Barcelona Fun

Third leg of my journey was to the slightly warmer Spanish city known as BARCELONA. It was here I met up with 3 other au pair friends I had made in Geneva. By the time I got to Barcelona I was happy on several levels; 1.) the temperature (while still needing a coat) was much warmer than London where I had come, 2.) prices had become more bearable here than in Paris or London, and finally 3.) I was meeting with friends I knew! I had just spent 7 days not having any friend to share the fun sights with. I was so excited to see friendly faces we could have done just about anything and I would have been happy.

I got in late Thursday and trained in to meet the other gals, after finding a hostel we ended up in a hotel style room that had all our beds and a bathroom in the same private room. This seemed very hotel like for me, since up to this point I was in rooms lined with bunk beds and shared the bathroom with the whole floor. (dorm style) This trip was ending on a great note, and thankfully Barcelona didn’t disappoint.

The Beach was near but we were far from beach bums- too much to see in the large city. Jenna, Mavis, Taryn, and I started out early Friday for our Tour Bus Day. We spent most of the day touring around and seeing all of Barcelona’s sites. My favorite places to see were buildings architected by a man named Gaudi. He lived in the early 20th century and was in a modern class all his own. He used nature as his inspiration, and you can see the uniqueness in his buildings.

La Rambla is one of the main streets in the city that gives a taste of the Barcelona life, with markets, vendors, and street performers. The one market we went to was very large and filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats. The meat was a wide selection- (larger than I’d ever seen) it included everything from chicken, beef, lamb heads, full fish, dead rabbits hanging by their feet, and possible dog (that’s questionable) very unique experience, however the market was fabulous, and it had really great fruit smoothies that were very fresh.

That night we felt pretty proud of ourselves for walking a good distance away from the main tourist areas to a back alley, hole in the wall restaurant. We felt like we were among the locals, even though with our American accents stood out like a sore thumb.

The next day we spent the morning at the Beach before I trained to the airport. At the beach we relaxed and took many a posed pictures that were intended to look natural. Not to mention finding the perfect seashells to pack in our bags for home.

By the time I touched down in Geneva, I was happy to be back, and very satisfied with my traveling stint. I was a bit tired from going non-stop for about 10days, but satisfied with seeing most everything I set out to see.

London is Cold this time of year

I should preface this leg of the adventure in the UK, that I thought the city was great, and I really appreciated being able to speak English to everyone- and understand all the signs in the subway. However, the first two words that come to mind when I think of London and the UK, cold and expensive.

After the Paris high, this leg didn’t reach the same height, however it was uniquely wonderful. Several things contributed to this leg really not getting off to the best start. For starters I just had all my spending cash stolen from me, the exchange rate hits you like a ton of bricks at 2:1. (so all the prices I was used to in the states, you might as well just double it.), and finally it was FREEZING cold, and my 2 hour train ride to see my cousin turned into a 4hour trip. Alright, that is the only whining I’ll do.

I met my cousin Sharon at the Birmingham train station where we continued onto her house in the small town of Warsall. Thankfully the house was warm and we had Internet. I was able to catch up some email and the very great friend connector/spy—facebook. After having a relaxing day to catch up on sleep, Sharon and I trekked it to a town called Stratford-Upon-Avon where the famous William Shakespeare was born. The town has stayed pretty persevered from Shakespeare’s time, so it was neat stepping back into history. Also I didn’t realize the editing that has been done to Shakespeare’s work, and realized that not all his work was meant for the PG audiences.

After a successful stay in Warsall, I continued onto the big city lights of London. How grand. The first day I had one thing on my mind… get a half-priced Theater Ticket to a big London Show. Mission accomplished, and the show you ask?? Les Miserable. I had so many favorites parts, not to mention just sitting and smiling the whole time because I was there, but everything from the singing to the atmosphere. One memorable moment: there was a moment in the play where the electronic set equipment had a slight malfunction, only no one in the audience knew anything was wrong until they dropped the curtain and told everyone they needed a couple minutes to fix the set. The house lights came on and everyone started chatting, namely the people behind me, how they didn’t realize anything was wrong. To that one lady piped in.. “Well I’m just happy this play is in English”.
Yes Madame.. me too- (inside this comment made me die with laughter) While we are in the English speaking country of England, I will give her the benefit of the doubt that the play’s title is in French.

After successfully looking at London’s most famous shopping strip and not being able to buy anything, I quickly realized that this city was too expensive for me. The following day was full of my Original Bus Tour. Great plan to see all the big spots when you only have one day, and you want someone to tell you a bit about the history as you go. I got to see the famous London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abby, London Eye, Buckingham Palace, and my favorite St. Paul’s Cathedral. Inside I was able to climb successfully to the top and get some great panoramas of the city. Another highlight, besides the fact that this royal majestic gate of heaven cathedral ☺ was gorgeous, but at the top was a whispering gallery. This was located around the dome of the cathedral, so you can whisper on one side, and the person on the opposite side can hear as if the person is standing next to them. Pretty cool.

Day 3 was a walking tour to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. No I didn’t see the Queen directly, however she was in the Palace. How do I know, well I did see the Prime Minister drive up for his monthly chat with the Queen, or so my tour guide told me. I believe him, he was a legit Brit.

While this trip I wasn’t robbed by any pickpocketers, I did feel a bit robbed by the government and the exchange rate. Haha what can you do- except move the party on over to Spain!

PARIS- 2nd Time Still Lovely

It is really official, there is something magical about this city for me. Once you hear the end of my Paris trip story you will see the huge dampener that happened at the end… however it can’t take away from the magic inside.

I decided with my time in Europe widdling down, that I just couldn’t go back to the states without visiting some of the major cities I set out to see when I came over, namely Paris and London. Au pair friends were conveniently going to Barcelona at the end of my trip, so I thought it very convenient to end my adventure there with them. The following entry is dedicated to my time in Paris!

I arrived a little at ease about the subway system and getting around, thanks to my previous visit there a few weeks earlier. Nonetheless, I started the trip a bit weary of not getting lost and staying safe in the big city alone.

With that… I had my backpack, running shoes, and camera- COMPLETE TOURIST. If you have been to Europe at all you know how stylish everyone is, so the running shoes and backpack made me stick out like a sore thumb. I didn’t even care.

Mission was to hit the things I missed the first time around. In about a 30 hour period of time… I did just that. It might be better if I just do the run down
Musee D’Orsay: Picasso special exhibit, Renior/Monet… amazing in person
Notre Dame: had to go again to see inside
Saint Chappelle: All Stained Glass (favorite)- depicts the bible with over 13,000 small stained glass pictures.
Conceirgerie: Old Paris Prison where they held the famous Marie Antoinette before she was beheaded.
Opera House: I pretended I was a Royal Opera Performer while I was there. Most beautiful hall I have ever seen
Champs Elyse: famous shopping strip
Sacre Coeur: (sacred heart cathedral) enormous dome- outside the church was a stunning panorama of the city.
Montmartre: real artsy area in the city. Ran across a small market square where artists were selling their paintings. Talented

So my time was full- and with each part I just kept thinking to myself.. “Paris just keeps getting better.” Well I should have known that after having such a Paris High I was a bit hazy in going to the airport. It was the one time I put my money belt in my backpack. You know where I am going with this. Yes I was pick-pocketed and had 250 euro stolen.
I could have been a lot worse off- but thankfully they didn’t take my passport or credit cards. A bit mad at the thieves, and myself; it was onto my next destination… England!

(if you are dieing to see more pictures you can either email me or go to my facebook page)

more to come...

I am really behind on updates but I have been literally jammed packed for the last month. I will update this blog- but know that more in depth blogs will hopefully be soon to come.

I have spent the last 10 days traveling from Paris to London to Barcelona. Along with the updates, the weekend before I left for one of Switzerland’s main cities called Zurich. I went with the au pair group. We had fun trying to stay warm and visiting Zurich’s big Christmas Market. Zurich is known as having the highest standard of living in the world. I believe it- for being a good sized city I didn’t see any poor or beggars. They are a bit confident/cocky about their city that they refer to themselves as Switzerland’s First City. A little presumptuous- probably.

My solo journey the following week was one packed with tourist spots, hostels, and adventure of course. I will look forward to writing entries of each one individually. Just thought I would give a little teaser to keep everyone hanging in suspense for the next entries.
Haha really just excusing my laziness in writing

Glorious Paris and Snowy L'abri

One would think that I with the time I have I would be able to crank out almost daily reports to my blog. However- I seem to have found myself busy these last couple of weeks and realized I was several adventures behind on the blog.

Several weeks ago a friend from Seattle, named Jim, came out to Paris for his company’s trade show. I have been anxiously waiting for a reason to go to Paris, so I decided to coincide my visit with when he was going to be there.

Paris was absolutely Glorious! It started for me very early on a Saturday morning, as I think I had the first flight out of Geneva. I got in to a very dreary and rainy Paris, but I didn’t even care. I was so happy to be there. The first day I went to the Paris Expo where Jim taught me the wonderful world of Electric Mirrors. Sadly my vision of having working the trade show and orchestrating a half a million deal for Electric Mirror with an attractive French man never became reality. ☺

That night we did Landmark #1: Eiffel Tower.
Amazing- it was bigger than I thought it would be. I was thinking it would be relatively the same size as the Space Needle in Seattle. I was wrong, the base of the Tower was massive. Myself, Jim, and three other guys that work for Jim all decided to climb the stairs to the second level of the tower- and than take the elevator the rest of the way up. It was great and the stairs were manageable. I think I could have climbed the whole way to the top if they would have let me. At night the Tower is illuminated with blue lights, but on the hour it would glitter with white lights. By the time is was said and done, we saw the lights glitter three times- hence letting us know we were there three hours.

Sunday- turned into ultra tourist day. Jim and I were quite on a mission to see Paris. We started with the Opera House- (which wasn’t open, so I’ll have to go back). From there we went to a pretty church called Madeleine, Place de la Concord, The Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, and the famous Notre Dame.

Highlights from that are definitely The Louvre, and Notre Dame. It is almost impossible to do all of the Louvre in one day, but it was so beautiful I wouldn’t mind living there a week. One thing that started to become quite comical during the visit to the Louvre was the difficulty of the ‘guided tour’ headset Jim and I rented. You would think that in a place like the Louvre it would be just bursting with information to tell you through your headphones. However that wasn’t the case. The actual pieces of art that had commentary attached weren’t as many as one would think. You knew that whole place was just bursting with history and stories and we couldn’t access it. All the literature was in French on the walls, so there was a good deal that went over my head. Don’t ask me about the history of the Louvre because that section of the museum was all French descriptions with no audio. Still a little upset about that. Haha

Good news is, I am going back in a week to explore more of that city, as well as discover some of its famous shopping!

The following weekend, European traveler Jim and I, headed to mountain town in Switzerland called Aigle- more specifically Huemoz (way-mo). We went to discover a place Jim knew about called L’abri. In French L’abri is known as “The Shelter”. A Christian philosopher/theologian named Francis Schaffer created this place called L’abri as a place where Christians or people looking into Christianity could get away and really study and dive into some of their questions to get some answers. It is quite the getaway spot in this Chalet up in the Mountains. After we got there Friday night, we got a foot of snow! It was exactly what you would expect this mountain house in Switzerland would look like with a lot of snow and the Alps all around you. We were near a little town but nothing too big. So for most cities in the U.S. this would have caused at least some school delays. Not for the Swiss- they have this snow removal thing down. The roads were clear by morning and everyone had snow tires. Even the buses weren’t afraid to go on the steep roads. Amazing.

