I hope you are all well and happy on this fine Sunday. Once again, I have neglected my blog and now have tons of things to tell you, but have a hard time remembering them all. OHOH!
I will start by saying that for the last month, I have been in full on Christmas mode. Pretty much everything I think about revolves around Christmas, and that includes seeing all (or most) of you wonderful people when I get home. In exactly 1 weeks time I will be sitting on an airplane probably somewhere over Ontario. Hey, I may even get to wave at Pere Noel in the skies, or am I a little early for that? I really have had trouble thinking of much else, and I think that is in part because everywhere I go I see Christmas. The streets, store windows, and even the snow just make me wish I was home drinking eggnog under the Christmas tree. They don't have eggnog here!! Who are these people anyways?
Truth be told, There have been some less than pleasant things happening here lately and I think that is why I am so desperate to get out. I have not, up to this point, written much about the family goings on on my blog in case they read it one day but I am not sure that will ever happen, and if it does, maybe they will understand how it affects me also. Things with the family are 95% wonderful, and I am still really enjoying them. Philippine and I have become better friends now and although she has her days, I do feel like we have a pretty strong bond. Arnaud is great as usual and we even went to see the new Harry Potter movie a few weeks ago. Yes, we saw it in French without subtitles, and I understood everything!! Alex is where the problems start, and although they do not concern me at all, it makes things around the house very tense. As I have mentioned before, he is at boarding school during the week and only comes home on the weekends. Since I got here at the end of August, not a single weekend has gone by where at least 2 meals have been completely ruined. It is not usually fair to blame a sole person for something like that, but it is honestly awful. I do not speak for sometimes 2 hours at a time because its not my place but it is truly uncomfortable and unpleasant for me. But think, if it's that bad for me, how bad it must be for his parents.
Maybe once a week, if the timing works out, Xavier will drive me to school on his way to work. It is great for me because I get to sleep in a few extra minutes, and it also gives me a chance to catch up with him. I talk to Cecile a lot during the week but Xavier always has other things going on so this is a good opportunity for me to get to know him a bit better. He is a vice-president of technology development at a very large telecom company here in France and is currently working on a massive deal. His job is clearly very stressful and I am not sure I have seen him relax since being here. Forgive me for sidetracking a bit, but I feel the background is necessary.
Around mid-october is when the problems really started... I was aware that things were not good with Alex (clearly) but the past few days had been exceptionally bad. Late night phone calls to him at school and a lot of yelling, and then he was kept in a detention on Saturday morning. Xavier revealed to me in one of our rides to school that Alex had caused some sort of mayhem on the coach bus he normally took to and from his school. He was permanently kicked off the bus and forced to take the train twice a week, costing his parents an extra 400 euro a month. After this incident, Xavier and Cecile met with the principle of the school and were informed that Alex was on thin ice and had to show some behavioral improvement, or he was going to be asked to find a new school in January. Fast forward a few months and we get to this past week. Alex had been expelled from his school. Xavier and Cecile now have 5 days, before the schools close for Christmas, to find him a new place to go to school in January. I am not sure if this is selfish but it means he is moving home, and I am now going to be living with him all the time. I have only spent 2 days at the house with him when his parents weren't home and they were truly awful. I have only cried twice since coming to France and one of those times was because of him. For the most part of the time he ignores me and pretends I don't exist but on those days where I am responsible for telling him when to do his homework, things can get quite bad.
I feel very sad for the parents because they are at a complete loss for what to do. They both have stressful jobs but this on top of it is just awful. I wish things would get better but I guess I don't really see that happening any time in the near future. Anyways, now I have all that off my chest, I'll get back to the good stuff!
Last Sunday I met up with my friend Christie Lee. I have known Christie since kindergarten and she has been at school at Versailles since September. We had been trying to get together for ages and when we finally did it was well worth it! We met at Place de la Concorde and spent some time at the Christmas market there. Christie's mom, Carlotta, is here for the month so she came with us too. After that we ventured to the market at La Defense and each made a few purchases there. Christie has worked a bit with Nike and was given tickets to go to the Paris Saint Germain soccer game that night and asked me to go with her, so after a good lunch in the market we headed off to that. It was really awesome to be in such a huge stadium and with so many enthusiastic fans! Paris won the game too which made it even better.
As you can probably tell, I am getting tired and my writing is getting increasingly worse so I am going to end this post here, and rather abruptly too. I hope you are all good and happy and feel free to leave comments or send me an email if you ever want to say hi!!
Love you all and hope to see you next week!
xoxo
M
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