My carry on bag and my bag that will be checked are both bursting nearly, I really thought that I was going to have to use a second bag but somehow it all worked out. I am even bringing a little cooler filled with goodies; some is chocolate for gifts and then I have some cheese, butter and tarama spread. It has all been freezing over night so hopefuly it will make it!

Time to shower and finish everything up!!

I am already plotting my packing and cleaning of the flat, which will have to be done tomorrow and thursday. Friday I head back to Paris and I have my wedding dress fitting at 4!! I can’t believe that the time is nearly done. Now it is time to start planning for our next step. First, for us to go to NY for Christmas and then where we will live after the Philippines! So many exciting things are happening and I just can’t wait to get back to Bobby so that we can plot all of this!

My eagerness to return also led to a lack of patience for all other things, I noticed yesterday I didn’t care about what was happening in my class. Normally I am very attentive and try my best but I was just thinking about Bobby and the Philippines and I got so sick of the French things. Today I was back to normal but it still had upset me yesterday, I was just so ready for it to all end already. Now it is soon enough indeed. I just love wrapping up one chapter and moving on to the next!

Countdown to the Philippines: 5 days

Upon entering, it is a maze of rooms and a bit dark but I would change that all when I would own it and make the rooms bigger and put up some dry wall instead of the wood paneling. But the magic part is the backyard. There is a HUGE flagstone patio and when you look around you see the Alps enveloping you and Annecy lake winding through the hills. Every few hills or so you see a castle as a reminder of the glorious past and up in the skies you see the colorful parachutes of the paragliders up above. It is tranquil, removed but still very close to a charming city and it is ever changing. It is not changing because of the development around it, which I hope is not too much but it looks completely different at different times of day. To me it is truly a paradise!!

I could imagine having family dinners on the patio when the weather is nice and raising a family in such a peaceful enviornment. It worked for the family who lived there before, they had 13 kids!! That place just oozes romance!

Bobby had suggested that he could go back to work for his old company while I go to grad school and after 5 years we could possibly afford a down payment on such a house (a million euro house mind you). It is amazing. Perhaps one day. I like Annecy so much also because the weather is nicer, they are in the Alps region but it doesn’t really snow and the spring and summer are glorious!! The people have more patience with you even if you don’t speak French very well and are more friendly. Also many of the people who live there work in Switzerland, maybe that would give us more choices for jobs also?? I don’t know, but it really was a very lovely spot. I imagine it would be a wonderful place for a writer to live, it is very peaceful and inspiring. I just wish that Bobby could have seen it.

Countdown to the Philippines: 11 days

First, I arrived in Annecy on Friday night and had enough time to straighten out the situation of the hotels for the other bridesmaids. There had been confusion of who was staying where and luckily I showed up just as the hotel was telling Hanna that there was no room for her at that hotel and no vancancies. Later that night we went for the rehearsal dinner where we got to know some new people and I was able to catch up with my friends Tamara and Lesley, who were just married a week and a half ago.

Saturday was wedding day and we started the day at about 7am. The bridesmaids had to be ready to get our hair done. Jenny arrived shortly after i finished my hair and before I was dressed and had makeup on and said that we had to leave that moment for the L’Abbey Talloires where she was having her photos taken. It was wonderful to be there to help Jenny prepare for her wedding and put on her dress and make up. Unfortunately her sister was not there as planned to do her makeup for her because of a fight the night before. I really enjoyed watching Jenny and Patrice getting their pictures taken, it was the first time in a while that I had seen them so relaxed, in love and enjoying themselves.

We rushed back to the city center for the “emergency” rehearsal that her sister insisted on having so that we don’t discrace her family with how unorganized we are. It just seemed to be a whole lot of a big deal for just walking straight ahead if you ask me. But her sister insisted upon it. So after she was satisfied with the arrangement, Tamara and I whisked Jenny off to the hair dresser to have her veil put on and to touch up her hair. It was pretty odd to walk down the street all dressed up like that holding the back of her dress!

The ceremony was over pretty quickly. The priest only 2 or 3 days before the wedding announced that he will not marry them because Jenny is not a catholic but they had already undergone all of the necessary religious preperations. Luckily their priest in Paris had left a note that was necessary to have them be married. He reluctantly complied but then announced that there must be more religious scriptures read and more hymns sung. They tried to explain that the majority of the guest are not French and do not understand. He didn’t care and said it is a French wedding and will be in French. We were forced to sing along with these hymns which I have no idea what we were saying and I just started to sing vowels and stretch them to make some noise. After the first time he insisted that we sing it again but louder, right, so I made my noises louder and even more inarticulate. I thought that was pretty rude of the priest. Luckily I do understand a bit of French and new at least what was going on when they did all of the important moments.

As we filed out, all of the bridal party rushed about to distribute the butterflies that we were going to release. Last week we had to take all of the cocoons and place them in these small cardboard pyramids and wait until they hatch. It wasn’t quite the effect Jenny expected I think but everyone got a kick out of it. We then headed over to the canal to our boat tour that was going to take us over to the castle for reception.

