pumpkin bootie

happy halloween!!!

birthday weekend!

Wow its been a busy weekend! But I had the best time celebrating my birthday for three full days :-) On Friday Mystery Guest and I kidnapped Sarah and Natalie and took them out to la Manche. Everyone had me surprised though when we took a different exit than usual and treated me to a fantastic pre-birthday dinner of galettes and crepes! The restaurant is fantastic, its an old mill and all of the crooked old beams and stone walls date back to ... well, they're old :-)

We continued on to Mystery Guest's parent's house where we crashed for the night. Up and out the door at the crack of dawn (according to Sarah) we headed out to Saint Vaast to wander through the marche and this wonderful little store they have there.

The rest of the day was spent picnicing and visiting lots of different places. The weather couldn't have been better for the end of October!

We dropped the girls off in Cherbourg at the end of the day and headed off for a birthday dinner of sushi!! I love love love the restaurant in Cherbourg, its the best sushi I've had in France :-)

Sunday it rained which was fine with me, I just wanted to veg and hang out inside, which is exactly what we did. Of course we had to celebrate my birthday again (Yeah, its hard isn't it??) so Mystery Guest's mom made a fantastic Sunday lunch and I blew out the candles on the chocolate-coconut cake and managed to blow bits of coconut all over the room!

I had a great weekend, it was the perfect way to celebrate my birthday :-) Thanks guys!!

DONE DONE DONE!!!!!

Look! Here it is!! All printed out and beautiful :-)

My memoire for the 1st year of my masters. I have to defend it probably in 10 days or so (my prof has yet to fix a date) and as long as I pass I'll go into the 2nd year of the program (I already started the classes but am not officially enrolled).

DONE DONE DONE!!! I put it in my prof's box and the other member of the jury about 1 hour ago and now it is time to RELAX! I'm leaving tonight for the weekend to celebrate my birthday on Saturday with some fab friends and I can't wait to get away from it all and not think about this anymore :-)

Now I'm gonna go veg... Don't forget to "fall" back on Saturday night for daylight savings.

les dieux

This picture has a story - as they all do!

I tutor 2 people during the school year, a French woman and a Russian man. They have almost become friends, especially the woman. She's great, she invited me out to her house this summer for lunch and since the "class" is conversation and she's already fluent in English we just chat for an hour every week.

She knew my birthday was coming up so yesterday she showed up with a birthday present! It was very sweet, I opened it up and she gave me the Dieux de Stade calender !! We howeled with laughter as we went through the photos one by one...

I remember when the first calender came out and the photos were quite tasteful and black & white. This year I swear its more gay porn than anything else.. so cheezy! Of course it will have to be displayed... ;-)

(If you want some pictures, type dieux de stade in Google Images)

fall ... falling

The weather here has been stunning the last few days, those crispt fall days :-) It's nice to see the sun before it goes away for the winter!

To take advantage of this beautiful weather I'm off with some friends for a bike ride to the beach - photos to come!

Random question, does anyone know why England keeps singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at their rugby games??? So weird... Hello!!! Not English!

manif

If you only look at recent blog enteries between mp3 players and bike tires I guess you could say my life is fairly boring right now! But to be honest not too much is going on these days... I'm trying like a madwoman to finish my thesis by Monday to get it off and printed and in between that I'm planning lessons and getting interupted by protests ;-)

I was sitting at my desk yesterday when I hear a manif going on in the street below... I was surprised because today is supposed to be the big strike. When I looked out the window I realized it was the med students who were striking. According to the med students I know they are protesting new plans that would force young doctors to work at least a year or two in the countryside where doctors are scarce these days. I can see where the government is coming from, most civil servants don't get to chose where they are placed their first few years (teachers can be sent anywhere in the country when they've passed their teaching exam) and fewer and fewer doctors are in the countryside which is hurting the village populations... Plus it isn't such a bad thing for young doctors to have the experience of working in a small town situation, that's a whole different kind of medicine than working in Paris or other big cities...

Anyway back to the thesis... anyone want to write my conclusion for me?? :-)

ups and downs

Well the down is ... remember my beautiful fixed bike tire? Yeah, I went to go take my bike to the pool the other day and it was flat again... I guess my bike fixing skills are not nearly as amazing as one would guess! Stick that back on my todo list!

