Puy de Dome

5/25/2016

Okay, so being in Auvergne has its merits, most of them being that I actually get to go on adventures instead of waiting for the weather to be good enough to have adventures. I got to hike the Puy de Dome with my two youngest and their grandpa. The perks of your kids having a young grandpa is that he can take you all on adventures and make kickass pasta sauce. I need his recipe. But anyways, two weeks ago, the kids had a five-day weekend and so we were able to go and have a fabulous adventure at the Puy de Dome, which is really famous for its antenna that it doesn’t even use anymore.

We first drove to Clermont-Ferrand so that we could eat lunch with the kids’ grandparents, which was really fun. He made pasta and I talked for ages with their grandma, who is a very nice lady. I also got to see the plateau where Vercingetorix gave himself up to Julius Caesar and their grandpa was like “okay that’s our next adventure” when he saw my face light up. Then, we ate chocolate-covered marshmallow bears and got in the car so we could start our hike.

We got to Puy de Dome and waited in line to buy tickets for the funiculaire so that we wouldn’t have to walk two hours up a mountain/volcano with small children. The funiculaire is not air-conditioned. Also, since it was a holiday, there were at least 200 people on it. I could not breathe without smelling someone’s armpit for 15 minutes. Normally, I would say that 15 minutes is not a long time, but it was two weeks ago. It was an eternity.

Then, Kylo Ren decided to run away from us after we got off the little train. Like I said, kid needs six pairs of eyes on him at all times. We finally found him and gave him a stern talking-to, then finished walking up the volcano. Then, we started hiking down. I have never seen more beautiful things in my life. I also have never walked down a steeper hill in my life. I fell really hard and sliced open my hand, similar to my experience at Etretat. This time, I did not put salt water on it. Just a bandaid.

When we got to the bottom of Puy de Dome, we stopped at a cute little mountain café and had a beer (the kids had soda), then continued our walk. Kylo Ren was so concerned that we got lost in the forest that he hung back for a good ten minutes, yelling at us to turn around. I kept telling him that we weren’t lost and to come walk with us, but he would not have it. Finally, when we started disappearing, he yelled “I got confused we’re not lost!” and ran to catch up with us. He’s cute when he’s not disappearing.

We finally made it back to the car, then went home and ate dinner and went to bed, which was well-deserved. I also can’t wait to go back to Puy de Dome this summer to run it with my host mom. I LOVE AUVERGNE!

Que La Force Soit Avec Toi

5/24/2016

I have no excuses. I have had time to blog, but I go and have adventures instead of actively choosing not to blog about sitting in my room all day, like I did in Vernon.

This is going to be the first of four posts à la suite which I’m going to get up as soon as they’re finished with very little proofreading.

THE STAR WARS CONVENTION WAS INCREDIBLE. I didn’t take a ton of pictures because walking around with a five year-old dressed as Kylo Ren is not a time to take pictures because if you take your eyes off of him, he is forever lost in the sea of Kylo Rens. Even if you’re with two other adults who are responsible for him. There must be six pairs of eyes on him at all times. Like today, I took him to the grocery store just before lunch and when I grabbed a cantaloupe, he was already gone. I spent a good five minutes tracking him down in the tiny Casino (the store, not an actual casino, could you imagine?). The kid is a walking disaster sometimes.

There were so many baby Reys it made me so happy. She’s my favorite character in the new movie I think. But also I love Finn and Poe so just don’t make me choose okay? I tried to dress up like Rey, but it didn’t really work. But then I found the only Finn at the con and took a picture with him so that was fabulous. He was so nice and all of my au pair friends thought he was my boyfriend or something and I was just like, “no I met him at the star wars con”.

Then, we got onto the con floor and I about died because there were way too many people there for it to be enjoyable, plus I had a disappearing five year-old on my hands. We walked by the autograph tables and I saw a guy there who looked very similar to George Lucas. His name tag also said “George Lucas” but I was like “no, it’s not really George Lucas this is small town France.” And so as soon as I got home, I googled him.

It was George Lucas.

My favorite moment of the con though was when I saw a guy dressed as Indiana Jones strike up a conversation with a guy dressed as Han Solo. I found it hilarious and my host dad had a really hard time figuring out why I was laughing so hard. I don’t really know why I thought it was so funny because neither of them was Harrison Ford, but I said “oh my lord it’s two Harrison Fords talking to each other.” I said that out loud. In English. Because for some reason that was my thought process in that moment. It’s not really a funny story to tell but in that moment I was dying.

