Monday, October 28, 2013

Halloween is Here!


Hello everyone and Happy Halloween!!

This past week was busy, but went by very fast.  My building is updating, and it was time for my flat to get a new bed, so I now have a new bed...yay!!  I finally have all of my immigration things done and I am so happy about that!  I also bought my ticket for a weekend trip to Disney Paris, a plane ticket for a trip to Amsterdam, and my friends and I are talking about a possible weekend trip to Rome!!!  I am super excited for these upcoming trips!!

This weekend, some of my friends and I ordered Domino's pizza.  I was surprised to find out that the pizza tasted almost exactly like Domino's at home!  Yummy!  They just had fewer options.  Also, I found out that stuffed crust pizza is a foreign concept here.  They are missing out!

Halloween just happens to be an obsession of mine.  Horror movies are the best kind of movies.  Anything that includes haunted, horror, terror, etc. is like music to my ears!  The season of fear is my favorite time of year! haha  Now that you know this, you can imagine my severe disappointment in finding out that France really doesn't celebrate it.  Young children generally dress up and will sometimes go "Trick or Treating," but beyond that, there isn't much celebration.  I was happy to see some people dressed up at the bars!  No one celebrates this holiday like the Americans though!  Lately, I have been getting a lot of questions about how Halloween is celebrated in the U.S., other people find it fascinating! 

We went to the fair again, and there was a haunted house there! Let's just say I could barely contain my excitement!! It was Universal Studios "Live Horror Show."  Everything was based on the legendary horror films!! A four foot "Billy the Puppet," the puppet that Jigsaw uses in "Saw," led you into the house.  It was filled with all the scary Freddy, Jason, Michael, etc.  At the end you were chased by Thomas Hewitt, aka "LeatherFace," who had a chainsaw, obviously.  It is one of the best houses I have ever been in!  I grew up watching all of these movies and having the terror memorized in my mind.  Then I went through this house and found myself in the same scenarios with the same killers that I have watched in movies my entire life.  It...was...awesome!!!  haha I know what you are thinking: "Wow, this is kind of twisted."  Don't worry, I have been told this before! ; )  You just have to love scary movies!

After that we went to Alejandra's apartment to hang out and have drinks.  (The picture below is the view from her apartment...so jealous!! It is beautiful!)  We listened to music and danced, and then decided to play some cards!  We had so much fun teaching each other games, I cried I was laughing so hard.  They said that they had heard of the game "Bull Shit," and wanted to learn.  So I taught them.  Ernesto just couldn't get the concept.  It was like he was in a different game all together most of the time, but we got a good laugh out of it!


Sunday was amazing!  Just like every Sunday, I had a Skype date with my family.  My whole family was home, and Matt and Jaime's family was also there to watch the Packer game!  It was loud, obnoxious, and hilarious as our home always is, and it just warmed my heart to see it.  I "sat" at the table with them as they ate.  My father's birthday is on the 29th, so we also watched him open up his birthday presents!  Thank God for modern technology!!! 

Also, because I have the coolest parents in the world, they logged into my laptop and hooked it up to their Dish TV.  Now I can watch and DVR American television! Which also means, yes...you guessed it, I can watch my Green Bay Packers again!!!  Watching live updates on ESPN worked, but man I am ecstatic to have American Television.  Thank you again!!  Also, I can now watch all of the Halloween Marathons and ghost shows that are flooding TVs right now.  I can watch "Hocus Pocus" on the 31st.  I watch that movie on Halloween every single year.  It is one of my all time favorites, and we share a birth year.  It was made in '93!!

This coming week I am on our Fall Break.  My friend Amy is coming to live with me!  I pick her up at the train station tomorrow!!  We grew up together and she is currently studying abroad in Manchester, England.  After being gone for almost two months now, we are both very excited to see a familiar face!  I am sure I will have many stories for this coming week!

Happy birthday Dad, I love you!!!

Thanks for reading and I hope everyone has a spook-tacular Halloween! : )

-Krysta

"Don't just fly, soar."
-Dumbo

Sunday, October 20, 2013

It Really is a Small World After All


Hello Everyone!

This first picture is to celebrate my excitement.  Ever since the very first day I arrived, there has been construction right outside my window.  I enjoyed waking up to loud blasting noises ..early...every...single...morning, but man am I happy to see them cleaning things up now!! They brought in a huge crane to get the other cranes and supplies off of the building.  Hopefully more peaceful mornings are in my near future!

I have started my second course, "Air Transport and Tourism Economics."  This class, like all of them, is three weeks long, but we have three professors teaching us three different subjects.  It is a little intense, but I have just started.  The material is interesting, and I hope it continues to be interesting!


