Strawberry Fields Forever

This past weekend my host family went once again to Reims, but I decided to stay in Paris and take advantage of having the house to myself. I invited a couple of friends over and we had a girls night. It felt so weird having people over and having to host! It had been a while since I've done so, and at the same time it was a bit more stressful than usual because it's not exactly my house so I had to be even more careful that we would not break anything or spill anything over the sofa etc. (Do not worry, I had permission from my host mom to invite friends over hehe).

I met my friends at the RER and then we all walked to the super market to get things for the night. We got chips, gummie bears, brownie mix, pizzas, strawberries, chocolate, wine, vodka...yes, it was a girls night all right! It felt so nice being able to just hang out at someones house, since we're all au pairs and live with the family, we can't really have friends over. I mean we could, but you're not going to have 7 friends over who are drinking alcohol, doing silly things etc while there's kids in the other room trying to sleep.
We ate the pizzas, prepared the brownies and the chocolate strawberries, which were a little bit of a fail due to the fact that my stove decided to stop working so we had difficulty trying to melt the chocolate haha.

We had a good night, full of laughs, doing silly things and in the morning we watched 500 days with summer. Now that I'm done writing about what I did saturday, I'm wondering why I wrote about this haha, it's somewhat a random post I guess.Oh well.

Reims and Cheese

Last weekend I had the chance to visit the town of Reims with my host family. My host dad is from that city and his mom and dad live there, and they were going to go visit for the weekend and invited me to come with them. I accepted the invitation and headed off to Reims without knowing much about the city but that it is known for it's Cathedral and that it's in the champagne region of France.

It was such a beautiful town, very calm like Lille but it had a different charm to it. It felt very bourgeoisie, very rich and I guess that's because of the champagne hehe. We arrived on saturday afternoon and we stayed the whole day inside the grandma's house which was an 18th (or 19th century not sure) house! It made me feel like I was traveling back in time and it was quite cool to get to see such an old house, to see what houses back then were like.  Of course, at night it was another situation...I was scared! The room I stayed in was in the last floor (there was 3 floors to the house) and well I was quite far away from my host family and for some reason that made me feel uneasy... Hahah I know, I'm such a scary cat! I have always felt a bit uneasy sleeping in older houses by myself, I guess I believe too much in spirits. However I did sleep quite well! The bed was very comfortable.

Saturday night we went to go see a show which was a mix of african dancing and acrobats. The performers did all these different kind of tricks, somewhat cirque du soleil style. We then headed back home and had dessert( we didn't have time to eat dessert before the show) which I was surprised that we were actually going to have dessert at 10 pm! I guess dessert is more important than I thought in french culture. The kids had their usual chocolate dessert (I know, chocolate at 10 pm! The french love their chocolate) and the adults had cheese with baguette. That night my dear readers, will be remembered as the night I fell in love with cheese. 

Cheese, cheese,cheese.

I had already tried one or two different kinds of cheese with my host family, but I had not liked them AT all, they were so strong and gross! I couldn't even swallow, it was too much. So of course, I was now very hesitant about cheese, thinking that they would all be as strong. But the grandma bought different kinds of cheese from different regions in France. I can't really remember the names of all of them, but I liked most of them which surprised the family! My favorite was Beaufort which was so good (and the mom bought some recently! I saw it in the fridge, I of course already had some hehe, and will have some again now for lunch!) I also tried Munchster, which was a bit on the strong side but it was good too. I tried to remember the names of the cheeses that I liked but there's just so many! I became instantly obsessed with the combination of cheese and baguette that I could not wait until sunday lunch to have some more cheese!

On sunday, my host dad and host mom brought me to the Cathedral and to walk around for a while. Let me tell you, the Cathedral was so beautiful. I was so impressed at all the details, the size of the church, everything! Well okay, not everything because I found the inside was a bit more on the "bland" side, but from what I've seen that's usually the case with churches. Beautiful and extravagant from the outside but more simple in the inside (with an exception of Notre Dame in Montreal!).

Here are some pictures...

