snowflakes

i realized today what i've been missing all winter.
...
winter
...

i never got the pleasure of sitting inside and watching the snow fall... or coming in covered in snow - or even PLAYING in snow. yes, it was cold. yes, i saw snow capped mountains in scotland.
but i had a completely non-white winter.
how unbelievably sad.

so after all that pre-vacation excitement

we have the end of vacation bummer session.
although vacation as a whole was GREAT!
where can i start???
saturday i went up to paris for the night so i could more easily meet my parents at 6 am on sunday. turns out that meant i didn't sleep since i met up with pascal and dominica and their friends for a while. and then that became like two am. and had to be at the airport at 6am. which meant leaving where i was at 530. so yeah. no sleep. grab the parents - who were jet lagged at CDG, head back to tours, grab lunch, take naps, grab dinner, go to bed.
spend the next day at blois and amboise and clos luce. clos luce was where leonardo da vinci lived the end of his life and died. it was a cool place though.
next day we go to chenonceau - SO GORGEOUS. see the picture to the left. then we head up to paris for a four night stint checking out: notre dame, the left bank, the eiffel tour, taking a boat tour of the seine, the pantheon, the louvre, and all over wandering about paris. it was quite a blast, my mom was overwhelmed by how big everything was, but she seemed to enjoy herself immensely. it was interesting being here with my parents, it was a nice little vacation but made me miss home even more, i got to see my parents but not experience all of the lovely joys of the VT life.
but anyways. then i head off to the lovely land known as scotland. first thing's first - i go to the world's end for some food and a strongbow. then head back to my hostel, where i meet lily and dodo. they are from france and austria, and we go out for a pub crawl to experience edinburgh's bars. the next day i spent wandering about the city - princes street gardens, the meadows, checking out the programs at the university (oooo mature grown up decisions - barf) then meeting up with lily and dodo again at the elephant house to get coffees in the place that inspired j.k. rowling to write a little number called harry potter. oooo also exciting. we head out for a ghost tour later that night (lily and i are scared in that picture) after making a silly grocery shopping trip, and then meet up with a friend we made on the pub crawl in the oz bar for a quick drink. the next day would be... monday. we get up early, i spend the day with them, and then at around 4 hear from a friend of mine from christmastime who lives in edinburgh, inviting me to crash with him and his roommate (another friend from christmas). crash at theirs for the next two nights, GO TO THE MOVIES!!!! IN ENGLISH!!!! saw jumper. not bad. not perfect. but alright. check out a posh bar in the not so posh area where they live. interesting experience. still have yet to climb arthur's seat - i need a nice day and a good pair of shoes to do that. the boots i had on weren't fitting. so after two nights of edinburgher (edinburger??) hospitality i go to glasgow - which is a cool little city. well not too little. i liked what i saw of it that day - hit up two museums and the willow tea rooms..... see image to the right. quite a nice little place. and well known for their teas. check out the university, but their psych program doesn't quite fit what i had in mind - although they do have a vet school... interesting. who remembers when i wanted to be a vet and james herriot was my favorite author. sadly, my last day in scotland - the reason i need to go back to glasgow - i wound up with a killer fever and chills and aches and pains. i stayed in bed all day after venturing out to check out the building shaped like an armadillo and the cathedral, but instead i went to marks and spencer and bought soup and went home after i realized my joints were locking into place in the ridiculous winds. so i went home and slept, in the lounge, across from a very nice australian boy who was inside reading for the same reason. i ate soup and updated my photos on my computer and he drank tea and read his book and that was about it. so i flew back here, and here i am. listening to jason mraz. and i shall leave you with the beautiful lyrics from his song "after an afternoon"which by the by is one of the few songs that actually mentions a girl with rich brown eyes and long dark hair. oh yeah baby. we are a sexy bunch that inspire beautiful songs.

face to palm
tear to tear
and mouth to tongue
heart to ground
say heart to ground
say any old thing.

oh yeah - photos from the trip with the parents are at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036425&l=1ba9c&id=10400438

