eye-run," and they helped me pronounce German tongue twisters, like this: Zehn zahme Ziegen zogen zehn Zentner Zucker zum Zoo! (Ten tamed goats carried ten tons of sugar to the zoo!)

Bamberg is, excuse me, but SO GERMAN. I don't know if you could find a more German city. Its population is around 70,000 and it's got a university with about 10,000 students. Lots of bikes, lots of ped ways, lots of little shops. But, it has an H&M, so you know that it's not too small. This is my constant gauge for how hip a city is in Europe. Oh, you have dozens of cathedrals and ancient ruins? That's great, but do you have a popular Swedish chain department store? No? Hmm, sorry. Not a real city.

The city largely avoided the bombings of World War II, so most of the beautiful architecture is still standing. Lots of baroque, gothic, and other styles that I won't pretend to know...in short, very pretty. Very colorful and a surprising number of baby Jesuses hiding all over. Bavaria is one of the Catholic hold-outs in a country of Lutherans and Protestants, so I'm convinced they go double-time with their religious relics to make up for it.

Most of the week was pretty tranquille. Angie was busy studying for her last final (of college!); Steffi was working on her thesis. I spent a few mornings with multiple hot mugs of coffee while studying some German and periodically looking out the window to admire the beautiful landscape. We still had lots of time to go to cafés, take pictures, get our hair done (I missed the blonde), stop at a tea salon, take some more pictures, browse bookstores..it was very "go-with-the-flow." I spent some afternoons on my own while the girls were doing their own thing, and that was fine. I kind of like exploring alone, anyway. All I need is my iPod, camera and a free afternoon. I didn't expect them to go out of their way to accommodate me--but they were very helpful and adopted me as the third roommie for a week.

We went out for dinner one night at a very typical Bavarian restaurant. Mmmmm sehr lecker! I'd like to tell you what I had, but I can't remember the 70-letter words for it. I therefore have made up my own translations: Potato balls and meat with meatsauce. Voila.

At the restaurant, I was the only (native) English speaker of the group , but they all were speaking English to each other, which I found strange. They were doing it to be polite, which was really nice of them, but unnecessary. I told them to speak in German because I was the only one out of five that didn't understand German, so I was by far the minority. They proceeded to speak in German, and even though I didn't understand much, I enjoyed listening to them speaking it. I recognize where I am on my so-called language ladder. I understand lots of words, and I can pretty faithfully do conjugations if I think about it for a minute. German has its ridiculous declension system, so listening carefully, I can tell you that hey! They're saying something and it's in the dative case! Or hey, we're going ins Kino because it involves movement! But if we're sitting in the cinema and there's no movement, we're im Kino. A few years back, when I first came to France, I was at this same level. I'd often have this kind of comprehension:

Today, I went to the supermarket and I bought XXXX and it was so XXXX but XXXX and then I XXXXX lady XXXX asked if XXXXXX but noXXXXXXX and then I came home and XXXX so do you want XXXXXXX we go to dinner?

Nonsense. Clips of phrases and verbs. I'm missing lots of language stuffing. But I'm getting there. I have a few more rungs, so to say, before I'll be to a level where I can have a conversation that doesn't involve "What's the word for that again?" Even though the week was largely in English, I still picked up a lot of words. It's so much easier when you learn it right there, on the spot, and you can use it immediately. Learning from afar with books only gets you so far, and the memorization (for me) takes much longer than if an actual native says, hey, this is the word. Use it here. And now, lets have a conversation and I'm going to use this word five more times and you will remember it forever!

I ended up extending my visit an extra two days because I liked it so much. I originally intended on having a four-day "staycation" in Paris before school started again, but the more I thought about it, I figured that I might as well spend my sitting around and doing nothing time in Bamberg, with friends, than at home, alone. So I stayed, ate my bodyweight in bread and wine, watched horrible/wonderful German TV, took pictures, tried to read a book in German (failed), read a book in English (succeeded), had a photoshoot with the world's next official problem solver (enterprise to follow; I've been promised the job of media coordinator), laughed with friends, had fun. It was great.

I'm officially in love with Germany.

More pictures here.

