HelloSmylez

Finals in Paris= mad procrastination

It’s my last week of school in Paris! 

Man, I’m going to miss this place and all the faces so much! I’ve been having an incredible time here. This has been a much needed escape and time to reflect for me. 

I’ve learned that it’s time for me to stop living for other people and it’s time for me to live for myself. All my life, I’ve had to take care of someone else. Working multiple jobs to pay for school and bills. It’s time to focus on me and just be selfish for once and just live life! I’ve been told this so many times before by other people, but it’s just so much harder to do than say when you have so many responsibilities.

I’m tired of having to act composed and disparage my own feelings. Time to let loose.

So much has changed in a year. Maybe TOO much has changed in a year, and it continues to change whether or not I want it to. I’ve never been a control freak because I think I learned early on in my life that there was nothing in my life that I can control. Life is unpredictable and, for me, never stagnant. A couple months ago, I discovered that my family and I will have to move due to certain circumstances. My father told me that we had to move out before the end of December, which is before I get home from Paris. So he and my brother will be moving everything of mine while I’m in Paris.

Upon hearing this, I accepted the fact that we needed to move. Upon thinking about this, I broke down like I never did before. This house is my home. This house is where my mom had raised me. This house is where my fondest memories and only real memories I have of my mom are. This house is where my mom’s clothes are. Her closet is my place of safety. Here I was able to be with her clothes, to be with her smell. Although it’s often makes me cry to be in there, it made me feel comforted.

Will life never give me a damn break? Can’t a girl just have a second to recuperate? I miss my mom and I think I don’t know if I vocalize this enough. It’s been a little over a year since her death and the holidays have been so hard. She’s the staple of my family that brings everyone together and bonds everyone together.

I want to call her when I’m homesick and talk to her, but I can’t. I want to hug her one last time, but I can’t. I want to hear her voice. I want to hold her hand. I want her to sing to me one last time. I just want to be a kid for once. I want to bitch for once and just say that I fucking miss my mommy and I just want her with me. I always resist to say that I want her back because I don’t think I want to wish her back into this world. I’m normally an optimist and I do try to believe in the best of mankind, but this world does not deserve a woman like her. It’s definitely not good enough.

I’m also normally not one to regret anything, but recently, that’s all I feel. I regret working so much and being away from home so often. I regret not spending more time with her. I regret not learning more about my mom. I regret not asking her more questions about what she likes, what she was like when she was younger, what makes her happy, what she was scared of. My mom was always just a supermom and I always forgot that she was human.  Rarely is there a day that she’s not happy, but I know that she wasn’t happy at times… she just made the best of the day. She just made the most out of her time. 

During my time here, I kept to myself more than usual because I just didn’t want to spread my mood to others. Plus I needed the alone time to just heal. I finally had time to face my mom’s death here in Paris. With all this free time without work, I had nothing else to do but to miss and think about her. Seeing and walking through all the beautiful parks was a bittersweet feeling. Going to parks is probably my favorite thing to do. It’s the most relaxing thing to do, but knowing that she would have fell in love with the parks in Paris made me wish she was with me and that she could see it. 

My dad told me once that he regrets we never had enough money to travel and that he wished he had been able to take my mom to all the places she wanted to travel to and see. I guess besides my passion to see different lands and cultures, that’s another reason why I’m in love with traveling. To try to do what my dad wasn’t able to give my mom.

Well my thoughts are all discombobulated at the moment, but the moral that i’m taking out of this is: Life’s way to short to take it too seriously. You will never regret not working more, you will never regret not stressing over something enough… So live it up. Forget being afraid about being judged. Give yourself a break and just enjoy life!! 

Jour 32- Vendredi 16 septembre 2011

Friday, September the 16th. What a wondrous day!

First off, I went to Versailles with a group of friends. We left at 9:15am from Paris to go to Versailles. It was about a 40 minute train ride. 

When we first arrived, it was gloomy and cold. A few moments after we arrived at the Palace, it started raining hard. It lasted only about 10 minutes or so though. We went through the palace and it cleared up to be a bright, sunny, and hot day. What crazy weather man. We toured the palace and walked to the gardens to a café where we grabbed food and coffee. The gardens are beautiful! We didn’t really get a chance to walk through them because we were a bit tight on time. We went straight to the Grand Trianon. Here, they had a temporary exhibit of costumes, dresses, and outfits on display that was inspired by Marie Antoinette’s time. It was very interesting to see. 

