Day 20: "Mademoiselle ? Êtes-vous triste ?"

Hello My Lovelies,


I know I'm not posting as much as I promised but my days are not that exciting so far, I could sum up the whole last week in this post. 


Workwise we started speaking way more italian and less english... basically no english, there's hardly any conversation and I have a feeling the girls are kinda avoiding me otherwise they feel they HAVE TO speak italian which is not it...I told them the rules that they can talk to me in english to ask me important things and to ask me how to say things in italian... but I've been given the silent treatment the last days, which is making my possible moving out, not too bad anymore. I started to look for other nanny/aupair jobs and I sent my CV to Disneyland (you never know) and now I'm hoping... of course I hope I can stay here but lately the air hasn't been to nice the mood was always groggy and yea my mood changes pretty quickly if you're sad I'm sad if you're mad I'm mad and so on... so they're all down and I'm feeling down too... thank god there's Edie ! We're both ranting about our jobs...both kinda stuck... 
Always better to have a backup plan than to be there one day with your suitcases sitting on the street.
The title of today's post comes from a man who saw me walking home on a pretty crap day and asked me that... it made an impact, basically my mood was on my face now...good to know.


I mostly went out with Edie, so far my only friend here, I didn't try too hard to get in touch with any of the girls yet so it's definitely my fault too, and we visited several places, we went to Versailles (randomly so no pics sadly) then we went to Montmartre yesterday but my leg is still a pain in the...leg ! So we didn't see much, beware of that area it's pretty... interesting, if you've seen the movie about "Amelie Poulain" it has a bunch of differnt titles you should know what I mean only by reading "Amelie", anyway that area is the one from the movie and it looks pretty different, I've seen the café where she works and the area is so strange...who'd have known that the café is on a hill ? I didn't go inside it was pretty crowded and my "dreams" were already shattered as I saw the area xD so I'd rather keep the rest in it's perfect version as it is in the movie. 
We often went to the Tuileries which is a pretty nice park, got cookies at "La Cure Gourmand" which is rather cheap even though it's famous, they do amazing cookies and the whole shop is just adorable... uhm I should definitely take more pics... anyway we went to LaDuree which is famous for its macaroons and I bought a "boîte" of 6 macaroons for 15€ but I believe it would have been cheaper without the "gift wrapping" but it just looked nicer and I can use the box for... Idk girls always can use boxes !


On wednesday I decided to do this thing called "Mercredisney" yea original name, if you're a frequent disneyland visitor you know where I got that from ;) Anyway since I'm usually free on wednesday I decided I'll always go to Disneyland, alone or not... usually no one's free on that day. So last wednesday I first wanted to go shopping cause I definitely need some new clothes and then afterwards I wanted to go to Disneyland but HM called and I had to go home earlier... sadly.. I didn't quite enjoy the day the way I wanted but well... in the evening I went out for dinner with Edie which was not too good. As soon as I got my annual pass I'll definitely go to disneyland once a week even to only walk in the Main Street, I'm happy with little things... 


That's it for now, tomorrow me and Edie will be hitting the shopping mall in the Val d'Europe, also known as my second fave place on earth (that mall looks beautiful).


I uploaded a video on my channel if you'd like to hear me blabber about most of the things and a bit more of what I wrote in here, check it out :)

See you all soon.
Love
Julie x

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Day 11: "...you might take the day off to think"

Hello My Lovelies

Sorry about the absence and the un-regular posts but my connection isn’t the best, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t which is REALLY annoying! 

Anyway here’s what I did today 14.09.2011... one month to my birthday yay... not because of that but because I had the day off and lots of thinking to do, apparently.

I already decided I wanted to go to Disneyland today to get the passeport annuel... but I decided to postpone this decision because of yesterday.

Yesterday morning I messed up a few things at work, no big deal really but well should have done better definitely and in the evening my HM spoke to me about how the last week went, basically another week like that and I’m out... so here it is ! I got my ultimatum and now I gotta work harder.

