Go Buy Yourself Some Flowers

I believe in buying flowers. There seems to be a bit of controversy over whether flowers are a worthwhile investment. Especially when it comes to guys buying flowers for women--why not buy something that is going to last? You go spend a fortune on some plants that may be pretty but will just wither up in a few days anyway. I mean, what's the point if they just die in the end anyway? (I'm glad we don't apply this principle to people!)

I remember growing up how my mother transformed our small backyard in the middle of town to a magical garden where I would spend hours dreaming and pretending.  Playing baseball in the summer had its many danger zones, and decapitating a tulip was a cardinal sin. In fact, there were always flowers everywhere, inside or outside, whether living and thriving or dried and decorative. My mother would drag me to the nursery on a regular basis where she would teach me how to make dragonheads talk and how to bury my toes in velvety soft lamb's ear. I remember our basement as a jungle of hanging rose stems.

Do You Lose Weight in Paris?

There is an age-old paradox which exists concerning the French, and you probably know it. When one thinks of French food, it's all buttery croissants, melt-in-your-mouth macarons, rich dark chocolate, crispy baguettes, savory cheese, and wine. Lots of wine. But when one thinks of a Frenchwoman? Thin. Fashionable. And impossibly effortless. It's just not fair.

As I was packing my bags to move to Paris for a year, there was a nagging voice reminding me that my Midwestern waistline was not going to blend in with the lithe ladies of gay Paris draped seamlessly in black and cashmere. Those glorious womanly curves I was given at the ripe old age of 12 wouldn't stand for it. And you know what? That voice was right.

Going to the Movies in Paris

This week, Into the Woods premiered in Paris, or as it is called in French, Promenons-nous dans le bois. Watching my favorite musical on the big screen in my favorite city?! Sign me up! And when I saw that the film recruited the producer of Wicked (another favorite) along with the director of Chicago, all backed by Disney magic, I was beside myself with apprehension! (Chris Pine, you ask? Oh well, my #1 celeb crush in a princely getup may have had a little to do with my excitement...)

Imagine my hysteria, then, when I am stalking--er--checking the week of the supposed release, and there is one, ONE showtime at a handful of theaters, during work hours. Noooo! It couldn't be! Chris Pine needs me! I mean... The musical, needs me...I have been waiting to see this film for the past year, and now it was only showing for one night in Paris?!

That's when I got to learn a little lesson about the French cinema. So here are some dandy tips to keep in mind next time you panic because your dream movie is nowhere to be found:

When God Does Your Christmas

I also just did a post about how our dreams are so small compared to God's dreams for us. That also includes Christmas presents. And this year, He really outdid himself. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the post about how Ruth got to travel all over England for 11 days, all expenses paid. Wait, what? It's true. It's miraculous! And it was through no certain travel schemes or extreme couponing that this came about. In fact, it had nothing to do with me at all. No, this is the story of how how three families showed me the meaning of Christmas through their unbridled hospitality and selfless giving. This is my Christmas in England.

I've always dreamed of seeing where my ancestors came from, of exploring the footsteps of my mother from 20 years ago, and standing face to face with the most handsome man in the world...Big Ben! I'd come up with several plans before, but I was never able to pull it off. But never in a million years could I have dreamed up a trip like the one I just had.

This being my first Christmas abroad, I had absolutely no idea what to do while my host family traveled out of town, furnishing me with two weeks of holiday bliss to go out and explore. But explore where? I wanted to travel, but I also wanted to feel like it was Christmastime. Christmastime meant family and fireplaces and Christmas movies and singing Christmas carols. Kind of a tall order when you are living by yourself in a foreign country.

But God had a plan. Before I even had the chance to get nervous about it, my friend Emma invited me to join her family for the holidays. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever invited a foreigner to your Christmas celebration, but let me tell you, I think it's a pretty rare thing. Christmas is time with family, time for traditions. I was none of those. And yet this family who I had never met not only invited me to spend that special day with them, but to house me and feed me too. At first I felt like an inconvenience. But throughout my time there, they did so much to make me feel welcome, I couldn't imagine spending my Christmas anywhere else.

A second family to open their arms to me during the holidays was my former nanny, now with a family of her own in the quiet town of Spennymoor tucked away in the north of England. This is the same town where my mom spent some time over 20 years ago, and I was anxious to retrace her steps and meet her acquaintances. I arranged to visit her after Boxing Day (December 26th, a national holiday in England) until New Year's Eve.

But that still put me nowhere closer to my dream city of London. After some extensive research into hostels, Airbnb, train tickets, buslines, and everything else, I was on the brink of giving up the whole idea, realizing that a day to The Big Smoke was hardly worth the train ticket to get there, and the cost of staying any longer pushed me completely outside my budget. Just before I was getting ready to go, I was going over my travel plans with my host family over dinner, and they reminded me that their eldest daughter had an apartment in London and since she would be traveling with them for the holidays, why didn't I just ask her if I could camp out at her place for a few nights? I could have died from excitement.

Now just to get to all these places. No problem for God! I was able to pay for my plane ticket through my Chase reward points, and my host family's Christmas present was money for train tickets that exactly covered the rest of my tickets to London and to Spennymoor. And both my hosts in England provided transportation to and from the airport.

Spending money? Food in London? Tickets to attractions? Just the icing on the cake. My host family paid me my regular pocket money in advance, even for the two weeks I was on vacation, which covered all of my other costs while in England. You can't make this stuff up people.