Then we went home and had Oreos and milk for a snack and I had a ton of lightsaber battles with Kylo Ren because I’m the only one who will have countless lightsaber battles with him. I’m just glad I get to be my normal geeky self here. Harry Potter, Star Wars, History. It’s absolutely fab.

You are not Julius Caesar, Napoleon

4/26/2016

This weekend, I went to a festival celebrating the guy cocky enough to compare himself to Julius Caesar. It was fantastic.

I love history, so the festival of Napoleon III was pretty cool. I was able to take a walk in his park and see hundreds of people walking around Vichy in period costume. That was pretty incredible to see. Like, 150 people in crinolines take up a ton of space, but when they dance the skirts are so pretty!

I was able to experience a French military camp and learn quite a bit about medicine from the period, which my host mom loved because she’s a doctor. I also got to closely examine one of the first domestically available sewing machines, which nearly fell of the table when the inside machinery was being shown to me. Those things are heavy. I learned about guns and bullets from the French Second Empire and watched the bullets get dipped in bacon grease so that they could slide more easily out of the gun when shot.

Then I watched a guy pour boiling water into a metal kettle and then into a metal cup to make tea and I wondered how he didn’t burn his fingers off because hot water is not a fun thing to be burned with. I asked him if it was hot and he HANDED ME THE CUP. I didn’t really know how to politely say that I didn’t feel like getting another burn from hot water, so I touched it and handed it back to him as quickly as possible while he smoked his era-appropriate cigar.

Then I wandered over to the games of the era and tried to knock down some pins with foam balls. I failed miserably. Then, I wandered over to an amazingly gorgeous chess set and almost got shot in the head with an arrow. Luckily, burning-hot-cup guy said “Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait”, and I moved just in time.

Then my friend Marian called me to see if I wanted to get lunch, so I met her back in the center of Vichy, where we got a sandwich and ate in the park, then went to an exhibit on the Suez Canal, which was mostly just portraits of Napoleon III. Then, we got a coffee before finding a good place to watch the three o’clock parade of dancers, musicians, and imperial family. It was so cold and I was wearing capris and a light jacket. I no longer trust any type of weather. While we were having our coffee, some guy sitting near us in the café told us how ridiculous all of these people in period costume were and I was just like “Dude. Had I known about this earlier, I would be one of those weirdos.”

Finally, the parade got to the opera, where we were, and so many people crowded us against the barricade that I thought I was gonna die from being squished. We watched a ton of people dance in the park after Napoleon and Eugenie opened the “ball” with a beautiful waltz.

After a few dances, Marian and I went to meet up with a friend of hers and her kids, then a friend of Paola, Marian’s friend, met up with us and she talked to me about how I absolutely had to go to the ball that night because she’d been one of the dancers four years ago and she absolutely loved it because of the skirts and the music and that it was just incredible. So I was convinced to go to the ball, even though I’d made my mind up on Friday morning to go.

Then, the six of us took a horse-drawn carriage ride through Vichy and I was given a tiny tour of the city while we were in the carriage before I had to get in line to buy my ticket to the ball.

The ball was absolutely spectacular. Everyone had changed into ball gowns, there was a live orchestra, and then there were other musical performances during the course of the ball to give the dancers a rest. I sat there for two hours completely lost in 19^th century France and it made me sad that nobody asked me to dance. But of course, who’s going to ask a tiny American to dance at an imperial ball. Then, I went home and had dinner. And that was all I got to experience of 19^th century France, though I wish the festival would go on for a week so that I could go listen to historians talk about the achievements of the era because I could sit in history lectures for years without getting bored.

But next weekend is the Star Wars convention so I am definitely looking forward to that.

Okay, Change is Really Good

4/25/2016

It has been a month since I left Vernon. A month since I was belittled, punished, and cornered by someone much older and apparently more adult than me because of my decision to leave. And I’m happy.

I miss M, P, and M since they were part of my life for the last few months, but I’m happy to have moved on to something that is much better for all of us in the long run.

Now, I live in a small city called Cusset, which is a two minute drive from Vichy and an hour away from Clermont-Ferrand, which is the big city in Auvergne. I’m still taking care of three kids, E, R, and Kylo Ren (sometimes it’s Luke Skywalker. As a former Anakin Skywalker, I’m proud he’s my son, but my grandson… yikes), and they are so sweet and well-behaved. And happy. They watch TV and listen to music from this century. The kids have chores to do, like putting away their laundry and keeping their rooms clean. I get to teach them English and play games and help make dinner, which has been really fun because they like me. That is to say, nobody has held a knife to my throat yet (thanks, Moyen Pamplemousse, aka P, my loving seven year-old in Vernon).

