random stuff and sweden!

so maybe i should wrap up my paris experience since i've left everyone hanging. to sum it up, i've really never had a better time in my life! i met some great people and really enjoyed my french classes. i got to experience paris in a way that most tourists never get a chance to. my friend sandrine took me to many plays and showed me parts of paris that i never would have found on my own. immersing yourself in a foreign culture is definitely the best way to travel, although i know that's not possible for the majority of people. i consider myself very lucky for the all the time i've spent in france. not just these three months in paris, but also my semester abroad in cannes and my year as a language assistant in grenoble. little does my former company know that by telling me that my "position has been eliminated" that it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

i've been pretty lazy since getting back home just over two months ago, but i now have the time to do what i really want to do rather than spend every day regretting ever taking that former job in the first place (which i did really regret). i've started an italian course with my cousin. last night was the first class and it was a lot of fun! my french helps a little bit, but it's still a completely different language and i stumble a lot. i'm going to stick it with it though because i really admire those who can speak multiple languages and i'd love to be one of those people. i've also started a bartending course in preparation for my trip to australia, which will hopefully happen early next year. i think back to how i really never felt like i belonged in the corporate world and i just want to have a fun job, so i'm hoping i'll find work in a restaurant on the beach somewhere in australia and a little bit of bartending experience should help with that. and i really want to see a kangaroo! there was a little zoo in the jardin des plantes in paris that had some wallabies. the day i went with my friend erin must have been close to 100 degrees so the wallabies were just laying there. i want to see things that hop! and have pouches! i hear that in australia there's a whole island full of kangaroos. i want to go to there.

so the president of the united states sent me a letter saying that due to my unfortunate economic situation, the government will give me money to go back to school for a certificate program. what luck! so i picked one out (event planning! yay!) and called the school about getting my free cash and they said "no." but i already have my heart set on it, so you know what, i'm going to do it anyway! it's an online program and i'm not sure i'm disciplined enough for that, but we'll see what happens. if it looks like i'll need to be in the country to actually do well in the courses, then i'll have to postpone australia (but it will happen - that's for you mom. it will happen.)

so i went to sweden! my friend jen is quite the world traveler, and if there's a long weekend, you can almost guarantee that she's leaving the country. so this past labor day her trip was sweden. she and her friends had an extra bed in their hostel so i bought myself a plane ticket and went to sweden! we spent three days in stockholm and had a really great time. our hostel was a boat on lake malaren. the rooms were teeny tiny and i had some difficulty getting down from my top bunk, but we were on a boat, and that's all that mattered. we had fantastic, sunny weather. i don't think i've walked more in my entire life than i did during those three days, but we saw so much so it was worth it. we met up with jen's friends hilary and francis and saw all the sites. i really enjoyed the vasa museum, which houses a salvaged ship that sank in the 1600s after only about 20 minutes at sea. the recovered some bones of some of those who died in the wreck and put them on display! they were able to discern what they looked like based on just their bones and had these really life-like busts on display. another museum that we all really enjoyed was the junibacken museum which is dedicated to the work of astrid lindgren who wrote pippi longstocking. after posing for pictures in the playground inside the museum we continued on for the magical train ride. there was more for us in store on this train ride than we could have ever imagined! as we rode the train, some of the author's stories were narrated for us. so we heard about the kid who tried to jump off of a house and "nearly killed himself," the kid that they attached to a flag pole, and the kid who died by saving his brother from a burning building. the surviving brother than visited his dead brother in the underworld and it sounds like he may have stayed. so i guess they both ended up dying. what wonderful stories! anyway, the best part of the train ride was when it LIFTED INTO THE AIR!! that's right, we started flying. it was amazing. i believe my exact reaction was, "ooohh this is wonderful!" and it really was! we also visited the skansen open-air museum which is made up to be a mini-sweden. there are old houses from the different areas of sweden which depict where a shoemaker might live or a banker might live. hilary was actually taller than most of the houses. she's so tall! we had a really nice dinner at a restaurant called pelikan which is in the newer part of town. we had a bad experience with swedish meatballs the night before so i got salmon instead. i'm not much of a seafood eater but i thought i'd be adventurous. i then saw someone who ordered the meatballs and they looked amazing! but i guess my salmon was good too. on our last night, jen and i stayed out by the airport since we had an early flight. our hostel was called the jumbo hostel and it used to be a plane! it was soo cool. it still had the luggage bins and the windows. and it was a brand new hostel so it was clean. i had a double sized bed with the softest sheets ever! and a flat screen tv!

well i guess that's it for now. my life is really boring so i'm not sure anyone will want to hear about it. so who knows when i'll write again.