(try!)To-do List 2016 :)

Happy New Year! E ku Odun Tuntun! Bonne Anneé! Frohes Neues jahr! Buon Anno! 

May your 2016 be full of only good things.

So, blogging kind of fizzled out for me towards the end of last year, as I became busier and busier with work and life in general. I currently have two part-time jobs, and at the time of signing the contracts, thought only about the positives, i.e. the chance to explore two very different work environments. Since then, I have had to re-think my decision as I gradually began to realise that two part-time positions doth not one full-time job make! Instead, I feel like I have at least 1.5jobs, and I'm struggling with keeping up with both places, as well as doing my usual gallivanting around Europe. In the light of this, I've been thinking about making 2016 the year of lying low in Brussels and picking up other more...non-nomadic habits. Still for some reason, I'm super excited about this year!

Anyway, as is traditionally the case every year, I have thought about and decided on this year's (much shorter) new year's resolutions. I know many people make fun of these, but I find them very helpful because as a bona fide list-checker, I am motivated by the pleasure I get whenever I can cross something off my list. Looking at last year's list, the major seemingly impossible goal was learning German and reaching a certain level before the end of the year. I somehow managed to do it, and it has both given me the skills I need, as well as inspired me to pick up Italian again. So, without further ado, I present my 2016 new year's resolutions. 

1. Learn Italian, get the CELI4 certificate by November
2. Improve German
3. Read 24books this year in Italian and German
4. Make more of an effort with my appearance
5. Take care of health: exercise, healthy diet, drink 2L water daily, good sleep routine 7-8hrs daily
6. Give up fizzy drinks except for the rare beer
7. Clear face
8. Finish paying student loans
9. Start MPH
10. Put up 52 blogposts 

Will I attain every goal on the list? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, putting them up on the blog makes me feel more accountable, and I'm also hoping I'll get the same amount of support and encouragement as I did last year. So are you a resolution maker? What are your plans for this year? Please share!

The Versatile Award

This is my second time of getting tagged, and the third of writing this kind of post, so I realise it may be becoming a bit repetitive. However, I really enjoy getting to know my online "friends" better, and absolutely love discovering new blogs/reading material, so I'm glad whenever I get tagged. Anyway here are a few more facts about me, we can all thank the lovely Ibibiogirl (who by the way has introduced me to so many cool blogs) for that ;)
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The rules are simple. *Show gratitude to the blogger who selected you. *select 15 blogs that you have recently discovered. *share 7 things about yourself.

Here we go...

1. I'm a hustler, and I come from a family of hustlers. I have been working since I was 17, and have tried my hand at a wide variety of jobs including nannying, fruit-picking and even working as a nurses' aide at a male-only prison with high-profile inmates.
2. I  studied chemical engineering before deciding that I wanted to become a nurse. Well you can imagine how that went down with my dad.
3. I love fruit and veg, and will choose them over chocolates and/or any other snack, every single time. I really enjoy discovering and trying previously unknown varieties and I always almost love them too....that is except for artichoke hearts which are vile!
4. My great-grandma was an Edo princess who lived until well past the age of 100. I didn't see her often, but we loved each other very much and she used to sing my oriki (ancestral praises) in Bini. I guess that's why I'm determined to learn the language before I die.
5. I’m lucky to have participated in two exchange programs. One in Sweden, while I was studying engineering, and the other in Bangladesh during my nursing degree. I loved both, but particularly enjoyed the second one because I was 100% immersed in the local culture. I shared a dorm-room with 4 other student nurses, wore saris to theatre/the wards and on special occasions, and salwar kameezes everyday. I ate and loved the very spicy food, and learnt a bit of Bengali which I've since forgotten. The biggest thing for me though was learning about the culture of the Chakma and other indigenous people who lived in the area where I was (a minority ethnic group). They look so different from your "typical" Bangladeshi!
6. I have what some might term "OCD tendencies." Personally, I don't think it's pathological at all, I'm just a bit organised that's all ;)
7. I'm writing wrote this on a ferry somewhere on the English channel, between France and England.

