Pourquoi? Parce que.

Something I learned today: The Gare de Lyon is not actually in Lyon. It's in Paris. Why? Just cuz. Because this world is not supposed to make any sense.

The Pumpkin Pie...

...was a hit! I think it actually tastes better made from scratch than using the canned pumpkin. Here it is! And note that it's half eaten, meaning I do not lie and people actually ate it. Yummmm....

Climbing Highs And Lows

(For those of you that care about my climbing and/or would know what in the world I'm talking about when I refer to the inverted wall or lead climbing, you may read on. If not, skip to the previous post down below.)

On Monday, I managed to cram in my biggest climbing accomplishment and my biggest climbing failure. So the good news first: I climbed the entire inverted wall! Without falling! My belayer was an expert climber who is also one of the guys in charge, and he challenged me do it. I didn't think I could, but I struggled so much on that wall and finally reached the top. Earlier, one of my climbing mentors (seriously, a 70-something-year-old man with legs hard as a rock and the climbing wisdom of, well, a 70-year-old climber) told me after observing me climb that I go too fast and that I need to concentrate more and go slow, using my whole body and not just my arms. So with his advice, I didn't panic or feel rushed to climb the wall and finally did it. I felt very accomplished. That feeling didn't last very long.

Minutes later, I suffered my biggest climbing scare to date. After seeing how well I climbed the inverted wall, my belayer told me I should work on lead climbing. Lead climbing is basically when you're the first to climb and the rope is not already set, so as you go, you're clipping the rope onto the bolts on the wall. I've done lead climbing before, but always at an easy level. This time, he challenged me to lead climb the wall at a difficult level (french system, a 6A+, which is about a 5.10 or 5.11, I think). So I went for it. I mean come on, I just climbed the inverted wall at the 6A level, I could do this.

I started off fine. I was almost at the top and I had two bolts to go. The inverted wall had taken almost all my strength, but I soldiered on. I put the clip onto the second to last bolt, but my arms were starting to give out. I knew that if I fell now, I would fall a couple of feet down. As I went to put the rope through the clip, I missed, and my arms just gave out. And I went tumbling down, about 5 or 6 feet, and slammed into the rough wall. The rope burned my lips and my arm and I bruised my back, but that's not what burnt me the most. It was the embarrassment. The whole gym went silent, and everyone was staring.

A bunch of people came up to me to see if I was ok, and of course I played it off like it was nothing. But seriously, my life flashed before my eyes! I wanted to cry, but I didn't want to look like a whimp in front of all these tough, experienced French climbers. I want to make an impression on them: not an American that stuffs her face with McDonald's and watches TV all day, but one that is brave and serious about climbing and doesn't break down over a little fall. My body ached but my belayer told me to take a breather and try it again. He wouldn't let me quit, and I love that in a partner. I tried again and when I was getting close to the bolt that I missed, I chickened out and climbed back down. I couldn't do it. I was too scared to fall again and hurt myself. My mom would kill me if she found this out--she already hates the fact that I climb because she thinks I'm going to fall off some cliff or something and die.

I couldn't climb the rest of the night. I was still trembling from the scare. But next time I go into the rock gym, I'm going straight to that same wall and lead climbing it to the top. Of that, you can be sure!

Christmas Tunes and Pumpkin Pie

While I expressed my deep hatred for French strikes on the last post, I must admit that today, I was the #1 supporter of the strikes. I didn't have to work today because the teachers I was supposed to work with today were all striking. And I didn't work all of Friday afternoon, the weekend, Monday, or Tuesday. I'm not working tomorrow either. Life is good.

So today, I spent the day curled up in my warm bed, downloading Christmas songs and singing them with my roommate (as well as shedding some light upon the meaning of these English lyrics for her which she knows but does not understand). The one productive thing I did do was manage to spend 60 euro on Christmas decorations and pumpkin pie ingredients. Christmas lights are so expensive here...a set of 100 bulbs is 9 freakin' euro! I can get the same product in the states for 99 cents at Walgreens. And that's not even for the multi-colored lights.

