Sleepless and vaguely near Seattle

Welcome to hour 13!

Local time: 5am

Body clock time: 11pm the night before

Reality: For the past few nights I've only slept 4 hours or so and will now be awake for 24

Yay psychosis!

So in the final few hours I managed to crash and doze for around an hour, in and out of sleep, while watching Batman, but I found I was starving and couldn't really relax because every time I heard the crinkling of paper I snapped my eyes open thinking food was here, and being terrified of missing it. It was never there though. And another matter was becoming more pressing (literally); the bathroom challenge of a window seat. See the blonde guy in the aisle, 24I, appeared to be joyfully sleeping and 24J was watching a movie, all the seats were reclined... and I was locked in the window seat. How do you navigate your way out of that easily? I felt terrible waking 24I up, but thankfully as I began to move things off my lap and prepare for the dash, 24J noticed and helped me out by prodding the guy and nodding at the aisle and suddenly they both swept out of the way like some sort of clockwork motion had been initiated. It was fantastic! My tired mind and full bladder were very grateful :)

I then proceeded to enjoy the thrills of attempting to get changed inside an airplane bathroom, constantly being terrified of knocking the latch off and having the door swing open [which I'm not sure if I wrote about in my France tales or not but totally happened to me. It was NOT fun]. Thankfully though, I managed to emerge unscarred (physically and mentally) and now clothed for a wintery country :) ...and just in time to hit the food trolley! Now we had to play a fun game of tray balancing and switching to get back to my seat while everyone was trying to eat Breakfast!

Eventually, when all the trays were cleared, and Paul's accent and my natural statements of "no worries" or "cheers" had been made fun of enough, land began to appear in the dim light of dawn below our wings and we began to descend! The best part was, on the run way, we'd been trafficking around for a little while when the pilot's annoyed Aussie voice crackled over the intercom

"Hey guys, so ahhh it seems as though they aren't quite ready for us at the gate. Even though we told them we were coming. They still aren't ready. Soooo... we're just kind of... driving around the airport a bit. Um. Yep. So, that's what we're doing!"

Now I'm sure sometimes you allow me creative license in my writing here, but that is honestly what he said! He sounded so irritated and yet was kind of laughing as he said "we're kind of just... driving around... the airport" hahahahaha ahhh it was hilarious yet the last thing any of us wanted to hear when we were all so ready to get off the plane.

Of course we all escaped eventually, and, extensive custom lines later, baggage check, fingerprinting, a barking line attendant and a shared grin with an Aussie guy who mumbled "gee everyone's so nice here in America :S" I opted for the 10 minute walk outside the airport to get me to the gate for Seattle. I then proceeded to spend my very first American money! I bought some weird dark chocolate and coconut bar, oats and an infamous "cinnabon"...

Finally I was on board my final airplane! And suddenly I began to crash... hard. I fell completely asleep within 2 minutes of taking off and woke up about 10 minutes from landing, just enough time to look out the window and marvel at the landscape...

There are so many mountain ranges here!

As I sleepily disembarked I glanced around to check if this is where Nic would meet me, but there was no one, so off to baggage claim! I was thrilled my bag was unprecedentedly the second one onto the track, so I grabbed it and began to trundle off. Suddenly I realised the airport just... ended. There was no "pick up" area. Uhh, okay, no mind... what's over here? A big open area... where Nic isn't. Jesus, he was going to meet me at the airport... right? RIGHT??? My mind flashed nervously back to Noel and Christian teasing me in the car that he probably wouldn't pick me up, and flashed back over the emails where I realised it was never actually stated that we'd meet at the airport. And hey, he did give me his address, maybe I'm supposed to get a cab? But how am I supposed to get into his apartment? No, no, surely he's here... So I did another sweep of all the areas. Nothing. Okay, no worries, I have my laptop, there's probably wifi here...

Wifi connected.
Lol jokes forever loading nothing.
(I realise it looks like facebook, but it's just frozen on the last screen I had open)

Oh.
Good.