You can read all these travel blogs about how to travel abroad on the cheap, but let me tell you, no cash-back rewards system or holiday travel bundle can compete with having God as your travel guide. I don't want to sound corny, but there really is no other explanation. God delights in giving gifts to His children. And not just any gifts. Big ones. He doesn't always send us where we don't want to go (though He may for a time... I've been there.) He desires to go above and beyond to have us realize our dreams. I am humbled and still a little dazed from how deeply I have felt His hospitality and generosity and love through so many people over the past two weeks.

So now that you know HOW I got to travel all over England during my Christmas break, in my next few posts, you'll get to see WHAT and WHO I got to see! Stay tuned, darlings!

A Different Kind of NYE

No champagne flutes, no flashy dresses. No glittery glasses or lip-rimmed mustaches. No frittering of friends or flickering of fireworks.

This New Year finds me propped against some overstuffed suitcases in an echoing airport, double-checking my boarding times and calculating taxi fares and subway routes home. Sound depressing? Think again. I'm flying home from a 11-day vacation in England to my home in Paris. I couldn't think of a more appropriate way to ring in 2015.

What a difference a year makes. 

Driving in Paris

I had one lesson at a driving school here in Paris before I officially took the wheel. My driving instructor gave a generous eye roll when he learned I didn't speak French (other than "un café, s'il vous plaît), and begrudgingly escorted me to the car. His confidence was reassuring. He actually seemed rather congenial, like someone I might enjoy a conversation with if either of us knew anything more than right and left, alle and arrete in each other's language. As it was, he got continually frustrated at my lack of conversational skills as I tried not to kill us. Priorities, you know.

Now three months later, driving in Paris has become one of my favorite activities of being an au pair. While the adrenaline rush has lessened considerably from when I first revved out into an economy car-packed roundabout, it has been replaced with a calm understanding of the rhythm of the rue, like taking my place in a daily dance. I am so glad I get the opportunity to drive in Paris as an au pair because getting behind the wheel is as much a part of learning the culture as the food or the language. But as with any immersion experience, there are some real surprises along the way.

Here are the big shocks (that's a little car pun, folks) of my driving experience in Paris:

December Blues

Winter has finally come to Paris. After a delightfully drawn out autumn, the chestnut trees are finally shaking the last of their amber leaves from their limbs. The city seems to fold in on itself, the streets getting quieter and the days getting shorter. Pedestrians buried under bundles of scarves and hats, rushing from one warm spot to the next, flooding the metro and bus lines.

I am one of those people who is affected by weather, truly affected. If it's rainy, I feel melancholy and introverted. If it's sunny and warm, you'll find me dancing on the streets. But this Paris winter is really doing a number on me. I feel like everything I do is in slow motion, like I'm pulling my arms and legs through a thick mud. I can't seem to fully wake up, as if I'm only 80% there most of the time. It's like my mind is reverting hibernation, and my body is begrudgingly following.
My girl Sara gets me.

I always feel more quiet, more reflective in the wintertime, but I think being an expat makes everything a little more quiet, a little more solemn during the holidays. It hits right after Thanksgiving, after thumbing through everyone's white square pictures of pumpkin pie and family portraits. You realize you have a whole month of holidays away from home headed your way.

It's rounding out that dreaded third month now, the month during a transition that makes you feel like you are going to break. All the au pair blogs and expat forums say it: "Whatever you do, don't leave before month 4," they said. "The fourth month is the hardest month, stick with it," they said. And now I know. By now I've visited most of the big sights to see in Paris, I've explored the neighborhoods, I've met the new people. The novelty is rubbing off, even for Paris.

And my novelty with people from back home is rubbing off too. Friends have moved on, made changes, started new seasons of life, without me. Texts don't come as often. Scheduling FaceTime and Skype dates becomes more difficult. Excuses come more often about not having time, when really they simply aren't making time. And some friends just fall away altogether, because the only thing we had in common was proximity. But it's part of the whole experience, spending a year abroad. It's a new level of independence you learn when you step away from your comfortable cushion of familiarity. It's something special that only being an expat can give you. 

So while I won't give in entirely to these December blues, I will just give in enough, enough to learn about myself and my heart. I will not go back to bed in the morning, no matter how much I want to; I will go get lost in a museum or library. I think that's the key to surviving the dreaded fourth month: not to give in, but to give out. Not to ignore the colder, more somber feelings blowing through the brain, but to use them. Not to drift around in a listless fog of denial, but to excavate the heart, to take advantage of the cave-seeking instincts to find the treasure buried deep within.  Channeling those winter blues into discovering or developing a new layer of yourself. Change forces you to choose, to choose sorrow or joy, to choose to be a victim or a champion. As for me, I choose to be a champion for joy.

Besides, Christmas is just around the corner....

A French Friendsgiving

Some people get worried about being abroad for holidays. But I think this is one of the most enriching experiences for a traveler. It immediately bonds you with other expats from your country and allows you to really consider why the holiday exists (especially when people outside of your culture start asking questions about it). Plus trying to hunt down traditional dishes in a foreign country, even developed ones, can be full of challenges and surprises. (For example, a small can of Libby's pumpkin puree will run you about 5€ each.) 

America Saved the World

Wow, could I get a little more presumptuous? 
I mean, isn't the whole point of moving to another country to appreciate their culture, not your own?
It's not like we were the only ones in the war, ya know.
How typically American of me. 
No wonder other countries hate us...

All the thoughts that raced through my mind when I wrote the title of this blog post. And yet, I'm still going to write it. Because sometimes we get caught up focusing on our modern problems and forget the good this country has done. Because this Veterans Day is different, because today I'm living in a country that is celebrating a freedom we helped win for them.