Look closer

That's right those are carrots, beets, and broccoli gummies. I was at the grocery store getting yogurt and clementines and I saw the bear on the package and I thought yum gummy bears! So I bought them. Upon closer inspection at home I realized that they are indeed various vegetable gummies, legumes means vegetables and if I paid any attention I would have noticed it on the front of the package. Needless to say corn and carrot gummies are pretty gross.
I am an avid watcher of the show Sex and the City, and in the sixth season of the show Carries (the main character) is in Paris. She is alone and sad and wandering around the beautiful city dressed in a gorgeous outfit and all she can think about it home and friends and then to top it off she steps in dog poop. The scene shows her looking frustrated and on the brink of tears and in the background some old French guys are chuckling at her and pointing as she tries to wipe of the dog crap. When I saw this I laughed and thought oh how funny, yay for Paris.
Well today on my run I stepped well more like stomped into an enormous pile of poop. Yep, all of you reading this and who know how truly clumsy and unobservant I can be can surely picture this happening. Also I am sure you can picture the numerous French people laughing at my mishap. I felt like crying but instead I laughed at myself along with the rest of the enitre park that was there and wiped off most of it in the grass.
There is dop poop EVERYWHERE here I am not kidding. Walking anywhere outside here is like walking in the 17th parallel. It's really intense, so if you ever visit me BEWARE, not of the dog but what the dog is bound to leave behind.

Isaiah 41: 10

This week has been very difficult. Alex left on Monday which has made me very lonely. Just being in a different place surrounded by completely different things doesn't so much bug me, I guess I am just really homesick right now. It has been very difficult for me to meet people. My French class is made up of me a girl from Turkey who comes in late and leaves early, and about 10 middle-aged Spanish ladies who talk very loudly in Spanish to each other. I was sort of hoping I would meet some people in my class. My flatmates have all been very nice but the girls are very busy and hardly around and the guys are fine but not really people I would necessarily feel comfortable with. As I am typing this I feel a little ridiculous because I knew all of this before I left it is just harder to deal with it now that I am here. I am just having a pity party this weekend :/

E and S left for Cape Town for 10 days and that has been very tense with the girls. They are so used to a strict routine that this is throwing them off quite a bit. The grandparents and I have to rely on the girls to translate for us but they haven't been very helpful at all. Mostly not translating anything and ignoring us. The girls are supposed to do homework every night and they have either been telling me they don't have any or not doing it and telling me they are finished. Today D came home with a bad spelling grade and yelled at me for not making her do her homework. Granted I should have made her do it and I would have if I had known she had any. That's the thing I guess with watching kids that aren't your own; discipline has to be carefully discussed but the parents aren't here so I don't know if D should be in a timeout, go to her room, do chores I don't know. Ir just starts crying when she doesn't get her way which isn't exactly abnormal but rather irritating.
Both girls are pretty darned spoiled. They NEVER have to pick up anything because X comes twice a week and they just expect me to clean up their messes after them. These are all things that can be worked out, it's just been a trying week and I am ready for it to be over.

Isaiah 41:10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Laundry and other things

Alex left really early this morning. We had to be up at 4:30 to catch the tram to the train station in order for him to catch a 5:20 train to the airport (we checked the train times the night before, lesson learned). We made it just in time and said goodbye at the train. There were no romantic giddy Audrey Hepburn "Hello and Goodbye" endings it was just sad, as it always is saying good bye.
E and S are going to Cape Town for a week and a half so E's parents are here from Greece to be with the girls along with myself. Her parents only speak Greek so we have to rely on the girls to translate for us when needed. I am not worried about E and S leaving, the days are so scheduled that there won't be any time for emergencies and I already have it all down, almost :) The grandparents are so sweet and just like my grandparents. The grandmother is soooo short and cooks delicious things and is very motherly and really makes me miss my grandma who passed away last spring. It is nice that Ipa and Grandpa are still healthy it makes the pain of losing people softer.
Today I did laundry. I have been here two weeks today and I have been avoiding it. My clothes and things are still good haha! But I desperately need undergarments. The washing machine here is TINY, so I could barely fit those things in one load and then there is no dryer. I have to hang dry my things in the common room on my floor which is fine except that I washed all of my socks and underwear so I have only what I am wearing until those things dry and at the rate they are going it might be a couple of days.....perhaps a trip to the monoprix (general store) will be neccessary tomorrow.
Now that Alex is gone I have to buckle down and meet people. I am lucky that my flatmates have all been very nice and gone out of their way to meet me.
I got a package from my mom today, she made me a calendar with sayings and things it was so nice to see something from home! Although I am now worried about my books and contacts that I sent myself before I left because they are still not here...

wii, oui, yes?