Okay... well I have his number here somewhere, I'll call him! *Finds a payphone* 50c for a local call, okay no problem *pulls out wallet... promptly realises that whilst she can sing a song that includes all of the American currency, she has no clue what any of them are actually worth*. Seriously this is so freaking annoying the way they've set up this currency! ALL of the coins are moronically small and about as thick as tin foil. Here's what I had; a handful of pennies (which I would soon realise are worth 1c and are sincerely the absolute dumbest, most useless coin in the world), 2 5c pieces and 3 dimes. And then I was stumped, what the hell is a dime worth? Despite my best attempts at deciphering the inexplicably small inscription around the edges which is how I'd know the other pieces were 5c... all I could gather was that it was a dime. I also kept dropping things since I was now really tired and confused and had to turn to someone to ask for help...

Lisa: "Excuse me sir, I have a bit of an embarassingly silly question, but could you please tell me how much a dime is worth?"

Man: "Are you trying to make a local call?"
"Yeah"

"It's 50c"

"...Oh. Yeah, I know... I'm just trying to figure out if I have 50c, I just don't know how much a dime is worth in cents"

"*Looks at my hand* Yeah that's a dime"
"... ... ... yep! Umm... could you tell me how much a dime is in cents? Like is it 10c or 20c or..."

"Ohhhh hahaha sorry! Yeah it's 10 cents"

So I count up what I've got: 30c of dimes, 10c of mystery coin and... 8c of pennies. 48c WHAT THE HELL! WHYYY! So now I had to wander over to some other desk and ask if they could change a crumpled up $1 note into quarters, but they had no register and none of them had change, so I had to go back up to the place I started from to find a cafe to swap the money over. I also tried to get onto the wrong escalator to do so because the traffic in the USA flows opposite to ours. This also explains why I keep bumping into people because I naturally want to pass on the left :/

*beep beep*

Hello?

NIC! Hey! Where are you??? (please please don't say at work)

"Baggage claim, where the hell are you?"
-Half of a very muddled conversation cut out-

"Okay, yeah, you wait there, I'll come to carousel 5. I'll be the really tired confused Australian girl who looks like me."

But we made it!!!!

Yay adventure!
Adventure on the wrong side of the road!

So after a drive on the wrong side of the road later through delightfully drizzly cold weather layered with 5000 conversations, catch ups, jokes, food, pointing out things, questions and instructions later, we reached Nic's apartment in Kirkland. I feel terrible, but there's no way to undo the first words you say when you see something. *Nic opens door*

Whoa O.o

The giant cardboard boxes are there for you to build your own home Lisa!

This looks like the place furniture comes to die

But honestly it's a nice apartment :)

Decked out in heavy black tablecloths for curtains,
just like in the old days of when you lived at IH in uni Nic!

A plethora of food!
We have: soft drink, milk, beer, cream cheese and cookie dough.

Which is how we found ourselves finally in a bed, ignoring the fact that it was 12pm and resigning to exhaustion. And embracing being Sleepy in Seattle :)

Phew sah tired

Allo, this is Captain Allen, signing off

Night night bloggers and bloggets.

See you next time for chapter 3; The first few Daze in America...

It's just another plane day

There are few songs quite as specifically uplifting to wake up to as Winnie the Pooh's soft joyful rumbling voice singing "Gotta get up, gotta get going, gunna see a friend of mine!". This, mixed with a few potent shots of caffeine and you have a powerful elixer to remind you that in 3 hours your meager little human-bag-of-bones corpse is going to be suspended in the sky by magical jet engine powers for 13 hours.

You will then find yourself playing the "clothing selection" game one more time to confirm what you plan to don that corpse with for the trip. It's a tricky game, allow me to explain how you play!

The inexplicably frustrating game of Travel-Clothes selection: Rules and regulations

• The outfit should be comfortable, I mean hey, it's 13 hours on a plane after all
• But don't look daggy, you aren't a 12 year old boarding the plane wearing joggers, track pants and that weird fleecy style hoodie with her head buried in a game boy screen anymore. We in no way plan to resemble so.
• But at the same time try not to focus too much on aesthetics; it's a plane trip, not going out for drinks, you don't want to look too fancy!
• Also it should be made of a material that caters for possible spills, static, heat, cold, itching, running, sleeping and potentially walking around airports for the rest of your life
• It should accomodate the Australian summer weather you are leaving for the trip up and time in the airport here
• Yet also be comfortable and suitable to step out into the Los Angles winter in
• Oh ps it should also suit you
• And we also have to actually own this garment
• ...you have to be able to find an outfit that subscribes to all these rules within the next 10 minutes

I see.
And the choice I made for you last night... is not okay?

