So first off, sorry about all the typos, but I'm thinking that you got what I was saying. Proofreading really is a beautiful thing.... when you do it. Maybe today.
Currently, it's 4:30 in the morning. I am so tired at night yet wake up so so early. And then the vicious cycle continues. Either way, it's good for you all because when I wake up this early, I have time for an update!
Like the title says, to be honest, I have nothing exciting to report because really, everything that we have done the last two days had been..... BORING! Seriously, boring, but needed to get done.
Let's see, Sunday, went to church, walked around a bit exploring neighborhoods trying to get a feel for where is good place to live and where is not... oh wait! I have to tell about this! We accidentally ran into a rollerblading parade/race. One minute we're walking down the street the next were quickly bombarded by thousands of rollerbladers. And I do mean thousands. Lauren has a video which I must post later when I steal it from her phone. So that was pretty cool. Most things are closed on Sunday so the city is pretty dead so this was a nice surprise and livened things up a bit. We saw a Syria protest and then went and ate pizza. FYI, I love pizza so you're going to hear about it a lot.
Monday was really exhausting. An actual weekday so the apartment search began. Let's start by saying, this is not easy! Not at all. Another thing to point out..... I have never spoken this much french in my life! Normally I am with someone who speak wayyy better than I do so they talk. Not the case! I do all the talking and it is so good for me! In recap, we hit 5 rental agencies, 4 of which had no listings. I got a cell phone, we bought a train tickets, train discount cards, ate lunch, saw the opera house (that was actually fun), and then finally saw an apartment. Whew and my god we were exhausted. Barely made it to dinner... which was pizza. Don't worry, we ate french things for breakfast and lunch.
Anyway, not the most exciting two days but trying to keep you all up to date! But get excited.... on either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on apartment viewings, Lauren and I are going to hit up Belgium and the Netherlands. Get pumped! You know who you are Belgian Waffle people.
Until then!
Monday, September 2, 2013
Saturday, August 31, 2013
And I'm Here
So, after much anxiety... and I do mean much, it begins again.
Leaving Hawaii has not been easy and it's not because of its natural beauty but mostly because Hawaii was easy and Paris is hard. (See how I side stepped all that emotion.)
Anyway, I spent last week getting ready to leave for France, for those of you who don't know, I am going to grad school in Paris. Thank God, my best friend Lauren for some had a few free months in her life and was able to come with me. Seriously, I would probably be a puddle if I had to do this on my own. So Lauren and I took off, Friday morning from Honolulu headed to Paris.
With the exception of my wayyyy overpriced ticket, this may be the most that I have ever spent on an airline ticket, must be karma for all my past flight deals, the trip was not bad. One stop in LA and then Paris.
First flight was fine, a bit bumpy, which in my mind translates to "OMG I'm going to die! (I hate to fly.) Either way, Honolulu to LA is a quick 5h13 minute trip. Lauren slept and I watched Grey's Anatomy, my new obsession on my other new obsession, The (Work) iPad. Work bc it's my dad old iPad that I used to use for the table.
Anyway, the flights almost done, we're landing. To be honest, landing is my favorite part. It means the flight is over, your closer to the ground, and it just feels more controlled than random turbulence. However, I have one big fear of landing.... not including the newly produced one of low air speed that was created last month with the Asiana flight, but I digress. My fear came when I saw Natalie Portman on Jay Leno like 8 years ago. Yes, I have a great memory.
Natalie was flying into New York, the plane was about to land, something happened and then the flight had to take off suddenly. Now, talking about this doesn't seem that bad, but when I heard that I thought I would die if I was ever on a flight that did that.
Can you guess the next part of my story.
So Lauren is a corpse next to me, and net to her is this Army man in cammies. We're landing, we're landing, we're langing, and then we are NOT landing. No, instead we are shooting straight up into the sky like a spaceship. To be honest the verticalness of the angle was actually quite impressive. So of course, I being to freak out.... and where does my mind immediately and logically go? Well of course we are going to nosedive into the ocean! LAX is right on the water, we've now shot up an impressive amount up and over the Pacific, and of course the only place left to go is in.
This may shock you, but instead we just circled the airport and tried to land again, this time successfully, about 15 minutes later. We touch down, people clap, and Lauren wakes up. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was something like, wow, it's nice that they are clapping because it was such a great flight.
