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...