mint

France, France, France, when can I go back to you?

How about in two years when my brother gets done with his mission to Paris? 

Yes. (okay, Mom?)

(side note: I want to paint my nails the color of that scooter. annnd photo from last summer's toulouse adventure.)

jeffy got called on a mission!

My little brother Jeff opened his mission call this morning, right when the mailman delivered it (little fricker, didn't even wait for a mass of people to congregate around him for a dramatic opening!) And he is going to be spending the next two years of his life preaching the Gospel to the people of.....

drumroll please.....



..............




..........................




PARIS, FRANCE!!!!!!

We are so, so, so, so, so, so excited for him! Paris is where my mom served her mission back in the day, so it's pretty cool that my brother gets to go to the same place. Plus we all know I'm a major francophile, so I couldn't be happier for him. When he gets back we'll have to have a triple French conversation of me + my mom + Jeff! Except by that time I will have forgotten everything while Jeff will be completely fluent. Oh well, c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas? Anyway, happy feelings all around here. He is going to be an awesome missionary!

coeur de pirate (what a rad nickname)

I love discovering awesome music

that is sung in French.

Also, love watching episodes of Lost that have French people in them.

(started season 5 today! Jin meets 1988 Danielle?! Ohmygoodness! And Whidmore was ON THE ISLAND in 1954?! AHHHhhh!!! Must. Know. What. Happens. Next!)

Maybe you should also listen to this:

And maybe then this:

Rihanna just got Coeur de Pirate'd!

cheese please.

For my birthday (a week from today!), I would like Utah to stop selling gruyère and emmental cheese for $9 per 5"x5" square, so that I could make some decent savory crepes with the crepe cookbook Kristen sent me.

Someone could arrange that, right? Just for one day?

kthxbye.

(although even if i did have awesome cheese, the crepes would probably turn out terrible anyway, because ever since me and aaron got married, my cooking skills have decayed exponentially...in the past week i've tried making macaroni and cheese, molta lava cakes, chocolate sugar cookies, nutella cupcakes, and white bean chili, and none! none of them have turned out nicely. grrrrr.)
HOW DO YOU RUIN NUTELLA CUPCAKES?! how can you go wrong with butter + sugar + flour + nutella + nutella cream cheese frosting?! 
bake them way too long, and don't bother mixing your frosting long enough so you have little cream cheese chunks everywhere.
that's how.

été invicible

I think now is a pretty good time for a trip to the Mediterranean, yeah?

Boo on below 10 degree weather.

Photos from last summer's vacation within a vacation to the picturesque coastal town of Collioure while living in Toulouse. Vive la France!

too bad "just be glad we made it here alive" is never quite enough

I dreamed of $6.50 macarons this morning. I was telling my mom how much cheaper they are in Europe (like 2 euros for a big one) and how I was going to buy one anyway. But then the store didn't have the flavor I wanted (passionfruit? why that was the one flavor I wanted, I'm not sure) so I left macaroonless. 

And I woke up missing French food and summers. 

I could use a vacation or something. Just saying. 

booya

This is basically how I feel right because guess what.
French paper = DONE.

also, i feel so cool because i just barely figured out how to embed videos in my posts. as in, this is the first time i've successfully displayed a video for you to watch dear readers. soooo behind on technology!!

pourquoi apprendre l'américain? demain, on parlera l'occitan!

whyyyyyyyyyyohwhyyyyyyyydidithinkitwouldbeagoodideatowriteafifteenpagepaperinfrenchaboutoccitanculture?

bleh.

the end.

quoi le heck

Avoiding working on my Occitan paper feels like the kind of rebellion I never indulged in during high school.

Sigh.

If I just ignore it, maybe it'll write itself.

I can't help it if all I want to do is pick out flowers and reception centers!

il faut avancer

One eternal afternoon* later, and I was home.

I'm torn. I am so, so glad to be home. I'm so happy to be back with Aaron. And I am so happy to start throwing myself into rehearsals and working in the lab and planning my school schedule and figuring out my life and everything else.

But I miss France. I miss hearing French everywhere and reading signs in French. I miss saying "Bonjour!" and "Au revoir!" when I enter and exit stores, elevators, buses. I miss eating jambon/emmental/beurre baguette sandwiches. I miss walking around the centre ville. I miss the metro. I miss the Mediterranean Sea. I miss weekend train trips. I miss the taste of French on my tongue and pastries in my mouth.

To everything there is a season I guess. My season in France is over. Must keep pedaling the bicycle forward or I shall lose my balance, a la Einstein:

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

Keep moving keep moving keep moving.
Can't help it; mostly I just want to sleep.

*okay, 11 hours if we're going to not exaggerate.

carmen san diego

For a while I thought that after this experience I'd be a total homebody and never want to leave the country again.

And while it's true that I'm longing for a little stability and a little bit more permanence, I think that just the opposite is true. I think I'm going to want to be a traveler for the rest de ma vie.

I would like to visit:
Asia: Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing
South America (especially after reading "The Lacuna", talk about a beautiful portrait of Mexico)
Switzerland
Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Malaga
France: Nice, anywhere in Provence, Marseilles, more Paris, anywhere in Bordeaux, anywhere in Brittany, more Normandy, anywhere in Alsace Lorraine (man, I love this country)

What about you guys? Where do you want to visit?

framboises

This little outing led to this...

...delightful little lunch.

Mmmm open air markets are just maybe my favorite thing about this place.

le moulin

Quite frankly, I cannot decide what I think about Paris.

It sort of feels like this odd, make-believe world created for me, where people are speaking in French for my benefit and learning. I keep thinking things like,  "Oh, how nice of them to speak French!" and "Wow, it's incredible how many people speak perfect French here!" 