Not because of the thing I did wrong or in general anything about the child minding, it’s because I didn’t start speaking italian to the girls, which was the main point of me coming here. I must admit, I didn’t try too hard to speak italian but when I did I saw that not even the girls made an effort... a conversation always has at least 2 parts, right ? And when I asked them questions or gave them something to talk about nothing came back besides a “si” (which is ‘Yes’ in italian...you ignorants) and well you kinda lose your will to keep going if all you get is that. When they try to speak to me in french, I try to reply as good as I can.. they don’t ! Sorry I love those girls to bits already but it’s not ALL my fault !

Well from tomorrow on I got to start in italian straight from the morning, a day without conversation at all is better than too much of it..in english ! The only english words I allow are “How do you say?” otherwise we won’t move on.. same goes for my french, although (if I stay) I’ll learn a lot of it in school, but still I should talk more. 

Ah so anyway yesterday evening I had a lot on my mind, internet not working, so not being able to vent somewhere wasn’t really that great. This morning then I went to Disneyland, fave clothes on, hair in a way that doesn’t make you want to vomit everytime you look in the mirror and off to your favourite place. Well took some time but it was fun, I spend a lot of time people watching on the metro, because I’m (still) scared to listen to my ipod in case of pickpockets, and you see a bunch of interesting things. Then I did a lot of walking, in and out of the Disney Village, in into the Disneyland Hotel, which still smells like the last time I’ve been there...almost a year ago, found the perfect Christmas present for my friend, sat down in the foyer as if I belonged there, took pictures of many things. Then had some crappy lunch at starbucks cause I wanted to keep it cheap... well... wasn’t THAT cheap ugh... and then decided to go for a movie, this time in french (for real) I went to see Cars 2 and well you gotta know that in french cinemas (from what I’ve seen so far) they do 30mins of adverts which is REALLY annoying ! The movie was to start at 14.30 but started at 15.00 -___-° the movie itself was pretty good... I wish I understood more of it, my mom said she had a teacher who always said “If you understand even only ONE word in the whole movie it’s already great!” well I understood more than 1 but still I missed out on a lot of funny things... I basically just looked at the images, like a child :) 

Then the funny thing I was supposed to get home with the metro again and since Disneyland is quite outside Paris I didn’t have the tickets for going back and 1 ticket was friggin 7€ !!! I checked my wallet and nope.... had 4€ nothing more... what I usually do in this case is walk with my eyes sticking to the ground although it’s pretty unlikely to find 3€ on the floor... thank God I then found 3€ in my bag somewhere beyond all that stuff... so lucky, I wouldn’t have known what to do xD Never ever leave again without my cards !!!! 

Anyway back home now, I ate an apricot muffin which was friggin delicious !!! after 10 days of no sugar, salt or anything that gives any kind of taste, this calorie bomb was needed ! :D 

That's it for now. More to come the following days, now that I got my wifi back :D

Love

Julie xx

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Day 8: "Oh shoot there's the metro let's run.... owwww"

Hello my dears,

today was pretty eventful... and I really mean eventful. First of all I was meeting a new friend whom I spoke to on the internet for a while, and yea we were supposed to meet at Gare du Nord and even though I was the one with most problems to get there I actually got there first, I went upstairs and outside... I wish I never went outside -___-° I’m usually not that naïve but today one of those beggars came to me with a list to sign and I thought it was something official but nope, it was them trying to get money off you and it even said “minimum 10” and (which makes no sense “minimum 20” I gave 5€ which was even too much... ugh ! 

I then went back inside which felt safer and met my friend, Edie was supposed to come to and after what felt like 100 calls we found each other and all three decided to go to La Defense, which is famous for its big arch... which to me isn’t much like an arch, I imagine an arch being round but then... I might be wrong. Anyway this is it !