Me and Army man quickly corrected her.Turns out, right when we were about to land, another airplane pulled out onto the runway we were landing on we had to pull up. So that was fun.
The we had to wait on the tarmac and then finally we got off that plane. The waiting wasn't great because on our next flight, Lauren and I didn't have seats together and we were trying to get to our next gate as soon as possible. We had a two hour connection and I will give you a hint, it took the full two hours.
LAX is already confusing enough, but one really annoying thing is that to change terminals, you usually have to leave security, and today was not exception. After making it to the line, a battle between Lauren and a girl from an eastern block country who kept cutting in front of us on the corners, which Lauren took as a personal challenge, serveral paparazzi trying to photograph who we would later find out was Tom Welling, we made it it our gate and learned that there was no way to change our seats. So we boarded.
Well, apparently everyone wanted to change seats to it was mad chaos on the plane. I switched twice, Lauren three times, and finally, this really nice guy next to me traded with Lauren! Yay!
Thank you church for the headphones! They are AMAZING!
Photo of Birmingham, England from the plane.
So, the flight was bumpy. And actually bumpy. Like really bumpy. But I think that its always pretty rough when you fly over the Atlantic, at least it has been for me in the past. We land, are the first people through customs and head to baggage claim where all of our bags come, including my giant one, except for my one black one. Excellent.
Turns out it was in the oversized baggage place,not exactly sure why. We loaded it all into a taxi and head for.... the storage unit! Currently, I have no where to live, so everything but that green backpack is going into storage.
We hit up the storage unit, I do it all in French! Yeah baby, the man in incredibly nice, the place is huge, awesome! We metro to our hotel, which turns our is in this awesome and incredibly cute neighborhood, the hotel is awesome, and we got have a drink. I wish I had more picture but I don't.... tom morrow.
We walked around, ate dinner, then we died. SO much in one day! And now I write to you at 6am from my bathroom, as Lauren is sleeping, with this view
Leaving Hawaii has not been easy and it's not because of its natural beauty but mostly because Hawaii was easy and Paris is hard. (See how I side stepped all that emotion.)
Anyway, I spent last week getting ready to leave for France, for those of you who don't know, I am going to grad school in Paris. Thank God, my best friend Lauren for some had a few free months in her life and was able to come with me. Seriously, I would probably be a puddle if I had to do this on my own. So Lauren and I took off, Friday morning from Honolulu headed to Paris.
With the exception of my wayyyy overpriced ticket, this may be the most that I have ever spent on an airline ticket, must be karma for all my past flight deals, the trip was not bad. One stop in LA and then Paris.
First flight was fine, a bit bumpy, which in my mind translates to "OMG I'm going to die! (I hate to fly.) Either way, Honolulu to LA is a quick 5h13 minute trip. Lauren slept and I watched Grey's Anatomy, my new obsession on my other new obsession, The (Work) iPad. Work bc it's my dad old iPad that I used to use for the table.
Anyway, the flights almost done, we're landing. To be honest, landing is my favorite part. It means the flight is over, your closer to the ground, and it just feels more controlled than random turbulence. However, I have one big fear of landing.... not including the newly produced one of low air speed that was created last month with the Asiana flight, but I digress. My fear came when I saw Natalie Portman on Jay Leno like 8 years ago. Yes, I have a great memory.
Natalie was flying into New York, the plane was about to land, something happened and then the flight had to take off suddenly. Now, talking about this doesn't seem that bad, but when I heard that I thought I would die if I was ever on a flight that did that.
Can you guess the next part of my story.
So Lauren is a corpse next to me, and net to her is this Army man in cammies. We're landing, we're landing, we're langing, and then we are NOT landing. No, instead we are shooting straight up into the sky like a spaceship. To be honest the verticalness of the angle was actually quite impressive. So of course, I being to freak out.... and where does my mind immediately and logically go? Well of course we are going to nosedive into the ocean! LAX is right on the water, we've now shot up an impressive amount up and over the Pacific, and of course the only place left to go is in.
This may shock you, but instead we just circled the airport and tried to land again, this time successfully, about 15 minutes later. We touch down, people clap, and Lauren wakes up. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was something like, wow, it's nice that they are clapping because it was such a great flight.
Me and Army man quickly corrected her.Turns out, right when we were about to land, another airplane pulled out onto the runway we were landing on we had to pull up. So that was fun.
