Daily Observations

-After gaining all that weight, I promised myself I'd reverse nature's punishment in 2008. That means, NO MORE SUGARS. After going completely nuts on cakes, cookies, pastries and candy bars, I'm now three days into no added sugars. I'm fine eating things like fruits, but no more chocolates!

-Long story short: Day 3 is taking its toll. I'm so co-dependent on sugar that I was light-headed and dizzy all morning. So I grabbed a handful of dried cranberries and hopefully that works.

-Monique is starting a big campaign for it to be spring already. So far, so good as it's nearly 60 degrees mid-morning. I've stopped wearing my jacket, while everyone else around me is all bundled up -- UNNECESSARILY! After weeks of yucky, freezing rain, I'm getting ready to start wearing sandals again.... if only in my head.

-When I return home in three weeks, I'm going to Santa Barbara for three days! I sort of landed a very casual "meeting" (since we're not calling it an interview) to see about having a job in June. Not really going to tell you too much about it, since I don't know myself, but it's a winery/cellar/event hosting-site in Santa Barbara and hopefully they need some PR/media people!

-This morning, I was going to take my usual mid-morning nap and as soon as I started to drift off, I was rudely "awoken" to a five-to-six minute blaring horn. Now I don't live on a very busy street, for those familiar with the area, it's akin to your Dublin/San Ramon Valley/Danville Blvd. stretch of road back at home. I guess the entire road was clogged for about a mile by parents picking their kids up from the middle school right next door to me. So instead of sitting and waiting patiently for 10 minutes, EVERYONE AND THEIR MOM decided to honk their horns. Not sure what that was about, but I can tell the buses are now late and the road's cleared up again.

-Teaching is coming along a little better. I think I was so overwhelmed because I didn't really have any classes planned since I was traveling nearly every weekend. But now I have free time and free weekends to dedicate to planning extra activities in my classes.

-And you know what, it's not worth it to get stressed over them!!! They're just elementary students (not even mine) for God's sake.... haha. So I'm just going into this all with, "Today's going to be fun. They're going to learn something."

-Yay for the Dollar-value going up! It's getting a little bit closer to the Euro again, though not by much. You know what, I'm willing to bet that it's not actually going up, but the Euro is going down. All stocks are down and many countries are blaming their dependency on the U.S. for that, so maybe they're starting to come back down to the Dollar's level. Either way, today would be a good day to withdraw from my American account, if I hadn't promised myself I wouldn't do it again back in October.

I drove a car!!!

...for the first time in over a month!

...in France!

...and it was a stick!

Ok, enough of that. But basically, my roommate and I've been having some bonding moments which I've been lacking to say the least since I've been here. Yeah she's like 35 or something and she can be kind of a psycho, but she's really starting to warm up to me! I'm even making jokes in French :) That's a step in the right direction.

But basically she had the be at the train station at 9:45 this morning to catch her train to Lyon. So last night she asked if I had a permis de conduire, and somehow I found myself offering to drop her off at the station this morning. However, I realized I wasn't sure how to get there -- which was totally inaccurate! Taking the bus every day has its perks, because I knew exactly the roads to take to get to the train station.

The next hurdle was parking. Oh yeah, and driving the stick-shift. See, the gears are all different here than what I was used to on my Explorer, so we left a little early so I could give it a test-drive before dropping her off. I'm a little rusty, but the car's still in perfect shape haha. The only slight problem was driving up the hill to get into our apartment's parking lot. I accidentally shifted into a higher gear and stalled the car on the hill, oops. So I let it roll back to a flat area, and tried a second, successful time.

Oh the other "bonding" moment we had was yesterday when she came home for lunch. She just had her hair cut and apparently it was a new girl this time, because she had two clearly different lengths on the right and left sides. It wasn't even a diagonal in the back, it was like two distinct levels. So she had me cut it down to the same, even length. Then she offered to give me the address so I could get a cheap haircut, too! I actually passed on the offer, because I kind of like having my hair straight...

And one thought crossed my mind last night as I was watching t.v. (which, I'm understanding more and more every day!)

Other than the news, these are the shows I watch most often:

-That 70s Show
-Friends
-The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
-The Simpsons
-Sex and the City

All dubbed over in French... hmmm, do we see a trend here? The other two I find myself watching are French-studio filmed episodes of 1 Contre 100 and La Roue de la Fortune (1 vs. 100 and Wheel of Fortune). However, the French versions involve much more talking and noticeably smaller prizes.

