So I've been thinking..... I really have the best life. Sometimes I think things should go one way, and they just don't. I have been getting this slammed in my face night and day the past month it seems like. I really have learned to take it though :). I don't even mind any more. I have learned to just "roll with the punches," as they say... and I am loving it. I realize (Amelia and I have talked about it a lot recently) that we are all such whiners! What is the deal with that anyway?? Life isn't even that bad. In fact, it is really enjoyable. There is always something good that we can find out of the whole thing, and most of the time things turn out better when they don't go how we'd like them to. Really though... life is so good.
Well, this past week we had many magnificent plans which we never did... of course. It looks like it will just be lazy days again this last week :). It is ok though. I am coming back, so I will have opportunities to see it all. Plus, it is nice to just hang out with friends... namely Amelia :). We have way more fun than anyone over 5 should ever have.... If you saw us at night, you would be shocked. Amelia's dad ends up begging us to be quiet and go to bed :). Woops. Oh well. I only have 1 week left! I am entitled to some childish fun I think.....
Well, this is the Pumpkin pie. We gobbled it right up. (Of course we had help from the Guillaume, the students living with us and Amelia's English students... it went pretty fast.) You will notice that it is burned slightly on top. That is because it was making me late for my Solfege class, so I cranked up the heat so it would cook faster :). So there you go. It turned out wonderfully. I think I already told you about it, but I thought I would show you. It looks just like real pumpkin pie, no?
Well, this week it snowed! Apparently it never does that this early, so I thought it was cool. As much as I hate cold and snow, it just made Christmas even more exciting for me. It doesn't feel like Christmas time without snow. At least for me. That is because I am from Utah though....
Well, out of all of our plans, we only got one done. Shopping. Well, even that isn't done. We ended up going at night, and by the time we had come to the spot with good stores, everything was closing. Poo! So, I need to go shopping again this week. I only have bought things for 2 of my family members and nothing else. Blast. But... it ended up working out just fine because after shopping we had planned to look around at the Christmas lights. Well, they were beautiful! It just makes me so happy to see all these Christmas lights everywhere! Well, as we were looking at Christmas lights, I was attracted by a very lighted area. I am so glad I was! There was the "Marché de Noël" going on. It reminded me of when my cousin and I would go sell candy with my Grandma. There were just these cute little shops everywhere covered in lights, and people were drinking hot chocolate and eating waffles, etc. I ended up buying something there actually. It was so fun though. I definitely want to go back. It was a magical place. There was this CUTEST old carousel all covered in lights. I love it! New favorite place. It should be in the North Pole or something. Anyway... needless to say, I wanted to buy ALL of the hot chocolate and waffles. Too bad I didn't even buy one. But... I think Amelia and I will be going back so we can maybe get some then :).
You can't really see all the shops very well, but this is it... kind of :).
This was a "Shoot the Santa" game. Heehee... how terrible. Don't worry, I didn't play it...
I don't know why, of all the things on the Carousel, this is what I got a picture in front of... but there you go. Yes, that is a fake smile. Don't even worry about it...
This is my lion. Of course I had to get a picture of it :). Too bad I didn't stand in front of this one, huh?
These are some Christmas lights. This is the Regent Hotel. The super rich one across the street from the Grand Theatre. This is the rich part of the city. They sure do show it too. They had a lot of lights. It was really beautiful.
Well, we went inside one of the really expensive chocolate shops. Heehee.... I felt really bad. We just looked for 5 seconds and then walked out. THEN I took pictures of the stuff :). We thought we might get in trouble if I did while we were inside.
First of all, there was this Audrey Hepburn picture right outside the door. I had to get a picture of it. They were apparently showing/maybe selling clothes from the 40s to the 80s upstairs... I don't know..... We didn't stick around long. We were obviously outsiders... :)
Don't these just look magical? Macarons! "All the colors of the rainbow!" I still haven't had one...
These were things they had made out of Chocolate. Some of them were pretty impressive. Also, they looked SO GOOD!
I don't know if this was supposed to be like a wedding cake or something.... but I thought it was pretty.