The we had to wait on the tarmac and then finally we got off that plane. The waiting wasn't great because on our next flight, Lauren and I didn't have seats together and we were trying to get to our next gate as soon as possible. We had a two hour connection and I will give you a hint, it took the full two hours.
LAX is already confusing enough, but one really annoying thing is that to change terminals, you usually have to leave security, and today was not exception. After making it to the line, a battle between Lauren and a girl from an eastern block country who kept cutting in front of us on the corners, which Lauren took as a personal challenge, serveral paparazzi trying to photograph who we would later find out was Tom Welling, we made it it our gate and learned that there was no way to change our seats. So we boarded.
Well, apparently everyone wanted to change seats to it was mad chaos on the plane. I switched twice, Lauren three times, and finally, this really nice guy next to me traded with Lauren! Yay!
Thank you church for the headphones! They are AMAZING!
Photo of Birmingham, England from the plane.
So, the flight was bumpy. And actually bumpy. Like really bumpy. But I think that its always pretty rough when you fly over the Atlantic, at least it has been for me in the past. We land, are the first people through customs and head to baggage claim where all of our bags come, including my giant one, except for my one black one. Excellent.
Turns out it was in the oversized baggage place,not exactly sure why. We loaded it all into a taxi and head for.... the storage unit! Currently, I have no where to live, so everything but that green backpack is going into storage.
We hit up the storage unit, I do it all in French! Yeah baby, the man in incredibly nice, the place is huge, awesome! We metro to our hotel, which turns our is in this awesome and incredibly cute neighborhood, the hotel is awesome, and we got have a drink. I wish I had more picture but I don't.... tom morrow.
We walked around, ate dinner, then we died. SO much in one day! And now I write to you at 6am from my bathroom, as Lauren is sleeping, with this view
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Picking back up.....
So getting back on the travelling track, things are about to get busy. I leave for France in less than two months and have no shortage of tasks to get done before my departure date, August 30.
One big step in this whole process is I think, getting my visa. The I think comes from no one ever telling me that I actually need a visa as well as my school only emailing me once since I got accepted. But going off of that information, I think it's reasonable to get a visa considering I will, in theory, be out of the country for 15 months.
Well, getting a french visa is an almost endless task but the final step after tons of paperwork is getting the actual visa.Normally, once would just go to their closest consulate and pick one up. However, my closest consulate happens to be in San Francisco, California. Right next door. Honestly, even LA would have been way better. But no, San Cisco, here we come.
Who is the We? Well, I found out that this trip was happening about 5 days before it actually happened. I asked Marisa to come and after some careful deliberation on her part, she came into my room at midnight and declared, "I come." My first thought was, "Where?" But after a few seconds figured it out.
So, without further ado, I present to you, "Marisa and Brittany Go to California."
One big step in this whole process is I think, getting my visa. The I think comes from no one ever telling me that I actually need a visa as well as my school only emailing me once since I got accepted. But going off of that information, I think it's reasonable to get a visa considering I will, in theory, be out of the country for 15 months.
Well, getting a french visa is an almost endless task but the final step after tons of paperwork is getting the actual visa.Normally, once would just go to their closest consulate and pick one up. However, my closest consulate happens to be in San Francisco, California. Right next door. Honestly, even LA would have been way better. But no, San Cisco, here we come.
Who is the We? Well, I found out that this trip was happening about 5 days before it actually happened. I asked Marisa to come and after some careful deliberation on her part, she came into my room at midnight and declared, "I come." My first thought was, "Where?" But after a few seconds figured it out.
So, without further ado, I present to you, "Marisa and Brittany Go to California."
Monday, June 3, 2013
Start of Summer!
So I'm still in Hawaii! Cool. No but really, the days are ticking down and I'm starting to get really, really nervous. But that's okay. For those of you who are late to the game, I'm moving to France in October for school. At least that's the plan, the school likes me but we still have to see if France will let me in.
Before that though, I have a bunch of places to see and lots of things to do! Hitting up California twice this summer before heading off with Lauren in September to do putz around Europe. That should be fun! And I bet the stories will be even better.
Summer is Here! Which I am pumped about! If only it would stop raining. We have had more rain in the last few months than I bet we normally see in a year. A lot!
