Sunday, April 1, 2012

The blog is back.

I've decided to make my official return to blogging. As mentioned in my last post (a shameful 6 months ago!), my colocs and I have a food blog--check it out!  and it's fun to look back at our dinners, so it would be cool to have a similar log of my life in France.

Since my last post, obviously, a lot has happened. Chris went back to the States and Mark moved in in November...we miss Chris every day (and hope he'll be back in Stras next year), but we have a very happy colocation and I can't imagine anyone I'd rather live with than my 3 colocs. I went to Berlin with Mark and Krista over Toussaint, where I rediscovered how much I love Germany. We visited our friends Simon and Amy in Luxembourg for a weekend in December and had a great time. Christmas in Strasbourg was a little bit rough, but then I went to Portsmouth and London for New Year's and that made up for it!  Anne and I realized we're too old to stay up all night waiting for trains. My former coloc and one of my favorite people, Chrissy, came to visit for a couple of weeks and it was wonderful to have her around...just like she never left! For our February vacation I went to Portugal and Spain with Anne. We visited Porto, Madrid, and our great friend Harris in Galicia. Beautiful cities, wonderful people, and FANTASTIC food...perfect vacation! Last weekend I went to Paris with Lily and Nadine to see Dispatch in concert. We did almost nothing touristy, and now I love Paris (I used to kind of hate it). In between all of that, I led a few hundred English workshops and cooked lots of dinners.
Miss you Chris!! xxx

NYE in London

with Anne in Madrid

Lily and I on the Pont des Arts in Paris
I also had somewhat of a quarter-life crisis. I found out in February that I had to reapply for my lectrice job (I thought it was automatically renewable). So I did, and also applied for other lectrice and maitre de langue jobs in Strasbourg. I was pretty sure I'd be heading back to the US permanently, so I started convincing myself that maybe I wanted this to happen. It wasn't too hard, considering the administrative hassle of living in France and the fact that I'm turning 26 in August, whereafter I won't be a "jeune" and life in Europe will suddenly get a bit more expensive. After a couple months of soul-searching, I realized I really do want to stay in Strasbourg for one more year. I really love the city, my job, and my friends here.

Luckily I found out last week that I have been renewed for next year, along with my awesome fellow lectrice Alice.Wooo! I'm so happy and relieved. Even better, now I can start doing everything that I put on hold while I was waiting to hear about my job....buying a new (to me) bike, joining a gym, sorting out health insurance and housing aid, and planning my summer travels!

I recently bought a ticket home to visit for the summer, from May 24-July 7. I'm excited about this for many reasons....first, I'm flying Air Canada, which is my current favorite airline. I also have an overnight stopover in Montreal, which is exciting because I've never been to Canada and I'm hoping to see a good friend from high school who lives in Montreal. The next day I'll go to Colorado to see my dog and my family! I plan to spend a week or two in Texas, but I'll be in the Boulder area with my mom for about a month. I can't wait to go hiking and see my friends and family and drink margaritas and go SHOPPING. I am so sick of all of my clothes, and it's so expensive to shop in France that I pretty much don't bother. Also planning on loading up on green chiles, jalapenos, masa harina, black beans, and all of the other Tex Mex staples France is lacking to bring back to Strasbourg. When I get back to France I might go to a music festival in Bilbao, then go Interrailing....any suggestions of places to travel?


I suck at blogging!!

I am the worst blogger ever, clearly. I really want to be better about this....I want to keep track of my life in France!! New goal: blog once a month at least. That's manageable I think.