Also, their Christmas trees. I have to admit... they have a lot of cool lights on the streets and buildings, but their Christmas trees are pathetic. I don't even know what they would do if they saw Temple Square lights! Here they just kind of drape the lights on. So lame.... Oh well. They really do have some cool stuff though, so I can't complain.
Well, on Saturday Adeline had offered to take Amelia and I to this really good French Restaurant. It is called Restaurant L'Entrecote. It is really popular. We even got there 15 minutes before it opened and there was already a huge line. We waited and waited. Well, we got ALMOST to the door when the restaurant was full. We decided to come back another day because we didn't want to wait until someone finished eating. It was freezing.... It is ok though. It was a good night anyway....
So, on Sunday Amelia and I played a Christmas song in Sacrament Meeting. It was an arrangement of Greensleeve which is also "What Child Is This?" Neither of us played our best, but... everyone really liked it. Guillaume even said that the "feeling" stayed with him a while after. That is exactly what I was hoping for and that means a lot coming from him. He wouldn't say it if he didn't really mean it. That is why I play music! I love the songs that really impress you. I love being able to make songs do that for people :). It was good. I have said it before and I will say it again.... I LOVE playing with Amelia. She is the easiest person I have ever played with. I think both of us have the exact same musical soul... or something :). We feel the music the exact same way every time! It is so wonderful. I think we were meant to play together :). I don't even feel half as nervous when I play with her. It just seems like the most natural thing to me. I love it :). So anyway, it was really good. I am so glad we got to play it again together. (We played it for our Christmas Program in Utah when she was there.)
Well... after we hung out at her Aunts' house, we went over to Guillaume's for a few minutes to see if he was ok. He seemed pretty down when we saw him at church, so we wanted to go make sure everything was alright. It was :). These were some lights on the way to his house. You can't really see it very well... Amelia was just trying to make the most of me being in a picture... The lights were really awesome though. Just believe it.
Well, on the way home we were talking about chocolate. We had some chocolate at home and we were wanting it. Amelia had remembered that, while she was in Utah, she had tasted some of the "Butterbeer" that my family makes. I know... we are such nerds. We made up our own recipe for Butterbeer... from Harry Potter, yes. If you tasted it though, you would absolutely join in the nerdiness of it all. We (meaning my mom) did an absolutely perfect job. It is the most delicious/fattening thing I have ever tasted. Mmmmm. Well.... on with the story. Amelia remembered tasting it and she also remembered loving it. We decided that we wanted to try to make something like it when we got home. So we did :). It was kind of a white hot chocolate kind of thing, but it was creamier and way more delicious. It was a total success.... I know it just looks like milk in the picture but it wasn't. Just imagine something really delicious. (The things in the middle are these sort of cookie type things. They have raisins and almond paste in them and they are coated with powdered sugar. They are actually really good. I used to never eat raisins either before I came here... now I do. What is going on here? Eggs, raisins..... what next? )
Well, this morning Amelia and I brought breakfast over to Guillaume's again. Well, we did half and half. I had to go help Guillaume with something, and Amelia had to go practice at her aunts' house, so we decided that we would just both go there for breakfast and then do our own things afterwards. It was great. We ended up being almost an hour later than Guillaume had said... woops. It was ok though.... "All's well that ends well." Guillaume has been having me read some papers/articles on Men in Non-traditional occupations ( Nursing, Childcare, Teaching, etc.). They are for his Thesis he is writing. They are in English and the writers were trying to show off how many big words they knew so he had a really hard time reading and understanding them. So, I read them and underlined certain things and then today I went over it with him and explained them. We were doing so good. We were just on a roll. We were separating them into the certain subjects and we were just doing great. Well, right when he was about to say "we're finished" and save it, this old lady from down the hall turns the power off. To the whole building. !!!!!!!! AH!...... it was so depressing. All of that work down the drain. Oh well... we are going to do it again tomorrow.... Hopefully the darned lady won't ruin it again this time....
Well, I better go. I have been working on this post for a few days now. I am just so sick of it..... I can't promise I will post again before I leave. This may be my last one. I plan to make the most of this last week, so I guess we'll see, huh?
à bientôt.
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