Some things that have been going on... I did another Table, big success, super fun and stressful. Marisa graduated, very cool. Been hanging out with my peeps a lot. In fact, here's some pictures from the sunset the other day. Oh, before that, get pumped! I got a new camera. Hopefully, this one will do it's job in making take amazing pictures because without its help, I am essentially the worst photographer ever. You be the judge. Check back, I'm trying to keep up with this thing again!
Before that though, I have a bunch of places to see and lots of things to do! Hitting up California twice this summer before heading off with Lauren in September to do putz around Europe. That should be fun! And I bet the stories will be even better.
Summer is Here! Which I am pumped about! If only it would stop raining. We have had more rain in the last few months than I bet we normally see in a year. A lot!
Some things that have been going on... I did another Table, big success, super fun and stressful. Marisa graduated, very cool. Been hanging out with my peeps a lot. In fact, here's some pictures from the sunset the other day. Oh, before that, get pumped! I got a new camera. Hopefully, this one will do it's job in making take amazing pictures because without its help, I am essentially the worst photographer ever. You be the judge. Check back, I'm trying to keep up with this thing again!
This is me drinking sangria. For someone who doesn't really like sangria, I sure order it a lot.
I drove up to the west side of the island with two friends to meet up with another friend who lives in "Paradise."
Here's a bunch of the sunset. It was beautiful!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Beef Broth
For weeks I have been waiting for something worth blogging about and while maybe this is not the most exciting thing that I have done as of late, it is the most exciting that I have done in 2013.... so here you go.
So today was the most boring day that I have had all year... haha. It reminded me of the jour ferriers from when I was in France, because everything is closed and it is too cold to go outside, so you end up sitting around doing nothing. And while it wasn't "too cold" today, it was raining and overcast and dark, which partly I liked because the cozy weather is a welcome change from Hawaii's ever so sunny disposition, but that combined with everything being closed left me with about nothing to do. I was even more irked by the fact that the TV was on, playing the umpteenth day of college football. I am so done with that I cannot even say.
I woke up with terrible shakes....love it! Insert emergency eating here. Acai naked juice, glasss of milk, bowl of cocoa krispies with milk, whole wheat waffle with strawberry jelly, and cheddar cheese. I debated going for an english muffin with cream cheese and several strips of bacon after that but I thought I was good. I was also full.
After that fun, I tried to read and that occupied me for a good hour. And then I was immediately bored again.
Hopefully, the kitchen would come to my rescue. It did somewhat. (Currently I am having trouble typing as the grease on my hands from the day is now being passed from my fingertips to the keys... great!)
Marisa has been requesting the Pioneer Woman's Minestrone Soup for a couple days and yesterday, Milds and I had picked up the ingredients for it, so why not make it on this start to the boringest day of the year. I personally am not a huge fan of minestrone... essentially is vegetable soup that I don't really like. But I made it anyway following here colorful blog pictures in hope of the perfect recreation. Even with a new over and extra time, I couldn't get me zucchini to blacken like hers.
Soup done... it looked pretty good. I had a taste, not bad. Would recommend to all minestrone lovers. Perhaps use a bit less pasta than she calls for as the elbow noodles I used took over the fifty pounds of vegetables that were already overflowing in the pot.
And then there was a lull.
My mom and is always trying to get me to use what we have. And what we had was a lot of left over ingredients that we never use. Carrots, celery, half opened bottles of almost sour red wine. Mix that with the two pound of fat and meat trimmings from my beef bourgignon last week and I was on my way to making my very first batch of beef broth. This turned out to be a killer idea!
Exhibit A - Celery, meat, onions, garlic, carrots, thyme, oregano, red wine, and water. (Not all ingredients included)
After 2 hours
After 5 hours
.jpeg)
So epic and it smells amazing! We should all be making our own broth!
So today was the most boring day that I have had all year... haha. It reminded me of the jour ferriers from when I was in France, because everything is closed and it is too cold to go outside, so you end up sitting around doing nothing. And while it wasn't "too cold" today, it was raining and overcast and dark, which partly I liked because the cozy weather is a welcome change from Hawaii's ever so sunny disposition, but that combined with everything being closed left me with about nothing to do. I was even more irked by the fact that the TV was on, playing the umpteenth day of college football. I am so done with that I cannot even say.
I woke up with terrible shakes....love it! Insert emergency eating here. Acai naked juice, glasss of milk, bowl of cocoa krispies with milk, whole wheat waffle with strawberry jelly, and cheddar cheese. I debated going for an english muffin with cream cheese and several strips of bacon after that but I thought I was good. I was also full.