*photo*

It started to rain so we decided to do something inside, we found a massive shopping center and well we didn’t do that much we went to Starbucks, then to Naked (food place) where I had a pretty expensive (and crappy) quiche and then, since this place was huge, there was a cinema and me and Edie decided to take a look, and in the end decided to actually go for a movie !
Our friend wanted to go shopping so we let her and we queued up for the tickets, because both of us don’t really look like 18 and 19 we tried (and succeeded) to trick the lady at the counter to get us a cheaper ticket “But only for this ‘fois’ !” yea sure ;) anyway as soon as I got the tickets I realized what the lady said.... *original version* in other words, me and Edie were about to watch a movie in english subbed in french. We saw ‘Friends with Benefits’ which I had already seen but still found funny. Anyway as we got into the screen room (?) you could clearly tell that we two weren’t used to that AT ALL ! We were amazed by the size of the screen and as we sat down, by the comfiness of the seats... we felt like hill billies xD But maybe it’s better like this, if you come from  pretty small town you can enjoy things that might seem normal to anyone else, way better. 

Afterwards we spent some more time in that shopping center but not much, our friend left and we proceeded to go to the Eiffel Tower since, even though I see it from my flat, I hadn’t been to yet. And we decided to go up with the elevator later in the evening, I took what felt like a million pics (Like for my flickr) and then we tried to find some place to eat because I was starving, we ended up at some small stall next to the tower (not to mention pretty expensive, but what isn’t expensive here ?) and yea I had a nice chat with the peeps behind the counter. In foreign countries all italians become the best of friends xD

At 9 we started at the end of the queue, it actually moved forwards pretty quickly, we paid 11,80€ because we were under 24, and then the stressing part started, we wanted to go to the top and it’s not like you get off on the second floor OR go up to the top, you gotta get off on the second floor, you might take a walk around and then you have to queue up AGAIN for the elevator, then you get to the top and yea although there are 4 elevators it took ages ! People were pretty rude and snook in... oh well... anyway at 11 we got to the top, right in time to catch *the sparkles* which is ONLY LIGHTS but always fascinates everyone you could here *oohs* coming from everywhere, pretty funny :)
Then to go back down it was another adventure, took ages and since the metro closes at midnight it was pretty hectic, from there a run to the Trocadero station where there had been some kind of charity concert tonight (apparently) and then everyone went its own way. 

Oh the last bit of this day, as I got out of my metro station, not only I saw that there had been a pretty severe accident with firefighters and ambulances but I also heard the worst chat up line ever !!!
While I was walking to my building some guy chased me from behind on his scooter (he looked like 10) and started talking in french and what I always find amazing is that when I say “I don’t speak french” (in french) I sound pretty french... if that makes sense. Anyway I told him I was from Dublin and kept walking, he then asked (are you ready?).... If I wanted to try his... electric scooter !!!!! xD thank god in that second I reached my door, quickly opened it, declined his really (very tempting) offer and said good night ! 

So that’s it... I should write more often instead of cramming everything into it although this is all ONE DAY... preaching but not practicing... that’s me ! 

Good Night

Love

Julie x

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Day 2: "Je suis...ehhhh....Giulia!"

Bonsoir à tous !

Hello dears,
day 2 in captivity nah just kidding it's amazing here ! Today was pretty eventful, first thing I had to do was to go to my french school and sign up and all that before 12 ! Which was kind of a challenge, knowing myself, I easily get lost and get to a point thinking "Oh it's too late anyway I'm just gonna wander" anyway after an hour walking through the immense Jardin de Luxembourg I finally got there and the stress begun, no one dared to speak english so yea awkward situations came up.

When I got to the school they made me take a test and yea even asking for the test was a struggle but as I said people do understand me but it's grammatically awful !! Anyway I was sent to this room by myself and yea sat there for what felt like 10 hours doing that ridiculous test, looking at it I thought this was gonna be easy, I mean the same exact test in english and every idiot could have done that, but nope anyway I left a lot blank cause I'd rather write nothing instead of writing sth completely stupid. When I was done I brought it back and the most hilarious moment of my life started: Me, actually trying to speak french ! To a french person who was giving me NO MERCY at all !!! Well it went how it went and in a few days I know when and where I'm going to school :)

After this lovely event I went to find the FNAC in which to buy my camera and all that jazz, the camera is 100 euro more expensive than planned but yea I'll think about it ! The camcorder is NOT there -___-° but I got a book... I never go to a bookstore without buying a book. I got Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, in french, so I'm gonna do some hard work to go through 432 pages !