But the up is that I've been to the pool twice this week with my new -straight - from - America toy! I ordered this waterproof MP3 player to swim laps with. I was really curious to see how it would work, if you could actually hear the music while underwater, its great!! I swear I swim twice as fast with a little Paul Simon Concert in the Park pumping in the background :-)

Otherwise not much is new around here... lots of work. I started teaching classes last week, I've arranged my schedule to teach all my hours Monday/Tuesday so that I can go to my masters classes Wednesday/Thursday and have Friday free for the library (read 3-day weekends hehe). I always think I'll have something interesting to blog about but all that's exciting today is that I'm going to the market to get a pumpkin for pumpkin soup :-) Enough to make this girl happy!

I rock!

Before I went to the states I noticed that my bike had a flat tire... :-( I didn't have time to try to fix it (read: con someone into fixing it...) before my flight so I just left it.

When I got home I decided to go up to Decathlon to get a bike repair kit and finally today I had some time to try it out. I realized that if I put it off any longer I just wouldn't ride my bike all winter, and that my friends is sad!

So I off I went. Let me tell you - that is a PAIN!!! I know people complain about it all the time, but oh my GOD what a pain!! I finally (after about 20 min!) wrangled the tire off so I could get started. Fixing the inner tube was the easy part, it was all the other mess that was annoying: taking off the brakes, getting the outer tube off but worst of all once it was all patched and the tire finally back on the rim the stupid thing wouldn't inflate! It must have had a kink somewhere so I had to take it off - again! Once I got everything back in place and inflated it was a royal pain getting the brakes back on...

But hey! Now I've done it! Whoooo!!! Bike meet your master! :-)

rugby

Who needs a TV to find out sports news? Just live in town and you can hear the result, if you need help I'll give you a hint:
1. Calm late in the evening = France lost.
2. Horns honking, people screaming, firecrackers going off = France won.

So when I heard latter going on a few minutes ago I didn't even need to check the websites/tv to confirm what I suspected - France beat the All Blacks (apparently the best rugby team).

Not much going on in other news, its just a crazy busy month that has started and other than lots of work not much to post about... but I'm around :-)

California #2

I've spent the last couple days at my grandparents. It's been really fun to see them and spend a relaxing few days. My aunt and uncle were up Friday night and then left Saturday after lunch, but it was great to see them and my little cousin is getting so big! He's already 9 years old and since the last time I saw them was 2 years ago the change is really striking! My dad and step-mom stayed through brunch today and we all went out for a nice eggs benedict ;-)

Lots of short visits but lots of fun. Since then we haven't been doing too much since my grandma hurt her foot a little and so she's trying to get it better by staying off of it. This afternoon we sat outside on the patio enjoying the 80F temps!! It will be hard to go from this weather back to France! Then this evening we watched Mystic River - it was excellent! I've got all day tomorrow (Monday) and then fly back to France Tuesday. I'm all ready for my flight, tons of books and I just need to make sure that my computer and ipod are all charged ;-) Not looking forward to dragging my very full suitcases around the airport and into Paris to get to the train station though! I wish they'd start a train service directly from the airport out to Caen like they do to other cities... that would be so nice!

Other than that not much new, it has been a great break and I think my batteries are mostly recharged to start up the semester!

the OC...

I just arrived in California. I'm here visiting my grandparents in Orange County until Tuesday when I fly back to France. It's great to be here and see them but Southern California is a different world! I met my dad and step-mom at the airport(John Wayne Airport if you please) and while I was in baggage claim waiting for them the first thing I was greeted by wasa Sheriff on a segway! I also spotted a business woman dressed to the nines - wearing Crocs! And apparently here inSouthern California the men have adopted the skinny jeans look! Where did I land?

It's great to be here though and reconnect with my family. My grandparents moved into a new and smaller house 2 years ago just after the last time I visited. It's funny, their new house smells exactly the same as their old one, and withall their things I feel like they never moved! Here I am sitting on the little twin bed they've always had ready for guests, a quilted blanket that my great-grandmother made (as my grandmother proudly declared) typing this blog entry offline. As tech-saavy as my grandparents are they have not set up a wifi system ;-) So I'll post this tomorrow when I get online.

I'm so excited that I was able to have the time to come down here a couple days. A part of me wishes I lived closer to homeso I could come visit more often, but at the same time I know that even living in the States I wouldn't be able to come all that often. I love my family but I couldn't see myself ever living in this area, and so they are the only thing which draws me here. And since I'm the far-away grandchild (although now in Australia my sister is rivaling me on this one!) a special effort made for everyone to get together. My dad and step-mom came down from the Bay Area and my aunt, uncle and little cousin took the train up from San Diego :-)

Southern California is too much for me though, the endless freeways jammed with monsterous SUVs, and the countless strip malls that linethe streets, it truely is a concrete jungle in every way possible. It's a big change from the stories my parentstold me about growing up here, long lanes of orange orchards, instead of snowball fights there were rotten orange fightstoday you'd never know that it was named "orange county" for a reason! I've never seen the "O.C." but Orange County is hardly the glamorous place the previews make it out to be, but it is a huge part of my family's history.

