Fish Fiasco

I am actually blogging at a decent hour tonight (9:50pm), but I feel like I don’t have too much to say. The initial excitement of au pairing is over, I am slowly getting used to things and seeing how my everyday life will be.

The girl started dance lessons today, so that was added into get home, pick up girl, then pick up boy, so I had to combine taking the girl to dance and picking up boy. Each week, they will add activities, so it will get continuously more complex with chauffeuring the kids around, but I will handle it.

Waking up at 6:30am sucked as usual, but I think tonight I will go to bed at a decent hour, so that will help. I am probably jinxing myself now though… I also took the girl to school today by myself for the first time (the mom went with me one day last week to show me where to park and what to do), so I hung out with the girl until her friends came. I then drove home, did some last minute getting ready/half waiting for the dad to wake up before I left for Paris because I needed his money to fill my Navigo.

Of course he did not wake up before I left, so I had to buy it on my own. Who the hell knows when I will be reimbursed. Anyway I used a machine to fill up my card for a week, and it wouldn’t accept American cards or my French card bc it has 5 euros on it. So I was effing mad I would have to buy another 15 euro round trip ticket to Paris yet again, but (the world was in my favor today) I went up to the counter, and there was a Navigo sticker, so I could pay cash to fill it up! Hallelujah.

So I used my French and bought me a week of Navigo usage. I am happy with myself, but hopefully I will get paid back soon! During the train ride, I wanted to sleep but didn’t and read/listened to music. I arrived at my train station in Paris and headed to the predetermined location where I was meeting up with au pair friend. Last night, I told her just plan today for us because I had to go bed and didn’t have time. So the first thing was the Musée de l’Orangerie. It took freaking forever to find the damn place and each other, but it was a nice museum once we found it. I had my passport, so I got in fo free! Au pair friend is an Art major, so she educated me at the museum, which made it much more enjoyable. My favorite part was the lily paintings of Monet; there were like six. They are so big and pretty!

We headed to le Marais after. A cute district that has a Jewish side to it, which means yummy food. So we walked around for a bit and then asked for directions to the Jewish part and they more or less worked. We were sent in the general direction, but eventually turned on a cool, random street we liked and ran into it fortunately. I was super happy because I just happened to find an ice cream and Jewish restaurant that I went to with my study abroad peeps last summer. I miss my study abroad group! I really miss having lots of friends…sigh… in time, soon enough. I really am lucky to have friends here already; I’d be so bored a depressed right now without them.

We ate across the street from last summer’s restaurant, and I ate a pita brochette dinde. No idea what brochette is, but dinde is turkey, so it was a safe choice (which now I think—what the heck was I doing, my goal was to eat weird food here! Oops). Then time flew by as usual when I am in Paris and enjoying myself, and I had to leave to catch my train back to the real world.

After my train, I drove home and hung out for a bit until I picked the girl up, then drop her off at practice, and get boy, start dinner, then pick up girl! Whirlwind. For dinner, the dad had basically had whole salmon in the fridge and told me to put it in the oven for the hour. No other details… so I had to wing it because I had no idea what I was doing (mom and dad were gone to a school meeting). The hard part came when I took it out of the oven. I had no idea to cut into a whole fish and de-bone it and all. I did my best, but I warned the kids to be careful eating. Anyway other than the fish disaster, dinner went well. I had a good convo with the kids and we were laughing and all, so I feel good! They were singing this funny song and translating it word by word for me (something about farting in water and a grandma cutting someone’s butt into 300 pieces).

Then the parents came home and a switch goes off, and the kids become little demons. Glad I don’t deal with them then! I chatted in French with the mom for a bit (she really is the only one who makes me speak French so I am thankful), and then I drove to a new train station with her, so she could show me how to get there. This station has more trains, which is nice, so I am gonna do a test run tomorrow with them to time myself.

I just laid out some laundry (boring au pair details), but I think it may be smarter to do laundry at night and let it air dry over-night and maybe tomorrow afternoon it will be ready to iron? I think so… we shall see.

Tomorrow I have plans! Au pair friend told me au pairs are meeting at Centre Pompidou for lunch, and we are gonna do a museum in the morning. So I hope to meet some girls!!