Il y a une année aujourd'hui j'ai laissé mon coeur à Paris...

*One year ago today I left my heart in Paris*

A more fitting blog title does not exist. One year ago today, I was flying home over the Atlantic leaving some of the best people in my life, the best city in the world and my most enjoyable 3.5 months of my life. And I definitely left my heart in Paris.

One year ago I was so sad that I didn't know what to do exactly. As my plane pulled away from Charles de Gaulle Aéroport I couldn't do anything else except sit there and cry. Depressing, I know, but it's true. My semester abroad was so incredible in every way possible, except for being away from any Stonehill friends not in Paris. I know I've written other posts about going abroad, but this topic has a different feel. I knew that from then on out my life was going to be different. I wasn't going to wake up to fresh croissants and baguettes every morning, I wasn't going to cross the street and have the ability to take the metro to anywhere in the city, let alone out to Versailles or Disneyland Paris for day trips, I wasn't going to be understood when I went out in public and spoke French (believe me... I tried once I got home and got some WEIRD looks), and worst of all, some of the most important people in my life weren't going to be with me every day.

It was really hard coming home. I remember the first day back I just sat on my couch and watched TV all day long for lack of nothing else to do. I didn't have a car at that point and my parents were both at work all day, none of my friends were home yet and I had no work since my semester was over. I just sat, blankly staring at the TV for something like 6 hours straight and hated life. I hated that I couldn't walk to a patisserie or hop on the metro and go hang out at a museum or the Eiffel Tower for a few hours. It took me a long time to get back to normal.

Charles and I were talking today about how we felt so much more like ourselves over there. I just adore the lifestyle and culture of the French. Life there was the best and I miss it every single day. Mostly I just miss speaking French whenever I felt like it and having people understand me :)

Tonight my suitemates and I exchanged our secret santa presents. My secret santa Melanie made me a collage of pictures from my Euro-adventures :) They are framed and now hanging on my wall all lovely :) As much as I love them, they made me miss France, but in a good way. I keep trying to spin my sadness post-France into a good thing and feel lucky that I had such an incredible semester. You know the quote "How lucky I am to know someone who was so hard to say goodbye to"? Well that's how I feel about my time abroad; thankful and glad.

Below is a photographic expression of the things I miss from France... these are all everyday things, not traveling or special once-in-a-while luxuries...

Wednesday Night Family Dinner! Every Wednesday a bunch of us would come to the Cité where most of us lived and cook dinner together, usually some form of pasta sautéed with veggies since that was about all we could make, though one time we did make burgers :) Always accompanied by red wine and baguettes, of course!

Trying to fit into really small elevators :)

Being ridiculously excited to watch Grey's Anatomy on iTunes every Friday afternoon on a laptop, even if the episode did skip every 10 seconds or so...

Spending way too much time here, in my favorite room in the Musée d'Orsay

Lunching daily with Rosaleen in the Jardins de Luxembourg :)

Having picnics at Versailles :)

Watching the French go on strike and protest one thing after another... yes that is a man standing on top of a bus shelter with flares going off in the background...

Eating crepes at any hour of the day... or night :)

Joyeux Anniversaire :)

Today is a very special day :)

Today Miss Jill Rachel Federschneider and one of my very best friends FINALLY turns 21!!! We have been waiting... and waiting... and WAITING... for this day for SO LONG. She's obviously that last one of us to turn 21, as we're all seniors and now our circle is complete. We have a whole week-long celebration planned for Jilly with different events each night and I am SO psyched about it. Poor Jill has been left out of far too much this semester... she couldn't come into Boston with us to celebrate anyone else's birthdays, nor could she hang out with us at Owen's or Buddy's whenever we go. But now, that all will change! Birthdays are always so much fun, no matter how old you're turning and I like to make a huge deal out of them.

Jill and I have been friends since freshman year, when we had religion and philosophy together. The next year, and every subsequent year since, we've had French together. We were always good friends... then we went to Paris and it all went UPHILL from there :) While I was studying in Paris, she was interning there and we became even closer. I realized what an incredible person she is and how much fun we have together and I knew she would be in my life forever. Even now as we plan to move to Paris together next fall, I can't imagine not having her in life. It's true when they say you'll meet friends in college who will be your friends forever and Jill is definitely one of those people for me. Je t'aime chérie et je te souhaite le plus joyeux anniversaire du monde!

Last night we took her out for some birthday celebrations, as we started off with a little celebratory champagne in the courts and then headed to Owen's at midnight. All of our friends came and it was a total blast :) Exactly what your 21st should be-- friends and fun :) Just wait Jill... we've got a whole week of this!

So in honor of Miss Fed reaching her milestone of a birthday here are some favorite pictures from years past and present:

Our favorite picture from our semester abroad :) This pretty much demonstrates our love for each other :)

This was taken at about 6 am after our most favorite night out in Paris...

Our first photo together in France! This was taken I think the day after Jill got to Paris, and you can see Notre Dame and the Seine in the background.

This was taken on MY 21st back in March-- like I said, Mandi had flown Charles up for my birthday and she and Jill went to pick him up at the airport to surprise me!

This is of Jill, me and Ayatt, one of her best friends from home :)

Spring Weekend 2008 :)

This was our "Oh my God I can't believe we're seniors" picture, let's smile and not worry about it...

Haha, this was this October in our shirts that Mr. Charles Knorr so lovingly made for us... long story, just go with it!

I love you so much Jill and I hope your birthday is everything you wanted it to be! Can't wait to celebrate future birthdays with you... et bien sûr, pour notre vie ensemble à Paris!

Gobble Gobble :)

Well this blog is a bit delayed since Thanksgiving was last week but that doesn't mean I've already forgotten about it. I had a great time at home and I hope all of you did too. It was not the smoothest airline adventure I've ever had, as my flight out of Boston departed at a lovely 8 am last Wednesday morning, so I was up at 4:30 in order to get my stuff together and get up to Logan Airport... I ordered myself a nice venti-sized Starbucks and plopped myself down at my gate with plenty of time to spare. I intended to do work on the plane ride... but then I fell asleep... then I woke up and decided I didn't feel like doing work; instead I'd rather watch a movie on my computer... so that's what I did! Once I got to MN all was well-- I visited with some of my neighbors, some friends from high school and lounged a lot at home (isn't that what you're supposed to do over breaks?) and I didn't do an ounce of homework (oops)... Thanksgiving Day itself was pretty quiet, as my family is very small (just me and my parents) and my extended family is spread out all over the country. But here are two pictures from Turkey Day, one of our table and one of my yummy plate of goodness (with my VERY OWN STUFFING!):

Mmm that meal was so good! While I prefer our Christmas meal, Thanksgiving is always good too... I'm a big fan of the cresent rolls myself :)

Spending some time at home was so nice since I hadn't been home all semester. Like I said on Wednesday my parents picked me up from the airport and then we went and visited with some of my neighbors, met the new neighbors who moved into their house across the street from us in September and just sort of hung out. We opened a nice bottle of Bordeaux and caught up which was very relaxing and fun. Thursday was obviously Thanksgiving, which was spent watching football and me frantically texting Paul every half an hour to make sure he was still alive since the Lions just couldn't pull off anything close to a victory in their Thanksgiving Day game ; ) Luckily he didn't take their loss too hard though he has sworn that he will not watch any more Lions games this season... we'll see ; )

Friday was the best day of the year--- BLACK FRIDAY! My mom and I hit the mall around 6:30 am (which is pretty late for us, but I just couldn't get out of bed at 5:30... ew) and we got all of our Christmas shopping done. Plus I got some new clothes to wear in the mean time. Then on Saturday I got to see my littles!! I had missed the kids so much since I hadn't seen them since summer and to go from seeing them every day to now was hard. Miss Sophia (the youngest one, she's 2) was beyond excited when I walked into her house which was so great, as I wasn't sure how she'd take it. I figured she'd take a while to warm up since she hadn't seen me in 3 months, but no, she came running over with her arms wide open ready for a hug :) Aren't little kids the best?