And that is how I ended up wearing a comfortable blue cotton dress and a pair of tights and stuffing a scarf, jeans and jacket into my carry-on while marveling at how I can make any process complicated, and yet how much this contrasts with the simplicity of my life summarized into one suitcase, a carry on and my handbag.

Your life in 3 bags or less

Hokai, bai bai Australia!

 I suppose at some point I should actually describe the adventure we're heading off for. We'll as has been established

AMERICA!

A little more specifically;

• Leaving Brisbane on Nov 28th for LAX
• LAX to Seattle
• (Hopefully) being picked up from Seattle airport by my older brother Nic
• One and a bit weeks living with Nic while he's at work during the day, adventuring throughout Washington by myself by day, being an epic little sister by night on dual adventures
• A week with Nic on holidays of duo adventuring
• Flying to California to meet Katie (Nic's woman)
• Spending 3 days in San Fransico
• Flying out of LAX on the 19th
• Arriving home on the 21st of Dec at Brisbane airport

 Two hours later in the car with two of my favourite men in the world with a playlist of randomly bouncy songs and one or two "oddly suitable" songs courtesy of Dad (eg "Los Angeles international airport") and we were suddenly pulling up at the international drop off zone.

I promptly already began to forget things already by grabbing all my bags and leaving my phone in the car. Yay Lisa! Cue Dad showing up with not only my phone but with a large skinny cappuccino (there's a very specific sentiment to knowing someone knows your coffee order). We then proceeded to spend forever in the slowest moving check-in line in the world (seriously, children were born in the darkness of the line and grew up, only ever knowing the steel cages of the trolleys and intermittent half strides of movement and clickety-clacks of the wheels) wherein we passed the hours by deconstructing and mocking my fellow passengers.

But... my lucky chainsaw! I'm supposed to just leave it behind???

The smile is from delusion. I've managed to forget what I'm actually doing in this line...

Of note in this game was a guy I pointed out because he looked exactly like Zach Galifianakis, saying he'd be ready for the winter we were heading into and another skinny blonde guy wearing glasses who looked a lot like a guy I used to know, but stared at just awkwardly long-enough to confirm it was not him. There was also a family with three or four kids (it was hard to count them when they were constantly in motion) that had managed to work out how three trolleys full of suitcases could also double as a jungle gym. The parents already looked exhausted :/ I said a silent prayer for future Lisa if she ever finds herself in the time of travelling with her children and mused on what a specific freedom there is in endlessly travelling as a 20-something. I mean how strange to think that pretty much exactly a year ago, I was right here heading off to Paris and we were in chapter one of CFOB, and here we are now ready to go to America... I wonder where we'll be standing with bags packed for a year from now?

But for now, let's conquer America!

So boarding passes, goodbyes, departure forms and customs later and I found myself wandering Brisbane aiport looking for gate 81. There were signs showing "gates 70-80" hmm... okay... *walks off in the other direction*... "gates 82-90" ...uhhh, okay, no problem, I probably just missed it *walks back* "78 :) ...79 :) ...80 :D ... ...82 :| >: ( OH WHAT THE FU-" Seriously, 10 minutes till boarding and a non existant gate, awesome start! Just as I was about to ask for some sage wisdom from a subway sandwich maker, I spied the gate lying on the outskirts of the airport and pulled my bag and myself there. As soon as boarding was called, the longest line in the world proceeded to form...

Yeah screw that

So instead of standing in yet another long line, I went wandering off in the nearby shops where I was promptly offered free alcohol! In my books, all good adventures start with the main character getting slightly drunk. And it was baileys on ice! One of my favourite drinks :) And there were two new flavours they were promoting, Orange Truffle and Biscotti. Oh god, my mouth's watering just remembering the deeply biscuity flavour. They have a special deal going on two bottles for Christmas, I hope it's still going when I come back through customs on the 21st since I like Baileys and someone else I kinda think is cool seems to like it too and this stuff tastes like Christmas.

The magic ingredient is the cocaine!

But eventually the line died down and I tossed my now-Baileys-infused body onto the end of it and made my way onto the plane. The best part of this was overhearing someone else in the line go "America, fuck yeah!" hehehe... 

