Re-bonjour!

Hello again! After a month of blogging silence, we're back! The "end of the world"(aka, false alarm, again) happened, returning to the US happened, Christmas and New Year's Eve happened, 2013 came around, and now I'm back in France! Here's a bit of a recap:

Well, holy cow, those first four months in Europe sure did fly by fast!! Classes wrapped up nicely for the first semester and C. hosted a lovely pre-holiday bash for the assistants before we all headed to our respective native countries for the two-week break.

Christmas party with the gals!

And what a break it was! The first challenge, of course, was getting back on US soil. This proved to be quite the adventure! I had a super epic 36-hour trek from Nantes back to Vancouver, WA. This included spending the night in Paris-Orly airport (A bit of advice: do not sleep in an airport. Ever.), and massive layovers in London and Seattle. However, I made the most of it and was actually feeling quite good when I arrived back home to my family! A solid night of sleep later, I was up and at 'em and not feeling like a zombie, luckily.

"World Traveller"? Affirmative.

My first full day back was Christmas Eve, so I dove right into some last-minute Christmas shopping / present wrapping endeavors and spent a great day catching up with my folks. On Christmas Eve, we spent some time over at my sister and brother-in-law's house, and I finally got to meet their adorable little Dachshund puppy, Elsa!! Boy oh boy, is she a cutie! I fell in love right away, and she liked me too. I think I'm officially 'cool Aunt Afton' to that little pup. Yes! I'll puppy-sit her anytime!

Readers, meet Elsa!

A couple of days after Christmas, Kris drove down to Vancouver to spend some time with my family and me. He and I are still adjusting to the whole continental/oceanic distance issue and everything that comes along with it, so it was especially refreshing and amazing to see him after four long months!! I'm so incredibly happy that he was able to visit and that my family could get to know him better. The two of us don't get down to Vancouver together very often, so this was a real treat.

While Kris was in town, we also took some time to take new family photos! Last time The Tylers did that was in the summer of 2009 before I left to study in France, which feels like forever ago! We got some great shots, thanks to Photographer Kris, both of our fancy camera equipment, and my dad sneaking us into his office downtown on a weekend! :)

The fam!

My best friend

The whole gang!

The next portion of the adventure was a quick trip to Seattle! Kris had planned for us to do something special there for New Year's Eve, and I was also very much looking forward to being back in my old stomping grounds for a day or two. Of course, we HAD to revisit some of our favorite coffee places! As much as I love French coffee and café crème, my taste buds were positively dancing at the thought of a good ol' American latte or mocha. Fortunately, I was able to have both several times during my time at home. Craving fulfilled!

Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee!!!

Some of my other American food cravings included pizza (Papa John's and that dang garlic sauce for the crust- soooooo good!), Thai food (we went to Thai Tom's in the U-District- truly spicy food, hooray!) and Dick's hamburgers and fries (The Capitol Hill location satiated that craving). All of it was delicious and made me remember some of the reasons why I do love America. And the French say we can't cook! Hmph! ;)

Gotta get your fix of Dick's!!

More delicious coffee! Stumptown on Capitol Hill.

New Year's Eve was by far the best one ever!! Kris took me to a surprise concert downtown at the Paramount Theater - Beats Antique! I had never heard of them before, and neither had Kris, really, but his brother and his girlfriend had seen them in concert a few months ago and had told Kris they were great. When he saw that they were playing in Seattle for the New Year, he decided we had to go. It was worth it and then some! Wow. If you haven't listened to their music, check them out! They're a really cool dubstep/world fusion group. They put on a fantastic show: crazy costumes, dancers, a giant blow-up squid, and balloons falling from the ceiling at midnight! We had such a blast. I can't think of a better way to start the new year than by doing something awesome and new with Kris. I'm so glad we went!!

Best. New Year's Eve. EVER!

I had to leave the next day to go back to Vancouver for another two days before my flights back to France. It was so hard to say goodbye to Kris, but we are both looking forward to his visit to Europe in the late spring. :)

After another couple of days of catching up with family and friends and taking care of various errands before I again left the country, I headed back to France! The journey back was significantly smoother and shorter than the trek over, which was nice, and it felt good to arrive back in my apartment this past Saturday night.

Another big thing that I took care of around the holidays was applying to graduate school!! I completed applications for the University of Denver, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Washington. Now, I just have to wait until mid-March to find out what the responses are. I'm hoping for the best news from DU, as that's by far my top choice. Keep your fingers crossed!

The first week back in France and at work went well, but the kids were noticeably still in vacation mode all week! Already the teachers in the teacher's lounge are wishing it was six weeks in the future so we had another two-week break, haha! We'll see where this second semester takes us all...

Surtout, I am happy to be back in the "mother country" for another five months. I've decided to try to start running again, so I went out for a run on Monday and again on Thursday. I must say, it's pretty dang amazing to run through downtown, past a chateau, and through the Jardin des Plantes. You just can't do that in the USA. De plus, when I ran on Thursday, all of the taxi drivers in the metro area were evidently pissed off about something, so there were hundreds and hundreds of taxis parked on the main arterial downtown, blocking off all public transportation and traffic. The taxi drivers? Well, they were standing around smoking and drinking wine and laughing, of course. Oh, la France... :) :)