Francophile in the West

GREAT news today!! I am officially half way to my savings goal for my return to France ** AND ** I just submitted my application for the Teaching Assistant Program!!!!!!! Holy eff, I am SO excited!!! I can barely contain myself and process the thought that I have to wait until April to hear back from the program! You can choose three regions where you would prefer to teach. I picked the following regions, in this order: NANTES! GRENOBLE! NANCY-METZ! We'll see where I land... :-) December 20th was my 6-month-iversary with the UW (half way done!!), and two years ago today, on December 22nd, 2009, I was spending my last evening studying abroad in France revisiting my favorite places in Paris. I remember I was so sad to leave, but I couldn't WAIT until I could come back!! Keep your fingers crossed that good news comes to me at the beginning of April! Joyeux Noël à tous!!

Christmas is in one week... How ridiculous! But, it is an exciting time of year. My sister and brother-in-law just moved into their very first house, Kris is currently driving through Canada on his way back to hibernate in Seattle for a few months (!!), and I'll be spending several days at home with my family for the holiday. It's amazing how quickly the year goes by in general, but once November hits, the last two months seem to go by at ludicrous speed with everything that goes on! My roomies and I hosted a very successful holiday potluck with four other friends this past week. People brought tapas and holiday drinks and we had a great time. There was also a rather hilarious game night last night with fierce competition over the game "Mille Bournes". It was awesome, haha. Other than that, work is going well and life is good! I'm getting into some excellent nitty-gritty at work that I've been looking forward to and I'm still/always daydreaming about F...

A few weeks ago, I had a special task at work: to be a model for a photoshoot with our Admissions photographer!! We went out on the wettest, most typical fall Seattle day you could think of and I got to sport some Husky rain gear and stomp around in puddles across the campus. It was cold and wet and super fun! One of the photos is currently featured on the front page of the UW Admissions website. What a privilege to be a UW "poster girl"! I do love my alma mater. :) All photos courtesy of and copyright Katherine Turner, UW Admissions.

Kris was in town this past week! He left a bit earlier this evening, so now I'm updating my blog because I don't know what to do with my life for the rest of the night until it's time for bed... :-\ We had a wonderful week together, but then again, we always love spending time with each other and going on random adventures! We did a lot of walking around town: on Tuesday, we walked all around Ballard, Magnolia, and Discovery Park; on Friday night, we walked around Capitol Hill and Downtown/Belltown; yesterday, we walked around Wallingford and the U-District; today, we walked around View Ridge, Wedgewood, and Magnuson Park! Lots of walking. The weather has been beautiful, so it's been the perfect time to be outside. It's honestly been exceptionally nice weather for late November/early December, I love it! We were trying to see "The Cave Singers" on Capitol Hill, but the concert was sold out, so we wound up in Belltown at the Crocodile for a concert by...

If you happen to have a Netflix account and can watch videos online or if you're looking for a good movie to randomly rent, I highly recommend these two films: "Waste Land" (Youtube trailer) "Life in a Day" (Youtube trailer) Kris is in town this week (so wonderful to have him here!!!) and we watched both of these films and they are mind-blowingly fantastic. The first one is about a Brazilian-born US artist who returns to Brazil and creates beautiful portraits of "pickers"; people who pick up recyclable materials from the largest landfill in the world, right outside of Rio de Janeiro. He gives them all of the proceeds from the artwork to help to change their lives. These peoples' daily lives before he comes along are beyond belief and inspiring. For the second one, the directors/producers had an open call for any and all amateur and professional videos shot from around the world on the same day of the year. They then compiled a bunch of vide...

What a great week! Wednesday was my 23rd birthday. Roomie K and Roomie S made me another amazing birthday cake!! This year, it was a couple of hedgehog-shaped German chocolate cakes with almond slivers. They are delicious! I took one of them home to share with my family and am looking forward to eating the other one when I return to Seattle. Thanksgiving was wonderful, definitely one of the best on record. We had 10 people and a newborn hanging out at my folk's house and my mom cooked up the most delicious turkey! The leftovers keep a'coming- on tonight's menu is turkey soup with dumplings (one of my all-time favs). So, all is well. The rainy November weather has definitely set in, but it's still beautiful with all the fall leaves. I can't wait to return to Seattle tomorrow because Kris will be waiting for me at the train station! I'm so glad we'll get to spend the rest of the week together. :)

Roomie K, Roomie A, Roomie K's friend, and I went to Seattle's Beaujolais nouveau wine festival this weekend! Holy cow, what a blast! It was a super-swanky celebration; delicious food and hors d'oeuvres, an actual ice sculpture, and wine for days! All four of us girls decided that the mussels they served were our absolute favorite. We could have easily eaten hundreds of those things. So delicious! I'm really glad we all went. It was a heck of a party and a great excuse for me to pre-celebrate my 23rd birthday. :) Also recently, I had the chance to meet the Husky mascot, Dubs, at work! Admissions had a 'Bring your dog to work' day, and Dubs stopped by Schmitz Hall to say hello. He is such a cutie! He's very well behaved and *loves* to get his picture taken. Last week was excellent and I'm very much looking forward to my birthday and Thanksgiving this next week! I'm always down for having a few days off of work and getting to spend time with my family....