D got a Wii for her birthday from E's parents on Wednesday the girls don't have school so we set it up. I am not very good with anything technology related I usually let Josh and Jason handle all that junk but I felt that I could handle setting the Wii up. Well I followed the directions and had everything plugged in and D and Ir were jumping around like crazy people they were so excited. However we couldn't figure out how to get the tv from regular mode to the Wii. We just kept pressing things on the remote. X who was cleaning that afternoon came in to see what the girls were excited about and saw the Wii. She watched us mess around with the remote for a while and then took it from us and tried to figure it out. X speaks Russian and French and the girls when they are excited go from French to Greek and I of course only speak English. So we were all yelling excitedly at each other trying to figure it out. X kept saying merde haha which I did recognize as the French word for s#$@ haha how amusing that she was speaking in Russian but switched to French to swear. X eventually called her 16 year old son and after a very animated conversation and trust me I didn't need to to know Russian to get the jist of it she had figured it out.
The girls and I played the Wii for ooo I'd say about the next 4 hours STRAIGHT. I was too tired to fight with them to make them stop and I figured since it's the first time it's fine. When it was time for showers and homework they flipped. "NOOOO Joy we don't want to stop" then they fought with each other "it's my turn" "you're going to break it". It's amazing what one stupid game can do. My siblings fight over the Wii and whatever other games as well, my mother will be relieved to know it's kids all over the world in every language.

I hid the controller :)

Mon amour dans l'aeroport

Alex is here! I went to pick him up at the airport after my disastrous morning. Well I got to the city center and everything was dark and nothing was open. Also I tried to buy tram tickets and they don't take cash they only take coins or a credit card and the machine wouldn't take my credit card so I started to freak out. So I just hopped on a tram hoping I wouldn't get asked for a ticket, and I didn't thank goodness. I got to the train station and go figure the trains to the airport had already stopped running, FANTASTIC. At this point I was seriously freaking out because I didn't know how to get there I found a taxi and asked him how much it would be to the airport and he said between 40-50 euros. Well that's when I started to cry, I had only brought 25 euros with me because the train to the airport is only 3.50 and metro tickets are 1.30 so I thought 25 would be fine. I tried explaining this to the taxi driver in my horrid French and through my torrent of tears. I just kept saying "mon amour dans la aeroport" which sort of translates into my love is in the airport, hahaha the poor guy! In the end I just showed him how much money I had and he laughed and said that's fine that's fine. We got to the airport and the fare was 45 I felt sooo awful, I repeatedly said "Je suis desole" I am sorry and he kept smiling and saying c'est bon. What a sweetheart.
I was so relieved to see Alex get off of the plane. We went to get his luggage only to discover that the airline had lost it. How fantastic. We took a taxi back home and Alex had money for the fare thank goodness. I was able to get cash and pay himback but I feel so bad that I couldn't pay the first cab driver the rest of his fare.
I took Alex to the Tarte Flambee restaurant so he could try it since I had loved it so much but he didn't like it. So I just ate the whole thing while he watched and because everything but the bars close really early here he didn't eat anything how sad.
The rest of the time we have just been wondering around Strasbourg looking at the sights and enjoying each other's company. We went to a Chinese restuarant which was good. We also meet my Romanian flat mate Simone who is very nice and speaks excellent English. We are all getting together Sunday night for a big dinner which I am really looking forward to.

Spoiled American

These pictures are the view from my window. The look deceptively sunny and warm especially with the doors open across the way.

It is FREEZING outside, actual temperature -4. Weather.com predicted mostly sunny and 39, I have lost all faith in that website. This morning was not a good morning. I was supposed to have my French class at 9am. I went to the building I went to the classroom...no one was there I checked the list of classes in the hall and I was supposedly in the right place. Then I couldn't find anyone to ask for help because my classes aren't on the main campus they are in a little building with no front desk. So I left after 45 minutes of waiting. I decided to go and see where the train is to the airport so I can go pick Alex up tonight. Well I guess I misinterpreted the map. There is a little picture that says navette aeroport Strasbourg by a station and I looked it up online and basically you go to this station hop on a train and go to the airport. I went to the station which was very sketchy and at the end of one of the train lines and wandered around in the freezing cold for another 45 minutes looking for this phantom train I asked a guy at the ticket window and he said just wait by the buses. After freezing my buns off I went back downtown and had to go to the city center to get a map of the bus lines there I was told all I had to do was go to the central train station and catch a bus to the airport.
By the time I made it back home my hands were so cold I could barely open the downstairs door and my neighbor (miniskirt lady) let me in, I am beginning to like her :) When I got upstairs I talked to Raza (the Iranian Prussian painter) who laughed at my mishaps and made me a wonderful cup of tea which I don't generally like but in this instance it tasted sooo good.
In Iowa when it's cold, it's awful but I bundle up and have my brother Josh or my sweet boyfriend Alex go warm the car up (depending on where I am) then I take my car park and run to the warm building. Here when it's cold there is no warming up of the car there exists the jog to the tram or bus station and walking. I am so spoiled. I think that I have a lot of adjusting to do. It is no wonder why all the people I see are so tiny.