Regular life in Bordeaux continues to get better and better!  On Wednesday night, I went to an event hosted by the school at a wine bar.  We had the entire cellar to ourselves, drank great wine, and talked with friends.  It was a good night.  The weekend was even better!  There was a lot of drinks and laughs.  On Friday we went out for Thai food and then went to one of my favorite bars The Cock and Bull.  I had a bit to drink that night, but as usual, I was very responsible and safe! : )  On Saturday, some of us went to the fair that is in town, "La Feria."  That was a lot of fun.  I found it interesting that most of the names on the rides or signs by all of the vendors are mostly in English.  For a moment, I forgot where I was and thought I was back in Wisconsin!  We were going to go into the haunted house but ran out of time.  So we will be going back to do that because I love haunted houses!! After, we met some friends for dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays!  We didn't even start eating until 11:00, everything is done later in France.  But, we had Indian food and it was delicious! 

Quick side note: My friend, Amy, and I have known each other a long time.  We went to high school together and are really close friends.  She is currently studying abroad in Manchester, England for the year.  We both have fall break next week and she just booked her tickets to France and is going to live with me for the break!!! I am very excited! 


Finally, I would like to share how small our world really is!  I chose to go to somewhere completely new and foreign to me.  I went 4,000 miles away from home and still became friends with someone and then discovered we had ties to each other!  My friend Alejandra is from Mexico City.  She is dating a guy named Vito.  Vito used to work at the college program at Disney in Florida.  While there, he became good friends with another worker, Darren.  Darren and I went to school together and grew up in the same very small town in rural Wisconsin!!  Of the 7 billion people in this world, the 4 of us have a connection over 3 different countries.  I just learned that yesterday, and I thought that was so awesome!!

To end, as many of you know, my grandfather passed away on October 10th.  He lived a very good and long life, and left quite the legacy!  It has been hard being so far away from my family and being alone, but I am doing good.  I would just like to take this moment to celebrate his life!  Love you, grandpa!

Thank you everyone for reading!!

-Krysta

"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Food, Friends, and Some Thoughts


 

Bonjour everyone!!

I am already in the last week of my first sequence! My final is on Friday and, to be honest, I am very nervous!! So I am taking a study break to write to you. : )

In my cute little flat, I have a small kitchen that doesn't have an oven.  So I am somewhat limited as to what I can make.  I am finally becoming bold in the grocery store and learning how to use the computers to get fresh fruits and veggies! (It's a bit different here)  It is still a little bit difficult to get food because I can't read labels.  I can get the overall idea from the pictures, and I am starting to learn some words, but I don't like that I can't read the directions and ingredients before hand.  So I still stick to what I know is safe.  One of my favorite meals this week was the one pictured above.  I sauteed peppers, onions, and chicken in olive oil and my favorite seasonings.  Then put that on a wrap with lettuce and chopped tomatoes! It was quite yummy!


This weekend, some friends and I got together to make a meal and have some drinks!  It was quite the entertaining night.  We are all from different countries: U.S.A., Chile, Mexico, and Canada.  We always have fun talking about our homes and all the differences from place to place.  We were on Google Maps showing each other our neighborhoods and how different they are.  I had tried explaining to them just how small my town is.  They didn't quite understand until it was my turn to show them.  I went around the block and pointed to the ones that were relatives (which is pretty much every house.)  They were amazed! "I have literally never seen anything like that!" they all said!  My town is quite unique! My favorite part though was when they said "That is so cool, hey zoom out so we can see the whole town!" I laughed hard and said "uhhh, nope, that would be it!"  Again, they were amazed! I love my small town!


For supper, Ernesto (from Chile) made us some Chilean Hot Dogs! Let me tell you, they were delicious!  Earlier, we had gone shopping for the ingredients.  There was some miscommunication, and sausages were bought instead of actual hot dogs.  The meal was just as good though! We just kept calling them our "Fake Chilean Hot Dogs."  Also, someone (but I won't mention names) burned half of the buns.  They opened the oven and a cloud of smoke rolled out.  The bread was rock solid.  It provided for some good laughs though! 




As I was coming home from class the other day, I decided to check out a little bakery close to my apartment.  I was standing there and thought "Krysta, you are in the land of pastries and bread, and you have yet to try a croissant.  What is wrong with you?"  So I got a lovely croissant and was on my way.  Let me just say, if you even kind of like croissants, you would absolutely LOVE them here!! It was delicious!!


To finish, I would like to share some things I have noticed that I think are pretty cool! Of the people that I have met, most of them say how much they love the U.S. and how they have been there several times, or they really want to go!!  We all know it is a very large country, but I guess I never put that much thought into it until being by all these small countries.  America really is huge, and has sooo many things to offer and explore!  Some people also find it interesting that I am used to my one country having several different time zones.  And how I am used to seeing TV shows and programs listed with their premiere times.  Or how on New Years Eve, we all watch the ball drop on Times Square, but we watch recordings of it at different times.  In smaller countries, a TV show is on at 8.  That is it, just 8 o'clock.  No 8/7 Central or anything like that.  It is these little differences that I find interesting.  