My recently and not so recently discovered 15 blogs are:

• Nigerian Scorpio
• JANYL BENYL SHARES
• Pynk360
• Berry Dakara
• The Young and Confused
• Urigi
• Lively Twist
• La Deutsche Diva
• Ibibio Girl
• Seyon Hundeyin
• New Dawn
• The Source
• Natural Nigerian
• Autism Gist with Adelola
• Good Nigerian Girl
• Life Talks Listen

(try!)To-do List 2015/Review of 2013 Resolutions

Increase Exercise

• Take train to work, and walk (4 x 15 minutes) each day. 

(Failed on this one. My new goal is to walk  2x15mins a day. I started when I moved to Brussels and so far, so good)

• Abandon metro; always cycle within Paris. (Failed, and no longer valid)

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Health and Diet

• Complete ban on caffeine and fizzy drinks. Minimise junk food consumption.
  
• Increase intake of water, fruit and vegetables. Practise quasi-vegetarianism  
• Increase fitness, heart-rate and muscle tone 
• Get rid of acne

(Failed on all counts, renewed for 2015. Will start this when I get back home to Brussels after I have had the chance to fully enjoy my dear mama's cooking #longerthroattinz ;) )

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Relationships

• Stay in touch; contact at least 4 friends abroad, each week
• Spend more time making and developing Parisian Brussels friendships

(Achieved, more or less. Renewed for 2015) 

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"Self Improvement"

• Start Spanish classes
• Take a least one course in a subject that interests me; law, philosophy, Yoruba literature, history...
• Restart violin lessons

(Failed on all counts, goals not renewed for 2015) 

• Gain ability to converse in Italian  

(Done! New goal is to learn German, I hope to have achieved a level C1 at least by December 2015)

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Miscellaneous

• Use time wisely and improve punctuality
• Read more books by Nigerian/African authors
• Go dancing, to the opera/cinema, sightseeing etc. Be cheesy, have fun! 

(Done, done, done! Continue with these)

• Manage money well, save 2000€  

(Achieved thankfully, as I later needed this for big expenses such as my flat's deposit in Brussels. Slight change this year, the goal is to deal with my student loans. I hope to pay back at least 6000€)

• Blog at least 52 times
• Sing with the choir this summer
• Start process of getting driving license

(Failed on all counts, goals not renewed for 2015)  

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I didn't make any resolutions in 2014, as I wanted to focus on achieving 2013's goals. I'm hoping to do an evaluation of how many of these I manage to achieve by the end of the year. I'm really optimistic at the moment, but come December we'll see how well I've done... ;)

Last Post for 2014....A Mish-Mash!

 Source

End of the Year

December was a very busy time for me, as I travelled a bit and then worked/hosted some guests over the Christmas period. I went to Vienna as usual in the first weekend, then Germany in the third weekend (met Jen from Ibibiogirl and visited T's family). Vicky, my Argentinian friend, arrived on Christmas eve and stayed until the 27th when Mr T got here. I was so tired from working full-time  and all the fun I had with Vicky waka dugbe-ing around Brussels, doing longer throat and eating all manner of mede-mede. Anyway by the time T got here, the temperature had really dropped and it even snowed sef, so we just stayed home and I slept a lot. He left yesterday, and I'm back to work today and tomorrow before packing my bags again and heading off, this time to mama Charlie's country (England for my non-naija readers).

My 2014 in Books

I started the year with Adichie's Americanah and it was definitely worth the hype for me. The issues that come with moving to a new country and finding yourself a "minority,"  the fight to affirm or (re)create your identity, doing the adjusting/adapting required, and merging your new culture with your home culture...these are all things that meant I recognised myself very strongly in Ifemelu and the other immigrants. On the other hand, I really didn't enjoy Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go. I had seen an interview of the author on RAI1, an Italian TV station, and was really impressed so I actually spent some of my Amazon vouchers on the book. Unfortunately, I was bitterly disappointed. I did not like her writing style one teensy bit.

