Bye bye 2011 !

Oh hello there, still here ? Well thank you for still following me after bit more than a month of absence. My life has been ridiculously boring and I fell into the same black pit I fell into last year around this time. Nothing to do, no real purpose to wake up, no mother to annoy me to get up. Don't get me wrong, my mother was in Germany until the 3rd of December therefore I had almost a whole month alone with dad, which was lovely, I felt like we really bonded, yikes I even watched a football match with him just to spend more time downstairs. He got sick I took care of him, I got sick, he took care of me, just amazing...then mother came back and yeh....


Anyway I don't want to talk about this boring parts of my life but about how this year went. 2011 was a really interesting year, starting from the fact that I moved to a new country, I moved to Ireland to work as an au-pair and "learn" english. This will be tough to sum up. I worked for a family with 3 kids, I didn't feel too much like a part of a family, but maybe I just didn't see it, cause right now I always think back to that time there. I had a lot of fun with the kids which kinda made me come to the conclusion that I might not be such a horrible mother like everyone made me believe, made such great friends, learnt that Ireland is a beautiful country with beautiful people and yikes who'd have known, I even developed a tiny irish accent, I'm really proud of :) 
Thanks to that new facebook "diary" option, I had the possibility to look back on what my statuses where back in the first months and I can't believe how much I hated it, now I realise that I should have appreciated things way more and I could have done so much more for the kids. But well can't change it now, but one thing is sure... those 6 months made me 1/3 irish !!


After that back to the boringness of my island... but it wasn't as boring as expected because yikes (yup I love that word, give me a synonym !!) I gained 7kg in Ireland... too much candy and hidden pleasures that those kids made me discover, but.. I regret nothing ! I still love and want to marry O'briens' carrot cake. Anyway so when I came back my mother, my friends, my friends' mothers were shocked so yup.. Julie went on a diet and I realised that if I DO try I can lose weight pretty easily, I swam 1 hour a day, went for runs, ate healthily and drank (water) like a fish... and those 7kg went away... great !


Then came Paris... oh do I have a lot to say about this. At first it seemed amazing, the girls, although a bit strange, were lovely, the parents seemed adorable and FLIPPIN HELL !!! I had an appartment with view on the eiffel tower ! Couldn't have been better huh ? yeh.. then after a week the first scolding came from my boss, I wasn't doing my job right but a simple "Look, try to do this..." would have helped instead of a third degree ! I mean I did this job before and whenever I did something wrong my boss just told me how to make it better. But no... and after that first argument came another 2 which eventually led to being fired. In any case this was a good thing, because what came after it made me grow as a person in a massive way... no I didn't gain another 7kg !!!! 


One decent thing my boss did was to advice me to try again in Disneyland, so there I went, the day after I got fired I presented my side of the story to the boss and she told me that. I went to Disneyland, I asked a dear italian cast member, I will never thank enough (Antonella from the Sequoia Lodge, put her on your Pluto Card ^_~) a million questions and you wouldn't believe it, she even drew me a map of how to get to the casting centre ! 
Some never ending days passed of me waiting and wandering around paris AND Disneyland. On the 4th of october I made the decision to get an annual passport... genius huh ? So to "get the money back"  I had to visit the park at least 4 times.. and I surely did even only to sit around and take photos. Then one day the mail came, I got a job interview for Disneyland, both amazing and incredibly untimely ! Because it meant I had to stay in Paris at least until the 3rd of Nov. So there I was... what now ? I booked myself a room in a hostel close to Bastille and after I lived with a prostitute in Nogent-sur-Marne. Yes, yes she was a prostitute. I slept on the floor in her pink flat with her 5yr old daughter but it was ok. Then the day of the casting came, I got there 4 hours early cause the goddamn e-mail with the time never arrived, but I spent 4 hours in a mall... boy can a mall be boring at 9am when you're not allowed to spend anymore money. The casting came, I spoke in french but it didn't go as well as I thought. But that day I was happy anyway... looking back I was so naïve ! Anyway I spent the afternoon in the mall, can't remember the reason, met a strange but kinda funny guy and we went on a date the same day... never heard back from him... your loss ;) jk


Then I flew back to Italy, more depressed than ever... I call my english teacher a.k.a. nina a.k.a. the godmother, to get some support, what do I get... ? Angry words on how I failed. Well that was really nice, but again a good thing in the bad thing... she advised me to go to the Disneyland Casting in Rome. So I went, and I couldn't be happier that I went... my french still sucks but I rocked it with my english and my enthusiasm and my politeness... yes I'm saying all this stuff, not because I'm vain but because the castings for Disneyland are held in two by two and the girl who came with me was absolutely ridiculous. 
1. Graduated Uni with the highest mark but spoke broken french AND broken english
2. Never looked at the interviewer
3. Didn't know anything about the contracts therefore needed explanations about everything.
4. After the casting she stood up and left and didn't even shake the interviewer's hand.


Small things that could have made a difference but then... I don't care. I'm selfish and I want a job for myself ! And I...almost...got it... the day the mail came I cried a lot... but then I re-read it and realised... "oh, so..what now ?" they pretty much told me that now I'm on a sort of waiting list or as they called it "the disney talent pool" and I have to wait till something pops up. As great as it sounds my mother didn't like my "waiting" and to be honest I didn't like it either, so she signed me up for the best hotel management school in Switzerland. It is ridiculously expensive and we can't even afford all of the years so unless I make a lot of money while studying.. I'll never graduate !


So this is how things are right now. The year ended... bring on 2012. I'm excited for this school but then I also know that I'm not the best student so it will definitely be tough. What I'm most excited about is the paid practical training that will be done in the second semester, you get to pick where you'd like to work in the world and you go there for 5-6 months. A person I know from the first year is now starting at the Bahamas :) Not where I'd go but still... great :) 


What I disliked about this year: I missed a lot of events with my best friends, Francy got her license but I wasn't there the first time she drove like she was there for me. Francy also got her confirmation and Marty was her godmother... wasn't there either. Missed both their birthdays... all in all friendshipwise it was a crappy year. I'm still friends with them but I can't help but feeling a bit left out sometimes and now.. I'm going away...AGAIN ! It's just horrible. 


What was great about this year: I discovered the amazing music of Imelda May, met her twice. Once backstage :D and another time in Paris where she recognised me, such a doll ! Love her !
I realised that youtube is extremely important to me and it was one of the only things that was constant this year... I'm in a collab and seeing the same people every week kind of kept me down which was absolutely fantastic. 


This is basically it for 2011... I hope 2012 will be a good year for all of us.


Love
Julie x