From the Mountains With Love X

Hi readers,

It has been probably two weeks since my last blog post, which I apologize for now. I am trying very hard to stick to my rule of “At least one blog post a week” but ma vie Française so far has made simple things like staying connected to the world via Internet a bit difficult.

Currently, I am typing this message from Grenoble (and profiting from the free wifi) and I am en route to the Alps with my ex-au pair family from Nice. I don't know exactly know where to start with my “news” from this week and the previous except that I greatly enjoyed writing my last blog post. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I think I am going to start doing more blog posts with creative writing type styles to them.

This week and the next, for those of you who are not in France, are the “Vacances Toussaint” or in other words, two week's holiday from school (half term). So, instead of staying in my appartment for two weeks to stew over problems like wifi and lost passports, I made the executive decision to go and visit my old au 

pair family in Nice.

Cannes

Nice - the view from the top

The three munckins and their new au pair Imogen!

Antibes

Gwendal and Ronan (nothing has changed)

So far, it has been a great week. Seriously tiring, but in a good way. Tiring in the sense that I have tried to do as much as is physically possible in seven days in the Cote d'Azur. I have visited old friends, gone out in Cannes and Antibes, done quite a lot of shopping and forgotten all my woes of past times: pending dissertations, passport applications and Macdonalds de Bordel. 

The only woe I do have is now checking my bank balance.

*

I am now typing this part of my blog entry from the mountains, in Chamonix, Haute Savoie if anyone really wants to Google map it.

(Our view, and no, I did not find this on Google!)

The crazies. Not superimposed against a background, I might add. This is the real background.

 There is no wifi here, except that I found a small pub at the bottom of the mountain called the Green Monkey, which has free internet and beer (not free). So I am saved, once again.

I am having another week of insecurity, unfortunately, which I think is related to the fact I am anticipating my return to Paris and all the alarm bells are going off in my head saying DANGER! LONELY DAY! LOST PASSPORT! MCDONALDS WIFI TWENTY MINUTES WALK FROM APARTMENT!

Now, I know that my last blog post was called “Finding my Feet” and that it was all about how I was finally feeling okay about living in the middle of nowhere near Paris all by myself, but...

There are always ups and downs to the settling in process and I think that this is one of the 'down' moments. This experience of being abroad so far has brought back a few of the bad memories amongst all the good I have of being abroad – as an au pair. I am now remembering how lonely and homesick I felt some days when I was an au pair, how much I just wanted to be surrounded by familiar faces and old friends.

If I am completely honest with myself, I never imagined my year abroad to start off like this. Like I've said before, I always envisaged this to be the most amazing experience of my life, even better than my gap year. I never imagined I would want to hop on a Eurostar home at any given moment!

However, deep down inside I know better than to trust my emotions. I know for definite that there are as many good days as there are bad days.

Explanation: You can't tell who is having a happy day or sad day. You might be surrounded by bad day people when you're having a good day or you might be having a bad day when others are having a good one.

And of course, you have the classic, is it half empty or half full? picture. 

To be honest the only thing that matters is that there is beer in it.

It's stupid, but just thinking about things from this perspective cheers me up. I like the idea that even on a bad day, it doesn't necessarily mean you're having a bad life. And the truth is, I have already had some pretty amazing days in Paris, amongst the crappy ones. I've made friends, here and there and there are many more to meet, according to Paris's size and population.

The other day in Grenoble with my au pair family we were at dinner with some of their friends who know me pretty well now from my au pair days. The dad in the family said:

“Living in Paris is a weird experience you know, Rachel. You can be right in the centre, in a small apartment, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the city and you can still feel completely alone. It's as if it's so big that you feel small.”

And then he said:

“When I first met you, you were only eighteen, you were practically a little girl!” he smiled and said it's funny how things change. He said “Je ne sais pas si j'étais si autonome que toi quand j'avais ton age” (translation: I don't know if I was ever as independent as you when I was your age).

Then they started asking me all sorts of questions like “When are you going to meet your French man and marry him so you can stay here for good?” and “When are you going to come and work in France as a teacher?”

I just laughed and said, wait, let's see how this year turns out. One step at a time, committing myself to France forever is tempting, but it's not a commitment I'm willing to make right this second. And who needs men anyway?!

They all laughed but I bet they didn't really believe me.

Just a few more pictures to cheer myself up, because well...

...I can't get enough of this photo.

Or this one.

...because this is how I get when I see Daniel Craig.

This is how I feel when a bad day hits me.

We've all been there (literally, sometimes. the Tupperware drawer is a huge hazard in our house).

But generally there are ways of cheering up. 

I will stop posting pictures of gorgeous men in a minute. But here, last but not least, one of my faves :

Au revoir!