The reception was a great deal of eating fantastic things and some of Patrice’s friends had arranged very cute games during the reception to let people know more about the couple. During dancing, the bridesmaids and I teamed up with Sonny, a relative of Jenny’s, and she was teaching us some moves. She is probably in her 40′s and a party animal! We were doing all sorts of things like pretending to be pushing a shoping cart, to the sprinkler, driving cars, etc. My favorite moment of the night was to see an older French man and an older Korean woman dancing like Pulp Fiction. Dancing really must be an international language because they couldn’t communicate with words but once that music came on BAM, everyone was culturally mixed. My dancing for the evening was put to an end when a rowdy crowd of French dancers slammed on my foot which instantly swelled up and turned blue. In a room full of Korean doctors I was certainly in good hands and within seconds had ice for it. Luckily it was shortly before the bus was to take us back to the city center so I didn’t miss too much of it.

Sunday morning there was a brunch at L’Abbey Talloires and it was the perfect ending to a fantastic weekend. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny with a slight breeze. The food was fantastic and I managed to swipe some of the small jam jars from our table for gifts for the Filipinos. It was the perfect wedding, it makes me look forward to mine even more. I also found the house of my dreams but more on that another time.

Countdown to the Philippines: 13 days

I have had class from 9 am to 12 pm each day, except Wednesday when there is also an additional 3 hours of class for French civilization. But the classes have been enjoyable, I am speaking a lot and we have begun more grammar, which is my weak point, so at least I am being challenged. I feel that I have spent too much time away from the Philippines but I am still over all very glad that I decided to take the course. It certainly has given me a greater confidence in my speaking abilities. I really enjoy the city, it is a small and calm place. My walk to school is more like a hike, along the way I pass a castle while enjoying also the mountain views and fresh air. I really like that the street I live on is exclusively for pedestrians and is in the old city center.

Tomorrow will be the start of the festivities for Jenny and Patrice’s wedding. I will have to pack all of my things and bring them with me to class so that I can head out straight after. I guess the next update will be on monday!

Countdown to the Philippines: 17 days!!

I am still undecided on my opinion of the classes. I am quite young but I think I may possibly be the oldest person here. I am also, to my knowledge the only person living in a flat. When Jenny had been here everyone seemed to live in flats and older. I guess I will have a better idea at the end of the week. Time will tell, I am certainly getting a lot of practice speaking.

Things here are a lot slower, shops seem to close whenever they wish and from what I have heard, most things are closed not only on Sundays but on Mondays as well! I tried to stock up on things at the supermarket today, although I still have not found toilet paper. I forgot that in many places in France you have to provide your own shopping bag. Meanwhile I just bought a few days worth of groceries and remember this fact as she has already moved on to the next customer. So for 30 centimes I was able to buy two sturdy plastic bags, they are now folded up in my pocketbook for shopping later.

One thing that I have noticed since I arrived here is how much I miss Bobby. This is the first time that I haven’t had internet access for 24 hours a day and I had no idea where an internet cafe was. I have no credits on my phone to text message him. It makes me so sad. It was never such a big deal before because I was still able to contact him whenever I please but now I can’t. I went to the school thinking that I could get on the internet there and all of the buildings were closed. It was quite a walk there, I will be in great shape when I am done with this program!

Hopefully tomorrow Chantal will arrive, I still have not heard anything from her so I have no idea whether to expect her or not and at what time. Hopefully it will work out and we will get to catch up.

Countdown to the Philippines: 22 days

What made it difficult was the pack that I had with me. It is not my usual pack which was created for a woman’s body and made to be comfy. This one has a zipper like a suitcase and is more practical for getting things out but not for actually wearing. So I get through the millions of stairs that the metro station of Place d’Italie has to get to the street (of course the station closest to Jenny’s flat is Tolbiac which is conveniently closed for the entire duration of my stay in France) and the entire Avenue d’Italie is roped off because of a bomb threat!!! So with my heavy burden of bags and the clouds dense with the rain that was soon to come, I had to navigate my way home. Mind you Paris is not exactly a grid system, you can take a turn that you think will get you back on track and you will be in some little dead end alley in the next arrondissement!! I was cursing this bag the whole time, I am definitely switching back to my original backpack!

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for Chambery and Monday I will start my French language classes at ISEFE. I will try to go to Annecy on Saturday to make some arrangments for Jenny’s bridal party for the next weekend.

Countdown to the Philippines: 24 days

What is so wonderful about the relationship that Jenny and I have is that we were both experiencing the same emotions at the same time. When one of us was elated from being in love, the other could relate and we could share our thoughts with one another while most people have no interest in hearing how happy we were. Also when things were not so good we would turn to each other for advice since both of our boyfriends were so similar in character, if one did something, the other was sure to follow.

Jenny risked a lot to make this relationship work. She gave up her career, life and friends in NY and moved to Paris. She also risked the relationship of her family who in the beginning was not pleased with her dating a French man. I am so happy to be there for their wedding day, I know how far they have come and how many difficulties they faced…the French bureaucracy being one of them.

I will be spending about 3 weeks in Chambery, a small city in the Alps-Savoie region studying French. I am not so much looking forward to that part but I know it will be good for me. I have forgotten a lot over time and it will be great to refresh my memory and learn new things, also being able to use it on a daily basis helps.

Another perk is that Bobby’s mom Chantal may be able to meet up with me in Chambery. She and her husband Ange have been travelling around Italy for the past 2 weeks or so and need to get to France anyway for their flight back to the US. I am looking forward to that also.

It’s time to finish packing up my things and then get some rest for tomorrow.

Countdown to the Philippines: 27 days…boy that sounds like a long time!!