The weekend was great, and I met a lot of neat people who all were staying and studying at L’abri. (there was roughly 25 people living in and around the house) There were several other houses around the main house called Chalet Bellevue, as well as a chapel.

Sunday night I returned safely back to Geneva where I have unpacked and hopped right back into the weekly routine. This week I am starting to help plan the 4 year olds 5th birthday party for next week. Lucca very sweetly decided he only wanted one friend to come. After we reminded him that the more friends you invite to a party the more presents you get- he said- “Your right, I’ll invite 2” haha oh the innocence.

French Countryside and a little Halloween Fun

There is plenty to update on and this blog while it may seem long to some, will be very edited down. I have been pre-occupied with several things
1. processing through my next stage of life. (as I mentioned in my previous blog the family and I have decided that it is better for them to find another au pair after the first of the year. With that I will be staying home after Christmas, and God willing moving back to Seattle.)
2. I’m not going to lie- I am hook line and sinker into the tv series 24. I have been through 2 seasons in about 3 weeks. Yes folks, that is about 48hours of Jack Bauer. I am in love.

So mid October the kids were on fall break, so I went with Sophie and the 4 kids to the middle of France. Now when I say countryside in the middle of France- I am neither joking nor exaggerating. I can’t even really tell you what town I was in nor was it really near a major city. There was a lot of farmland and you would go through small cities that had a common thread of the building and houses being from the 1800’s and the towns based around a gothic style church. The church was needed in the olden days to inform the people of an attack or any other important message that needed to reach the people. It was neat to see such old buildings. With that the country houses where we were are about 15% occupied by farmers and 75% vacations houses. So the week we were there, the only other living things I would see on walks were the cows.
It was 10 days with no internet, 6 kids, three other adults, and plenty of time to try to understand more of the French language.
(it was here I finished season 4 or 24, and became officially hooked.) I also had plenty of time to watch some classic 80’s movies.
Due to the rain we ended up coming home a day early- in which Sophie and I were more than happy to get back to civilization.

Our first couple days at home were filled with us preparing for our big Halloween Bash with 4 extra people staying in the house. I was in charge of the games- and decided that I would do some classic favorites like wrap your friend in toilet paper and let them run and of course a Scavenger Hunt. The chaos and noise of 6 kids really prepared me for the chaos that walked through the door that night which was a total of 13 kids ranging from 4-11yrs. Good news we moved some of the breakable things out of the big room- so we were just hoping for no hospital visits.
We promptly started serving the sugar at 3pm and I don’t believe that table was without a child until they left at 6pm.
Overall it was a success, the kids all became a little closer with their new friends, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves (at least the candy)
Afterward I went out for some much needed wine with a couple of other au pair friends.

Now the day before the party was the American Holiday you may know as Halloween. Well that holiday is not as popular or known about as it is in the states. I helped the kids carve their first pumpkin. They were not keen on touching the insides- only on directing me where to put the goo. Afterward we decided to go to a couple of house and ‘Trick or Treat” Now the kids had been wearing their costumes every night for a week- so the 6 of them didn’t need to spend much time getting dressed when I agreed to take them out.
I layed down the ground rules before we hit the first house. Ring the bell, say ‘trick or treat’, and than say thank you when your done.
Here is what followed on the learning curve:
First house- rang the doorbell, when the neighbor answered the door proceeded to ask in French ‘ we would like candy please’
(laughing behind- had to remind- no you say ‘trick or treat’)

Second house- knock on the door, no one answers, the middle boy proceeds to open the unlocked door, stick his head in and say ‘trick or treat’. (again laughing and scolding, used this as a teaching moment)

house three- under control!

I think they had a good time, bc the oldest informed me that the next night we would be going again to more houses- I had to burst her bubble by informing that this great night is but once a year.

I don’t think the neighbors would have known the difference. We got mostly confused looks when we came to the door, and all had to rummage through their cupboards for something to give the kids. The loot included oranges, fizz drinks, and an opened bag of chocolate covered peanuts. The night made me smile.