The roomies and I went to the Washington state-shapped corn maze up in Snohomish last weekend with our good friend and her cute family. We had a blast! We braved the maze (and even did the maze scavenger hunt!), picked pumpkins to carve, picked up apple cider, and I took pictures of our friend and her family. It was a great day of celebrating the fall. More stories and photos after this set: Kris was in town for a week! OH man, it was so wonderful to have him here. He really likes the new place I landed in with Roomie A and Roomie K and we had a great time wandering around Seattle taking photos and going out for drinks (on multiple nights! :) ) A couple of pictures from that week: In other news, exactly two years ago, I was in France with Kris enjoying drinks in Old Town Nice and watching the crazy French Halloween celebrations go on around us. I can't wait to get back to Europe!!

Actually, I have travel fever, to be specific. Hooooly crap, do I want to leave the country ASAP. This Tuesday was my three-month-iversary at the UW. Nine more months to go... Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic job and the people are awesome and I'm even going to be flying off to Arizona for a week to recruit new Huskies, but a work trip to Arizona doesn't quite have the same appeal as going to Germany for Oktoberfest, FINALLY going to Italy and returning to Spain, and then spending the better part of the year hanging out in France. I must keep reminding myself that I'll get there soon! It's not as far away as I think. I'm just jealous because the majority of my good or decent friends from my graduating class at the UW have left for internships, jobs, or youthful play abroad. I'm pouting because I want to go, too!! I'll get there... That said, I can't believe it's pretty much October. What a wild year. A trip to Arizona is coming up, I'l...

I had the best Labor Day long weekend EVER!!! First off, it was amazing to have a three-day weekend, of course. But, I was outside and exploring all sorts of new places, which is always amazing. Roomie K, Roomie S, Roomie S' boyfriend, and I went out to Roomie K's parent's cabin on Lake Cavanaugh and swam, cruised around the lake, and barbequed all day on Saturday. On Sunday, Roomie K and I went backpacking and hit the Park Butte trail in the Mt. Baker National Forest. Hoooooly crap, it was the most amazing hike I've ever been on! It was 3.5 miles at a pretty good grade the whole way; the hike ends at the Park Butte Lookout on the very top of this awesome ridge that's right in front of Mt. Baker at about 5,400 feet. We were the first overnighters at the lookout, so we totally snatched it to stay in! It's a 14' x 14' building with an old rickety bed, some cooking supplies, table & chairs, and a 360-degree catwalk from which you can see Baker, the Casc...

It seems like as soon as a new month starts, every weekend is immediately filled with travels and adventures! June was full of graduation and new job excitement; July was filled with weekend hikes, a wedding, a week of work training in San Diego, and a concert; August has already seen an epic bike trip on Lopez Island and will see a bridal shower, a funeral, more training for work, and a move. Wow! I am loving all the excitement, new places, and time with friends and family. All four of the roomies went on a 25+ mile bike ride around Lopez Island this past Saturday. It was hard work, but it was gorgeous! I had never been to the San Juans before. I would love to check out the other islands now. Check out the pictures below! We all went to the Matisyahu concert at the end of July, which was amazing. He's such an incredible artist: an Orthodox Jewish reggae singer/beatboxer. So awesome! His sound is so unique, it's great. Well, at the end of this month, everyone will b...

A few highlights from my recent adventures! I went to a wedding with Kris in the middle of the month that was just beautiful. Right next to Mt. Si in North Bend and the weather couldn't have been more awesome; a thunderstorm passed right over the mountain, but we didn't get rained on! It was a wonderful weekend for Kris and I. We're making really good progress and are consistently feeling better and better. Roomie Kate's 21st birthday was not too long ago, and the other roomies and I had a blast introducing her to bar life in Ballard with a big group of her friends! I think she'd agree that she had an awesome birthday. :) I just got back from a fantastic week-long business trip down to San Diego for training/continuing education stuff for work. Holy crap, it was wonderful to see the sun and have it be hot enough to actually feel it burning my skin! Summer in Seattle this year is pretty crappy (although it's been beautiful the past couple of days), so it was refr...

Here are some photos I took during Seattle's 4th of July fireworks show over Lake Union. It's always so fulfilling to use my SLR and take great pictures! Makes me want to get out for photo adventures much more often. :-) Enjoy!