The famous smiling angel

This Cathedral is famous because this is where they crowned all the Kings of France. The roof of the church was also once completely destroyed during the war (I think it was WW2, sorry I keep forgetting all these small but important details! ) and if you look around the walls outside, you can see bullet holes. In fact, if you walk around town and look at old buildings, you can see many bullet holes or tiny squares which are covered bullet holes. What I learned about Reims is that it was pretty destroyed after the war, so much that the population went from around a couple of thousands to 400! This made it harder for the city to recover and it took a while for it to get rebuilt, but that they got a lot of funding/help from the United States.

It was really nice to get to see another French city, even though I wish I could've seen more. But I'm sure there's going to be another weekend I can go with the family. I would recommend visiting Reims for two days or so, it is a small town like Lille, not too far from Paris and of course full of history from what I learned that weekend!

Baguettes

The other day I bought a baguette for the first time (I know, I can't believe I've been in France for more than two months now and I just recently bough a baguette!) and now I'm obsessed with baguettes! They're so good, you can find them in every bakery, you can eat it with different things and of course, they're so cheap! Baguettes are usually .90 cents, yes ladies and gentlemen .90 cents! So there I was feeling all proud of my purchase and I decided to also get a croissant (yum yum yum) and headed home to make my lunch.
I decided to make myself a sandwich with the baguette (of course only part of the baguette!) and as dessert I had the croissant with nutella. Here is a picture of my lunch...

I know, it looks so delicious doesn't it? This is what is so awesome about baguettes, you can do so much with them! For example:

-Make a sandwich

-Have them as tartines, which is pretty much a baguette with either nutella or jam (for breakfast)

-You can eat them with you meal 

-With cheese

-As a snack, with cheese, hummus, nutella, whatever you want!

The possibilities are endless, so versatile, so practical! Okay, I feel like I'm making an add for baguettes, I'm going to stop now... But yes, I love baguettes and I don't know what I am going to do when I go back home! Oh no, life without baguettes.... My favorite way of eating baguettes is of course with cheese! So good.

This weekend

This weekend was probably the best so far! Remember how I said that I feel like I haven't gone out in a while? Well I sure did make up for it this weekend! I slept probably 6 hours in total, that can only indicate that I did some serious partying....
On friday I wanted to go all out, but as it usually happens when you want to go all out, I didn't. I don't understand how when you want to stay up all night and get "crazy" (a.k.a super drunk haha) it doesn't happen, but when you say "I'll go for just one drink" you end up doing more than one drink. I went to Rue Mouffetard( its a pretty awesome street that gets pretty busy during the weekend, filled with a young crowd) with two girls from my french course who are also au pairs. The problem was that since we pretty much got there by 10pm it was impossible to find a table in a bar (the downside of bars in Paris is that they're quite small so you have to be there really early if you want to get a table) so we decided to go to this cafe, where there was tables outside (very Parisian), to drink some wine. It was actually a good time, we got to talk about our families, the kids we look after, boys etc. Then one of my friends had to leave to catch the last metro and the other girl and I went to go look for something to eat (I have the biggest cravings after I drink, its so weird! I just need to eat something after drinking) and I got a crepe with cheese,ham and mushrooms....YUM.
I then went to go see another friend and stayed up until 4 am, slept for an hour and then got the metro to head back home. I wanted to go to bed when I came back home but I was going to meet the guy I was seeing (I said "was" because we "broke" up on monday. I have to say break up in " " because it really wasn't a serious relationship lol) for breakfast. We walked around for a bit and then we found this really cute restaurant that serves brunches and breakfasts only which is located in Rue Mouffetard. I would tell you the name, but I forgot the name! However, I plan on going another time and hopefully I won't forget what its called. I loved that place, it made you feel like you were in the french countryside, it was so quaint. Okay, thats enough with my obsession with this restaurant...