Welcome to window seat 24K, my new home for 13 hours! I sat down and started rearranging my little nest, noting the weird stain on my pillow and subtly swapping it with the pillow next to me (not realising I'd be made to feel like an evil vixen for having done so later in the trip).

Le 24K palace!

And then my compadres for the journey arrived; 24H and 24J... and my face went wide O.o who should it be but *fan fare* the bearded guy from the line! I was shocked and amused by the chances that it should be the one person I noted and kept seeing in all the lines. Then 24H shows up and it's the BLONDE GUY! Seriously, what are the chances!

Howdy internet following of weird-girl's blog!

Turns out 24J was awesome. We hit it off pretty quick somewhere between our mutual reservations about the howling baby infront of us, sharing a scotch or two and discovering a shared ability to banter and mentally joust. We also began to investigate the inflight entertainment and discovered the creepy magic of the seat-to-seat chat function and immediately began to bully each other through an extended word game challenge.

"A vocation for vacations. Summoned by a light... it pertains to both of us..."

"I have no idea, this one makes no sense, are you sure we've mentioned it already?"

"Positive. Okay I'll break it down, first half of the word rhymes with you and describes a hot meat dish all of one consistency, usually eaten in Winter. The second half of the word rhymes with cord and describes a place in a hospital you keep a lot of sick people."

"This is just as bad as you trying to guess jetlag..."

"Jetlag isn't a noun!"

"I didn't say noun, I said thing!"

"Everything's a thing! Quit stalling, you're just annoyed because you embarassingly still can't get this word..."

It was STEWARD, 24J. 

So if you came and found CupFullOfBlank in the end, there is your answer :) and welcome to the blog! It was a sincere pleasure to travel with you as a partner in crime, thanks for making our trip far more fun.

Inflight seat to seat chat; how to passive aggressively alienate your neighboring seats in three easy steps!

After a pretty average lunch and another scotch, a personal critiquing based on lunch choice (24J's remorseful choice of inedible stew) and eating-on-a-plane skills (or rather my lack thereof) and a fierce debate on the brand of scotch we were being served, ending in a monetary bet (just a quick side note that you are still in my debt 24J thanks to Mr. Johnnie Walker) we proceeded to play a new game with the chat function: Fishing. The game works like this; arbitrarily invite random seats to chat to you until you manage to lure one into a conversation. First person to keep a conversation going for three lines each wins! I managed to pull in yet another victory thanks to 13C, some muso named Joel ALSO from the GC going on a road trip with friends in the USA.

So muddled somewhere into my 13 hour flight was hearing the succinct summary of a strangers life told in an american accent, a mediocre thriller movie, snacks, forever night time, music, batman and the bathroom challenge of a window seat as well as stories such as...

"How to steal money from the passengers next to you; a charlatan's guide to airline gambling (aka: the story of how seat 24J came to owe me $2)"

"10 things you can't do on an airplane"

"How to get changed in an airplane bathroom; a restrictive movement injury guide."

All this and more in the next chapter of Lisa's airline adventuring; "Sleepless and vaguely near Seattle"

The United States of Unprepared; The final 24 hours before we leave

The final 24 hours before the plane leaves for America.

A glimpse at where we were 12 hours ago through the lens of my conversation with Noel...

-

"All packed for tomorrow Lisa?"

"Just about" 

[Translation: Literally have not even started]

"Did you fix up those jobs that needed to get done before you leave?"

"Yeah, I've totally taken care of those. Don't worry."

[Translation: I will be rushing to empty a freezer, wash it out, clean the kitchen, move my old furniture downstairs, back up my laptop, get a gift for Christian and turn a box of full of randomly poking out crap into a heartfelt well packaged gift before you get here in 2 hours so you don't judge me.]

"Got your US money, passport and visa stuff all good to go?"

"Yep! ...you're still a few hours away... right? Oh no reason :) Yep, definitely have all those things done!"

[Translation: My passport is in a black box in the back of my cupboard and I did my visa online so I think that's taken care of... dammit I need to get to the bank... damn I need to do a lot... Okay, let's go final day before America!]