Des enfants gâtés

Might as well write a little update while I have Internet! My modem has been pushing me closer and closer to insanity for the last four or five days. It works, it doesn't work, it works, it pretends to work, you bring up your home page, it stops working, then starts again, only for a minute, though, but enough for you to think that it's going to work after all..and then it stops working. Again. I almost threw it at one point last night, but then thought that probably would make the whole problem much worse. Calling Freebox would mean at least a few weeks of waiting for an overpriced technician to come to my apartment only to tell me he doesn't have the part needed. I've got you figured out, France! So I gently set the modem down and tried again and again. Since my TV, Internet and phone are all connected, not having any form of communication had me (could be has at any moment..) going crazy. I can only read so many books, listen to so many Advanced Spanish CDs (I did an entire course this weekend out of boredom) and clean so much before I want to just chill out and browse my favorite time-wasting sites. Don't judge, it's been cold outside..

So, now I'm on "vacation" again, but the only good thing about this week is that I don't have to wake up at 6am. I'm still watching the two boys during the day, and good God my patience is disappearing quickly. Yesterday, the older boy decided it would be fun to hide under the couch cushions for 45 minutes while his brother and I desperately searched for him. We looked everywhere. Upstairs, downstairs, in closets, under blankets--everywhere. I called his friends looking for him, offered candy if he came out, threatened death, etc. Nothing. (I should mention that we weren't even playing hide-and-seek--he just decided to hide for kicks. FUN!) I gotta give him props for his silent dedication, but I was literally dialing his mother's cellphone number to tell her I had lost her son when I saw the cat sniffing the couch and realized that his "super bonne cachette" was right in front of my eyes. He was squeezed in the little space between the back of the couch and the cushions. And he thought it was funny. Hilarious. I was not amused, not at all. I told his dad, and he was quick to brush it off and say "No, he must've just thought it was a game. He didn't know you weren't joking." Riiiiight. That's what it was. A 45-minute game. Because my yelling, running up and down the stairs, looking down from the terrace to the ground (part of me half hoping he'd be laying on the ground below with a broken leg) and frantic behavior was a GAME! That's it!

I seriously considered quitting today. These kids are spoiled and impolite and NEVER NEVER NEVER OBEY. I went off on them today, yelling out all kinds of mean things in English, telling them how they were the worst children I'd ever met, and so spoiled, etc. They get whatever they want, and just do not know how to cope when something doesn't go their way! Especially the older boy, who will be 11 in a few months. I'm surprised he's not still in diapers and doesn't suck his thumb at night. He cries all the time, as in real sobbing tears; stops in the middle of the street to sulk, throws a fit when he doesn't get what he wants--apparently I signed up to watch a toddler! I almost want to suggest to his parents that he go and get a hearing test because it seems like everything I say falls on deaf ears. When someone asks you a question, to your face, and uses your first name, in an interrogative tone, don't you usually respond? Guess this doesn't apply to him. Yet he's smart. He loves to play chess, is very creative, and when he's not being a big brat, can be sincere and somewhat nice. ("Nice" being a very loose term.) If he put half the time he spends making my life hell towards learning English, he'd be able to have a real conversation with me. But, as it stands, the younger boy--who just turned 7--can say more in English than his older brother. He at least tries, whereas the older one flat out refuses to say anything in English unless I bribe him with being able to play the Wii longer than he's generally allowed. Candy does nothing for these boys as bribes because hello! Spoiled kids always have candy and cake in the house!

And to top it all off, the father is a total creeper. Ugh. I'm in Paris, I'm in Paris, I'm in Paris..I remind myself of this often. I have a lot to be grateful for, I know. But unless I'm offered a ridiculous amount of money, I do not ever want to watch kids again after this year until I have my own years from now. I'm done. (I'm pretty sure I said this a few years ago, too..)

Moving on..can't wait 'til this weekend. Week two of my vacation, completely child free. I'm headed to Germany, as I mentioned before. No big plans, probably just hanging out with my friends, taking some scenic walks, soaking up some German, spending a significant amount of time in bookstores and cafés.

A few pictures from this weekend. I had a lot of time on my hands! I found this little gem of a park on a random street. That's what I love about Paris: Just when I think I know a neighborhood fairly well, I come across little tucked-away treasures.

Makes me think of Notting Hill

Afternoon stroll

"The time to read" ...if only I had more of it!

Birth control.

Clever

Why can't America do this? It makes so much more sense to have refills of hand soap in little plastic sacs like this. You can squeeze every drop out, and you're not wasting another big plastic bottle (or new dispenser). Sometimes, the French are très malins..

Two more days..