I then went back home and I think I took a quick nap, I don't know for how long though..it felt like it was very long but I think it was more like a power nap. Later on in the evening I met up with some friends because I had gotten invited to my first ever french Apero at this guys house (the guy I met in Lille). I was so nervous at first, I thought it would be awkward because I didn't know anybody else but the host and thankfully he told me I could invite some of my friends and that helped with the awkwardness. We finally got to his place quite early actually, 8:30 and we started drinking and having small appetizers. Kudos to him by the way, we weren't expecting that much food but there was a lot! Plus he got small pizzas, chips, small rolls of ham with cream cheese, small pieces of bread with some kind of meat, cucumbers etc. I'm sure in America we would have gotten chips, coke, and pizza from Dominoes lol.
It really wasn't awkward at all because his friends were so nice and they asked us a lot of questions and of course alcohol helped everybody feel a bit more at ease haha. What turned out to be a small reunion of 10 people ended up being a get together of almost 20 people! At midnight we headed to this bar called "Financier" in Montparnasse (thank God we drove there because it was all the way to the other side of Paris!) and ended staying there until 5 am dancing. It was a lot of fun.
We then we all headed back to the house (the guy I met from Lille) and talked a for an hour so before going to bed( oh and ate some pasta this guy made haha, I guess I'm not the only one who has cravings after drinking). Nine of us ended up sleeping over which was pretty funny because there wasn't enough room for everybody haha. I slept with one of my girl friend in the pull out couch, then 3 other people slept sitting down in the couch with their legs stretched on the bed I was sleeping in; another friend slept on the floor and then there was 4 people in a double bed! Don't ya love sleepovers?

Sunday, well it was recovery day for me!  So that's it for my weekend, which I'm really happy with. We got to party and meet new people, french people!

Le Louvre

Museums in Paris are free every first sunday of the month, got to love that about the french! I think it is such a good thing to do, it encourages people to get cultured. I had been meaning to take advantage of this day but I always kept forgetting! But finally, I was able to go this month and decided to go to the Louvre.

I had planned that I would go super early so I can do the whole museum, or at least attempt to. However, I ended up going only for 2 hours.

I can't believe how exhausting it was! I really thought I would have more patience/energy but I obviously forgot that the Louvre is huge, you definitely need several visits if you actually want to see all of it. I wanted to do the whole tour of the Louvre even if I had to go several times, but after sunday I am thinking twice about it haha. I mean, I don't need to see all of the Louvre, I won't even remember all of the art I'll see. I decided on Sunday that I was going to do one section of the Louvre, starting with Napoleon's Appartments. As I finished that floor of that section of the Louvre I realized it would be impossible to do even just one section of the Louvre in 3 hours (I failed to go early in the morning, I ended up getting inside the museum at 3pm), so I looked at the map and decided to go see the paintings that were written on the museum plan (I figured that they must be famous enough to be the ones mentioned and showed were exactly they are). I however didn't pay a visit to dear Mona Lisa, since I had already done so on Thursday with the oldest kid (lucky for me it was also free entrance on Thursday, thank God because we only went for like 30 min. the kid only wanted to go see the Mona Lisa and then asked me like 5 times to go to the gift shop).

Here are some of the paintings/sculptures I saw...

Appartements Napoleon-III

Portrait de Gabrielle d'Estrees et de sa soeur

La Vierge du Chancelier

Venus de Milo

Psyche ranimee par le baiser de l'Amour

L'esclave mourant

Mona Lisa

La liberte guidant le peuple

Lille

Wow, its been a while since I've written! When I started this blog I told myself I would write at least once each week about how that week was or what I did...yeah that's not really happening.
Okay so now to fill you up on what I've been up to...I can't even remember what I last wrote about haha.  When I try to think of the past few weeks they all seem like a blur... I can't quite remember what happen..and  no, it's not because I have been drinking all the time haha. It's more because there's been a lot going on, emotionally.
I don't want to start to get all depressive here, but let's just say I was not doing well emotionally. There was a lot of things going on, so it was a mix of everything that made me feel very "down". But after having a serious conversation with my parents and crying for 2 days straight, I feel so much better now and "awake". I say awake because after speaking with my parents I felt like I had an epiphany, I felt like I snapped out of that "trance" or whatever I was going through. I feel so much happier now! (I know I'm not being very detailed here, and you might be wondering what happened that must have made me so depressed, but it's a long story so let's just keep it short and simple!)