Being here has been so much fun because my host parents are interested in taking me places and talking to me about things, instead of telling me what to do or interrogating me about subjects I have little knowledge about. Like, this weekend in Vichy, there’s a huge festival celebrating Napoleon III and my host dad brought me the program so that I can go and learn more about it tomorrow and Sunday. I’m super excited!

Last week, we went on vacation to a ski resort called Avoriaz, which is incredible. You go everywhere in one-horse open sleighs because there is snow absolutely everywhere. I ate really good food in the Alps. I even learned to like Reblochon de Savoie, the nastiest cheese known to man when melted on top of pasta and onions. It’s really good with potatoes and lardons and cooked onions. Tartiflette is just good. I took the girls, E and R, ice skating, which was super fun because they’re just fun kids. Then, I took all three of them to the swimming pool.

I hate the swimming pool.

When we got back from Avoriaz, I went with the kids to their grandma’s house, which is up on a mountain in the country. She has two swimming pools, two donkeys, and two pygmy goats, which turned out to be the most terrifying things in the world when you’re sitting in a pasture with them and you can’t move.

Last Wednesday, Kylo/Luke was playing with his cousins in the donkey/pygmy goat pasture while I was with my host grandma, host mom, and two teens of family friends drinking our after lunch coffee and enjoying ourselves, when we hear screaming coming from the pasture. We looked out the window to see what was going on and saw the kids running away from the goats, so we laughed a little until the screaming got louder. At this point, I set my coffee down and ran out to the pasture with the other young adults and tried to hop the fence. I am not tall enough to hop a fence with ease, so R, who was really just trying to help, pushed me over the fence. I found myself face down in the pasture with a ridiculous amount of pain coming from my ankle. I rolled over and sat up, but could not move while the goats were on a rampage. They really just wanted to play, but it was a rampage from my point of view on the ground. So, I just sat there, knowing the goats could come by at any second and really hurt me, but I could do nothing but sit there. I was finally able to limp over to “save” the kids from the goats and I decided to look at my ankle when everyone started screaming my name. A goat was getting ready to butt heads with me.

I also hate goats.

But I am truly enjoying my time in Vichy because I’ve found a family I click with and who encourage me to enjoy what the city has to offer.

Change is Good

3/20/2016

Two weeks ago, I got a second degree burn on my back. It was a complete accident and my host mom feels really horrible about it. It hurt kind of like a giant sunburn if you give it a nice whack seventeen times with a wooden spoon.

But anyways, I was in the kitchen with her making dinner and she grabbed a pan of boiling potato water to drain the water from the tots and well, Big M opened the fridge door and hit my host mom’s arm, thus sending the boiling potato water onto my back. I spent about 15 minutes in a cold shower trying to calm the skin down and then my host mom said we needed to go to the emergency room so they could take care of the burn because it was bigger than the palm of my hand. Considering I have small hands, a lot of things are bigger than the palm of my hand, so we went to the emergency room where they put some burn cream and a sterile sheet on my back and told me to come back on Sunday morning to see what was up with the burn.

Sunday came along, and well, it turns out the first degree burn on my back Friday night had turned into a second degree burn and so they gave me a real burn dressing and narcotics and a prescription for a nurse to come to the house every two days to change the dressing and just make sure everything was healing up well.

Tuesday rolled along and the nurse who came to change my dressing was really cool when I almost threw up on him.

Thursday came along and the dressing change went swimmingly, but it turns out I’m allergic to medical tape. Wow, me, with sensitive skin, is allergic to medical tape. So I got a prescription for new medical tape (I’m allergic to that, too. More later.) and was told to call him if I had it on Friday so that he could come and change the dressing earlier.

Then he came on Friday to change the dressing, and then again on Saturday because nobody wants to be bugged on Sunday by a nurse. Then, a new nurse came on Monday to change the dressing, and then a new one on Wednesday.

It turns out that I’m also allergic to the hypo-allergenic stuff. Good things. THe nurse taped up my entire back to the point that I couldn’t move my right shoulder and then was like “you should be able to take a real shower on Friday”.

I did not take a real shower on Friday. But my dressing changed in size. It literally only covered my shoulder. The nurse then told me I’d be able to take a shower today and since my dressing fell off at 10:30 this morning, I took it as a sign that I could wash my hair and body at the same time. I’m now sitting on my bed with a clean t-shirt just sittin’ on the burn and it doesn’t hurt a bit. To be honest, taking a shower really helped with all of the itching on my back.