I however liked Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowlands, Khaled Hosseini's And The Mountains Echoed, Swallow by Sefi Atta, A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif Unaccustomed Earth again by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Adaobi Nwaubani's I Do Not Come To You By Chance. Special mention goes to Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist, Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh and Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives which I particularly loved. These books made me laugh out loud, literally  and I really enjoyed reading them. They were (in the words of T about me), "kleine aber feine!"  I also loved Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds, Faraway. She wrote about Nigeria in a way that was very realistic. Even though the story was sometimes sad, I felt a kind of connection with the Nigeria she described, it felt neither over- nor underdone... 

Of the 75 books I read this year, only about 12 were written by "white, mainstream" authors, and even then 11 of them talked about "others." "Atypical" situations, places and people, for example transracial adoption, immigrants and immigration, being an expatriate, being Amish, polygamy, Jewishness and the second world war etc. I am apparently attracted to and fascinated by difference and otherness...

Highlights and Lowlights

• Travelling! I visited 6 countries and 10 cities/town. 
• Moving houses 5 times between July and November. It was hectic, phew!
• Putting up only15 blog posts (pitiful)
• Improving my Italian, then abandoning it for German
• Going to the seaside once this summer with T
• Going to a European zoo for the first time (the other time was in India), and visiting the circus, also for the first time, thanks to the generosity of a dear friend
• Turning 30. I had 3 birthday parties and got many wonderful presents. I especially love my churidar, my alabaster necklace and my Aya de Yopougon comic book.
• Discovering a good naija restaurant in Paris, then moving. Now I have to find a new one here in Brussels :(
• Drinking a million aperitivos whilst on holiday in Italy
• Seeing my friend K after 8years
• Having an amazing summer with my sisters and friend, while living in another friend's beautiful Parisian flat. I so want something similar when I grow up!
• Getting my turn at the annual mummy-and-me-only holiday
• Getting my current job

I am grateful for

1. Life and health. I turned 30 this year and became a bona fide adult ;) And everyone in my entourage (family and friends) is alive and well.
2. A wonderful summer. I had the best summer of my life this year with my sisters, a wonderful sister-friend and T.
3. Christmas with Vicky, which meant I wasn't alone in a new city during the festivities.
4. The online community of which I'm part. I feel like I have made so many new friends this year! I'm thankful that I discovered the blogs that made my 2014 interesting - Duru, GNG, Ibibiogirl,  Nigerian Scorpio, Berry and Pynk amongst many others.
5. Journey mercies. Not one train/plane/road accident or incident in spite of the many many miles that I covered this year. Truly a miracle, if you think about it.
6. The most uncomplicated cross-country move ever. My move to Brussels has been ridiculously coordinated and everything has fallen into place so easily...making friends, work, finding a flat and church, getting along with colleagues and even my day to day life!
7. My job. I love it so so much! I enjoy the work because it's very different from everything I've known up until now. It is really challenging me as a nurse
8. Progress with my finances. Thanks to nagging from T and him constantly telling me off for accruing unnecessary interest, I've increased my student loan repayments substantially and have started making serious inroads into paying back my debts, slowly but surely.
9. My parents. They are finally starting to enjoy middle age, this season of their lives where all the children are more or less independent and there are no grand-kids yet. They're taking up travelling again and making plans to really enjoy each other.
10. My family-in-law. I met them this year and it seems they love me as much as I love them. I even went there alone for a weekend and things went better than the first time when T was with me. I particularly love his mum because we're very similar (it's so uncanny!) and it feels like she's a friend. Everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am.
11. My siblings. One sister finished her masters last October and did fantastically well; she got 18.99/20 and was valedictorian. She then basically gave her French university the middle finger salute by giving her speech in English. Yep, my sister is gangster like that ;) She now has a place at university for next September to do her PhD in law. My brother is doing amazing things and is going places with his new startup and little company. I feel like this year was a very important one for him in terms of making progress and knowing what direction to take the business. The baby sister loves her course this time round and has really settled into university. I'm thankful that she decided (and my parents insisted) early on that she "drop out" of  last year's hated course,  and take a gap year. She really grew up in the 9months she spent in Paris. As for her twin brother, he is also doing great at uni, working/playing hard and getting fantastic grades. My siblings are such superstars and for that I am grateful
12. Mr T. This year has been difficult, with him moving to Brussels and then Vienna, but I think our relationship has become much stronger as a result of it. We've both had to make a lot of sacrifices this year in terms of time and money so we could see each other, and it really makes you ask yourself if you truly want to be with the other person.  I know now,  for sure that I love him and would go to the ends of the world to be with him. It's been 2years of ups and downs, but our relationship (and both of us!) has matured a lot. Like good wine, it just keeps getting better.
13.  Favour wherever I go. People have always described me as someone who makes friends easily, but this is the first year I've actually noticed that it is true....for some unknown reason, people are drawn to me and want to be friends. I spent a lot of time thinking this year about why this is so, as well as trying to figure out what it is about me that attracts others. I'm certainly not the most intelligent/beautiful/cool/fashionable/whatever-attribute-you-like person in the world! In the end I figured it must be God's grace, some special dispensation, a particular blessing in my life, because I know for sure that I haven't done anything to deserve the undeserved and unreserved love that often comes my way.  I am just immensely grateful!

