Here we are.

SO I've been loving work, I have less than a week left before I move back to the mountain. I'm pretty excited about decorating my room again. I already decided where I'm going to put my bed, dressers, desks, etc. and it's gonna be SO good.

Plus the girls who are moving to my hall are awesome. I already know it.

I'm also getting really excited for the rainbow house (the unknown house I'll live in after graduation). I decided today that I'm going to get a membership to the YMCA to do group classes (ZUMBA!), meet people, swim, etc. This whole "adult life" thing could be pretty awesome. I wonder if I'll be able to figure it out, though. Finances, leases, ick. I am really excited to buy and prepare my own food, though. It's going to be pretty vegetarian and pretty chocolatey delicious.*

I still haven't decided what I'll be doing work-wise. I'm think that admissions for Covenant would be good because it'll be something that utilizes the people-gifts I have as well as the types of work I like to do. We'll see, there are a lot of other things I could do and there's definitely no guarantee that I could get that job. But we'll cross that bridge...and the house bridge...and all the other postgrad bridges - but not until we come to them.

*I'm also going to have a garden planter, and I'm going to live fabulous.

What brought you in today?

Today, I got my first hourly-paid, in-the-world job! I'll be working at Pier 1 starting on Tuesday. I'm pretty happy about it! I have an interview with Macy's to work cosmetics on that same day, and I'll still go because it would be a full-time job instead of part-time, but I'd rather work at Pier 1 and just have then give me more hours, haha. It looks like it'll be lovely, and the boss-lady Lucy is really nice.

On top of that, Momma comes home tomorrow with the bro/sis duo! What a good weekend. I'm drinking tea and Tristan and I are puttering and tidying up the house before they get home. Dad and Tristan both have work tonight, so I think I'm going to walk to the store and get some milk and sugar when the sun goes down a bit. I might lay outside while the sun is shining, though. Sunlight is such a benefit of Florida, let me just tell you. When I know my work schedule, I want to go to the beach. Mmmm.

Sophy

P.S. I don't remember if there was any exciting news to report before today because if there was, I would have blogged about it, and blogger was not working out for me at all. :(

Productivity Party!

This morning I woke up at 8am-ish. I did my usual grandma routine of watching today show and eating toast and drinking tea. You know.

Then I spent 200 dollars on contacts and books, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, washed ALL my laundry and folded it, and put on my bathing suit for some sun time. I sat out there soaking up those rays when I got a call from my dear friend Melanie! We talked for a good long time and got all caught up. I love talking to her. We're going to live together after we graduate along with some other lovely ladies, in a house which we referred to as "The Rainbow House" during tornado week. I think this picture is what I wish our house could look like. I also would like a cat that could have a goatee. I think that would be really funny! We're going to have people over and eat good food and watch Modern Family. It'll be great. One year. This is really the last time I'll live at home for any long stretch of time. After this, I'll come to visit but I'll be living in Chattanooga. Crazy to think I'll leave the house we've lived in for 16 years!

Anywho, I was talking to Melanie when I got a call from Pier 1, who wanted to interview me for a job! Woohoo! I went in for my interview at 6:30 and I think it went well. They'll let me know early next week. It's only part-time, so if I got the job I'd probably look for another part-time job to round things out. Gotta pay the parents back for Paris, you know! Good experience, but expensive experience.

I'm really tired. I think I'll get ready for bed. 9pm is slightly early, but I am just sleepysleeps :)

Good night, all.

Sophy

Jiggity-jig.

HOME! And boy does it feel good. I got back yesterday afternoon.

We got up at 4:30am Paris time (10:30pm Miami time) and took a shuttle to the airport because the earliest flight of one of our group members was 7:30. My flight wasn't until 11:15, so I was chillin' in the airport, eating cookies and talking to Jordan until we boarded. My flight felt a lot shorter than it was, thankfully! When I first got on the plane I had a window seat, which was lovely but also meant that I couldn't get out easily and didn't have a whole lot of room. Just as I was becoming content with this situation, a flight attendant asked me if I wanted more room! I said I would and she moved me to an aisle seat with two empty seats next to me. It was terrific. I knew I needed to sleep, so I had a cute mini wine bottle on the flight (complements of Air France)and after my vegetarian meal, was in a perfect spot to snooze for a couple of hours. Because I had free seats next to me, I curled up on two of them and it was pretty good!

I'm really not sure what I did with the other 7 1/2 hours of my flight. I didn't read, I don't think I watched an entire movie on the flight, and there was no one to talk to. Ah, the mysteries of life.

In any case, I got home at 3pm Miami time and Dad picked me up. I was so glad to see him! We got home and saw Tristan and decided that we should all go swimming. We put on our suits and hit the back yard, where the sun was shining. Ooh yes. So nice. The water was even warm. We got back inside and I got washed up and put on clean pajamas and then we watched Tangled. First of all, I love that movie. It is my favorite that Disney has done in recent years. Secondly, I cried during it. Twice. Again. The first time I watched it there was a constant stream of tears running down my face at two separate parts of the movie. This time wasn't much different. Good tears, though :)

I went to bed at about 9pm (3am Paris time) and surprisingly didn't wake up at all until almost 7, and even then I went back to bed until 9! I am a super jetlag killer, I've decided. I got up and at 'em and after eating breaky, watching the Today show, and calling my mom, decided I needed to find a job. I called a couple of places I'd applied to online and they said they weren't hiring. Bummer! So I went out to a plaza with a lot of new boutiques and restaurants to see if anyone wanted to hire me. Then I went to another plaza, and then a mall. I was out for almost five hours total. Hopefully not without fruit; many of them took my resume/application. We'll see.

