Saturday, February 19, 2011

“There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.” - Rufus Wainwright

A pre-note: If you guys don't already know, you can click on any of the pictures in my blog and it will take you to a higher quality, larger version of the image. 
Hello everyone! This week has been long, but awesome! Last time I wrote was Thursday night, and since then QUITE a bit has happened. Friday morning I had planned on having breakfast with Becca (which I mentioned in my last blog). SO, I woke up at 8 a.m. to make SURE I wouldn't be late. I headed out the door, got down the street and remembered that for the SECOND time I'd forgotten my metro card (I had also forgotten it the day before and had to buy metro tickets all day). Since I had given myself enough time, I hurried back to my apartment, grabbed it and went to the metro again. Thinking Becca had said the cafe was on line 6, I headed toward it. REALLY, she had said it was in the 6th arrondissement, on line four. So after I'd gone about 8 stops towards line 6, I jumped off and switched at Strassbourg St. Denis. Little did I know, line four only runs sometimes from Strassbourg St. Denis. I asked a girl if it was running, and she told me yes, when really it wasn't. Lost and confused I asked a guy if he knew how to get to a line four. When he figured out I didn't speak French (for whatever reason) he continued to follow me around speaking to me in French. I had no clue what to do or how to get rid of him so I just walked out of the metro station to call Becca. About five minutes into our conversation, my phone cuts out because I was out of money on my "pay-as-you-go" plan. I call her back with the couple of cents I have left on my plan, and my phone dies because of battery. :| So, I'd gotten enough information to get myself to the bakery. So finally we get there and we couldn't read the menu to save our lives so we just guessed. I got a croissant filled with chocolate, and a hot chocolate. Becca got a TRAY of toasts with jams, and butter.
 My hot chocolate came with a biscotti spoon, that broke off after about two stirs.... so I had to spoon it out of my cup. Here's a picture of Becca with her spoon:
This is Becca's tray of toast (she somehow managed to eat all of it except for one of the pieces which I ate). I was pretty impressed. I think the best part of the whole morning was when Becca tried to dip her toast in her coffee, and decided it was too big. She then thought it would be best to just til the glass so she could fit her toast. While doing so, she didn't realize the coffee was pouring onto the toast, through the holes, and onto the table. We were laughing so hard she started crying, and my stomach started aching. 
 Finally we parted ways and both went to school. It was Alice's last day which was so sad :'( Here's a picture of everyone in the class. From left to right we have my teacher, PingLing, me (my face looked strange), Jessica, Alice, Susan, and Hilda.
After that I went out with the youth and met a girl named Lindsey who is from California. She's really nice and spunky. We went to QuickBurger later and while we were sitting there some boys told me to read the back of a fry box. After working up enough courage to mutter the first sentence, I started and it was so awful. They even filmed it! Hahahaha. But they didn't make fun of me! So that made it a little bit better. French is so hard because I never know how much of the word i'm supposed to pronounce. Sometimes a word will have "ons" at the end, and all three letters are silent. It's awful! Later that night I came home and was passing my mailbox and thought "Gosh... How come I don't have any sort of mail?" I took a closer look and saw a few things sticking out. Now, my mailbox is like a compartment in the wall with a smallllllll rectangle at the top to put the mail through. Thinking this was the only way to get your mail out as well, I wriggled my hand in there. Aggravated that I could only reach a couple of the papers, I kept wiggling my arm around. I was thinking "Why do they make this so complicated?!". That's when I looked down and saw a lock and it hit me that my mom had told me there was a key for my mailbox. Thinking that key was upstairs, I walked up ALLLLL the stairs and got to my apartment only to remember that it was on my keychain, attached to my wallet, in my purse, which had been on my arm the entire time. I walked BACK down, opened it up, and saw about 20 pieces of mail. I gathered it all up and came back upstairs. My WONDERFUL grandparents sent me a card! It made my day! It's the only piece of real mail I've gotten. If you'd like to send me anything, or you'd like me to send you a post card, just give me your address, or I'll give you mine.