The last 2 weeks of February where the "spring break" equivalent here in France (lucky them, they have TWO weeks off! and we only get one!) and I got one week off so I decided to take a small trip to Lille with this other au pair I met through an au pair group on Facebook. A day before leaving to Lille I was regretting going, I realized it was going to be more expensive than I thought it would be and I realized I could've taken advantage of that week in Paris to visit all the museums I wanted. (I thought I would finish all of my money I had saved up, which I almost did but in the end I didn't. Of course that was due to me eating 5 euro meals and I found 70 euros in my purse!!)
However, it was too late and I couldn't cancel, but I was not very excited to be honest. But now I'm glad I did go,even if it was Lille, a city that is quite small, because it was a good experience to see another French city other than Paris. I got to compare the different "lifestyles" and see that not every city in France is like Paris, oh not at all. Paris is a whole different world compared to Lille. Of course Lille is very small compared to Paris (we walked everywhere, there was no need for metro or bus! Everything was at walking distance in the center of Lille), it's more calm and laid back. I found it really cute and quaint, but I would not like to live there, it's too calm!
What did we see? Well I think pretty much everything, we walked all around and when I say all around, trust me all around. After those two days I felt like I had been living there for a while now because I could somewhat find my way around!
 On the first day we took a walking tour of the Vieux Lille (Old Lille) where we were told about Lille's history and showed around. We also visited several churches one being Notre-Dame-de-La-Treille. We went to the park right next to La Citadelle which is a military base (we couldn't go in of course), we went to the Marche de Wazemmes, which somewhat disappointed me. There was a lot of merchandise and everything was cheap, but I thought it would be..I dunno, prettier I guess?

Notre Dame de la Treille

Marche de Wazemmes

We then decided to go out that night (not much was happening on a Tuesday night) and that's when we met a guy who lives in Paris but was in Lille for work. I found it so funny that we met a Parisian in Lille (not very surprised though, because most of the tourists in Lille seemed to be other French people). The three of us decided to go to a bar called The Wos Bar which is an Australian bar (there is one also in Paris). He was very nice and I actually went out with him on thursday night with another friend and he invited us to a party he might be having this weekend at his place, which I'm excited about because I think it'll be a great opportunity to met other french people!

Opera de Lille and la Chambre de Commerce(clock tower)

On our second day we visited the Palais des Beaux Arts, which was very nice. We also went to the house were Charles de Gaulle was born in. There was also an exposition on Anne Frank in the house, and it was funny because after the tour I felt like I had been to an exposition about Anne Frank and the house was something on the side. It took us longer to see the expo than the house!

For lunch we decided to go to this restaurant that served very traditional Lilloise food and I decided to go all out and when I say all out, I mean it. Realizing that I had not spent a lot of money (We eat 5 dollar meals, and the museums and tour were no more than 7 euros) I decided to take this Formule (a lunch/dinner menu where it includes either appetizer+dish or dis+dessert) that included: cocktail, appetizer, dish, dessert all for 23 euros. You might think it's not that bad (which is what I thought, because after all it was a lot of food, but when you think about it 23 euros is quite an amount of money, specially with an au pair budget), but it was SO worth it! and dessert was the cherry on top. I got served a Ch'ti cocktail (Ch'ti is the name they give to people who live in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France), for appetizer Escargots (snails) with Mareille cheese, then I had Carbonnate Flamante a l'Cassonnate (it was meat with a sauce made with beer and brown sugar, it was quite good!) and for dessert....drum roll please!.... CREME BRULEE! So so so good!! Of course after this meal I felt like my stomach was going to explode.

Okay, so I know the last paragraph isn't the best travel review hehe, but I don't want to go too descriptive because I know how long my posts can get.... So that was it for my trip. For those of you who are thinking of paying Lille a visit, I think it's worth it but no more than 2 days and maybe on the weekend so there is actually some parties going on.