pre-ex-aupair

It is the evening of my 4th night now in Paris (well Vélizy-Villacoublay). A lot has happened, and I am still not fluent in French, I really wish the language would just hurry up and enter my brain, or my brain would just hurry up and suck it in, because being a deaf mute is not so fun.

Since am v. stubborn, I refuse to (or try to not) talk to anyone in English besides Ariane and Juliette, which makes me as talkative as a cherry tree in dead winter. The family is so awesome and does so much for me I wish I could be more animated (as in talk), but everytime I talk, it's either to ask a question or answer one, there's not much other conversation. I did talk to Ariane quite a bit when we went to the forest, and found out that there's a sound that she can't pronounce in her otherwise perfect English accent. she says "red" "wed" and "road" "woad", it's really quite cute.

Last night we went to dinner with Ariane's best friend Natasha's family at Hippopotumus. Isn't it cool or the kids' families just get together to have dinner? instead of the kid bumming along with the parents, it's the other way around! on the way home, Ariane showed me her cellphone/mp3player/camera, and played something by Amel Bent, which Sabine said made her want to vomit; so Sabine put on "Highway to Hell" by ACDC on the car stereo, and so started the mother-daughter fight to shut off the other's music player. Later they compromised on French hiphop, which was actually pretty cool, even though i normally loathe hiphop. Amaury told me that Sabine started dancing hiphop a few months before Juliette was born. I wish MY mom would dance hiphop during pregancy!

This morning Ariane was sad because the ex-owner of the house took away her cat. That and she had to go to piano class.

Amaury and Sabine took me to the Latin Quarter today--one of my favorite areas in the city! It's really cool to see the same streets I walked on last year, even the cool jewelry stores I saw with Michelle and Kristoffer. but the 300 euro tibetan necklace was gone. I'll just have to go to tibet soon. oh and they bought me the prettiest postcards for my room! well...I chose them, so obviously i think they're pretty. They wanted to buy me some posters, but the poster were all too big, and I didn't want them to spend so much money, so I went the other extreme and bought postcards. I did see some posters of Miles Davis and BB King by Jeff Sedlik! I shall email and tell him.

We all had pizza for dinner except Juliette and Ariane--Juliette, well, doesn't have teeth and doesn't know anything but baby formula; Ariane was not in a good mood, and threw a tantrum when Amaury tried to make her eat. I wish we were closer already so I would know what's going on. Actually, I wish I were Jessamyn. I'm sure Ariane misses her a lot. I'm a bit nervous about how it's going to go with Ariane, who's not quite comfortable with me yet. Well she needs time, of course, especially at age 12, and with so many changes in her life. I'm really glad/excited/relieved/worried that Jess is coming tomorrow to stay for a week. I'm looking forward to talkint to her; but I don't know if that'll make it even harder for Ariane to move on. well we'll see. I'm trying to sleep early so I can go to Mark's friend Nahoko's house tomorrow.

below is my first email before I started the blog:

I'm got in France in one piece, yay!

I have an internet phone with a US number, it works great but isn't plugged in all the time. the number: 562-239-4908 my US cell also forwards to this number.

my family is fantastique!

baby juliette is tres adorable, she smiles and makes baby noises a lot, but she refuses to lie there when she's awake, you have to hold her so she's sitting up, otherwise she cries. Ariane talks in a perfect british accent, because her last aupair (and all her teachers i think, are english) but I have trouble understanding her most of the time because she talks way too fast. Her parents tell me they don't understand her french either! The parents are so cool, Sabine is on maternity leave still, so she's been helping me a lot with settling in and driving me around; Amaury doesn't have paternity leave, and comes home quite late.
The house is super cute! my room is painted a beautiful light peach/yellow. It's a tiny room but i did manage to fit all my stuff (including my clothes!) Apples fall on my roof every few seconds and it feels like being caught in a cross fire in compton (have had none such experience, pure speculation). My room has a separate entrance from the rest of the house, the house is pretty big, lots of rooms on different floors (seems like 1 room per floor or half). The basement is their music room with drumset and electric guitars and giant alien sound equipment; the parents' rock band has rehearsals there.

I went to Paris yesterday to register for my french classes, 10 hours a week, but it doesn't start for another month...booo... The train ride home from paris took 15 minutes, but this being my first time not being driven, I had a nice long walk getting lost in the forest; and it didn't help that 2 people gave me bad directions and sent me to another lake that was not near my house. Luckily I found 2 joggers that knew my street.

I'm going to try to meet up with Joanna and Ryan from school (art center) tomorrow. I'll post some photos later.

bises!

Cherry
p.s. I was in NY for a bit before coming here, and that was awesome, met with some photo editors, visited friends, randomly ran into some friends, did a couple of shoots, and lined up some work for here! yay NY!