Finally in the Cool Kid Club ;)

A few weeks ago, I got my first official nomination from the very lovely J of IbibioGirl, however, I have been really busy so it's taken me ages to get round to it. Still, in the words of the great Duru Adolphus, better late than never right?

 Anyways, the rules for the Sunflower award are as follows:

1) share 11 facts about yourself

2) answer questions set by the blogger who nominated you

3) nominate 11 bloggers

4) set 7 questions for your nominees.

Having recently done a post where I listed 20 unusual facts about me, I decided to take a leaf out of J's book and skip the first rule, mostly because it was really hard coming up with that list. Also, I feel like I need to keep some of my (as the French say) "mystere" ;)

So, here goes!

1) Is there any friend you haven’t spoken to in donkey years? Would you ring them if given the chance.

Yes, unfortunately :( I have moved quite a bit in my life, and everywhere I go I seem to make a few good friends, sadly, every time I leave I realise how hard it is to keep in touch with all them for long periods of time. The result is that I often end up with 2 or 3 really close ones who refuse to let me go (shout out to my sisters and those friends!). So yes, were I ever to be given the opportunity to reconnect with long-lost friends who once meant so much to me, I'd take up the chance in a heartbeat! 

2) What’s your thought on the Bill Cosby rape news

I really hope they're not true, but as a woman who was once a female child, I know that our societies will often trivalise/devalue the experiences of victims, as well as invalidate any stories that seem to hurt our "heroes." What this means is many people don't come out to share their stories until they're much older and/or have sought help. Still, I wasn't there and cannot judge, so I hope he's put through the justice system where he is either able to prove his innocence, or made to pay for his wicked acts.

3) Bookstore or library

Library, definitely! Having realised that it'd be no fun being a homeless, broke somebody, and that books neither warm you up nor fill your tummy, I decided to use and misuse all the libraries in any city I move to. Paying 7€ per year for example will always be cheaper than trying to buy books, for someone who reads as much as I do. I have been known to go through a book a day, during my holidays or quiet times...so yeah, thank God for libraries!

4) Fix it or get a replacement?

Fix it all the way! As a bona fide cheapskate, I'd rather fix something than replace it, unless of course it costs more money then replace it is. 

5) Damsel in distress or wonder woman?