It's a small world after all

Today I met someone who graduated from Price Lab School with my dad!! Isn't that crazy??? Her daughter is classmates with D. D had her tenth birthday today and 15 kids came. We went ice skating and then took the tram downtown and had tarte flambee which is a traditional Alsatian dish that is like very very thin pizza with no marinara sauce. It was good and then we had a different type of tarte flambee that was sweet with apples and some type of sauce. The birthday cake was in the shape of a horse and unlike our cakes in America it was layered and more like a thick chocolate mousse with thick frosting. For those of you who know me well, of course I LOVED it so deliscious and really rich and wanted a big glass of milk afterward but settled for some Orangina instead. I don't think that E and S (the parents) were quite prepared for the craziness that 15 9 and 10 year old kids can create. The ice skating rink was fine. Getting the kids on and off the tram was a chore and the restaurant well as you can imagine was hilarious, well hilarious to me because I know how crazy kids can be.
We had made a reservation but it was in a room with two other parties and the kids were going crazy, it was a busy night so there was a lot of time in between courses in which the kids proceeded to rip the tablecloths spill drinks, break dishes, etc. Keep in mind these aren't bad kids just normal. How amusing :) Either way the night ended peacefully with a nice tip for the restaurant from S and many new and exciting breakable toys for D!

I am adjusting well I think. Everything is still very new but I am learning the routine. I am so grateful that everything with the family is going well so far. Both parents are open and honest with me and I never feel overworked (thank you X, the Russian housekeeper)! Some of the funny things that I have noticed
-I was waiting for X to come and show me how to get to the girls school and one of the ladies that lives in the apartment came down to get her mail we exchanged a few words in my limited French and she went on her way...this was an older lady I'd say mid 60's and she was wearing a MINI SKIRT with a mesh see through black shirt with a blue bra on and that was it. I wanted to take a picture soooooooo badly, don't worry common decency held me back :)
-Everyone smokes, not too surprising I knew this from my last visit. But kids smoke and it's no big deal. The family I am living with doesn't at all which is wonderful for me but everytime I see someone who looks like they are 12 puffing away I want to yell at them like I would if I saw my 12 year old brother smoking, oh well.
-PDA is huge here. I saw two high schoolers engaged in a very intimate embrace on a bench in front of the school...I am assuming they were in high school could be younger who knows. I really don't have any problem with affection in public, kissing hugging holding hands, but this really was extreme
-Everyone budges, E (the mother) is a sweetheart but no lines for her and thank goodness because if she didn't budge she wouldn't get served or helped.

The Family

After I made it through customs S and I identified each other and we proceeded to the car which to my relief was plenty big enough for my luggage. To my surprise it was not awkward at all. He was very interested in my flight and kindly explained the meaning of French words as we passed them. That night was the night of the three wise men….or something like that? Anywhooo There is a cake/pastry and inside it somewhere there is a token and the cake is cut and whoever has the piece with the token is going to be the luckiest person for the next year. They pick someone to go under the table and yell out a name and that person gets the first piece of cake, etc to ensure that no one cheats. It was amusing and D (the 9yr old girl, soon to be 10 on Saturday) called my name first then her parents than Ir (8yr old girl) and then her name last which was good for her because she got the token which was an Indian riding a horse, oo yeah John Wayne style!
My two sisters are 8 and 10 and they are both tall, I didn’t realize just how tall they are until I met D an Ir who are a lot shorter. They are very cute they speak French, English, and Greek. They go to an international school were half the classes are in French and then the other half the parents can choose to have it be in English or German. So their English is superb which if good for me. They are typical kids very close in age the bicker but are clearly close to each other. E, the mom, is beautiful. She is Greek and works at the Council of Europe S also works there. They make a striking couple. They are both very sophisticated looking but not at all snobbish. They both speak English with the most elegant (lack of a better word) accent. They have been very kind. I don’t ever have to cook which is amazing because I am sure the girls would very soon tire of the Mac and Cheese…wait they don’t have that, ok the girls would tire of nothing very soon J
My room is on the fifth floor of the apartment building and their flat is on the fourth floor, there is an elevator. There are five other rooms on my floor. And so far I know the Chinese guy Hong who lives next door to me and the Prussian Iranian painter Raza who lives two doors down. Both have been very gracious and polite. E tells me that there is an Australian girl as well but I have yet to see her. The room is big with a great window. On the fifth floor there is a kitchen, the shower is in the kitchen which grosses me out and the toilet is in the hall. So far I have eaten lunch and dinner downstairs with the family. I am supposed to go downstairs for anything I need whenever I like. Their flat is spacious and well planned my mom would love it. She is eternally annoyed with our house’s poor layout. Their flat is exactly how I pictured a European apartment to be. I will post pictures when I get the chance. My room does not have internet which stinks but I am going to try to remedy that situation.
The parents are very involved with their kids they take them to school in the morning as many times as possible they come home for lunch and they are almost always both home for dinner. Before I left for France at the dinner table with my family I was commenting on how odd it is that my family talks about such varied subjects and it’s not just the older ones even the little girls participate and this family does too, I love it! S and E talked about their jobs and we talked about American politics because I guess everyone in the world is interested except Americans, go figureJ. The D and Ir listened and participated when they could. It was very nice.

