Paris, I'm going to miss you

 Oh my I just realized that I've lived in Paris for 10 months and I don't have a picture with the Eiffel-tower! It's something to add to my never ending "to do"-list :)

Last time I told you how I miss Finland. Well, this post is dedicaded to all the things I'm going to miss from France!

First of all I'm going to miss the language. Especially in the beginning I got better and better every day and I really liked that. Now when I start a new conversation with somone they don't even start talking in English like in the beginning. I guess that my French is understandable :) of course I don't have as much vocabularly as I would like to have but I just have to sturdy, study some more and use the language. For some reason I loved to have the lessons in French but if I could chose I'd have the exams in Finnish...

I'm going to miss my job! I've been a babysitter in a French family and it has been such a joy to see the children grow and see how the younger one learns new things all the time. I'm happy that I'm going to see them a couple of times before I leave France and I hope that they'd visit my family in Finland some day like my family and friend have visited them. I'm really grateful for them for doing stuff with me outside of babysitting. The picture of me playing piano is from their place.

I'm going to miss French food. All this pasta, snails, sea food, pain du chocola (that I hated in the beginning and now I love it), French onion soup, baguette and all these delicious desserts. I'm really French now since every time I eat I HAVE to get a dessert :) and oh my God all the cheese and creps that I'm going to miss in Finland. And macarons! All and all the bakery here is so different from the Finnish one that I can't tell in detail all the things that I'm going to miss.

Here I love the fact that I live near Paris but not exactly in the center. Orsay is really safe and I can hop in a train whenever I want and be in Paris in 30min. In Finland I live in the north and the closest big city is like 6 hours away. I can't describe the joy that I feel when living here because I can find everything I need from Paris.

Of course I'm going to miss all the friends I've made here but I miss my Finnish friends too! And now all my Erasmus friends have left for their homes so they aren't exactly here in Paris. But I really with to see them at some point :) I've made plans to go to Germany and Mardrid, I just have to see when I have money and time to do that. I hope that as many of them as possible will visit me in Finland.

I'm going to miss the train and metro system. In Finland we have metros and trams only in Helsinki, not where I live. Of course they have had many strikes here and the trains are late a lot but still. In Oulun we have only busses which go once in 30min or an hour. I've became so impatient here! All my friends laught at me when I go "Shoot!! We have to wait 2 minutes??" because in my hometown we go "Oh nice only 15 minutes to wait". I love living in a bigger city.

I'm also going to miss all the stuff we can do here. In Paris you can just take a metro and go to a new location and there is something to see. In Oulu you call your friends and you are like "yeah... well.. I don't know.. How about a coffee?". With my friends we even drive out of the city to get a coffee somewhere far so that we can pass the time that way. I'm going to miss this city so much...

Oh yeah and then a bit off-topic: They payd my CAF (it was about time..) and I didn't have to pay my rent this month :P Les Halles here I come! I'm going to buy all the books that I want.

Sushi evening

 Hello lovers!

This has been a really nice week. On Monday we had someone cutting the power from our building ALL THE TIME. Because of this I lost 1,5 hours revising time for my exams on Tuesday.. I'm sure it was someone who had his exams last week so he could just do whatever he wanted this week. It was really hard to read when the lights went out every 2 minutes for longer period of time.

On Tuesday we had a sushi evening with other exchange students! It was so much fun! In reality I hate cooking (I'd rather starve than cook). Cooking in a group made it really nice and I actually helped with rolling the sushi. I think I'm going to do this in Finland with my friends :) This time all the pictures are from the sushi evening.

After the exams in L3 of chemistry we had 5 days of vacation. I used two of these days to go to work.. On Wednesday I went to work around four and I slept there to start working around 7 in the morning. On Thursday I was alone with the younger child the whole day for the first time. It actually really enjoyed it! Of course changing diapers isn't my favorite thing but still. I tried to talk as much English with him as I could but I still have to wait a bit before he starts answering me.

On Thursday evening we played draw and guess with the parents of the family and their friends.  The cards were in French so they had to translate the cards for me but I think it was OK. I had fun and I guess that's the most important thing.

Friday was a free day here in France so one of my friends asked me to go see The Adventures of Tintin with her. She wanted to see the original version with French subtitles. We went to Le Forum des Halles too see the film. There are two movie theaters so of course in the beginning we were in the wrong one..

After the movie we went eating and then shopping. Actually we didn't have too much time for shopping in other stores after finding fnac. fnac in Le Forum is HUGE. It's in three floors and every floor is so big that I was completely lost in there. I was really happy about the books that I found: I bought three comics and grammar book of German and a conjugation book of French. Now I just have to get around to reading them...






Today I went shopping to Paris all on my own. In the beginning it was my meaning to see one of my friend there but in the end we ended up being in different places in different times and we didn't see each other. I was quite happy all the same! Now I really have confidence that I can find my way around Paris.

In the beginning I spent a couple of hours in Le Forum des Halles when I was trying to find shoes. In the end I bought only one waffle from there (which was really good). After that I decided to go to Rue de Rivoli - which is a really big shopping street - to find my favorite store here: Jennyfer. I ended up buying a lot of stuff and I'm really happy for finally finding clothes for winter. I also found shoes. We don't have Jennyfer in Finland so I guess I have to go there as much as possible.

Ready to eat!

This reminds me that I have to whine about the French sizing. In Finland I'm size S and in here I'm L!! If I'm lucky I can find something with M that fits me. Today I tried one skirt and the biggest size they had didn't fit me.

I think these were the most burning subjects at the moment. My mom, aunt and cousin are coming to visit me in three weeks! And I'm going to Finland in one month and 5 days. Time just flies past here.

I think today I finally fell in love with Paris :) At the moment I so don't want to go back to Finland.