Wonder woman toh bahd! People (including a certain Mr T) always look at me and think I'm some powerless little kini. I'm like don't do it o, you judge this book by it's cover at your own peril! I've always been fiercely independent, and even as a child was often detached from everyone/everything around me, living my life according to my rules and doing it all by my freaking self. I have never understood people (especially women) who are more  "damsels in distress" types. I'm like shebi I have a brain, two hands and two feet? Oya think and take action jare!

And that's it from me. I'm nominating Good Naija Girl, Myne Whitman, Duru, Berry and Natural Nigerian for the award, and my questions for those bloggers are:

1. If you could learn a new langague which would it be? Why
2. And if you could choose a city/country in which to live, which would it be and why?
3. What are the Xmas traditions in your location/family?
4. Few close friends or many not-as-close friends? Why?
5. Procrastinator or just-do-it-er?
6. Favourite book in the world, and why?
7. 2014 in a nutshell? 

Tag, I'm It!

I've been seeing this tag around the blogosphere lately, and it seemed fun, so I decided to tag myself and do it in the spirit of YOLO and all that... ;)

Anyway here are 20 previously unknown facts about me.

1. I am the oldest and smallest in my family.With 50kg for 161.5cm, it's easy to see how this is possible. I have always been quite small and can in fact remember my mum telling me that my twin siblings were each bigger than me at birth even though they were premature and I was full-term! I used to hate being so tiny, especially while I was in secondary school (end of adolescence and moving to England made me gain a lot of weight) since I felt I was often overlooked because of my stature, bookishness and late physical development. I love myself now though because people never ever believe me when I tell them my age :)
2. I love writing and hope to get published at least once in my lifetime. 
3. I am ambidextrous, but not naturally so. My left-handed cousin broke his arm when we were kids and seeing the trouble he had with using his other hand, I got worried about all the potential future accidents, and decided to put my girl guides' motto  into action. I taught myself slowly but surely to use my left hand. You can imagine how frustrating it was for my parents and everyone around to watch me take an excruciatingly long time to do anything (I realise now that I must have been a really weird child). Anyway I stuck to my guns and today my left hand and leg work almost as well as the right ones.
4. I am a psychiatric nurse who stumbled across the speciality and who ADORES her job. I studied adult nursing in the UK, and there, I'm not allowed to work in psychiatry/paediatry/learning disabilities without further training. However, since I'm registered as a general nurse here in France and can work in every area, I decided to explore my options and luckily fell in love with psychiatry.
5. I have a love-hate relationship with food. I really enjoy eating, but sometimes I am so unbothered and lazy, that i just go for hours even a few days with really eating. I will also not eat unless I am actually hungry. This is something that drives the boyfriend bonkers, since I will often refuse to eat one minute, only to stop everything and demand sustenance the next. He's all like "you said you weren't hungry 10minutes ago when we went past that restaurant!" The poor boy is getting used to it sha.
6. I love going to the cinema and the opera (although the cost in Paris has killed that habit for me). Apart from these two things, I like sleeping and me time. I'm such a homebody and I really really really enjoy hanging out with my boyfriend, or being alone in my room :)
7. I make friends easily, maybe too easily! People seem attracted to me for some reason, and we often become close friends very quickly. To my eternal shame however, I am bad at staying in touch (with both friends and family). It often seems like my life revolves around my current friendships, but then I move away, make new friends and forget the old ones. Luckily, I have the best friends in the world! People (including my siblings) who will write/call/prod me into keeping in touch and force me into remaining in their lives.