-

So after a whirlwind of a final 24 hours, I now lay in bed with a packed suitcase at my feet, a set of clothes on the chair, a charged phone by my bed and a backed up laptop at my fingers. So finally, I can sigh and smile and welcome you all back for the brand new and exciting season of Cup Full of Blank! (Who knew that I'd be committing myself to such a nonsensical title when I typed out a completely random title when we first began our adventures) I hope you all remembered to pack your Lisaisms translation dictionaries and brought your own seatbelts because tomorrow we're off to America! (Again, it's not reaaaaally "we"... it's just me. But I like to make you guys all feel included and special. It's all part of the in-flight service.)

During this final day I have learnt a few valuable lessons that I have summarised and will share with you in a not-at-all-easy-to-follow guide. Enjoy!

Lisa's guide of helpful hints for your final day before travelling:

1. Ensure you have functional feet.
   After having injured my feet in the most moronic way possible yesterday, I cannot emphasise enough how valuable feet are. Seriously, take a moment right now to just give your feet a little foot-five and tell them they're awesome, because they freaking are and you don't appreciate that till they suddenly stop working. Apparently the recipe for ruining feet is 2 parts asphalt, 1 part extreme heat, 1 part heavy items, 5 parts pride (dust lightly with stupidity), let the damage sit for a few hours to develop very large tender blisters on the entire pad of your foot and then garnish with crushing this with your entire weight stepping on a power cord plug. I cannot believe that such a stupid thing was so utterly crippling! I would like to point out that I'm not a baby with pain, but this was insanely painful with every step. There has been no way to actually move around without using my feet and every step feels like stepping on smashed glass, and there's really no way around it when it's your whole body weight leaning on it. Suffice to say this has slowed my day down considerably and has vexed me to no end, thankfully they've been getting better (much better this morning than yesterday!) and I've still hobbled through all my jobs like some street urchin at Australia Fair. Ergo, the lesson is, prepare some functional feet for the days leading up to your travel.
2. Try to actually gather data about things like the weather of the place you're going to, where your suitcase is and what the weight limit is on it so you don't end up with a whole pile of eclectic clothes on your bed.

Is there some sort of cmd+F for my wardrobe?

3. Playing tetris music while you pack makes the entire affair seem far more entertaining and rewarding!

Damn these L-shaped boots!

4. Try not to be the sort of strange girl who gets engrossed in writing a bizarre blog about her odd adventures the night before you're leaving to travel.
Especially if it's nearly midnight and you're getting up at 5am. This is almost certainly a bad plan.

5. Know your personal travel weaknesses.
I know that I need to have a nail file in my handbag, set my alarm an hour early, write a little note to myself about where the gates are and the travel times, that I always have this time where I inevitably feel sick right before I travel and that I should have a playlist ready for the trip.

The really good part is, for some reason I really adore flying. I love the intimacy of the airport; even though you're actually the most anonymous there and surrounded by strangers all in transit between worlds, there's something oddly unifying about that to me. It's like you've all entered this little capsule between worlds; you're all in no-mans-land together. It's always the start of an adventure for me and its one of the main times that I feel that sense of it's-just-me-and-this-adventure sensation. I almost always feel in the moment in an airport.

Don't even get me started about actually being on an airplane (Ha, never mind, it's my blog and it appears I'm about to ramble on about it either way!), it's even more so a delightful regression into this womb of limbo. It's a complete removal from my world where I have little to no responsibilities because there really isn't much I can be doing up in the air anyway but snuggle down into the capsule high above the world and enjoy that sensation. And I do. I love everything about it; the low hum of the engine, the bing bongs of the announcements, always in those soothing tones, the little lights, the foods and drinks that are actually far less nice than what I have at home but for some reason infinitely more exciting, the very specific hairstyles of the flight attendants, the little stories of the other passengers that play out before you, the click of the overhead compartments, the sensation in your stomach as you speed up and then lift off (that's my favourite part), the hot towels, excitedly prowling through the guide to the movies that are showing, the little nest you end up forming with your chair, watching the world grow distant out the tiny thick-glassed oval windows, the dim lights when it becomes night and seeing the soft halo on the faces of the small handful of other passengers who also can't sleep and are sharing the night stretch awake with you, the sensation of leaning your head against the cool glass of the window at night and feeling the gentle rattle of the jet engines against your skin, watching the fluffy white clouds cast a soft bed below you and seeing that tiny rim of frost that forms on the windows at night when it gets so cold. That frost is maybe my favourite of all; like a tiny secret easter egg of flying I always look for. Flying for me is cloaked in nostalgia and cosiness and yet somehow also a completely contrasting sense of independence and setting forth for new things.

