It's always nice when first impressions hold true - especially good first impressions. I do really like it here at Les Semailles. Tim, Laurent and Paul are very relaxed, fun loving guys (who also know how to get things done in a timely manner) and have welcomed me into their midst quite effortlessly. I haven't done much that is terribly interesting, hence the lack of posts recently, but I've been able to do things that do help out a great deal (at least I think they do). I've done lots of getting mailings ready to send, going through clothes to send to Madagascar (which had been collected some time ago - don't know when - so they needed a thorough going through and I did come across some mold... don't really want to think about all the stuff I probably breathed in), and creating an excel sheet of the different resources they have in the office in preparation for the move. They will be moving to a different office (with much less space) at some point in the near future, so they will need to downsize a bit. With this excel sheet, they at least know what they have and can better decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
We eat lunch together everyday which they cook and we spend about an hour eating. Can't imagine ever having that much time for lunch at a job in the states - it's quite nice. I have yet to eat a dish twice for lunch, though we always have bread with cheese and coffee with chocolate. Yum!! When I first moved here I had cooked a soup (curry type thing with vegetables, potatoes and hard boiled eggs, served over couscous - I was actually going to make a normal stew to eat with the couscous, but realized I didn't have the correct spices, so curry it was - shout out to my time in India). I had made enough to last a few meals, and between that, staying at the McDaniel's on the weekends, and throwing random things together, I hadn't really cooked a meal again till tonight. And... yup, going to keep up on actually cooking meals now that I have a better sense of the space and what is available. It just tastes so much better. For instance, my tomato, avocado, hard boiled egg, kidney bean, chicken marinated in a vinaigrette salad with shredded emmental and lime juice tonight was freaking phenomenal!
As I've been thinking of what I want to write over the past few days, I continually butt up against the same thing: how much do I say, how personal do I get. This is a public blog after all and I don't want to put something out there that I will regret later. At the same time, that is what is interesting and some of what I think many of you (meaning my family and friends) want to know. So, something that struck me at about Christmas time relates to last Christmas and everything that went on that year. Some of you know the details, most of you don't, but all you really need to know is the winter and spring of 2012 was not full of great and wonderful experiences for me. I learned a lot in that brief period of time about myself and people and very difficult life circumstances, but it wasn't until that fall that I started to deal with the negative consequences of that time. I was broken, holding myself together with every ounce of my being and not doing such a great job. Anyways, throughout that fall I began to put myself back together (counseling is really a rather amazing thing, I must say) and learning to validate my experiences and emotions. That Christmas I was sitting in our living room, drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying our tree when I felt, for the first time in I don't know how long, that I was whole again. I could feel and see my inner strength like a column of light and it was effortless. It wasn't until that moment that I truly recognized how fractured that column had been and how much effort it had taken to hold the pieces in place. This Christmas was a different Christmas than normal. I was with Mimi, but not with my parents or my sister - my first Christmas away from home - and I was (and still am) doing really well. Without that year in between graduation and coming to France, I would never have made it here. So, thanks mom, dad, Annalea, Crystal, Michelle, Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else who provided the support and unconditional love that helped carry me through to where I am now: In France, on my own(ish), just to learn a language and experience new things.
And, just for some amusement (I don't think I've shared this link yet - I've been meaning to, but keep forgetting) here is a pretty good example of how idioms and literal translations into another language can make presentations/conversations pretty interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKFkuJHwfnw
We eat lunch together everyday which they cook and we spend about an hour eating. Can't imagine ever having that much time for lunch at a job in the states - it's quite nice. I have yet to eat a dish twice for lunch, though we always have bread with cheese and coffee with chocolate. Yum!! When I first moved here I had cooked a soup (curry type thing with vegetables, potatoes and hard boiled eggs, served over couscous - I was actually going to make a normal stew to eat with the couscous, but realized I didn't have the correct spices, so curry it was - shout out to my time in India). I had made enough to last a few meals, and between that, staying at the McDaniel's on the weekends, and throwing random things together, I hadn't really cooked a meal again till tonight. And... yup, going to keep up on actually cooking meals now that I have a better sense of the space and what is available. It just tastes so much better. For instance, my tomato, avocado, hard boiled egg, kidney bean, chicken marinated in a vinaigrette salad with shredded emmental and lime juice tonight was freaking phenomenal!
As I've been thinking of what I want to write over the past few days, I continually butt up against the same thing: how much do I say, how personal do I get. This is a public blog after all and I don't want to put something out there that I will regret later. At the same time, that is what is interesting and some of what I think many of you (meaning my family and friends) want to know. So, something that struck me at about Christmas time relates to last Christmas and everything that went on that year. Some of you know the details, most of you don't, but all you really need to know is the winter and spring of 2012 was not full of great and wonderful experiences for me. I learned a lot in that brief period of time about myself and people and very difficult life circumstances, but it wasn't until that fall that I started to deal with the negative consequences of that time. I was broken, holding myself together with every ounce of my being and not doing such a great job. Anyways, throughout that fall I began to put myself back together (counseling is really a rather amazing thing, I must say) and learning to validate my experiences and emotions. That Christmas I was sitting in our living room, drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying our tree when I felt, for the first time in I don't know how long, that I was whole again. I could feel and see my inner strength like a column of light and it was effortless. It wasn't until that moment that I truly recognized how fractured that column had been and how much effort it had taken to hold the pieces in place. This Christmas was a different Christmas than normal. I was with Mimi, but not with my parents or my sister - my first Christmas away from home - and I was (and still am) doing really well. Without that year in between graduation and coming to France, I would never have made it here. So, thanks mom, dad, Annalea, Crystal, Michelle, Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else who provided the support and unconditional love that helped carry me through to where I am now: In France, on my own(ish), just to learn a language and experience new things.
And, just for some amusement (I don't think I've shared this link yet - I've been meaning to, but keep forgetting) here is a pretty good example of how idioms and literal translations into another language can make presentations/conversations pretty interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKFkuJHwfnw
