Château de Versailles: 29 October, 2013

The château 

I have always wanted to visit the famous Versailles, and I am very thankful for being able to see it :) 

I went to Versailles with Jenny, my sister's officemate (Ate didn't want to come with me because she'd been there twice already yada yada yada :P ). So I met up with Jenny at the RER Station near Notre Dame in the morning and off we went! 

France with My Sister: 28 October - Le Mont Saint-Michel

My sister has been to France numerous times, but she never had enough time to visit Le Mont St-Michel, one of the most beautiful sites in the country. Built between the 11th and 16th centuries, LMSM has a Benedictine abbey perched on it's peak, with a small surrounding village. I didn't see any monks, what I did see, though, were about a million Japanese tourists, all trying to communicate that they want to buy all the souvenirs in the shops. It's so funny how they think French people can understand Japanese. 

France with My Sister: 27 October - Paris

Pont Alexandre III

My sister's a lawyer and her firm has these annual trips to some European country, and this time around it was France again (the original plan was Germany in August, but half of the firm missed the flight because of the floods, so the "unlucky half" were sent to Paris instead). So of course, I met up with my Ate!! We hadn't seen each other for almost two months. The plan was to meet her in Paris Sunday, then we both go to Le Mont St-Michel Monday, I go to Versailles with her officemate Jenny Tuesday, then I leave Paris Wednesday.

Stockholm: 17 to 22 October, 2013

My only relatives who live in Europe are my cousin Karol and her family, who live in Stockholm. I hadn't seen them for around 5 years, so I was determined to see them.

Ate Karol, her husband Pele, and the younger of her two sons, Uriel, live in Sundbyberg (her older son Michael is currently studying at Parson's in NYC).  Sundbyberg is a municipality in Stockholm county, just north of downtown Stockholm city. It is a part of the Stockholm urban area, so it is still served by the Stockholm city metro (or T-bana).

Revelations

I've been here in France for almost 3 months, and I have since been enlightened about some things :P

• My "French speaking skills" can't really be called skills, because I'm not as good as I had thought.

• Cooking rice without a rice cooker is hard. Hard. Just like my rice after I cook it.

• If needed, I would rather die than interact with people--during my first few weeks in France, I hated doing groceries and going to the boulangerie because I would have to speak (bad) French.

• I walk very slow. On my way to school everyday,  I always find myself being last of the crowd to arrive.

• I cannot survive without conditioner--I had trouble finding "après shampoing" the first few weeks, and I wanted to cut my hair off!!