I got back home and immediately out me and HM went to get me a french sim card and the youngest got a phone :) we spent some really nice time chatting she sounds a bit strict sometimes but she's really fun and easygoing ! After we went food shopping and I finally got oats for porridge :D Quaker oats and I can get them right round the corner, basically I'm set for life !

Then random afternoon I taught the girls how to use her phone.. we have the same :D and I watched the older one and her friend play. Another friend came over then and we went to the park to play ping-pong I was in a team with the younger one and we gave up after the wind kept blowing our ball away we started to play catch which was pretty fun ! But then it got cold and we went back inside where the girls asked their friend if he liked "Friends" and they kinda forced him to watch but it was great... btw... JOEY'S VOICE SUCKS IN FRENCH! Then we had dinner, where I discovered the amazingness of creamy goat's cheese, believe me I could have eaten the whole packet !! One day I'm gonna buy tons of it and get fat while eating all of it xD

Et voilà this is it ! Today was a good day and tomorrow I'm free all day and I'm meeting a friend and in the evening I got a babysitting session which is no big deal :)

Bonne Nuit

Love
Julie x

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Day 1: "...never be rude to the french !"

Good Afternoon my lovelies,
your (officially) french blogger is back !! I'm writing from my amazing place here in Paris, just came home from a 3 hr walk round the city.
But first... the trip !
Yesterday morning when I came back from the hairdresser me and mam tried to make the last things fit in the suitcase and... nope we failed ! therefore I arrived with 1 suitcase and 2 bags -___-° thank God (find me someone else please) I didn't had to carry it around much. When me and my parents got to the airport we lined up in the queue, got to the front only to figure out it was check in for London and that the Paris check it would open about 30mins later... stupid easy jet and it's "mass check in" anyway once the suitcases were gone and my parents took me to the security thing everything was fine. One of the guards there came to me and with his "lovely"english told me to try to fit my hand bag in my other bag and I on the other hand (no clue where that came from) answered in neapolitan.. I NEVER DO THAT ! But well neapolitans work together "Simmo 'e Napule paisà" so yea I got through and although I wasn't wearing jeans or shoes with buckles... I beeped ! ughhhh a girl came to do the check... well awkward. Then the most intelligent thing ever !!! My amazing gate... had NO seats !!! Well it had them, behind a barrier and we couldn't access... anyway then we boarded and I was already starting to nod off when the captain with his lovely, LOUD, cracking voice said sth in french... which as you all know... ain't my best language, but I still understood that we were gonna have a 45 min delay... which was horrible. Then in the air we had turbulences, the lights went off, I saw a lightning right next to the wing... it was just horrible. 
When I came out I looked like something the cat ate and spit out so absolutely perfect to meet my family which was already waiting for me :D We drove home and they showed me the "fantastic" elevator which (even though i'm not allowed anyway) I'm never gonna take again !!!! In it, 2 peeps would fit nothing more and I was in there with my suitcase and bags and it was horrible !!! I will have to enjoy walking up 4 flights of stairs.  Anyway I'll try to make this as short as possible, the family showed me my flat and then left.
My flat is friggin amazing and it's soooo comfy and elegant and the best thing is... I have a view on the Eiffel Tower :D Anyway I decided to unpack and then fall asleep straight away... the bed is rather uncomfy or better... the pillows since one is like marshmallow and the other like concrete :S oh well I'll get used to it or bring mine round christmas time ! 


Today then was my actual first day, not of work just a bit round paris... I think I don't even need to state the obvious but... I GOT LOST ! yea I was looking for one Rue (street) and no way I could find it cause I left the only map I can read, at home ! I had one my HM (host mum) gave me but couldn't quite figure out but in the end by getting lost you see a lot more... which would have been the case if I didn't run around in circles for an hour, when I saw the vet's for the 4th time I realised I was doing sth wrong ! oh well xD My feet got blisters and I got a phone number from some guy... either my "flirting" is very powerful or those guys are pretty easy to influence xD leaning more on the latter cause all I did was smiling. He arrived saying like a million words a minute..in french ! when he was done, asking a question (apparently) I told him (in french) that I didn't understand one word, and he said the same in english, he's alright but... uhm... bit desperate sounding... might be just an impression though.