I'm supposed to go to a pseudo Thanksgiving dinner at Annie's house (the one that adopted me, kinda) on Friday and I offered to make a pumpkin pie. Which P.S., I've never made. Finding the ingredients for this pumpkin pie I'm supposedly making was quite the task. As expected, French supermarkets do not have heavy whipping cream, canned pumpkin puree or other basic items needed to make this Thanksgiving dessert in stock. So the creation of this pie will be totally improvised. I bought an actual pumpkin slice....do you think that if I just mash that up and throw in some eggs, flour and sugar, a delicious, American, homemade pie will be the end result?

New John! and Strikes

My night was going badly until I read THIS!

John Mayer's new song, Say, is so sweet! Love it. :)

And then, Perez posted a video of the Spice Girls comeback performance right above the John Mayer post! I never would've imagined such a thing. My two favorite artists of all time, all on one page.

And the reason for my bad night was that the Brit and I were planning on escaping the boredom that is a weekend in Romans, but then the train workers had to go on strike and ruin everything.

I.
Hate.
Strikes.
And.
Freedom.
Of.
Speech.
(Sometimes).

Snow!

IT'S SNOWING IN ROMANS! I never thought I'd be so excited/happy to see snow, so even I was surprised when I felt a big grin appear on my face at the sight of it. Let's see how long the cuteness aspect of this natural phenomenon lasts.

I just finished watching the news (we have a TV now with FIVE channels! What a luxury!) and upon seeing the weather report, I was shocked. My region of France is the coldest this week coming in at -5 degrees Celcius. All the other regions were at zero or positive numbers. So my faulty reasoning ("Hey, I'll choose to live in Grenoble because it's in the south and it's hot and it has mountains") ended up getting the last laugh.

Life Lessons

I've learned a couple of life lessons this week. Let me educate you:

1. Don't pray for English people. They'll laugh at you or think you're strange. (And if you do pray for them, don't tell them.)

2. Don't drink too much near little hobbit-y Irish people. It can lead to trouble and regret. Especially in dark alleys.

3. Make sure you plan your vacations around French strikes. They will most definitely ruin your plans if you don't.

4. Wear STRONG perfume and layers of deodorant when exercising to drown out any stanky BO, not necessarily your own.

5. French churros will never compare to Latin American ones so don't get your hopes up. However, the Spanish ones are alright.

Te Dejo Madrid

I returned to France today from a five-day mini vacation to Madrid which almost never happened due to a series of unfortunate circumstances on the day of my departure. Murphy's Law has never been so real, but I made finally made it to Spain!

It was so good to see familiar faces again since I've been feeling homesick lately. It was also a huge relief to finally be able to speak a language I'm completely comfortable with: Spanish. Though I must say, many times I questioned if I knew ANY Spanish at all, like when staring blankly at a cafeteria menu with items like patatas fritas (papitas fritas/french fries...or wait, did that mean potato chips???), zumo (jugo/juice), gambas (camarones/shrimp), and many others which I do not recall.

I discovered Madrid with the aid of Desiree who hosted me in her fabolous, centrally-located apartment that is reminiscent of the film Les Auberges Espagnoles, as there are NINE girls living there from five different countries. We also went with Fernando to the Sierra and saw the mountainside and an adorable city called Segovia, which was totally what I pictured Spain to be like. I spent like half my paycheck at Zara, or should I say, THARA, and I'm now suffering from Thara withdrawal...Must.....shop.....more......

And this made my trip. The whole time I was there, I tried to imitate the way the Spanish speak by overdoing the "thetas" (or how they pronounce the z's) and Desiree said I was overdoing it. I beg to differ. Because on the plane on the way back, I sat next to two guys from Cordoba who spoke like they just burnt their tongue, using the "theta" for ALL z's, c's AND s's! YES! I knew I wasn't exaggerating that ridiculous accent.