l.o.n.g.

Long weekend equals lots of fun equals very tired me!

I had a great, great weekend thanks to my new and very fun and amazing firends that I have formed here in such a short period of time. I owe it all to them and their kind spirits and fun personalities, without them, I would still be spending my in Chambourcy alone. Ok, maybe not in Chambourcy. ha.

This past week was just plain awesome and so incredibly tiring as I was always going, going, going. My feet are starting to hate me. I am already a slow walker but I am walking even slower because my body is just plain tired. But I am not complaining, its a good tired...a "i had so much fun its ok if my body hates me for a few days, it was well worth it" kind of tired.

>>>May I just insert right here that I might just pull my hair out right now because my 6 yr old boy was put to bed a few minutes ago and he tends to get a burst of energy around bed time and he's in his room making tons of noise (while in his bed) and the door is open. It's very loud and very annoying and happens most evenings. :-)

So Friday night I had plans to go out with some people from church and I decided to show up late as I had run out of money until I was paid so I chose to stay home and eat dinner with my host family. Not a bad idea! BUT I missed my bus to the train station and unfortunately it was the last bus for the evening. I almost cried. Ok, I lie, i didn't actually almost cry, but i was mad at myself! I have been missing buses and trains and appointments like crazy recently because I am not accustomed yet to this type of transporation and its driving me nuts. So my thought was...should I go back and get the bike? should i ask for a ride? should i walk? Well, I decided if i rode the bike to teh train station i had to eventually ride it back and i wasn't in the mood to ride it back up a hill anytime soon so that was out of the question, and asking for a ride at 8 30 was not really an option either and I was already dead set on going to Paris this evening so I did the only other thing I could do: walk. So let me give you a little background infromation: I have told you how i have walked to the train station before and its not so bad because its only 40 minutes and its downhill...this was not the same train station. This train station is a bit further and all flat ground and on the side of a highway. Boring and long. And i have since learned that I am a rather slow walker. So I set out walking. An hour later Im about to give up and I don't know, fall over on the cold sidewalk and hope that some handsome man drives by and offers me a ride and we live happily ever after (ha) and then Jesus sends me an angel in the form of another bus...hallelujah!!! I see a lady standing at a bus station just across the street so I walk over there to see if she is indeed waiting on a bus and if it will indeed take me to the bus station which is actually 2 feet from the train station...holy moly, the bus comes 2 minutes later, i walk aboard it, and 5 minutes later I am at the train station. (a walk that would have taken me another 30 minutes if i was walking fast for me). Praise the Lord!!! I finally make it to the destination of choice around the early (ha) hour of 10:45pm as most of the people had already left from my group. My friend and I stayed about 20 minutes longer and then decide to leave ourselves. She has a train to catch back to her house at a certain time and I had to find my way to my friends flat who was so graciously hosting me that night. So we decided to walk to the metro station...and not the close one, one a few hundred blocks away. Such is life in Paris!!! The story gets boring from there as my friend and I leave to go our opposite directions and I head out to my friends flat. I clearly get lost as is my style these days and eventually find her flat and am so thankful. It was very cute and she was very hospitable (very uncommon for France) and we had some good conversation and then we both passed out! My first night spent in the actual city of Paris and I honestly wished it was every night for me!!! But I wish for a lot of things that I don't get so its ok!

Saturday I made my long treck back out of the woods where I live. I have come to find it takes approximately 2 hours for me to get from the center of Paris to where I live if I have to wait at all. I knew I had a bus to catch so I try and catch a train according to how long I think it will take me to get there. I still have not yet mastered this art as I have clearly stated that I am becoming quite good at missing the buses and trains and my brain... haha. Anyways, I catch a train back to Saint Germain and anxiously watch the clock tick away and my opportunity to catch the bus along with it. Agh! Honestly! The buses only run every half hour on Saturdays and I ended up missing my bus by TWO stinkin' minutes. All thanks to the fact that my train was going quite sloooooow. (its a fan of going slow these days, no sure why...) So I am left to patiently (ha) wait (ha) at the bus station for another half hour for the next bus. Well, as the day was going so smooth already, why not for the buses also? The bus was ten minutes late meaning I sat and waited for a bus for 40 minutes. Ok, so enough blah blah complaining, once i made it home lunch was almost ready and I was starving and so excited to be eating a hot, already prepared meal! I enjoyed the meal with my host family as I most of the times do and then set off to decide my next plan of action: shower, nap, what?!

My host father then came upstairs and offered to take me for my SECOND driving lesson. Woo hoo!!! Ok, lets just say this driving lesson went a lot better than last weekends! Thank the Lord. I am learning to drive this car! I am thinking maybe 1 or 2 more weeks of driving lessons and I should be cleared to drive on the roads amongst all the crazy French people. And let me remind you that I have still had less than two hours of driving instructions and time so I don't think I'm doing so bad considering I never get to practice either. So Saturday I learned how to stop on a hill and start on a hill. Not an easy concept. I like automatics. But I do not have this option so its a fun challenge as I don't have many of those these days (ha). But it really is a fun challenge. I stalled out a bajillion times trying to go from stop to start on a hill but I got it maybe three times. And then my host father made me drive home. On the road. The road with other cars. I almost peed my pants or broke the steering wheel or both, from anxiety. But i made it! Only stalled once I think (if that was even a stall), only got one horn honked at me, no one passed me and I drove up 3 hills without stalling or having to stop. I am getting somewhere. I cannot wait until I have mastered the art of driving a manual have that much more freedom!

This post is already long and we haven't even gotten to my Saturday night or Sunday and I stayed pretty darn busy. Also, its geting a bit late and I have to get up early with the kids so I am out for now. I will finish this manana as the people back home would say. I will let you guys know tho, sometimes I revert back to my old self and tell people Adios and hola and I even caught myself telling my kids, "no mas" the other day as to their response, "je ne comprende pas" hahahaha! i don't know how to say it in french but spanish works well...for me! Oh well!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!!!! And thanks for all the letters! You know who you are but I got about five hand written beautiful letters from my amazing friends and family this week and I really loved each and every single one of them!!!! And I plan on writing you all back...once I'm caught up on sleep that is!
G'night, Kara