Anyway it's time for bed.

birthday bash

Last night we celebrated a friend's birthday in a beautiful house outside of town. They have this stunning view of the bay and we got to watch the sunset before stuffing our faces with a fab dinner and (yes, I'm so modest!) an amazing cheesecake that mom and I made. It was taken from the Joy of Baking website but we modified just a few things. We made the crust from chocolate graham crackers and then I made a kind of blueberry coulis from local blueberries to drizzle over the top - heaven!

Doesn't it look yummy?

Salem

I wanted to write this post last night but got distracted by the beginning of season 4 of House, it was excellent!

I had a great time down in Salem where I got to see old collegues and friends and enjoy a little suburbian Americana. Here are a few pictures, the first is my alma malter, the library and little stream that runs through. It is just beautiful and everyone was outside taking advantatge of the last few sunny days of September. I love the campus but all of that comes with a price tag eh?

I took a little walk downtown with some friends, even though there are a lot of parts of town (the big shopping street, er, strip mall) which are not so nice there are some really cute neighborhoods that they've been working on and the architecture is just so different! Here's a little church tower with was just so pretty and white against the blue sky and fall leaves...

I went to go visit my old boss and meet her baby boy! He was a little ham and we had the best time playing peek-a-boo didn't we? :-)
My trip would not have been complete without a visit to Target, Old Navy, Borders.. I just love this Halloween display at Target, that was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid. Dressing up to go trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and all that fun - maybe also cause it reminds me that my birthday is coming up!

The last treat was a trip to Baja Fresh - Mexican fast food but not fast food. I love it! All the fresh salsa and guac... YUM!
On Monday I got to have lunch with my French advisor which was really fun :-) Plus she gave me one of the best compliments ever - that I didn't really have an accent anymore! :-) Afterwards I hit the road to avoid the rush hour traffic in Portland. On the drive home I finally took some pictures. The sun was starting to get low in the sky so I wanted to take advantage of the last bit of sunlight... It is beautiful isn't it?

road trip

I'm on a little mini road trip right now. I left yesterday morning to drive down to Salem Oregon. The weather has finally changed a little and is beautifully sunny down here. The drive itself was amazing! I took mom's advice and drove down the Hood Canal. The non-evergreens (what's the real word?) were starting to change color and there was the Olympic National Forest with the pine trees hidden in the fog on my right and the sun reflecting on the water on my left.

It was breathtaking.

I wanted to stop and take pictures but there really was very little room on the side of the road. I saw more turn out spots on the left so hopefully the weather will stay nice tomorrow and I'll be able to get some pictures on my way home.

It's a long drive down here (I made it in 5 hours non stop) but with some CDs playing in the car it wasn't too boring. Now I'm hanging out, visiting the old 'haunts' and spending quality time with great friends. Tonight I'm supposed to go see my old boss and her baby boy and tomorrow my French advisor for lunch. I'll probably hit the road pretty soon after lunch just because I don't want to be too tired while driving those 5 hours in the other direction...

chilly

Well Fall has... fallen? Yesterday it was a relief to just hang out at home and relax. I vegged on the couch, watched TV and roasted my toesies by the fire. And well, to be honest today I did just about the same thing. I guess that's what vacation is all about!

So not too much exciting news over here but I'll post more pictures soon cause I'm driving down to Oregon to visit my Alma Mater :-) It's been 2 years and I can't wait to catch up with old friends down there (and perhaps take advantage of the no sales tax! tee hee). It will be a quick trip but really my only chance to see some friends since most people moved from my hometown soon after high school.

Seattle!

Yesterday Mom and I went off to Seattle to do some shopping and hang out. We thought about spending the night at a friend's house (its a 2 hour drive to Seattle) but in the end we finished everything we wanted to do so we just took the ferry back home.

I did lots of shopping *S* I finally found a pair of jeans that I like and aren't "stretch" cause those always stretch out too much. I got a great deal on a jean jacket at Levi's - on sale from $245 down to $50 with an additional 40% off!! Levi's can still be expensive in the States but at least the stuff on the sales rack is always a great deal! Got some long sleeved shirts for a huge mark down as well.