Friday night was spent going out for drinks with some friends from high school and a yummy steak dinner at home with my parents. Then Sunday morning we went out for brunch and I did some last minute packing as my flight was supposed to leave at 5 that evening. Well as I'm sure many (if not all) of you are aware of the lovely New England weather we were blessed with on Sunday... rain, hail, sleet, the works. Due to Mother Nature's cruel sense of humor, my flight was delayed a good 3 hours and I didn't end up getting back on campus til around 1 am... granted Mandi and I then stayed up til 2 catching up with each other, which made getting up for our 9:30s on Monday morning oh-so-fun... MN got its own taste of Mother Nature when I woke up Sunday morning to this:

Yes that is my back porch all covered in disgusting SNOW... I want summer back! But all in all break was great and it'll be nice to be home again in about 3 weeks.

Something else very exciting is occurring today... but that deserves its own special post :)

Hello Winter...

Let me start this week's post by saying: BRRRRR!!! Hopefully all of you have been surviving the nice little cold front that came in this week. What happened to our prolonged Indian Summer? I want it back! I am such a warm weather girl-- which I'm sure sounds surprising, as the girl from Minnesota chose to go to college in Massachusetts... but honestly, I love warm weather. I think about spring break probably every day! I even had to bust out my mittens this week to walk across our blustery quad in order to get to my class in Merkert. Stay warm everyone :)

So since Thanksgiving is coming up this week, my incredible chef of a roommate and I got to thinking. Since our guy friends have their marvelous off-campus house, we decided we should do a big family dinner and cook for them this Sunday. Now mind you, I am NOT a cook. I can make toast, chocolate milk, scrambled eggs and MAYBE an omelette (depending on the day). I have no desire to learn how to cook nor does anyone have the desire to spend time trying to teach me. However Mandi is a phenomenal cook and loves to cook for people. As I write this in her kitchen since we went home for the day, my tummy is full from the giant-sized delicious banana-blueberry pancake she made me for breakfast, the chocolate chip cookies I had for dessert and our ricotta-stuffed shells are baking in the oven. How nice that she takes care of me like that, right?

But anyway, she wanted to cook for the boys and I decided to get on board by offering to open the wine and maybe make place cards. So tomorrow night we (well, it's really SHE but she likes to include me in things) will be taking over the house and making yummy yummy fall dinner for the boys. Hopefully it turns out all right and everyone has a good time. We're also having a Thanksgiving dinner there on Monday night (they're roasting a HUGE turkey) so this week will be full of good food.

I am so excited to go home for Thanksgiving. I haven't been home since summer, so I'm looking forward to relaxing in my big comfy pillow-top covered bed, seeing my DOGGIE and some of my home friends, as well as my parents and my LITTLES!!! I'm flying home really early on Wednesday morning and going straight to my littles' house to play with them all day. This past week has been really light with work and while I'll have some over break, it shouldn't be too bad and I have two 3-hour plane rides to get work done! I love getting work done on plane rides, I am so efficient (unlike my normal snail-pace of actually doing homework)...

A large anomaly occurred this week in my household. This may come as a surprise to some (or all) of you, but I actually do not like the stuffing my mom makes at Thanksgiving. I know, I know, terrible. But I just don't like it. I try some every year, hoping my taste buds have changed but alas they never have. I always badger her to pick a new recipe but since she and my dad enjoy it so much, she has always refused. Until now! She called me this week and said that if I find a recipe, she'll make me my own batch of stuffing!!! YAY!!! I of course went to my chef of a roomie and am now equipped with a delicious stuffing recipe to bring home to Minna. Our Thanksgivings (and holidays in general) are pretty low key since it's just me and my parents. Turkey day usually involves watching the parade and eating coffee cake and then watching football all day... and eating, of course! My dad grew up in Detroit so we always cheer for the Lions in their game, and since they've actually yet to WIN a game this year it should be nice watching them play against a powerhouse of a team. My friend Paul is a diehard Lions fan and has had a very depressing fall with a lack of a victory in his life. Sorry bud... try not to take out their inevitable loss on the turkey or anything ;)