So there you have it, a rambling overview of the final 24 hours before you all finally get rid of me and now I have to send myself to sleep so we can get up in the morning and GO TO AMERICA!!!!
\(^o^)/

It's great to have you all here. I can't wait to take you on an adventure with me.

Time to drink up your in flight Cup Full of Blank, we're off!

Everything I've been meaning to write

Argh we're way too low on time for me to do this properly! Here's the current situation: Today is Friday afternoon. Tomorrow at ridiculous AM I leave Marseille airport (Check in 6:45) and fly to Paris for two days then fly out of Paris at 11am Monday morning and finally come home Tuesday night :) SO between then and now I need to organise everything I need for my two days solo in Paris as well as dump the collection of untold stories on you before it I a) forget them or b) it reaches that slightly awkward length of time ago where it makes no sense to tell the story now. Thus, without further ado, here are some really brief, completely sporadic stories for you!

I am genuinely just going to pull out whatever I think of as I think of it...

1. Crepes.

I am somewhat worried about my addiction to crepes, particularly with nutella on top. It's like someone took drugs, threw them into a batter and then layered it with chocolate drugs. Except better. One night here we made a stack of crepes which resembled the layer of pancakes that always looked so full of cartoony goodness from my childhood Danish cartoon Rasmus Klump.

Don't be fooled by his indeterminate animal type and/or questionable style of walking.
He's a total badass.

The table was laden with every topping in the world. It was an epic night.

The resemblance is uncanny!

Is that Nutella I see? DON'T MIND IF I DO! :D

Somewhat relevant to this is my love of spreading things onto the fresh baked bread over here. My habit of doing this during every meal has earned me the French nickname of "Tartiner" over here thanks to Patrick's constant happy teasing about me doing this. Which is fine :) I call him ecrouer because whenever I sit tartiner-ing it up, he sits and eats these with me.

Dammit, every time I think I'm going to tell really short stories it turns into a mammoth post. But, then again, how boring would it be if I just said "1. I ate crepes. I ate a lot of crepes." when you could be hearing all about my childhood memories about a bear (?) who seemed to like pancakes almost as much as me... Oh and it's not just in the house I ate crepes. One afternoon I went to a shopping center and after I'd been looking through all the Christmas stuff for long enough I found a cafe, ordered three nutella crepes and sat and read there for the rest of the afternoon. It was awesome. Also because everyone here is really quite nice when I smile and have fun speaking French, the waiters there gave me a free drink and spent a while chatting to me. Plus I had crepes! :) Tonight as my farewell meal Celine's organised a dinner at a Crepe restaurant, I was so touched (touched and mainly just really excited to eat more crepes) :D (ha! I just went to scroll up to the top of this post to rename it "crepes" and then I saw I'd already given it that very simple and eloquent title. I am awesome.)

2. People here drive like maniacs.

I may have already touched on this, but I have to rehash how bizarre it is that people here just drive all over the lines. If there's no one else around they'll just drive in the middle of the road or even if there ARE people around they'll just move from lane to lane, drive in the middle of the lanes etc with no indicating. It's a little surreal and worrying. Oh and for no reason I'll seize this topic to note how tired I am of sitting in the back of two door cars hahaha long legs are getting to be a pain and it's really very difficult to make getting out of the back look graceful.

3. We went to the mountains!

This has to be one of the coolest weekends ever, and it actually does sound like a fairytale location. We all piled into two cars, drove through beautiful countryside for a few hours till we hit serious countryside country. Rusty abandoned petrol stations, axemen, cows...stuff like that. After bustling around one of the last shops we'd see for a few km's and collecting up a weekends supply of food, we drove up the mountain and arrived at the most beautiful little mountain log cabin.

This fireplace was our saviour after the walk through the snow.
Plus it made the pine log cabin smell so good and deeply of hot wood.

For one weekend the only company the mountain had was six 20-something-year-olds trekking for hours through the pine forest up up UP till we reached SNOW!