So now I'm getting ready to go to bed.

If you're my family, know that I love you and I'm glad to be home. If you're my friend, know that I miss you and I want you to call me or write me a letter. I would write back.

Sophy

Lovely Sunday

Hi there :)

I almost made the most spontaneous decision of my life thus far today, but it couldn't work out. But I will get to that in a moment.

This morning on the way off of the metro I got flirted with again. The raised eyebrows and the smile combo with a piercing eye? Yeah, it was that one. I have a hypothesis about why I'm so appealing over here. It's because of my awkward eye contact. In Miami, people think I'm strange because I look at them. In Paris, people think I'm interested because I look at them.

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I DO THAT!

Back to my day. We went to church at Thomas' family's church which was very small and equally sweet and welcoming. The little old ladies let us help set out the hymnals and bulletins. A man in the church who spoke English translated the passage and part of the sermon for us. It was wonderful, even though I didn't understand most of it. Thomas played viola during the service, and everyone loved it except for him. After church I got to meet the last brother, Ben, while Thomas had a smoke outside.

Here comes the spontaneity: I almost decided to stay in France. I realized during church that I could have done it all along, just planned to stay with the Bouzys for longer than the class time! I was like, ooh, the day before I go to Miami, just decide to stay an extra week or so? That's crazy! But I told Thomas how I felt stupid for not realizing it earlier, and he was like - is it too late?!?! So I texted my Dad to ask if it costs money/would be possible. I wasn't sure if I would do it, but I do like their family so I thought it could be super cool and something out of the ordinary for me!

But alas, the change of ticket cost wasn't justifiable for such a short extension. I do want to get back to my family, anyhow. I just will miss Thomas so much and would have loved to get to know his family more! We did the three bisous with his family and then hugged goodbye until another year.

After goodbyes there, we went to say goodbye to the artists we had interviewed and interrupted. That was nice, got to have a nice little chat with two of the artists that had been especially welcoming to us. We came back to the hostel after this and just spent time together. We just found out that everyone has to leave on the shuttle at 4:45am. That's crazy early, but I'll make it. My plane leaves at 11:15am and will arrive (after gaining 6 daytime-hours) at 2:40pm tomorrow afternoon. It's so weird right now, because everyone's so ready to get home and we're getting antsy to leave, but we also recognize that some cool stuff has happened these two weeks. We have new friends, we saw real life Van Gogh paintings, we met interesting people, I saw an old friend, we had bad times, we had fun times!

It was a good trip. I can't wait to tell you all more in person...this blog does make it a little easier on me, though :)

Sophy

I'm running out.

Hey followers.

Well yesterday was quite the day. We got up at our usual hour and had a meeting about what loose ends of the class needed to be tied up. Directly following this meeting, we collected our gear and headed to the hostel's dining room to work on our presentation. Dr. C told us it would take six hours so we didn't want to do it all on Sunday, plus Kait left a day early so we wanted her to be able to collaborate with us. We worked and worked and got frustrated and kept working. It was a pretty hard thing. We got it finished at about 4:30 and then let Sam finish up the formatting and we presented at 6pm. Dr. C said it was in the "A" ballpark. Whew.

After that was done, we changed out of our working clothes and went out for our last group meal. We went to a place called Chez Clement and it was so lovely! The decorations were all spoons and forks and things, but it didn't look modern at all. It had hanging plates and a china bird in a metal cage and it was just really cute. Our waiter was so funny and the food was delicious. I had a fillet of pollock with pepper sauce and rice, along with sparkling water ("with the big bubbles," our waiter said). To go along with this I had a glass of Chardonnay and a floating island, which is soft meringue in a pool of custard creme with some caramelly sugar wisps on it. It was delicious. Of course we also had baguettes and lots of fun, and Covenant paid for it all, hoorah!

Then we came back and got in bed. We watched an episode of Modern Family and went to bed promptly.

I'm glad today is our last day in France. I'm ready to be back home with my family because 1) I love them, 2) I'm running out of money and need to get a job, and 3) I am running out of energy to want to be here. Then again, that last one has been waning ever since I arrived, probably because of the rushed nature with which school ended.

I'll update this afternoon after I pack!

Sophy

Breads

This is what I'm listening to right now. Hollaaa!

Today we woke up at like 10:30am and went for a coffee and pastries, aka breakfast! After that we went to the Galleries Lafayette, a mall equivalent, for shopping. I got some pretty things, some present things, and some rockin' lipstick. We came back and we're just gonna watch a movie in one of the hostel rooms. THAT'S what I call a relaxing free day :)

Sophy