I hope you all have a great vacation and aren't swamped with too much work. Enjoy sleeping in your own beds for a few days, eating good home food (which for me includes my favorite cherry-chicken pasta salad from our grocery store) and most importantly... relaxing : )

That's what holidays are for!

I thought midterms were over?

Wow... this week was ridiculous. I had a 15 page paper due last Saturday, spent all of Sunday making notecards for my Brain and Behavior exam, had a Crim paper due Tuesday, had a Brain and Behavior exam on Wednesday along with a French paper due Wednesday and a Modern France class discussion on Thursday... let's just say I am very much looking forward to a weekend!This weekend should be fun. Mr. Stonehill is tomorrow night! I'm friends with almost all of the hosts so from the bits and pieces I've been able to weasel out of them, it sounds like an amazing show! Hopefully all of you are planning to go. The shows of the past have been hilarious and I know this year will deliver as well. Good luck to all of the contestants!

This week was also a big week for tour guiding... since Tuesday was Veteran's Day and most Massachusetts high schools got the day off, we had a TON of high schools here for tours that day. I was assigned Registration, the Info Session and a tour on Tuesday morning and it was CRAZY. We already had about 70 families signed up and I heard we had close to 50 walk-ins... which would make sense considering how big my tour was! The tours are starting to wind down for the semester but I know they'll pick up again in the spring.

I found myself missing my abroad life more than usual this week. I think it's because I know that one year ago, I started to realize my time in France was winding down and I began to cherish everything a bit more that I had grown accustomed to. This weekend, for instance, was my last weekend outside of France for the semester. 3 of my friends and I spent the weekend in Venice, Italy and had an absolute blast eating everything in sight, getting lost in the canals and trying not to freeze! Here are some of my favorite pictures from our Venice trip:

Frieda, Jen & I on the vaporetto headed onto the island of Venice!

A sight rarely seen- Charles SMILING for one of my photos!

Jen literally being attacked by dirty pigeons in San Marco's Square... while she and Frieda chose to have this torture thrust upon themselves, Charles and I wisely chose to abstain from such an activity.

In one of the pretty pretty canals searching for lunch... I was determined to find tortellini for my first Italian meal...

Unfortunately for us, we ran into a few dead-ends on our trek... Venice is SO CONFUSING!

This photo is funny for a few reasons. Backstory: I bought a map in every city I went to-- Copenhagen, Prague, London, Barcelona, everywhere, and I always used them. So of course we bought a Venice map and this was literally the only time we brought it out because the streets in Venice are so small and plentiful that not all of them are even on the map! Jen managed to capture the one moment of map-usage on this trip, so here is Charles and I scouring the map so we can get out of the passageways and find food!

Success! Here are the girls with their delicious pastas!

Haha, definitely one of my favorite photos from the trip! We finished our food sooo quickly...

The girls over looking the Grand Canal, the main and biggest canal in Venice

How Venice does taxis :)

Frieda and I in San Marco's Square at night, freezinggggg cold!

Yet again, freezing cold on the vaporetto home, brrrrrr

Eating real Italian canollis! I can't even count how many times we shoved food into our faces that weekend...

Last photo in Venice, looking over the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge.

As you can see, I loved my Italian extravaganza and I wish I could go back to any of it, just for a day :(

Unfortunately that part of my life is over and it's time to stop being sad and focus on what's right now. Like waking my roomie up from her nap so we can shower and get ready for another fun Friday night at Stonehill!

Halloween Really Needs to Happen More Than Once a Year...