8. I abhor prejudice/discrimination of any kind, and I have been known to end important friendships over racist/sexist/homophobic/religion-ist comments or jokes. However, in spite of my intolerance to intolerance, I realise I am far from perfect and an example of this was when I laughed at a racist joke about Germans on BBC radio 4. The boyfriend was appalled and I was so ashamed of myself :(
9. I am a nomad. I enjoy travelling and have visited more countries than I can count. I have also lived in 5 countries (Nigeria, England, Sweden, Bangladesh, France) over the last 13 years, and I'm moving to the 6th in 5days.
10. Going hand in hand with number nine, I enjoy learning languages. I currently speak 4 (English, Yoruba, French, Italian) but would like to get to 10 before die. German is next on my list, then I plan to spend the rest of my life on Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hausa and Edo.
11. Linked to number ten is the fact that my English has really deteriorated recently. I've been known to forget words for things in English, translate literally from French to English, and speak the language using the French sentence structure. My anglophone friends and family sometimes look at me like I'm crazy, but my fellow multi-linguists get me immediately!
12. I have a strange relationship with money. I love love love saving, and often hyperventilate when it seems like I've been overspending, only for me to check my account and realise I have hardly touched it. I however never mind spending on my siblings, boyfriend or on travelling. 
13. And as incoherent as it may sound, I also sometimes have inexplicable bouts of spending urges where I buy useful/nice things that I don't particularly need. I just go out, look for 2-3 things and buy them while sticking to a set budget.
14. I love reading. I read everything I can get my hands on including when I was little, lists, medical books, textbooks and the catholic bible. I haven't had the time to read that many books this year, yet I am currently on my 66th.
15. While reading said catholic bible as an 8year old, I discovered a previously unknown type of  bible. It was different from what I knew, and I spent a lot of time reading all the stories in the  Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books. Falling in love one with with one of the stories, I decided I'd name my future son after one of the uncommonly named (in Nigeria/England/Anglophone/Francophone world) heroes. I managed to get to adulthood with meeting only one person with that name in Sweden, yet 20years later, within the space of a few weeks my French friend used the name for her newborn, and I met T who has the same name! I was so bitter that I could no longer use it for my darling future son.
16. I have banned myself from bookshops. I had to take this drastic step after I realised a huge chunk of my monthly budgeted spending money was going on books. Realising that my love for books was impinging on my love for ice-cream and my purchasing power, I made the rule and have more or less stuck to it.
17. I collect postcards and books by foreign authors, particularly from countries where I have visited.
18. I went to the circus for the first time in my life this weekend and I loved! I see more of it in my future.
19. I love close-cropped hair and have had my hair this way for the majority of my life. My poor mum was happy to have a girl to dress up, so imagine her surprise/sadness when I asked to have my hair like daddy and kept it that way most of my childhood. I have also had natural hair more or less all my life. I tried to relax it for a year after moving to England, but I had no clue what to to with it. It was flat and lifeless! I sharply cut the thing and went back to my afro :)
20. I am moving to Brussels in 5days and you might be able to tell that I'm a tad bit excited!!!!