Then we went to Pike Place market to walk around and maybe souvenir shop, it was starting to close up but we got some flowers to take home and a few things were still open. Did you see the size of those "eclaires"??? Insane - and no I didn't try one!

Pike Place is famous for its fish. I love this sign they had up "Travel packs accepted world wide (even ... France!)" Just had to capture that!

After all of our shopping we went out to dinner at a funky Italian restaurant Buco di Beppo, this sign that is visible from the waiting area captures the atmosphere! They have HUGE portions - like 1/2 pound meatballs! So we just got 2 appetizers and split them. It was more than enough!

We were really lucky and only had to wait about 10 minutes for a ferry, the sun was setting behind the Olympic mountains. It was just beautiful. I managed to get a couple shots in focus (hard to do balancing on a guard rail!)

It was a long day but just so much fun and it was great to spend the day in Seattle without being in a hurry all the time!

lucky!

I have had one lucky day! This morning I woke up early again (5am, but hey better than 3:30!) and then decided to go downtown when the shops opened at 10am. It's a small town and always fun to go back to stores where you know people who work there or just to walk down memory lane... I walked down 1 side of the "main street" and when I got to the end I wandered into a store I had been in at Christmas. This store sells El Naturalista shoes which I adore. I had bought some back in January in Caen that I wear allllll the time. This summer I saw they had a new fall line of some beautiful brown boots - but alas I was not going to spend 200E on shoes, no matter how beautiful they are!

But when I peeked into this store I saw they had those beautiful boots sitting right there! I walked over to take a look and noticed they were in the 40% off section! I asked the lady if I could try them on and she said there was only 1 pair left - crossing my fingers I asked what size - it was MINE! I wear a 41 European (10 or 10.5 US) and that was it!! So holding my breath I tried them on, they fit like a glove.

It was love at first sight and meant to be :-)

I bought them and between the 40% off and the exchange rate I bet I saved about 100E!! Yeah baby!


I rushed home to share the find with my mom and when I got home my NEW computer was sitting there waiting for me!! This was a saga that I never wrote about on my blog, but I ordered this amazing new computer to have it arrive when I got home only to have some ordering problems. The order was changed and lots of time was spent with Dell customer service but in the end they said that it would arrive Sep 27th. I'm flying down to CA the 28th... tight much?? Yup! So I was overjoyed to see that it had arrived so early! I'm now on it and playing around with things - it is just too great!!

So I had one very very good day :-)

home - day 1

Organic blue tortilla chips with homemade salsa - heavy on the lime juice and cilantro! Yum!!

Well after a jetlagged morning of waking up at 3:30am I ran a few errands today... nothing exciting the bank, the grocery store etc.. I come home about once a year and every time it still shocks me the sheer size of food at home. I'm not talking about Costco (we went there today too - yum free samples!) but just Safeway! I wanted some juice but they were all sold in 1 gallon bottles instead of 1 liter. I'm the only one drinking juice here - would I drink a whole gallon by myself? The flour was sold in huge bags of 4.5kg instead of the 1kg back in France. It just amazes me! Not in a bad or good way, its all just different... Funny to think that each time I come home I know what the culture shock will be but it always remains a "shock."

The weather here isn't that great, cold rainy and grey with a few sunny (but brief) moments this afternoon. But hey, its the Pacific Northwest and its a good excuse to take a break at lunchtime and veg in front of the tv to get over jetlag ;-) Funny though I find myself not enjoying the gazillion channels, especially the news! So I stick to catching up on sitcoms that I like and talk shows (yes, I admit it I watched "Ellen" as well as "Oprah" and "Martha Stewart" hahaha).

No big plans around here which I love. It is a real vacation and even though my body clock is way off (its 8:15pm and I'm going to crash soon... only to wake up at 4am again) it is nice to just relax, I can breathe here.

home!

Well I finally arrived, it was actually a lot easier this time because I got a direct flight from Paris to Seattle!! So 10 hours over the pole and I was home! Everything was so smooth, I got to the airport early and it was smooth sailing from there. I finally got back home around 6pm (with customs, baggage and a 2 hour drive home - yes I live in the country!) I managed to stay awake until 8 and then crashed. Its now almost 5am and I've been up for an hour, but hey this way I'll see the sunrise...

Its so nice to just relax, to leave so much crazyness behind in France and just not be in a hurry to do anything. :-) This is vacation baby!

i'm off!

Well after the last few crazy busy days I'm off to Paris today and flying out tomorrow to Seattle!

Can't wait for a real vacation!!