omigoodnessvacationsalmosthere

and yes that had to be said as one word. the above picture is the happiness with hair and also new sweater. oo sweater.
the weather here has been gorgeous lately - well, today it was beautiful. i spent the day getting ready, cleaning the apartment a little, running to the caf office. this is a beautiful thing, the caf. apparently you are only supposed to pay a certain percentage of your paycheck in rent. if you pay more than this, the caf reimburses you. so i finally got all my paperwork in today, and according to the lady i spoke to, i should get a lump sum of reimbursements for october, november, december, and january within three weeks.
hallelujah. right at the end of vacation, which is when i'm normally paid anyways.
i also met the lovely whitney for coffee/hot chocolate (she's not much of a coffee drinker) so we could discuss life and enjoy the weather while i waited for my landlord to come back from lunch for some paperwork, and she waited for her teacher to call cause they had a rendez-vous today. had a nice dinner, and went for a two hour walk with jen all over the city tonight.
today was pretty wonderful, except for th fact that for some reason, my key will not work in the outside lock of the main door of our building. inside lock - fine. outside - doesn't go in. jens and alysons do, so i called the landlord and she said well you've been able to get in haven't you? and i said well yes after i call my friends or ring someone else's doorbell. she said oh well someone else had that problem too. she then told me there was nothing she could do about it.
this would all be fine, except for my key really. really. does not work. for the past couple months sometimes it didn't work, and i figured it was just the cold weather messing with the lock. but today, it hasn't worked at all. if it doesn't work tomorrow i'm going down there and telling the old woman to make me another - this is ridiculous.
what else is new? whitney's birthday party was a blast, got to see some familiar faces that i hadn't seen in a while - note pascal and hilary washout picture to the right. pascal is a friend through the italians - he's french (from savoie, the region where my french professor from college grew up) spent some time here in tours with his girlfriend (who is italian - from sicily) and now lives in paris. so it had been a while. this is pascal's angry face, and my it's almost one in the morning and these boots are hurting my feet and i'm tired and had champagne face. although there are some pictures of everyone having fun. i swear.
jen and i went for a two hour long walk tonight. i know i already mentioned that - but the long walk was long overdue. i had forgotten how much thinking gets done on a long walk. a wise woman once told me that when you're moving forward it helps your thought process move forward as well. it's true. it also helps to have a nice sounding board like jen, who seems to be able to get right to the heart of every problem you have. it's incredible. but the basic conclusion of the walk was that we're at a crossroads in our lives, and we need the freedom to take whatever path we want. like the walk we took tonight. we were kind of moving in a direction, but only corner by corner, street by street, and eventually, when our feet were tired, and we felt like we should go home, we decided to head in a definite direction. that's what this france trip is all about. bit by bit, figuring out where we want to go next. on our own time. at our own pace. and on our own. there will be parts of the journey where we have a friend with us, but for the most part, it's us. doing our thing. and that's quite alright. i've spent a lot of my life making decisions with everyone else in mind. i think now is about the time when i start making decisions for myself. really. the idea that i'm going to live my life based on anyone's feelings by my own - at this point - is asinine. i've always tried to live up to a standard, or i guess what i thought was a standard. i've tried to please everyone. you know something? you can't do that. i am too afraid to hurt people. and i wind up hurting myself.
so. a promise i made to myself, was that the next time i come to a crossing where i can go left, right, or straight; i'm not going to think about what the person to the left or the person to the right or the person directly in front of me is thinking. they're not coming with me. as far as i know. i'm gonna make the choice. all on my own. because this is my life. the people around me - i love them. and i know i need them around. because without them i wouldn't be who i am today. but this isn't any one of their lives. no, it's not. and at the end of the day, at the end of the journey, their decisions aren't the important ones, mine are. because it's my life.
so now i get to ride off into that sunset and take hold of what is mine.

ALMOST BREAK!!! ALMOST BREAK!!!

so. here we are. it's the first of february. i have vacation starting... friday. i've got monday - 5 classes (but two are the exact same lesson), tuesday - six classes, wednesday - no classes, thursday - all day meeting with my bosses - one of whom is heinous and should really just quit the job, friday - two classes (but they are the exact same, and it's making up for me being sick last thursday as well). then i've got friday night which is mojito night at a local bar, saturday afternoon i head up to paris to stay there for the night, sunday morning grab my parents at 6am from the airport, to return back here to tours. spend the next two nights here with the rentals, then head up to paris tuesday night, spend my time in paris until saturday, when i fly up to scotland for a six day stint there on my own.
the time between now and the last time i posted has been alright - the curious george lesson has been a hit with the kids, although my boss didnt' get it. which is funny, because she was there when my other boss and i laid out the plans for what was going on. she observed me, after showing up 20 minutes late to the lesson, insisted on shaking my hand while the students were working which was awkward, and said "i don't understand this book thing" i got so mad i started crying and said i discussed this with your colleague. we planned it out ourselves. and she was like well i didn't know that from this one day lesson plan you have for me. you should plan better. which is when i said "i've done this lesson 7 times with all of my other classes. this is the last one. if you want to see the others you can. but i thought the lesson plans were for me. i know what i'm doing." and she said "yes but i don't know" and i said "well i'm sorry but i don't think 25 minutes of 1 of my classes is enough to judge an entire unit." she dropped it at that.
i was relieved to find out, from one of my teachers, that this boss of mine has such a horrible reputation that one of my teacher's friends (also a teacher) refused to take the administrative better pay position with this woman because she is so awful. apparently she not only talks down to the assistants, but to her colleagues. i almost cried again because i was relieved to find out it wasn't just me.
other than that, classes have been great. i've got one group of kids that's completely out of control, but it's alright. i'll get through it.
so for the upcoming week i have review lessons planned, to try and see how much we've retained in our curious george stories. hooray.
alright i'm beat, running errands was tiring today. plus jen and i have to do laundry tomorrow. ohhhh boy.

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