So far I feel very comfortable with the family and the living arrangements. I have to see about the internet though. They have it in their flat but the walls are so thick that I don’t get the signal upstairs and nighttime is the only time I could talk to Alex and friends back home.

The Trip

I am safe and sound in Strasbourg. Ipa took me to Chicago on Sunday night and I hung out with the Chicago Chungs for the evening. I love those crazy kids; they remind me so much of myself and my siblings at that age! I got to the airport at noon for my 4:45 plane. The ticket counter didn’t open until 1 so I waited for an hour and then another three hours my plane took off without any mishap or delays. I sat next to a 16yr old girl from Madrid who had been visiting the family that had hosted her study abroad last year. We talked for a while and then I basically sat awake the next 7 hours of my eight hour plane ride. I got to Madrid and went through customs with no problem at all. By that time I was exhausted so I just pushed two benches together and slept for 6 hours of my 7 hour layover, probably not the best thing to do, I am very happy that no one just walked off with my stuff. But really if you were going to steal something in an airport would it be the raggedy backpack from a sleeping 20yr old or the Louis Vuitton bag from the 30 something woman who set it down to talk on the phone? Also all the signs in the Madrid airport were in English first then Spanish.

Anyhow it was another two hours from Madrid to Strasbourg. The flight attendants on Iberia were by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. Truly all of them were very tall gorgeous long hair perfectly manicured nails the right touch of makeup well you get the idea anyhow they spoke English to me after I had employed my entire Spanish vocabulary which consisted of Hola, los banos, audios, bueno dias, and the word for silverware which I have no idea how to spell.
S. the father of the family I am staying with met me at the airport. I was very nervous about meeting the family and just seeing S there was intimidating. The Strasbourg airport is not very big it’s comparable to the Cedar Rapids airport so I really didn’t have any clue what I was doing. Some sweet girl about my age pointed me in the right direction after I stood around looking like an idiot at the baggage carousel while everyone else picked up their luggage and mine was nowhere to be found. Apparently people coming from outside of the EU had a different area to go through which makes sense because then I had to go through customs. Customs consisted of a French lady speaking every language she knew which seemed to me like everything except English. We laughed together and made our way through. She asked me things in French like are you declaring anything and translated it into English as “did you brings machine guns” I responded by saying “non je ne parle Francais, no guns” haha exactly like that it was amusing to say the least thank heavens she thought the whole thing was as funny as I did.

Thanks Steve!

I am in the process of packing, it is not going very well at all. I have a lot of stuff, my brother and my dad came and helped move all of the big things so now I have piles of junk lying all over the apartment. The problem is that after this year is done I am not sure what my plans are. Alex and I have discussed spending six months in China and then possibly going to law school in NYC. If that is the case then I should just leave a bunch of stuff here for my roommates that I won't need and my mom doesn't need, dishes, lamps, t.v. stand. BUT if I come back here after France and if I go to law school here then I should keep all of this stuff because I will have to buy it again if I don't. If I do decide to keep it then I have to figure out where I am keeping it, how it's going to be stored etc...

As exciting as my dishes are, moving on to something even more interesting; I went to the post office this morning to send my books over to France. I have to take them because they are books for my online classes and for my thesis that I will be completing overseas. They weighed 47 pounds. I KNOW ridiculous, that's about as much as I am allowed for one of my big suitcases. So I sent them to France and it was $100, but if I had taken them with me on the plane I would have had to pay overweight fees and all of that jazz which would have been more expensive. The guy at the post office was a sweetheart and helped me figure everything out and laughed when I came in hunched over from the weight of my backpack. It's amazing that one person can turn your whole day around!

Last night I went to start the dishwasher and I realized that we are out of dishwasher soap but we did have regular dish soap. So I used that instead, that was a mistake. This morning my kitchen was full of bubbles.