Also, something that I hear a lot is "You don't realize how lucky you are that English is your first language."  Many people from other countries have a desire to learn this language.  It is the international language, and no matter where you go, chances are, you will be able to survive on English.  Some of my friends are very good at speaking it, but they don't have the confidence yet.  I will tell them "You have been studying English for several years, and your speech is very good!"  They always say "Yes, but you have had the opportunity to study it for twenty years, you don't realize how nice that is."  Love your English language!

I also enjoy the fact that I get to share some of my knowledge! I have always loved teaching and sharing with people, and I get to do that here often.  Most of the people I talk to are non-native English speakers.  I rarely have a conversation that doesn't include: How do you spell...What is the word for...How do you pronounce...What is another name for??  Many people ask me questions about English and I love it!  

By the way, now that I have said I am helping many people with their English, do not judge mine from this blog!  It is my way of sharing, and I don't really pay attention to my grammar or how well I write.  When helping others though, I do my best to provide them with correct English! ; )

Thank you for reading! I hope to have some new adventures to share soon!

-Krysta 

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."
-Walt Disney

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

French Class and Fun

(This is the river in the park.)

Hello everyone!

I am now in my second week of my French class, and let me say...yikes!! I enjoy it, but it is quite intensive.  Our professor, Freddy, teaches us French by only speaking French.  I understand that by doing this, we are forced to try really hard and really pay attention, but for complete beginners in this language it is difficult!  If we don't know what he is saying by the 6th or 7th guess, Freddy will then switch and say a word in English to give us a hint, and then it is back to trying to figure it out.  We took our first tests yesterday and got them back today. I did pretty darn good and I was not expecting that! Excuse me for a second while I pat myself on the back. ; )

The first things that I mastered were learning the alphabet and being able to count.  I am pretty proud to now know the numbers because the French system is different than ours, and to be honest, a little weird.  They count 1 through 69 the same as we do. But then it gets a little difficult. For the 70s, they use 60 plus 10-19.  So 75 would be like us saying sixty fifteen.  The 80s and 90s are also different and even worse. And I won't even get started on how to say a year like 1993.  I can also introduce myself and participate in everyday casual small talk: "How are you?"..."What is your nationality, address, phone number?" and so forth.  I know the days of the week and terms that go along with them such as: morning, afternoon, night, tomorrow, yesterday, etc..  We have learned random phrases to help us get along in French life.  Now we are practicing grammar, verbs, a lot of food vocabulary, and many other things.  We do not get bored in this class!!
   

(This is Rue Sainte Catherine on a normal Saturday...packed!)

This past weekend I had some fun! My friend, Marine, and I did some shopping on Rue Sainte Catherine.  There were so many people! Then we went to Baillardran to get some famous French pasteries.  The Baillardran in Bordeaux invented the Canele, so of course it is a must to get one from there when in Bordeaux!  It was delicious! We also got some Macarons that were also delicious! Then we walked to a park that was very pretty and had a little river going through it.  We walked all over the city, followed the river for a while, and then went back to Marine's apartment for some coffee and girl talk!  She showed me a lot of pictures from her travels to the United States.  And of course I had to take a good twenty minutes to talk about the Green Bay Packers and Clay Matthews!!  The other day she said she was researching Clay Matthews! haha I am taking my Packer love international!! : )  Then we went out to dinner, got some pizza, and then it was off to the movies!  We went to see "Ain't Them Body Saints."  It was in English with French subtitles, so that was awesome!  It was a good movie!  On Sunday, my friend Lindsey and I went out to dinner.  We got some very yummy cheeseburgers and wine! Both of these days had bad weather though.  It rained so hard the streets were turning into little rivers.  I walked through puddles that went above my ankles.  My clothes were so soaked I could wring them out! But it was still a good weekend!

Last night there was a party at the night club Torito.  It was called "The Buddy" party.  It was meant for international students to find a French buddy.  It is a thing they do in France, so then if the international student ever needs help or has questions, they can go to their French buddy.  Usually you just get one assigned to you, but that wasn't working for our school.  So this year, we were able to pick our own.  Marine and I had already wanted to be each others "Godmother/niece," but we went anyways to meet more people and have fun! It was also a good night!  

Oh...also, I got a care package last week and I just want to say thank you again! It was so amazing! Today, two of my favorite movies showed up in the mail.  Thank you for that also.  I feel so blessed!!

Thank you all for reading! (I will try to post more often!!)

-Krysta  : )

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."
-Napoleon Hill