Last week at this time I was napping in preparation for an AWESOME Halloween... and it definitely came through! Hopefully all of you enjoyed your Halloween as much as I enjoyed mine! It started off Thursday with Midnight Madness. RUCKUS performed for the first time and from the applause we got from all of you, it sounded like you enjoyed it! I had a great time performing at my last Midnight Madness (sob) and RUCKUS will be performing again at the winter dance show, so be sure to come! Here are some photos of the squad at MM:

Kim and I before Midnight Madness with our awesome makeup :)

The whole squad ready to go on!

Nicole and I making loooveeelyyyy faces before we performed!

After Midnight Madness came one of my favorite days of the year-- HALLOWEEN!! Like I said last week, my roommate Mandi and I were runway models. Luckily, Halloween was a full-weekend celebration so here are some pictures from Friday's celebration-- before the Mixer!

MY SUITEMATES!!! Love these girls :)

Please note Mrs. Sarah Palin second from the left ; )

Cascino & Kingston girls - aka runway models (being fierce) bonding with Tinkerbell and Peter Pan

Jill, me and some of the guys! LOVED the Legends of the Hidden Temple costumes, guys :)

Friday was a lot of fun. I love mixers and dancing all night! Saturday was a ton of fun too. Mandi and I went to Clinique and got our make-up done... runway style ; )

Runway roomies!

Haha, sorry McGann had to put this one up... this is me and my lovely feminine friend MEGAN McGann ; )

EL TIGRE!!!
My favorite pirate and puppy dog :)

So you can see that Halloween was a blast :) Everyone went all out with their costumes and did a great job! Another exciting thing happened yesterday... we finally booked our flights for Spring Break! We booked our resort about a month ago but we finally all got together to figure out flights and now come March we're headed to... drum roll please...

COZUMEL!!!

Ahhhh I am SO excited that I will be on a sunny, sandy Mexican beach in 4 months :) What's best about spring break is that Mandi's birthday is the day we fly down and my birthday is our last day there, so we will be having so much fun celebrating birthdays in Mexico!

As for this weekend, Mandi and I have a huge paper that got pushed back and is now due Saturday night at midnight so unfortunately I know how my Saturday will be spent... tonight we're going into Boston to celebrate Coral's 22nd birthday which will be so fun! We're taking her to get her makeup done and then 6 of us are going to eat in the north end in Boston tonight.

Busy life... lots of work... fantastic weekends with people I love... sounds like Stonehill to me :)

I need to lay down...

Things that have happened to me this week:

1. My intramural beach volleyball team, the Cascino Catz, captured the title of Intramural Champions by winning our tournament in freezing fashion! My suitemates and I are now the proud owners of intramural champions t-shirts, which anyone will tell you is basically the coolest prize ever.

2. I went to the Coldplay concert on Wednesday night at the Garden in Boston and it was INCREDIBLE!!! Without of a doubt one of the top 2 concerts I have ever been to.

3. We had our first step performance at Midnight Madness last night-- way to go RUCKUUUUUUUUSSSSS!!

4. I have slept through 2 out of my 3 Brain & Behavior classes this week (Professor McCoy, if you're reading this, I apologize... please take up your anger with my faulty alarm clock)

5. The roomie and I put the final touches on our Halloween costumes-- we're being runway models :)

6. I took my last midterm of the semester

7. I realized I have a 15 page and a 10 page paper due next week

8. I realized a year ago today I was in Paris with two of my closest high school friends who were visiting me. And then I cried a little.

9. I realize that a year ago this upcoming weekend I was in London & Oxford with my Stonehill roomie... and then I cried some more.

10. I came to realize how truly vital naps are in my life...

... and on that note, I am off to take a nap to prep for the Halloween mixer tonight! I hope you all have a great time at the mixer in your costumes! Sorry there are no pictures in this post. I am so tired right now-- but if you want pictures from Midnight Madness and you're a student, there are a bunch on Facebook... I promise I'll put up pics from the concert, Midnight Madness and Halloween next week.

