Back at it again (2022)

Another perk of being in France is that I can be late on the blog post with no repercussions. Here we are, back at it once again. And boy am I glad to be back (despite already perhaps falling behind….)! I’m glad that I’ll have a more organized way to record my adventures in the coming months. I’m thankful that we had this blog before and it was a nice proposition to revitalize :’)

I have a bad habit of starting and restarting journaling. My intention is to always write daily or weekly but I end up with entries in my journals months (or even years) apart. In the end, I have a stack of unfinished notebooks since I also love the feeling of a fresh start and thus a new journal every time I embark. Anyways, after not writing for a while, I inevitably feel the need to “fill in” the reader with all the major things that happened since. It’s funny but I usually write as if someone will read it, even if in the far future. The blog is different because it’s obviously public (although quite hard to Google I have to say). But all this to say that I feel the same pressure to fill in the holes to any potential outsiders reading in. But I’m going to resist that urge for the moment and let things be explained when they come up. And for now, I’ll focus on the present!

Five days into the year of 2022… Bonne année ! Bonne santé ! Everyone has their own philosophy on the new year and new beginnings. When the feeling strikes, I can be quite sentimental about beginnings and endings. Not always, but if I build up the ideas enough in my own mind. I spent the turn of the New Year with H*** [name redacted for the sake of privacy, from here on out to be referred to as H] at his family’s home. We had spent the entirety of the break together otherwise and I even met his maternal grandparents :0 which was interesting (ask me for more details if you want me to expand hehe). We didn’t do a countdown, but I had a nice time and I was happy to be in a family environment. Maybe I said that in a way that sounds odd… But New Year’s has always been a family event for me. The only other New Year’s I spent away from my own family was with K******* [redacted for privacy, I decided from now on I should ask friends to use their name] and her family.

new years hat

foods from the break: brownies I made, carrot tart, apéro candy man

during the break I also got back into crochet! I'm very pleased with how this bag turned out :) and it was sweet because H's family gifted me all the materials I would need to keep it up back home

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I unfortunately had to leave on New Year’s day because work started up again this week. I was sad to leave and have to face the real world again but thankfully I was able to take a detour to see some of my faves (ie Aboni, Naoni, and Sebastian). With omicron bringing France to the height of the biggest wave of Covid it’s seen yet (reference: 264 K new cases today while 86 K as the previous all time high in Nov 2020), Sebastian left early the next day as a precaution. It was nice to see the biddies though, even if for a day. Naoni gave us a fun 2022 activity (courtesy of one Caitlin) and it was nice to have a moment of goal-setting and reflection for the new year. My goals are as follows:

1. read at least 50 books - If i read one a week I should be on track. With the weekly blog, it could also be good accountability for me to mention what I’m reading every week. I think I’ll do a little segment at the end each time.

2. eat less sugar - I watched this video about how in Sweden, they have a tradition of only eating candy on Saturday and making it a whole fun outing thing. I thought that was a good idea, but now I’m not sure if that’s so realistic. I got a new blender for Christmas so hoping a healthier form of sugar (in smoothie form) at least can replace some the refined sugars I would have so much of.

3. restart a one second a day (also for memory-keeping reasons).

4. get more serious about medical school goals - going back to the US later this year, I know I need to make this a priority.

5. practice Spanish - Naoni gave me the idea to designate a studying day for this! Since I don’t work Wednesdays (thank you to French school systems), I thought it would be the perfect day. Today I didn’t get much study in admittedly because I was focusing on my reading goal in the library, but I did have a think about what would be a good approach for my learning. I think I should get a physical grammar/work book but I’ll also try to do at least a few (maybe 5?) lessons of Duolingo a session.

naoni looks sad here but she's just focused on cutting into the bûche

I tried out the blender and was very pleased with the results (my next step is to improve my toppings I know)

I had a productive day, but still I need to get a move on because I want to sleep soon but I still have to do some of those goal-related things. On va y arriver *sigh*. I take a train that leaves my train station at 6:43am now instead of 7:04am because I was having problems with arriving for my 9am class even with leaving so early. 15 minutes is worth a lot when you love to sleep and hate to wake up! This semester is really when I’ll have to start implementing this new change, so wish me well in it please. By leaving 15 minutes earlier I get to the school 30 minutes earlier and by leaving 30 minutes earlier, I get there an hour earlier. Don’t ask me about the math on that but it’s basically because based on the amount of stops on a given train line the commute time varies.

The plus side to getting there early is that I can have a ~boulangerie moment~. I never did this when I studied abroad in Paris, but I’ve been taking full advantage while here again and I shocked even myself in learning to like black coffee (I think café allongé is sort of equivalent to drip or an Americano??). I also always go to the boulangerie during the long lunch hour (11:30am to 1:45pm, so more than an hour actually). Tuesday I actually went a grand total of 3 times because it was morning, lunch, and an evening coffee with H when I got back from work. Maybe that’s excessive, and I have to switch it up as to not raise suspicion (or more like feel embarrassed), but I think it’s not a problem for the time being. Tuesday was also the day when the woman at one of the boulangeries knew what I wanted before I even said it.

This is getting awfully long and I told myself that I didn’t have to make it a long post since I should sleep, yet here we are. It sure does feel good to just write at times I suppose.

Book of the week: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee - I started this before the break but didn’t make much headway over that time. It’s a long but very readable book and an interesting recount! Mukherjee calls it a “biography of cancer” which is an interesting but apt way to put it. I’ve learned about some biology of cancer in classes but it still felt very abstract to me. With the chronological tracing of its history, discoveries made little by little, things make a lot more sense and it’s more approachable. Since I’ll be working in a cancer lab it’s definitely necessary for me to start learning about the subject in both the big picture and in the details.