I definitely underestimated the time it takes to walk from place to place in Versailles. This place is huge! We were all very tired. I had to leave Versailles early because I had a dinner date with my roommate, Kelsey. We were celebrating our one month in Paris! 

I rushed my butt back to the RER (the train). I returned home and got ready to go to the restaurant that Kelsey had picked out. 

The resturant she chose was called La Boissonenerie (Fish). 

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d715085-Reviews-Fish_la_Boissonnerie-Paris_Ile_de_France.html

The two of us both love cooking and have been cooking all our meals in attempts to save money. We both felt like we deserved to indulge for the night. The food was absolutely delicious! It was a restaurant that specialized in fish. 

First, I ordered a glass of white wine that the waitress had recommended. It was probably the best white wine I’ve ever had. 

Then we both ordered the 3 course meal. I ordered whatever looked the most different and unique to me. Everything was in French and I didn’t understand everything on the menu. 

My appetizer was this amazing ahi coated with a thin layer of mint. The filet was sitting on top of a mango salad mix. It was “oh my god,” eyes rolling back to my head good. I haven’t had that in a while! My entrée was Marlin on top of spinach. Perfect combination of everything. Each dish was well balanced (extremely difficult to do.) Not too much of one thing and no flavor was missing. (I didn’t even add pepper to anything! shocker!) 

Best meal I’ve had in Paris so far, by far! For desert, we did it French style. We both ordered fromage (cheese). Once again, I ordered whatever looked the most different to me. ( I love surprises. :] ) By golly, it was SO DAMN GOOD. I have no idea what I ordered, but i never knew cheese could taste like this. The experience was as if I was eating a chocolate truffle. The cheese basically just melted in my mouth and it was amazing. It wasn’t too pungent, and it definitely had a lot of flavor. It tasted a bit like brie but more creamy and less “sticky.” The cheese came with a raisin chutney. The combination of the sweetness of the chutney and the flavor of the cheese was perfect. 

A restaurant I would absolutely love to go back to and highly recommend to fish lovers. 

The decor was adorable as well. It was quaint and a bit tight, but very welcoming. 

This was a GREAT day. :] 

Time to keep up with the times…

It’s been exactly 5 weeks since my arrival in Paris…. 

Time for me to stop being lazy with the internet!! I will be updating my blog, sorry if I spam. 

I really don’t know what my beef is against the internet and the computer…. I think I’m just old-school and technology and I just don’t get along. I don’t like to be tied down, especially to a routine. 

Now we are on our second week of UC classes. I am taking three classes. French, Histories of Paris, and French Cinema. I love all of my classes. They’re not easy, but they’re interesting in different ways. More on this later…

These past 5 weeks have been most beneficial to me… I’ve been doing a lot of recuperating, reflecting, thinking, and relaxing. I seriously do not remember what it’s like to be unemployed. I do not know what it is like to be bored and have nothing to do. Here in Paris, for the first time in forever, I get a chance to do what I want to do. Take care of no one else but myself. Have no obligations to anyone but myself. Think about what I WANT to think about rather than what I HAVE to think about. 

I can’t even explain how much thinking I’ve been doing. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t fully been myself here because I’m so thrown off by this ‘freedom.’ I think it’s finally time that I do some self-healing from this crazy year. 

Anyways… enough random ranting… off to the stories of my adventures….

Still dreaming about you.

Jour 28- Lundi 12 septembre 2011

I had weird dreams last night. I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept waking up every 20 minutes, then every 30 minutes, then every hour. It was quite frustrating. And I felt like I had about a hundred dreams. It was a bit overwhelming for my brain to handle that many dreams and images in one night… Maybe there’s a reason why normally we can only remember at most a couple dreams a night. I felt like my computer…. Out of space for memory and out of RAM.

My dreams were mostly of my mom. I don’t know what’s been going on with me. I know she’s always with me…. But these dreams were getting more and more intense.

I dreamt about my uncle. I dreamt about my mom and dad singing to andrea bocelli to me. I dreamt about anger, happiness, love, depression, bitterness. Now that I’ve been up for a couple hours, I can’t remember everything that I dreamt of.

I just remember waking up kinda angry and emotional. I went for a run and all I wanted to do was box. I did some sprints, fount a spot on the grass, and just did a few minutes of jabs and got tired. (damn my endurance) I ran some more, then just danced a little to do something that I enjoy doing. I sprinted back and showered. No matter how I wake up, no matter what mood I’m in when I wake, I can always choose my ‘tude. (attitude) The day is what I make of it. And if I wanna let this spoil my day, I can. But I don’t. So I won’t.