 Later that night I received the bad news that my best friend Kelsey had been in a terrible car accident and was in the hospital. My parents and a lot of my friends went to the hospital to wait with her parents, and they brought me so I could be there via Skype which was really nice. I felt awful I couldn't be there in person. She was t-boned by a garbage truck, and her internal organs were pushed up into her diaphragm. One of her lungs collapsed, and she has slight bleeding in the brain. She had to have immediate surgery, which went well. Please continue to pray for her. We've been best friends since we were five, so it was really hard to hear that that had happened to her and be a million miles away. Here's a picture of her:
I ended up staying up til seven a.m. waiting on some news about how she was doing, so I slept til about 3 P.M. today. When I woke up I remembered I had to go return a dress to Zara which is forever away. It was really rainy today, so I was thankful I had my umbrella. I walked around a little bit, and shopped some, and then headed on my way home. I remembered I had to get some groceries so I decided I'd just stick them in my shopping bags. I had no clue just how heavy everything was going to be. I ended up buying a pack of 6 bottles of San Pellegrino, a bottle of Cola Lite, and some strawberry-banana-orange juice. On top of that, I had a package of vanilla yogurt (in glass jars), strawberry yogurts, apple sauce, and strawberry jam. I also had to buy some other things but they didn't way as much. I had about five bags all stuffed with heavy groceries. I made my way out (in the rain) with my bags feeling like they were going to pull my arms off. I walked all the way back to my apartment and thought I was going to pass out. I sat at the bottom step, hoping and praying that somebody would pass by and help me out. After a while I decided to leave the groceries at the bottom floor, walk up, and knock on my neighbor Josh's door to see if he would help me carry them up. I knocked, no answer. So I walked back down the five flights of stairs, gave my groceries a dirty look, hoisted them up into my arms, and made the journey upstairs. Right when I got to my apartment my bag ripped up the side and my drinks went tumbling out (luckily remaining in tact). Here's a picture of the lovely piece of luck:
 After I got all the groceries out, I cleaned out my fridge, and restocked it with all he new things! So this is my little fridge: Hamburger patties on the very top shelf, vanilla yogurt, strawberry yogurt, cream cheese, and butter on the next shelf. Apple sauce, a baguette, and some sandwich breads on the next shelf. Pastas and ham on the last shelf.
 This is where I keep all my drinks and bottled things. So we have milk, orange juice, strawberry-banana-orange juice, cola light, then on the bottom shelf we have pickles, ketchup, strawberry jam, and some sparkling water. I'm fully stocked for a good while!
 This is what I made for dinner tonight! It's the best thing ever. It's a box with premade pastas in it and all I have to do is take it out and heat it up and they're so delicious. Tonight's was noodles with a tomato, mozzarella, basil sauce.
 So this is what the actual box looks like once you take it out of the packaging. You peel the plastic back and pop it in the microwave. After two minutes you put it in a bowl and heat it up again.
 The package comes with this cute little utensil thing that seperates, and fits together.
 This is what it looks like all together:
This is what the finished pasta looked like! It was so so so delicious for only two minutes!
Me enjoying my delicious pasta! 
 While I was out today, I sort of kept my eye open for some good deals on summer clothes since I'm going to Spain in two weeks and only have winter clothes here! I found this cute dress at Promod for 15 euros. It's really light, and has pretty lace up the sides, on the back, and on the arms.
 I also found this sweater dress which I thought was very "Audrey Hepburn". It's sort of a greyish color. Really lovely, AND mega comfortable! It was only 15 euros as well.
Soooo, that was pretty much my day! Tomorrow I have church and I'm so excited for that! I'll try to write a blog tomorrow but I've got French to study for so I'm not sure if I'll have time!
Until then.....
Au revoir!
Lauren

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