After that fun, I tried to read and that occupied me for a good hour. And then I was immediately bored again.
Hopefully, the kitchen would come to my rescue. It did somewhat. (Currently I am having trouble typing as the grease on my hands from the day is now being passed from my fingertips to the keys... great!)
Marisa has been requesting the Pioneer Woman's Minestrone Soup for a couple days and yesterday, Milds and I had picked up the ingredients for it, so why not make it on this start to the boringest day of the year. I personally am not a huge fan of minestrone... essentially is vegetable soup that I don't really like. But I made it anyway following here colorful blog pictures in hope of the perfect recreation. Even with a new over and extra time, I couldn't get me zucchini to blacken like hers.
Soup done... it looked pretty good. I had a taste, not bad. Would recommend to all minestrone lovers. Perhaps use a bit less pasta than she calls for as the elbow noodles I used took over the fifty pounds of vegetables that were already overflowing in the pot.
And then there was a lull.
My mom and is always trying to get me to use what we have. And what we had was a lot of left over ingredients that we never use. Carrots, celery, half opened bottles of almost sour red wine. Mix that with the two pound of fat and meat trimmings from my beef bourgignon last week and I was on my way to making my very first batch of beef broth. This turned out to be a killer idea!
Exhibit A - Celery, meat, onions, garlic, carrots, thyme, oregano, red wine, and water. (Not all ingredients included)
After 2 hours
After 5 hours
.jpeg)
Done!
So epic and it smells amazing! We should all be making our own broth!
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
We Who Are
We Who Are Your Closest Friends
By Phillip Lopate
We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Japan 5
Okay, so really, I don't even really know where we are! We have done so much stuff in such a small amount of time, you miss one day and you can't keep up!
But i'll try to get you all up to speed. So, Tuesday, was our "free"day. Ha! "Free Day!"
We met with a missionary for coffee early in the morning. It was supposed to be an hour meeting but ended up talking to him for two hours. Cool guy, good guy, doing a lot of good work here. Yeah.
After that we headed back to the hotel to decided what to do with the rest of the day. We had a prayer meeting at 7:30 and it was about noon. What to do, what to do.
Well, at the rate that we had been going, we should have done something chill... but there is no rest for the weary!
We decided to take a road trip. Nathaniel suggested that we go to a small town about an hour south of Tokyo and Matt and I jumped on the idea.
We grabbed some lunch at a super local place....
dropped MaryAnn off a the hotel because she was smart and took advantage of the rest, and headed off in to the maze that is the Tokyo public transportation system. Let's take a step back. You may be thinking, city... ya know, public transportation, whatever. Not so hard. L.A. has 7 million people. Tokyo has 35 million people, and they are all going somewhere.
We took a picture of our hotel's phone number in case we got lost...
and set off! Streets of Ginza anyone?
Step one done, made it to the suburb train station. Actually, we were running through the station because we were trying to make the earliest train possible to maximize our Kamakura time.
We got there seconds after the train left.... so we waited.
Matt and I had a seat next to one another... Nathaniel made some new friends.
Welcome to Kamakura!
Hmm.... figure this one out.
Kamakura is a really cute shopping town on the water. There are a bunch of temples and shrines to visit here too. It would have been so fun to spend some more time here, but we didn't have it, so we saw the abbreviated version of the town.
This was so good! Ice cream (obviously) but the flavor choices were green tea, green tea sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato vanilla, or vanilla. Sounds totally gross and I was ready for them to be nasty...
This is for biscuit!
Odd pictures of the town.
We made it to a shrine! First shrine for me.
No idea what this is.... beer?
Matt went camera crazy!
Massive fish!
I wanted a ride from this dude, but we were in a hurry to get back!
Our train was minutes from leaving! We hadn't eaten dinner yet and we had to be back for our prayer meeting by 7:30! We hopped on the train, almost missed our stop, ran and scooped up Mary Ann (who I just learned has a space in her name) and headed to the Pfeils for a prayer meeting. Dinner was out.
Sarah Pfeil had pie, which we scarfed down! Well, Matt did, the rest of us ate like normal people. Our thought was to get dinner afterwards. However, the meeting lasted till eleven.
Long but really fun day!
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