This weekend I am preparing for a weekend in Paris. Pretty pumped to visit the one city in Europe I have been most excited about seeing since I first decided I wanted to do this crazy au pair thing.

Swiss Alps

After the Cow Festival many of adventures have taken place, as well as many life changes that continue to make me feel as if I am riding this rollercoaster. Through the chaos it has been good to remind myself some truths about God- he is in control, and he loves me very much.

Two verses I have kept close:
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Psalm 37:7 “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him”

To start with the fun stuff- I went to a town in Switzerland called Zermatt for the weekend with the Au Pair Club. There were 64 other au pairs that went. It was unbelievable in every aspect. It was so great to meet so many friends in one spot, and not to mention you are in one of the most beautiful parts of God’s creation. Zermatt is located right in the middle of the Alps near the Italian border. You have a close view of the Matterhorn, which if anyone has been to Disneyland you have seen Disney’s rendition of it. The weather was perfectly clear for the weekend. The first day we took a small hike up to this small restaurant run out of a log cabin. Very quaint with heads of all kinds of animals inside (not just your average deer) Her specialty was an apple strudel with vanilla sauce. Delightful!
Day 2 was the major hike. We rode the train to the highest point at 3000 meters or a little over 10,000 feet. At the top was breathtaking views of the Alps that just sent chills up your spine. From there we proceeded to hike down the mountain- estimated hike time 3 or 4 hours.

I made friends with 7 other gals who were all staying in the hostel room with me. They are really great, and we plan to do more trips together. We decided we would stick together. At the top was snow and slippery slopes. I wasn’t expecting the danger of small paths that have a steep drop off, and you are sliding down the hill because you can’t get traction with your shoes. Hiking sticks wouldn’t have been a bad investment.
The funny thing is we all would be hiking and than all of a sudden one person would burst out the phrase.. “can you believe we are in the Alps?”
Though the trail was rough 64 au pairs came home from the mountain experience alive and with some great pictures.

Since than I have hit up my first Geneva Museum- it is the museum of the Reformation and Saint Pierre’s Cathedral. My dad would have loved the Cathedral, being an architect/ art history prof, because in the basement they had a museum of the archeological site. So you could see the parts of the original cathedral dating back to the late 4th century, providing evidence of Geneva's pivotal role in the development of Christianity. It may sound like a snooze to some, but I really get off on history stuff like that.

The following weekend I hit up another great swiss town called Montreux. This quaint water city is best know for two things 1.)in the summer it has one of the biggest Jazz festivals in the world and than 2.) the Chateau de Chillion
Sadly I wasn’t there for the Jazz festival but The Chateau de Chillion was awesome. It felt like you were stepping into the Middle Ages. I just envisioned myself in a movie, and I could see the entire scene unfold before my eyes. The castle itself was built near the early 1500’s. It is located at the head of lake Geneva and proves to be a strategic spot before entering the Alps.

I really have enjoyed the Museums and the site seeing new towns. So much history and I have only really touched Switzerland.

On another front, there is a good chance that I may be coming home earlier than the year time period. Believe it or not I am quite relieved and looking forward to it. There were some issues I needed to iron out with my family, and while our meeting was very good, we peacefully decided that we didn’t see eye to eye on some things, and we weren’t a good fit for each other. Due to that, I won’t be coming back to the family after Christmas. Now I could easily find another family if I so choose- however I don’t think I will do that. Au pairing is best I feel for girls out of high school- not so much for someone who has lived on her own for 6 years and doesn’t find playing with kids the passion of her life. Living with another family is quite a humbling experience. There are a lot of freedoms you give up and it is a big adjustment. So for those reasons and others I am happy to move forward.

Prayer request definitely for what direction I head next. I have a hunch what I might do, but nothing is set in stone.

Jesus is good, and has provided me with great support and friendships over here. I continue to realize that he is my real source of Joy.

Peace In Him