Yeah, no duh.

It used to be that I loved, loved, loved big cities. Staying in the Waldorf Astoria in downtown Manhattan for 10 days was a dream come true when I was fourteen. DC quickly became my favorite city in the world at age sixteen. People would say, "I love visiting cities, but I could never live there," and I'd always think, "I could! I will! And I will love it!" But lately, I think that has changed. In England, it wasn't London that was my favorite place. It was Downham and York and Aberdeen in Scotland, smaller towns (okay, York is still fairly large, but it feels small). Here, in Paris, I love being not down the Champs-Elysees, but in Monmartre, or down the little streets where all of the outdoor markets are near our hotel. 

So I guess that's why I do not know what to make of this place. One second it feels like I'm in New York, and the next it feels like a little village. Keep me in the village, I say. 

Laisse-moi rester dans le petit village?

And another thing I've been musing on. I used to love traveling (and I still very much do), but you know what, three months is a long time to be out of the US of A. And you know what else? I really love America (and maybe a certain boy who lives there). I love our superior plumbing. I love that we have air conditioning. I love that we use paper towels. I love that we speak English. I love that our money doesn't look like Monopoly play money. I love that we have trash cans everywhere in public places. I love that we have decent hamburgers and Mexican food. I love that my family's all there. I love that my friends are all there. I love that my boyfriend's there. I love that my teammates are there. I love that we have mountains there. 

I can do anything...better than anyone...! Go watch Jessica's daily affirmation on youtube to understand that reference.

Anyway. This is not me complaining about Europe, I promise. I almost cried when I saw France out the window of the plane on my way here. I have worked so hard, for so long to get here. This has been my dream since I knew France existed. It is beautiful, and I love love love it.

But I also love other things too.

That is all.

dégoutant

I. do. not. want. to. write. an. abstract. for. a. paper. about. French. healthcare. and. the. role. of associations. in. picking. up. the slack. for. the government.

Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.

If it's this hard to write one page, how the heck am I going to get through 15?

Shoot me now.

can't believe i'm labeling this post with "school"! it is summer! i am not meant to be writing papers during this time!

This is just to say

I have brought another blog into the world!

It's entitled "Katya in Europe"
and you can find it here. (pardon the not so pretty layout...it's still under construction)

It'll document all of my adventures in...Europe...this summer. So click, read, live vicariously through me or something. :)

bam.

I just wanted to say that I am very proud of myself for getting an article in the Daily Universe for National Lab Day, and for getting fliers taken to 15 schools in the area.

Go VP of publicity.

And I also find it highly amusing that my lab made it into the Police Beat yesterday.
(a piece of tape on top of one of our oven started smoking and a janitor saw it, freaked out, called the fire department)

Also...I leave for Europe in two weeks from tomorrow.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Ah. Ah. Ah.
I am simultaneously ecstatic and terrified.

Before I leave, I need to:
have another India night
write up my abstract for the paper I'm writing while I'm there (although, really? making me write the abstract before I'm done with or even started the paper? That is ridiculous and counterproductive.)

If you were leaving the country for 3 months, what would you do before you leave? I feel like I need to fill up my reserve of American-ness, eat some apple pie or something.

OH! And I saw "Iron Man 2" last week, and ohmygoshIlovedit.
The cast was great. Can I just say I am so impressed with Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to make Tony Stark, who is totally selfish and self-destructive in this movie, very charming and very likable? Pure awesome. I did think Scarlett Johannson's character was sort of unnecessary besides the fact that she had a fab scene of taking out a bunch of guys.

Anyway...please excuse the randomness of this post. If you have any thoughts on Europe, my incredible accomplishments with Y Chem (ha), things to do before I go, Iron Man 2, etc, feel free to share. :)

the only exception

Today I decided that I do not wish to attend graduate school alone.

I also decided that either:

a. my French professor forgot about my plan to take an extra year to graduate and the fact that I always fell asleep in his class, actually does like me, and was merciful

or,

b. I rocked my oral final

because I got an A- in that class (French civ)! Yeah!

I know right, A- is not something I would normally brag about (unless it was in o chem...) but this was the [uncurved] class where I turned in my second midterm a day late because I was in San Fran and ended up getting minus 10% on my already not particularly good score. I was expecting a B at best, let's just put it that way.

I also decided that apparently I should've been an English major, because I am much better at verbal reasoning on the MCAT* than on the physical sciences section. Ridiculous. Why I am so drawn to a subject that seems so determined to kill me I will never understand.**

Oh, and I also decided that maybe it would be sort of fun/seemingly good idea/potentially horrible idea, I don't know, to take a computer programming class. Not next semester, because somehow I'm already up to my neck in credit hours, but maybe next winter or sometime next next year.


*Not that I'm applying to med school...my boyfriend is. Sometimes we do verbal reasoning practice tests together, because we are just so darn cool like that. And a little nerdy.

**Not that I would ever change my major, nor have I ever regretted choosing it in the first place...except maybe once when I woke up at 5:00 AM in the Benson and had rehearsal at 8:00.

Bonjour!

I just wanted to say that this summer I will be living here:


Welcome to Toulouse, France.
Yes please.
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

february air

Tonight, I would just like to stop feeling like I'm dragging myself through everything.

I would also just like to stop being afraid of life in general.

The end.

illuminated

Today, I am grateful that places like this exist.

And that, finally, after ten years of dreaming, I am going there.*

*Okay, so technically the photo is of Perigord, France, which I probably will not get to see. But when I saw a similar picture in my French class, I almost cried. Silly, huh? But it just hit me all of a sudden, that France is real, and I get to go see it for my self this summer. Wow, wow, wow.