Belated Joyeux Noël!

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone (anyone?) reading this had a fantasic and merry Christmas. While I have to admit that it wasn't the most joyful of Christmases, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I treated myself to a nice steak dinner,(rubbed with cumin, chile powder for a little kick, and coffee! of all things^^) complete with mashed potatoes, corn, carrots, carmelized onions, and homemade baked bread. And because I've gotten into the weird habit of photographing dishes I make, here's a pic:

Also in the spirit of the season, I decided that as my gift to Kevin, I would bake gingerbread cookies to decorate. Made quite a bit actually, and he enjoyed getting to do that. Don't have pictures of the ones he did, but here are mine that I did later after getting home:

(As a funny side note, I tried taking a picture of them with my phone after I took this one, and accidently dropped my phone onto them and killed Mr. Gingerbread man...oops.)

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And in the few days leading up to Christmas, I got a little nostalgic, naturally, so when I found English muffins at the store, decided to try out Eggs Benny :) I know I'd seen the powder for regualar hollandaise sauce somewhere, but couldn't find it again, and so just went with the herb version of it. It was still pretty good:

AND THEN, I decided to finally take on the daunting task of croissant-making. I'd been meaning to for ages, even though many people had told me that making them was difficult. In the end though, it wasn't so much that they were difficult to make, just that the process was very time-consuming. But here is it, (one) of my beauties :)):

AND THEY WERE SO DELICIOUS!! In fact, the only downside to making them yourself, is that then you know exactly how much butter is in them ^^;. But hey! As long as you don't eat them allll the time...

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So anyways, pretty much everyone from ISA has left, and so it'd been pretty uneventful of late, but I did make a trip up to the Christmas market at La Defense for a little festive evening just wandering around:

(above) The Grande Arche looming beautifully in the background :)

I tried to get a picture of the enormous pans they cook food in at the martket, and while these aren't the largest I saw, (or even that great of a picture) it's better than nothing.

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On Christmas day, did meet up with the only other person from ISA that was still in town, Andrew, and so to keep us from being lonely on frickin' Christmas, we decided to meet up in the Luxembourg Gardens for a very French brunch. It was bloody cold, but nonetheless we enjoyed croissants, coffee, jam, bread (all brought by me) and cheese, fruit, and foie gras (curtesy of Andrew). Plus of course, each other's company. Oh, that, and the rather frightening pigeons and seagulls that kept stalking around our bench...but yeah, like I said, it was nice not to have been alone on Christmas. :)

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In other news, I am happy to announce that 2 weeks ago, I finally received some money from my school, and though it wasn't enough to cover my rent (had to e-mail my landlord and explain the circumstances so that she would hold off on cashing my check) it was enough to buy the things I needed, like food, a warmer blanket, TP, soap, etc. I might have enough for a Christmas gift or two, but I won't be receiving money again until a few days in January, after my bills are due, so gotta set some money aside for those..Regardless, it's nice not having to literally live from week to week with only the little money I'm getting from babysitting.

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So yeah, while money issues are not my favorite thing to post about, I feel like it's important because even though studying abroad is like a dream come true, I have to be realistic and put out there that not every dream is perfect. But you know what? It's still worth it, and that's the important part.

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And finally, Maura is in town! She got here just before Christmas with her family, and while they're leaving tonight, she's stay into the end of the first week of January. She's staying with Nadya starting tonight for a few days, and then on the 3rd-6th, she'll be crashing here with me. So that should be fun :)

Anywho, time to shower, tootles!

Rachael

Exhibit A

Second post today, but what the heck. As I've mentioned before, I've been doing a lot of baking (though only because I stocked up on a lot of cheap baking goods before I went broke).

Well, just thought I would give you guys a little peek into my obsession..