In the morning (before I left) the Hosts gave me a tour of their flat... but flat is ridiculous... they have like a castle !!! It's beautiful, very very very elegant and yea we went over everything that needs to be done and it's just WOW ! I'm not gonna say what, I'm not allowed, but it's friggin amazing, no comparison to the old hosts.
And what was class was that in the morning the HM kinda gave me an etiquette lesson on what to no to not be hated by the french and it was fucking true !! xD She said that whenever you need to ask someone a question you ALWAYS start with "Excusez-moi de vous déranger" -> "I'm sorry for bothering you"and that guy who gave me his number started with that, btw the only thing I understood xD


When I came back home I was knackered, but in the evening we were going out for dinner so about 2 hr rest then off again, I told the HM about this guy and it was so funny how she said "You girl !!!" xD anyway this evening was amazing, the restaurant wasn't too posh which was good since we were rather loud... we had 2 lightbulbs over our tables and one kept going off so we did "magic spells" to get them back on and yea I don't need to mention that we were pretty noticeable ! 


On our way back home the parents stopped at the park to warn some teens that it was forbidden I took the girls away and we started messing around at one corner, 4 girls and we all suck at volleyball was great xD and I showed them a silly thing I used to do while "playing" volley and we all ended up jumping on the place... pretty hilarious.
The best moment though was the littlest (who's 10) coming up to me and saying she's happy they picked me as au-pair it was soooo sweet !!! And this on my first day O_O couldn't be happier !!  
And now I'm home.


What's silly is that there's 2 entrances to my flat one which looks pretty awful, I'll provide pics ASAP and one which is pretty posh, I entered my flat on the first day through the posh side but today I just couldn't find it so I thought that the awful one was for my area xD and now the HP (host parents) "forced" me to use the posh one and as I got upstairs I couldn't open cause I had no clue how xD 


Anyway that's it... from tomorrow on I'll have to speak italian with the girls and they'll have to speak french to me... gonna be fun xD


Au revoir et bonne nuit !


Love 
Julie x

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Tomorrow !!!!

Hello Lovelies,

finally the day has come, tomorrow I'm finally leaving for Paris, my suitcase is still not done but it's just small things left to put inside, I don't know how much it weighs but honestly, I couldn't care less... I managed to fit everything in there. Last time I weighed it there were still 4kg allowed and I don't think I added 4kg of stuff now... though I'm not sure how much my mac weighs :S

Wish me luck ;)

Tomorrow the day is packed. I love traveling, especially alone, because at the airport no one cares about you at all, you're never gonna meet any of those people ever again so you can basically do whatever you want (even vlog); now Naples Airport isn't as cool as for example Charles De Gaulle (btw I'm arriving in Orly... O rly?) but it's still an airport and I can pretend I can't speak italian... love doing that.
A lot of people yesterday gave me "early birthday presents" since I won't be here on *MY* day... I got a bag which is definitely not my style, it's huge, brown and yea... then I got earrings from my aunt which are alright and money from my dad :)
Anyway back to tomorrow's plans, although I have my plane at 6 I'll have to be up at 8 in the morning to go to the hairdresser and basically keep me busy for a while, I hate sitting at home with nothing to do before I leave for holidays, and because my fringe grew at light speed during the last month and I hate it when it's long. At 2.15 I have to take the ferry which I really don't like, if it has AC though...
at 4 check in and at 6.10 finally my plane leaves, I think my parents are coming with me.. at least my mum, not sure if dad's coming. My new hosts will be picking me up I can't wait to finally meet them :) They seem to be great people.

Sunday comes afterwards (stop singing Rebecca Black) and that will be my first day wandering round Paris, the other girls organised a picnic but I couldn't figure out where it is and to be honest I'd like to discover the city by myself a bit :) I'm already planning on going to Disneyland soon, maybe for halloween !!  I think I'll watch Ratatouille sunday evening... I had this silly dream for a while.. watch a movie about a city IN the actual city ^_~

Anyway I'll say good bye now.. or better a bientôt  !!

Love
Julie x

PS: I'll leave this song for you, it's been on replay for weeks now ^_^

Melody Gardot - If the stars were mine

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