And now it's already 11 a.m. and I really, really want to make lunch. But I just ate. I'm trying to restrain myself, but the day seems so long since today was our Daylight Savings time. Karina woke me up at 8 a.m. (which was really 7 a.m.) and freaked out, asking if it was really 7 a.m. or 9 a.m. When I reassured her it was the former, she calmed down. So now my day seems much longer. But if you ever want to Skype me, I'm only 8 hours ahead of you now... until the U.S. catches up in November.

P.S. (UPDATE): During my run today, I happened to notice that 99% of the snow up in the mountains has already melted. Since it's another beautiful day, I'm going to assume that yesterday MORNING was the only time is was cold enough to actually allow for snow. This must be nature's way of saying, "Chill the F out, it's still autumn!"

Potpourri (...rotten jar?)

Here are some snippets of what's been running through my mind lately.

First of all, I can't explain it, but I feel this strong pull towards getting a tattoo. I know it's silly and permanent and generally spur-of-the-moment, but I have been thinking about this a lot. I've always thought, "If I get a tattoo, where would it be and what would it be?" Which was usually enough evidence to convince me I don't need one. But now, I know exactly what and where. Which is odd for someone like me, who changes her mind quite frequently. Long story short, I envision myself with a small and delicate fleur-de-lys (image above) on the lower back, towards one side.

It's not really the tattoo itself, but what it symbolizes. I know I'll never grow out of my adoration for all things French, and the lily definitely stands for that part of my heritage and life experiences. We'll see if it happens or not. My parents would flip, but they're threatening to cut me off financially, so that rules their opinions out! I'm only half kidding...

Next, I recently found out that I do not consume more than 1,100 calories on an average day and about 10-12 percent of that is my daily fat intake. Aimée directed me to this website with a download-able Excel chart to track your daily consumption. And it's not like I'm starving myself, that figure typically includes three meals, snacks and beverages.

Well, nights when I consume alcohol would probably exponentially spike my calorie and sugar count, but it's not like I'm at UCSB anymore. Those days are very rare and scattered throughout the month. Either way, after less than 1,000 calories today before my low-fat, low-sugar ice cream dessert treat, I feel extremely full.

My activity these days is quite mild, taking frequent walks and crunches every other day. For some reason, my knees can't handle running like they used to and I'm getting bored of the same route. Hopefully I'll find many enticing trails and routes to get me back to running when I'm in France!

And speaking of walking and France, I've decided to get back into my old French routine. When I lived in Nice two summers ago, all of my activities consisted of walking since parking, gas and cars are so scarce in the South of France. I had to walk 20-30 minutes to class each day and then walk to go out at night, walk to the beach (ok, two blocks from my apartment!), walk to the market for food and then walk to the shopping areas in Vieux Nice.

So remembering that, Antibes will most certainly be the same lifestyle. I've been preparing myself for those days again -- which I will probably have to attempt in work clothes and heels, yikes -- by walking anywhere I can. Lately, I've walked to get lunch, to the bank, to the grocery store, you name it. If it's less than a mile away, I'll walk it!

Here's to walking the many streets of the Côte d'Azur in 17 days!

Viva Las Vegas!

There are so many things I could write in this post, for never having been to Vegas before, that I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll begin with the plane. Last month on my way to Chicago, I had a brief layover in Vegas and I could see all the hotels on the strip when we landed and took off. But until you actually set foot in the city, that all means nothing.

The grandeur and sheer size of everything is incredible. I felt like a little kid just taking in all the glittery sights and everything. Fuck Reno! I'm so glad my parents never took me here when I was younger, because that could have been very bad. It definitely is an adult's playground to say the least.

While trying to find the shuttle at baggage claim was a huge ordeal, I shouldn't have ever worried because I'm traveling with a group of 6+ foot tall people. They're so easy to spot from anywhere, that if I ever get lost I'll just walk towards the height. So when we located our driver, he took us to a fleet of shuttles and we all piled into the Caesar's Palace-bound shuttle. Appropriately it was the huge Celine Dion car. And then I joked to everyone within earshot (probably more times than was funny), "I feel like we're Celine Dion roadies right now." It must have looked funny to see a van of professional volleyball players and staff piling out of a Celine Dion van at the entrance to the hotel -- which by the way is RIDICULOUS! I have tons of pictures to share from that.

The best part? My room's view of the American version of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. It's a fitting transition for someone who plans on living in France in less than a month!

My night was crazy and fun all at the same time. I'll leave you with that and no further details about it :)

Supposedly Matt Fuerbringer's sponsor is going to be picking up the tab for happy hour FREE drinks at the circle bar on site after his last match tonight. That means free drinks from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. I'm so there. Only of course after the Intern Olympics, which should be both ridiculous and hysterical at the same time!

Pictures to come later, once I load them all on my computer...