 I was so stupidly excited about this and started running and clapping and then threw snow at my friends when they weren't excited enough for my liking :) that quickly got them caught up in the fun of SNOW. It was only a touch and it was too icy to do much with, but it was crunchy and fun to walk on, and it was enough to get my soul dancing around enjoying the moment.

Thew views were breathtakingly amazing. I took some video of it but even that will be hard pressed to do the experience justice. This was definitely one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and I could have breathed in the views for years. Alas! Night was swiftly swooping in to freeze our bursting lungs and sniffling noses so we began to hours long walk home. By the end we could all feel the burn in our legs and butt even though we couldn't feel our fingers and I think we basically inhaled three pots of hot chocolate.

Hallo Christmas Card :)

Dinner was delicious as always over here (I've been so spoilt with deliciousness) but there was something especially beautiful about sharing it with just these other young people for one weekend in the mountains. Everyone cooking together, the food tasting so much better when you've been cold and hungry, lots of laughter and good cheer. Oh and Christmas beer. Yeah. You heard me!

The night wore on with dessert, coffees, dancing in the hallway whenever you walked past the tv while cleaning up (it's a rule!) and then an attempt at playing Star Wars Risk in French. After a very lengthy highly strategic set up and ages of reading rules out loud, debating, translating and arguing we decided this game made absolutely NO sense, even to the people who could speak French and we just randomly attacked each other for a few turns then couldn't keep our eyes open for long enough to continue and had to sleepily lumber upstairs and tumble into the warm squashy beds in the warm loft. The weekend continues in this amazing cosy awesome fashion. Also I want to include this because I find it funny.

The next day at lunch we found our coke had frozen. Inside. Yeah, I know!
Natural ice cubes! :)

It was a really wonderful weekend devoid of technology (and English) with nature and snow :) I'll never forget that for a little while I was allowed to fall into a fairy tale and play around in the snow.

4. Pubs at night in Aix

One of my favourite night time activities over here has been going out in Aix with Manue to the pubs. This is for a mix of reasons. One, Aix is drop dead gorgeous, this place has history that Australia is just to young appreciate (like a highschooler trying to appreciate a good scotch, Ninja turtles, ghostbusters or the real value of never needing to buy toilet paper), two, there's a huge range of really awesome pubs here, three, everyone here is really friendly and it genuinely feels safe to chat to people without worrying about them being seedy and/or dangerous but four, and mainly, Manue is a hilarious badass when it comes to busting down social boundaries. She will always just rope us straight into a conversation with a group of people and that seems completely normal over here! There is zero hesitation with walking into a bar, straight over to a group of men and sitting down and saying HEY can we sit with you? :) What's up, this is Lisa, can you speak English? No? No problem! She speaks French now anyway. What are you guys doing tonight?

I utterly love this confidence and the approach since we've met so many interesting people and had so much more fun than we would have if we'd just sat and had a drink chatting alone. Be aware timid Australian female (and male I guess) friends, I fully intend to bring this behavior back to Aus with me.

This also segways into the story of our Dice game last night which was one hell of a funny weird night. I won't go into too much detail but suffice to say it started with me asking the bartender to make up six options for my drink and rolling the die to chose from these choices and, from a list of simple things like a beer, a martini etc I instead landed on number 3; 10 shots.

This might have hit me pretty hard if I hadn't JUST eaten my body weight in pasta.
I'm actually a little shocked I didn't get drunk from this.

The game continued as we met a range of strangers that we had to bait into playing the game with us and included a lot of hilarious activities, clothes swapping, singing, dancing, questions and spontaneous conversations ending with a completely bizarre straightforward yet complex situation which I will always marvel at the amazingness of. Yeah, I know I'm being very vague, :P so? It was a bizarre hilarious fun night that I'll never forget.

5. Other random walk

I'm running low on time now, we're going out to dinner pretty soon so prepare for my eloquence to plummet. I WENT ON A WALK. IT WAS LOVELY. Hehe. This was a few days ago and I had fun walking somewhere completely new, hoping a fence and scrambling through an abandoned house, suddenly hearing a person and getting shit-scared that some homeless person was about to find me and kill me, running...running hard until I ended up in a really beautiful river, sneaking through bushes like a ninja till I reached the road again and then walking off down a different path. 

I found the other side of the creek/river and a quiet place under a tree overlooking the lake and spent an hour just lying looking at the branches and the sky listening to music and thinking.

