I miss Sunday shopping

It is so snowing here. How excited am I. At first, it was the giant snowflakes that any self-respecting Canadian knows will never amount to any snow on the ground. We then had the transition to light flurries and I think the precipitation now could even be described as light snow. Wehehehe.

Maybe I went outside and danced in the street.

Several times.

:)

It's hard to follow up such a stellar post, but I'll do my best :D
(I still haven't figured out what's wrong with my pictures, but I digress)

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. I was walking around yesterday minding my own business and what to my wondering eyes did appear - but a giant ferris wheel and a Christmas market. Yes, that's right folks, the cutesy Christmas market opened up for my shopping pleasure circa yesterday. Word on the street is that the early opening is to lure the English tourists in, apparently this weekend is the last weekend that they come to visit prior to the big day (Christmas). I usually hold out until December to meddle with deocrations and whatnot, but since I'm going home (IN ONE MONTH!!! You know, whatever) I want to cash in on the holiday goodness while I'm still here. My decorations are sitting in a little corner awaiting the first tree I can get my hands on. I don't know if I could really put one up in November though...but come December 1st, everything is fair game my friends.

Stockholm

Sverige

Let me take the time to tell you a little story. I was flying out of Beauvais (RyanAir's "Paris" Airport). To get there from my place involves taking the train to Paris, crossing Paris by subway and then getting a bus that goes directly to the airport. Being my anal self, I'd left a window of an hour and a half to get from Gare du Nord to Porte Maillot.

Less than ten minutes into the train journey, there is an announcement; "Due to a technical problem, we're going to have to take the old route, at non-TGV speeds and will be 1.5 hours late". Our train that usually goes at superhuman speeds, slowed down to normal speed and meant : No bus! The next bus out of Porte Maillot was too late to catch our plane. After panicing a little bit, a Plan B was concocted. Take a train from Gare du Nord to Beauvais and then take a taxi to the airport. I have to admit, it was the first time I could truely appreciate the usefulness of internet on a cell phone. The timing was all very tight, the tickets for Beauvais would have to be bought on the train. The orginal train arrived a bit earlier than expected leaving enough time to buy the tickets and some crossword puzzles as I'd exhausted all my distractions during the 2.5 hour train trip. Upon arrival to Beauvais, I finally relaxed. There was more than enough time to make the 5 km trip to the airport. At the taxi stand there was no taxi to be had. Call the number on the sign "The next available taxi will be in 20 mins". Another taxi drives by. "Please take us, we beg you". Answer "Oh, no, I'm not allowed to take you to the airport, there's a white cab around that can do it". One taxi to the airport. Excellent. I checked the bus stop, the bus to the airport came at the same time as our train had arrived and the next one was in an hour and a half. Half an hour passed.

I saw a happening vacation in Beauvais.

By this time, we'd started chatting with another guy trying to get to the airport. He was heading to Poland to play a gig with his band. Nice guy. But was clearly stressed, especially noticable when he reached into his bag and pulled out a giant bottle of sweet wine and took a big swig. Classy. I almost grabbed that bottle out of his hands (he did offer), and then I saw it, a city bus going to the airport. We jumped on. It took the longest route possible, and only after circling the airport 5 times did it see fit to actually stop at the airport. But we made it. Just.

I couldn't believe it when I realised I was on the plane. But all the better as I am terrified of flying.

The trip was awesome. Go to Stockholm. Now. It's a really cool city.

I'll try and post some pictures later today.

Quantam Solace

Last night, I went to see my good friend 007. It was only as I was trying to find the name of the actor that I realised it was actually released here before in North America. Strange. Yesterday was a less than excellent day, so you can only imagine my delight when someone called inviting me out to play. Back to the movie. The Bond connaisseurs that I went with claimed that the film was much more complicated that they might have liked. Complicated, I don't know. The premise remains the same, get the bad guys, get the girls. Very complicated. The talk about Canada! Go team Canada!

My meeting went well. I walked in to meet with the nicest French civil servant I have ever met in my life. He talked to me like I was a human being. I'd even forgotten to fill out one paper and he gave me a pen and let me do it right then and there. Talk about the generosity. My favourite part of the whole meeting:

Him: "Donc, voilà, il faut mettre votre nom et prénom..." Alright, so just put your last name and first name here
Me: "D'accord" Ok
Him: "Et puis tu n'as qu'à signe...ahh...pardon *turning red*, vous n'avez qu'à signer là" And then you (informal you) just have to si...ahhh...sorry *turning red* ...you (formal you) just have to sign here

I was so pleased to have a native born French person working in the French administration mess up his "tu" and "vous". It made me feel better about myself.

