Fast Track to Domestication

Growing up, I was never able to use the kitchen much because my stay-at-home mom was always very reluctant to let us make our own food and things like that. I was one of those kids that walked into college without knowing how to do the dishes or make even the simplest things, like fried eggs.

I gained an immense amount of weight my freshman year at NYU. Honestly, I had no idea. I thought I had gained maybe like, 5 or 10 pounds, but the reality was that I almost gained freshman 20 HAHA. I think that this sudden change can mostly be attributed to the fact that cheeseburgers and fries were my foods of choice at the all-you-can-eat dining halls in our school.

Luckily, I lived in an apartment-style dorm my sophomore year, and managed to shed off a good chunk of my tubbiness. It was the first time I really experienced cooking, and because I have a really weird palette, I ended up eating a lot of random things throughout the year. Chicken quesadillas with corn, spring herb quinoa patties, pan-seared chicken with eggs, stuff like that. It wasn't super healthy, but it was definitely a step up from the crap I ate my freshman year.

Fast forward to this semester, and I'm currently living in an apartment with my friend Jenn. Not a dorm, not an apartment-style dorm, but an actual studio apartment with real, adult neighbors (hahha). It was an interesting change, going from living in a bustling dorm with five other girls to suddenly moving into a small, residential neighborhood with just one friend. We assumed we would be cooking a lot, but because we traveled a lot on the weekends, we usually ended up eating simple things throughout the week, like fried rice and pre-packed sandwiches.

Since my days of heavy traveling have kind of come to a momentary halt, I've had time to settle in a bit more. It's been nice, and my apartment actually feels like home now. I've been using a lot of this time to rest at home (which is something I hardly got to do in the city) and also to plan my future trips out. I came into this semester with traveling as my primary goal, so I set up most of my budget towards it. What I didn't realize (until after I booked everything..) was that I kind of under-budgeted my living costs here. I can call and ask my parents for more money, but I decided not to because me coming here was a big financial pain in the ass in the first place.

Naturally, I've been cooking a lot more, and because my days are often so quiet, cooking my lunches and dinners has actually started to become some of the more interesting parts of my day. This sounds super pathetic, but I'm actually very thankful. In the city, I get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of interning and meeting people and going to school that I kind of forget to be a person sometimes. I've had really weird cravings during my time here, but it's kind of funny in retrospect. When I first came to Paris, I was really craving fresh fruit, because it was so cheap and accessible in Queens, but constantly shopping for one-persons servings of fruit on a tight budget gets harder here. I managed to balance out my budget, and have since incorporated a daily stream of grapes and clementines in my regular diet. After Steve left, I got terrible food poisoning and barely ate for a week. During that time, Jenn made me a lot of jook, so for some weird reason, I was craving jook basically 24/7 for about two weeks afterwards. That time has since passed, and at the moment, I've really been into things like quinoa, onions, and cheese. I basically take whatever ingredients I have in my kitchen and pan-fry them to a nice mixed dish.

I've also been craving fish for the longest time (esp after having the best fish and chips in London), but I was always too weary of the packaged fish at the markets and too shy to go buy them from the actual fish mongers at the outdoor markets. I was going to just eat quinoa again for dinner today, but I was REALLY REALLY craving fish, so Jenn convinced me to go to Dia and buy some. I ended up getting pre-packaged cod, and I was so nervous at first, but I ended up making a nice dinner with pan-fried lemon-herb cod, rice with seaweed, and eggs. It wasn't a gourmet meal, but it was my first time cooking fish, and I was very very satisfied.

Cooking here has been such an adventure for me, and although I'm sad that I don't have an oven to bake fun autumn and winter treats, I'm excited to see how I can continue to broaden my culinary horizons HAH :)

I will leave you with a few photos of my cooking (don't make fun of me):

today's dish! hehe

Drifting Thoughts

Before I start on my massive load of backlogged posts, I wanted to just jot down some thoughts that I've been having lately.. in no particular order.

Weekends in France
Because I spent almost the entirety of September and October traveling on the weekends, I've technically only had two real weekends in Paris. Part of it was because I wanted to take advantage of the light courseload and the nice weather- part of it was because I wanted to leave Paris. After planning the rest of my semester out, I realized that I accidentally planned my travels so that I have a month-long gap in which I'm here in Paris for my weekends. I've currently passed 1/4 of those weekends, and while last weekend was fun because Paul was here and I had to catch up on some schoolwork, I was really afraid of the coming weekends, particularly because Jenn, Erica, and Garam are all leaving this weekend to travel. Even though I  have been opening up to Paris a lot more ever since my parents left, I wasn't sure if I was at that point where I could be comfortable spending a weekend here by myself. I was so nervous and desperate that I began searching for flights to literally anywhere.  I just wanted to get out this weekend, and almost booked a solo trip to Poland on a whim, but ended up deciding to stay. I realized that I have very few weekends left in this marvelous city, and that this would be a good chance to explore the city on my own and actually reach out to the friends that I've made here this semester. Chris is visiting next weekend, and Sharon is coming the week after, so technically this may be the only weekend that I have here by myself. I realized that that too, is a gift, so I hope that I can enjoy it to the fullest.

Worlds Colliding
Speaking of Chris, my home friends Lois and Chris got to meet with Steve, Paul, and Patrick in London yesterday. Lois has known Steve for a bit, and definitely liked him, but it was the first time that my home friends and school friends were hanging out without me. I was definitely envious, as I miss them all terribly, but I was also very excited for them. Turns out that they all had a really great time together, and it felt so wonderful getting back such positive feedback from both parties. I'm so happy that Lois and Chris not only approve of Steve, but that they actually genuinely like him as a person and us as a couple. The opinions of all my friends are important to me, but to hear such encouragement from those that are dearest to me really put a warm feeling in my hear. Especially after some weird encounters with my home/college friends earlier during my sophomore year, this meant a lot to me. I hope that we will all continue to hang out together and grow even closer to each other in the near and far future.

Church
Because I've been traveling, I've only had the opportunity to go to church one weekend this semester, and that was back when I first arrived. I finally had the chance to go back to Hillsong Paris this weekend, and I am so happy that I did. Although the worship is in French, the sermon is giving by pastors from Hillsong London, who genuinely love and believe in the French people and the ministry as a whole. In a country that is as secular as France, religion isn't very highly regarded, so coming into this closed space and seeing so many Frenchmen and fellow outsiders praise and worship so freely was the biggest encouragement. This is kind of embarrassing, but the tears just kept flowing from my eyes at times. It's amazing to know that wherever we are in the world, that wherever we are in our lives at any given moment, we are praising the same God.

Yikes!!

I just realized that almost a month has passed without any updates on my blog..whoops. So many things have happened, and even though I haven't been super busy, I guess this just fell off my list of priorities for a while. I have some time in the next two weeks, so hopefully I can catch up before my new round of adventures start! In the meanwhile, here's a quick list of blog posts that I need to catch up on, mainly for my own reference-

- health
- steve visits paris
- italy with parents!
- madrid with parents
- amsterdam
- paul's visit
- making paris my home