I could just sink into the Earth here and die... mmmmm dying... wait, that's probably morbid. Eh, oh well, I'm comfy.
Note these were not my real thoughts. Get real, as if you want to know what really goes on in there...

6. Super Frog

I ate superfrog legs tonight (If you don't know what superfrog legs are, they're just normal frog legs except with a reference to yet another old childhood memory of mine that I get to bask in and force you to bask in. BASK IN IT. BASK IN THE GLORY! *throws bucket of memory all over crying reader*). They were actually really pretty delicious, really frustrating to eat since they're so small and the proportion of bones:meat made it very slow to obtain nutrition, but pretty tasty.

I aslo mentioned the eating of Escargo one night...right? No? WHAT? How have I been so remise! Consider yourself hereby informed of the fact that I have eaten snails as well. They were freaking delicious with garlic butter. I'm not joking, we need this to become part of Australia's culture too...

I have no childhood cartoon character to reference for this sorry.
I can invent one though. Let's call him Trillo the snail. He liked well priced stamps and picnics with his friends. Fin.

7. A rule I would like to instigate

If you are NOT single and attractive, you should not be allowed out at night. I think all people in couples should be given a curfew and should be expressly forbidden from going to bars. In fact if you're in a couple just stay inside all the time, and you definitely should NOT be allowed in France. :) Okay? Awesome, let's start working with this rule from now on, because Scottish guy you aren't allowed to rock up well dressed with a gorgeous accent and chat to me for ages and be all charming and attractive and then have a girlfriend but allude to the fact that if you had been single you would have liked to have dated me. It is completely uncool and unfair. It was still awesome to meet you. But seriously, I think this rule is a good one because I have a theory going that everyone in France is in a couple and screw this, I'm staying single. Ergo, Aus, implement this rule before I return home. :) sanku

8. Songs

Random final observation is how crucial songs have been over here. Seriously, 90% of our communication seems to be through the mutual knowledge of English lyrics to songs. If we can't understand each other at all, I've connected to plenty of Celine's friends simply by singing along to top 40 tracks with them in the car. Furthermore, I can't count the number of times a translation has linked back to a song lyric where they suddenly understand because they can go ohhhh! Like "I've become so numb! I can't feet my pelf and it felm...la...um...blah!" ...yep! Um, just like that! :D Seriously though, hearing English songs in the car has kept me sane when I'm feeling totally out of the loop. Although nowdays I can keep up in French and I really feel pangs of disappointment that I have to leave this beautiful place where everyone is kind of (sorry Au) more attractive (it's mainly the well dressed vibe) and speaks French and everything is pretty. I'm going to have to come back here again. That much is clear. :)

9. Nearly forgot

All the tidbits I nearly forgot:

-We went go-karting! It was real life mario kart and it was epic :D I came second, yay! So so much fun, we need to do this again at some point...

-I have to remember to go write down all those recipes I learnt over here RIGHT NOW before I forget

-There was this other mindblowing walk we went on scrambling over cliffs in a fishermen villiage that I have to remember to post the photos of because it was amazing

Okay, that's going to have to do for now! I know I'm missing a stack of info, but it's just going to have to wait. For now I can't imagine trying to explain why I look so drab for my goodbye dinner with this as a legit excuse. "Lisa, why aren't you dressed? Why does your face look...wrong?" "Oh sorry, I was busy writing a blog about various childhood cartoon characters I now feels as though I've eaten in some form..." hmmm...yeah, probably won't translate too well, it doesn't even sound good in English. So, thus, I leave you once more, and I think this is going to be the last time till I get home since tonight I'm crepe-in' it up then packing then sleeping then hitting Paris solo! I'm extremely excited and happy :) I've had the time of my life over here. I've been exhausted, surprised, delirious, desolate, stoked, laughed till I cried, frustrated, quiet, confused, confident, scared, lost, found, in great company, alone and completely blown away by everything I've done over here. I will sincerely miss everyone I've met over here and all of the little places I found. It's been one hell of a month, it's felt more like 3 months, and I wouldn't take back a single second.

I'll miss you France. Thank you so much for everything.

And thank you all for coming along for the ride with me, your company has been lovely.

I'll write up my final updates when I see you on the otherside!

x