Today I have the day off (I like having random Thursdays off) and I've got plans of studying German hardcore, reading my book Pourquoi ai-je dit oui si vite ?, maybe a bit of Christmas shopping and getting ready for the big trip this weekend. Wehehehehehe!!!

Today is the big day!

...I'm going to the préfecture for my meeting re: residency. I have 800 photocopies of everything they asked for and a few other things arranged alphabetically by date (is that possible?) Currently, I'm just sipping on some coffee trying to calm my nerves. Coffee is known for that, calming people down....

In other news, my über-Studiousness totally came through for the team. Last night at German Class, Teach was all "Steph, why don't you go first?" and I was all "Just watch me." It actually went own almost nothing like that. It as an awesome class. I really enjoy the people in that class and it's nice to be on equal footing with people, because either I'm struggling (French) or excelling (not-written English..my Grade 12 teacher wanted to fail me for my spelling, but I try so hard, I really do...I don't have English spell check...).

As well, over the weekend, I went to see a movie I quite liked. I'm not a cineophile by any means and in fact quite rarely catch something on the big screen. I wanted to go see a French movie about Education in the Suburbs of Pairs (Entre les murs), but then read the book and realised the film would probably anger me. Enough of the digressions, I ended up seeing The Visitor, in English of course. I'll let you read about the movie yourself, but basically it's a reaction to immigration laws in the USA. Being in a country that is currently reforming all of the immigration laws, it's an interesting watch. (Can I even say that?) The main actor is fantastic. All in all I left not angered by the ridculous price they charged me to go see it.

Ok, must go start putting on my face for the dreaded encounter with the authorities.

Happy Election Day to all you Americans out there!

I'm the worst student ever

For the past hour, I've been trying to do some of my German work for my class tomorrow. We didn't have class last week because it was school holidays in France, but it's back to the books on Monday. Naturally, I had this vision of becomming fluent in German last week which was about as successful as the Titanic. (Is that appropriate?) I just recieved my coursebook in the mail this week, so I thought if nothing else, I could read over the lesson for tomorrow so that I appear a little less clueless than usual (Although it might take away from some people's enjoyment of the class - look at Steph trying to figure all this stuff out.) Maybe it's where I sit in the class, but whenever I only half understand something, our instructor always turns to me and says "Why don't you begin?". I give it my best go to fail miserably much the the evident dismay of the instructor. I think she keeps hoping that if she asks me enough times, I might get it. hehe. She also likes to ask me translations of German words into English, but when I'm just barely keeping my head above water to understand the German and have French in my head, I'm hopeless to throw in a third language. "Steph, how do you say Buch in English?" "Uhhhhhh...." *in my head* It's not livre, It's not livre, What is the stupid word???

My good resolution for tomorrow then mainly involves prelearning a bunch of vocabulary. I'm sitting here with a mug of warm cofee, leo.org open on my web browser and have sucessfully looked up about 6 words. Wow. Model student here.

So to continue avoiding my Fertigkeitstraining, time to bring you up to date on the exciting happenings in my life over the past week.
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Yup. All that

Nah, for Hallowe'en, I saw French Trick-or-Treaters for the first time. Granted they were not in the city, I was in the small little village and there were all these Ghost and Goblins running rampant. Actually they were all Vampires and Witches and they were walking quite calmly on the sidewalk. I was invited to my Polish friend's Friday night. I said "Ah great, a Hallowe'en party" She said "It's Halloween?". Oopps. So we had a Polish-Canadian-Mexican-French UnHallowe'en Party. (Like Alice in Wonderland...Happy UnBirthday?) Well there was some Vodka and Orange Juice, I guess that kind of fits into the general festive colour theme. I also broke out my Jack-O'Lantern socks. I like to walk on the wild side, what can I say?

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but.....I'll be home for Christmas!! Yay!! I bought my ticket and mid-December I'm out of here. It's fun to think that next month, I'll be in Canada. I even have a new and exciting flight route. I'm used to flying through Montreal or Toronto, but this time I'm flying through New York. Too bad I won't have time to visit the city. But I'm excited! Before then though, ie. next week, I'm going to Sweden! Yay for adventure.

Ok. I'm really going to hit the books. For real this time.

Maybe.

There is that recipe I wanted to look up on Allrecipes.com...... :)