Egg, broccoli, bacon, cheese souflees:

Pumpkin spice muffins and cookies with creese cheese icing:

Whole grain bread I baked just a few hours ago...tasty with a nice and chewy inside :)

Ok, obviously I didn't make this next one (below), but just wanted to share with everyone a fruit that I'd seen around here for months but had never heard of/tasted in my life: kaki. So a couple weeks ago, I went out, bought one, washed it, and took a nice bite out of it...only to spit that bite back out two seconds later. It was the weirdest thing; the taste was fine and sweet, but the texture, oh god. Worst thing ever. I found out it was the skin, because the actual meat was ok. Something about the skin lends the kaki some kind of dry, terrible sensation similar to what I imagine eating sand must be like. Unfortunately, even after rigorously brushing my teeth, it took hours for the feeling to go away, and by that time, I lost interest in deceiving kaki and ended up tossing it out. Alas, maybe another time, kaki...

The kaki right before the bite

Also, this weekend I made a GORGEOUS pumpkin pie, entirely from scratch, along with mini blueberry yogurt muffins. I forgot to take pictures, but just know that they were both yummy..

That's for today,

Rachael

Positive thoughts on the future, FTW

Hey all,

It's been awhile, but I just want to put out there, that I actually wrote a new post about a week ago, published it...and then accidently deleted it -_-;. I'd written quite a bit, too, and was too lazy to re-type everything out. So let's see if this one can remain un-deleted, hmm?

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For those of you that don't know, I actually won't be coming home for Christmas. I was a bit depressed about it at first, but after some reflection, I figured it might actually be for the best. It'll save me some money, and Christmas in Paris is actually really nice. Even if they don't have Christmas classic songs like we do..but that's what Youtube playlists are for! ;) Also, I found out that there are a few other ISAers that will still be in town for the holidays, so I'm thinking maybe we can all band together and have a little Xmas dinner of our own :)

As a little example, here's a panoramic (kinda blurry, sorry!) photo of the Champs-Elysees just after the annual Christmas lighting (which famous French actress Audrey Tatou assisted in)

As for school, everything continues to go well. I wasn't a big fan of my fashion class, so imagine my utter joy when I found out that this week is our last class--not in late January like my other two. They told me that since it was an English class, (as in, the students in it are all American and almost all leave for Christmas) that it just made more sense to keep it a few weeks shorter than the rest. This means, that for 3 weeks in January, my Wednesday school days won't be 9 hours long anymore! :D We'll see if next semester's schedule won't be so rough..

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Speaking of which, I've been thinking a lot about my future. I might or might not've mentioned it, but I've really been strongly thinking about going into business, hopefully at a school here. Most likely management, to be exact. Mentally, I'd composed a list of reasons why this would be a good idea, so let me finally get them down:

-Paris is one of the best places for learning and practicing business. Great schools and great opportunities.

-English really is the business language. My classes would be in English, (which would help immensely) but I've decided that I would still continue learning French on the side.

-A career in business has a pretty decent return.

-And this one I only just realized recently, but I seem to be running into the old saying "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Between being completely taken over by an obsession with cooking and baking, and now managment, I'm becoming more and more like Papa..

-Worst case scenario, in the event that I can't find a good job here, I can work for Papa and help manage his business at home. Or maybe start French cooking workshops. I might even make that a summer thing to do at home. Ionno. I never said this was all concrete..

-And if all else fails...marry a rich French guy and I'm set.

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Of course, I haven't forgotten about a few, very important details: paying for school and housing here, and paying back my loans. I've sent an e-mail to a supervisor at the financial aid office at Western (though big surprise, I've yet to hear back..) on whether I could 1. continue to defer repayment of my loans as long as I'm enrolled in a higher institution, regardless of it's location, and 2. whether I could continue to receive aid from the state of Washington, again, under the same conditions.

And if the answer to those questions are no, then maybe, just maybe I could do it with aid from the French government and with a job. All I know then is that living inside city limits would probably not be possible. But eh, now I don't really care all that much.

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Ugh, there's so much more I'd like to write, but I feel that it's still too jumbled in my head to properly sort out and articulate. These last two months have been financially stressful beyond belief, but if there was any silver lining, it's that I'm now more determined to really set my future up right. That and that I've lost weight due to my food rationing, haha. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, knocking on wood, tossing salt over my left shoulder, but I may, may, MAY finally be getting some money in the next few days. Let's just hope I don't go crazy with my grocery shopping once I do aha.

Bisous! (kisses, in French)

Rachael