Thanks For Coming Out!

I am so sad right now.

One week ago today I was hanging out with so many of my favorite people, including Charles! Sorry it took me so long to post this week. I've been working on my Psychology Capstone presentation that's due tomorrow during my free moments this week. Basically, it's the equivalent of my thesis for my psychology major, and it includes an 75 minute presentation and a 15 page paper about a topic within psychology of my choosing. As you may have guessed, I chose child development so I could talk about my littles! More specifically, I decided to research whether having older siblings impacts the younger children's speed at which they reach certain learning milestones, and then based it on the family of 5 that I nanny for. Definitely a project right up my alley!

The project's been a good distraction this week, since last weekend was SO FUN! All us Stonehill girls had a great time with Charles. It was so fun showing him our school and having him meet our friends. My friend Laura turned 21 on Friday so we all went out to dinner and then out to celebrate and it was great having Charles here for that because he got to meet all my friends at once! So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA!

Naturally we took lots of photos since it was a double-ly special weekend!

Doesn't he look SO happy to see all of us?!

This is a good one of Charles, Mandi and I as we headed to dinner for Laura's 21st!

The Birthday Girl Laura and Jill :) They make such cute roomies :)

Haha, this was me imitating the non-smile face Charles (and most other guys) typically make in photos

Charles with Flicker, Janelle, JD and Mandi... now he looks happy to be at Stonehill!!

This weekend will be fun and hopefully relaxing. While I've been working on my capstone, Mandi's been studying nonstop for her 5 exams this week.... ewwwww!! She finally has her last one (bio-- eekkk!) tomorrow morning so once that and my presentation are out of the way I forsee looooonnnngggg naps for us tomorrow afternoon...

GO BLUE!

I hope you all had a lovely Columbus Day Weekend! Welcome back to school... and welcome to MIDTERMS. Ugh. I know I complained about them in my last post, but they hit me in full force post-break. I came back from a FANTASTIC weekend in Michigan (more about that in a minute) to a Brain & Behavior exam yesterday and a Modern France midterm today. I have literally spent more hours in the library this week than I have in my room, not including sleeping... ewwww. But the tests are both done now and I can relax a little bit. I need this relaxation since I also finally got the disgusting cold that everyone seems to be having on campus. Coughing, runny nose, sore throat, the works. Sooooo much fun, loved studying through that. My roomie and I are lysol-ing our room every chance we get since she's sick too, so at least we can complain to each other. 

SO... my weekend! It was so so so good to see Jessie for more than a day this time and I loved spending the weekend with her. Her roommates are hilarious and we had such a good time, even though Michigan lost the football game in the last few seconds... don't wanna talk about... but here are some pictures!

Jessie and I going out for the night :)

Michigan Stadium... no wonder they call it The Big House!

GO BLUE!

I liked this kid's shirt

Wishing I could do this every Saturday...

Sad Michigan lost, but still had a great time in the 80 degree weather!

The mass exodus of people leaving the game... I think we could fit like 500 Stonehill populations in there....

Night #2 :)

                                                                                                                                                                          

We definitely had a great weekend, even though we both had a lot of homework and studying to do. For our next reunion, we're thinking Paris June, 2009... see ya there Jess!

                                                                                                                                                                          

As for THIS weekend... I AM SO EXCITED-- my friend Charles is coming to visit! He and I studied abroad together last fall in Paris and all of us Stonehill girls pretty much adopted him as a pseudo-Stonehiller. I haven't seen him since March so I am sooooooo excited that he's coming for the weekend! His plane takes off in a couple of hours, so my friends and I are gonna hit the Senior/Faculty Cocktail for a bit, and then Jill and I are headed to Logan Airport to pick him up! Eeekkk!!! 

                                                                                                                                                                          

If you see me around campus this weekend, note the smile on my face. Us Stonehill girls are very excited to see our long-lost Charles!