I also just finished a Skype interview with a family in Vichy. I’m moving to Vichy in two weeks and my head feels a lot easier to hold high.

I won’t go into the gory details of why I’m leaving, but things are just not working out for me with my host family in Vernon and so I’m peacing out. It’s going to be a good change for me and I’m excited to go on a brand new adventure with a brand new family in a part of France I’ve never been to.

I also got a haircut yesterday and I am so completely in love with it! My hair is short again and I am happy. I look super cute.

I have pictures of my back under the cut if you want to see how it’s healing.

2/17/2016

My girls have now been sick for two and a half weeks.

I’m over it. 

We all had the stomach flu back in January and here we are on February 17th and they all have horrible colds. Not to mention Big M and P have had la grippe. Big M collapsed a week ago with a fever and no desire to eat and yesterday, P decided it would be a good time for her to catch it, too. Big M is now doing okay except for the occasional cough and extreme hunger since she hasn’t eaten in a week. Little M is holding out though. She’s got a pretty good immune system, apparently.

But my host mom bought truffles for the two of us since we’ve been taking care of the girls nonstop for 2 ½ weeks. They’re not as good as the truffles I made with my French family over Christmas.

I went to a party last Friday night in Rouen. It was a little strange because I’m 20 and most everyone there was around the age of 16, since it was really a Young Men’s/Young Women’s activity. There were a couple other young adults, but I still felt kinda old.

On Saturday, I just wandered around Rouen like I do every single Saturday, then decided to finally check out the Joan of Arc museum I’ve wanted to go to for six months. It was incredible.

It was super intense and so cool, especially toward the end where historians talked about Joan and her influence on France and as well as her role as a woman. It was so awesome and I’ll definitely go again.

On Sunday, I went to church and got asked to say the prayer during Relief Society. My excuse was that I don’t speak French well enough to say the prayer, but also speaking French in front of a huge group of French people? That’s terrifying. I know I’m going to get asked again within a short amount of time, so I need to study up on my church French.

Then, I was in Rouen again on Monday and found a cool little cafe. I had a chai tea and a muffin and read Julia Child’s memoir, then just walked around Rouen for hours. I need to find a place to just sit when I’m in Rouen by myself.

This Saturday, I’m meeting with the sister missionaries to get lunch. Last time we were supposed to meet, their car broke down, so hopefully now everything will be A-Okay Coolio Beans.

That’s about all that’s happening right now! I am still completely in love with France and it’s helpful that I’ve been making French friends aside from my au pair buddies. It’s honestly so nice to have friends I speak French with. Like, English-speaking friends are great, but I really enjoy my French friends.

ANyways, that’s all for this post.

Stay frosty!

2/8/2016

Look at this little girl:

There’s a lot of things that have changed between those photos and this one:

For one, I got taller and started wearing makeup. I also grew my hair out.

If you were to tell the ten year-old in those first two pictures that in ten years, she’d be spending her weekends wandering the streets of Paris with nothing but a basic knowledge of the metro and a gigantic amount of self-confidence, she’d probably start crying because that means she wouldn’t have gone to Hogwarts, and I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a crying ten year-old me on my hands.

One thing has not changed in the last ten years: my absolute love of France. 

I’ve loved France since I was probably five years old, but I didn’t know much about it. I remember my sister and I playing that we were speaking French, but we really only knew how to say “yes”, so we’d make up sounds to be “speaking” French.

I’ve been attached to Madeline for at least as long as I can remember. I had my grandma make me a “Madeline Coat” and I even chopped off my hair to look like her.

Then, at ten years old, I went to France with my papa and my sister. I met my French family for the first time, and I got to spend time in one of the most beautiful places in the world with the two of the people I love the most in my life.

In France, I was so completely confident in my ability to order a baguette at the boulangerie. I was confident in my ability to navigate the Louvre. I was instantly at home in France. It spoke to me. It turned me into a confident person who did not exist in Utah.

I wanted to return to France no matter what. I would consistently ask when we would be going to Paris for Christmas. I was set on attending the Sorbonne. I wanted to really learn French. I wanted to be French.

Then, I graduated from high school and was given the best gift I have ever received. I got to go to France for the summer. I was going to stay with my French family and experience living in France like a French person would.

I learned to speak in those two months. I learned some simple recipes and just how to live my life in the way I wanted to.

As soon as I got back from France that second time, all I wanted to do was come back and live. My sister introduced me to the idea of being an au pair and the rest is history.

I’m here. I’m here and I’m already making plans to come back and live. This is home to me and that hasn’t changed at all for the last ten years.