Phew, that was much harder than I expected! Everyone made it seem so easy, but I really had to think of the things that others might consider interesting about me...

Have a lovely weekend!

September So Far...

• I have birthday presents still coming in three full weeks after the event. A special 30th birthday necklace is being made for me by my ex-colleagues, and I recently received a few other things...

 

 Churidar all the way from Chennai

(via Stockholm!)

 

Alabaster box and necklace from Volterra

(Tuscany)

• I have been trying to improve my Italian, but to be honest, haven't really been practising my speaking skills with Lulu (my housemate). I however have been working hard on my listening and reading. Learning my fourth language in my third language is certainly, for want of a better word..."interesting."

Thank God for French libraries!

• Yesterday I had a small surprise dinner party thrown for me by friends who were either busy or away over the summer. Felt like such an idiot when they dimmed the lights and brought in an ice-cream "cake" with a candle and the number 30 on it. I actually looked round to find out whose birthday it was, only to realise it was all for me. I was so touched!

 Yet another birthday dinner :)

30.

On this, the morning of my 30^th birthday, I feel the urge to write something on this blog which is after-all a journal of sorts. I want to be able to look back a few years from now, to be able know how I felt, what I was thinking about, dreaming of and hoping for, at this exact moment.

30 is an especially poignant age for me, not least because I never thought I would attain this age due to the many events that happened in my childhood and early adulthood. Still, here I am. Alive, happy, successful, with a future full of possibilities and on the cusp of an exciting change....

To whomever is responsible, I truly am grateful. Thank you.

Eight Months Later

It’s been almost nine months since my last post, and to be honest I thought about abandoning the blog, but the combination of Timi leaving a comment, and it being the auspicious occasion of my 30^th...well here I am again.

So what have I been up to since November 2013? Well in no particular order,

• I chopped off all my hair, going from mid-back (stretched) to close-cropped.
• I changed jobs. Twice. Once, because I got fed of commuting for over two hours each day, and the second time because I just couldn’t deal with the horrible atmosphere at the first job where I lasted only 3months.
• I made lots of progress with my Italian. I go to the cinema/watch TV/listen to radio and can largely understand what is being said. I’ve also read my first two books entirely in Italian and have another two waiting to be read (one an early present, from Lulu my dear Italian friend).
• I went to Brussels, and back to Bruges, with a friend in May. Then about 2weeks ago, went to Belgium for a staycation with the boyfriend, fitting in one day at the zoo (first time at a European zoo!) and one at the beach.
• The boyfriend, who’s actually neither Kenyan nor called Hussien, ;) moved to Belgium last December for about 8months, which meant A LOT of travelling. Luckily my current job is flexible enough that I was basically able to live/shuffle between the two countries. Now he’s moving again, to Austria, which sadly means more "long-distancing," but more positively also means we can discover at least some of the eight bordering countries. 
• I signed up for Instagram, in anticipation of all the travelling and new experiences I see in my future :)
• My sisters decided to leave Paris this summer. The younger one is done with her gap year and will be leaving in 10days to take up her place at uni, while the older one, fed up of the city after about 5years has decided she wants to go home after her masters in September. I’ve decided I don’t want to be left behind, so I too am planning a move to Brussels for work and possibly further studies. Obviously lots of life changes and upheavals going on at the moment, especially since I have to look for a new job/flat/community etcetera. Luckily Belgian nurses’ registration is a relatively simple, if protracted process... Anyway this means that only 4years after graduating from uni, I am now a quadrilingual/tri-nationally registered (British-French-Belgian) nurse!
• And well I turned 30 today. Happy birthday me ;)

Hair, Here, Everywhere

 My friend Andreea, who moved to the US last April, loves my natural hair and often asks me about taking out my braids. Anyway as she is currently busy studying for her NCLEX-RN exams, I thought it'd be nice to make her happy with pictures of my hair, so I took my braids out last week and have been wearing various simple styles. Each one takes about 5minutes, except when I have to mould the hair with a scarf overnight...warning, picture-heavy post!

Andreea, mon amie qui a déménagé aux États-Unis Avril dernier, aime mes cheveux naturels et elle me demande souvent de les porter sans des tresses. Comme elle est actuellement occupé à étudier pour ses examens NCLEX-RN, j'ai pensé que ce serait bien de lui faire plaisir avec des photos de mes cheveux, alors j'ai enlevé mes tresses la semaine dernière et depuis, je porte que des styles simples. Chacun prend un peu près 5 minutes, sauf quand je devais moule les cheveux avec un foulard pendant la nuit ... je vous préviens, il y a beaucoup des photos!

Glasses!

Got two pairs; one red and one black, because I couldn't decide...so anyway, dear citizens and denizens of the interweb, which ones do you prefer?

J'ai acheté deux paires de lunettes car j'arrivait pas a choisir....mes chers et cheres citoyens du web, vous preferez lesquelles? Les noires ou les rouges?

So What Have I Been Up To?

Just before my last desertion, I blogged about taking my French language exams and finally starting work as a nurse.

Well that's exactly what happened. I took the TCF (test de connaissance du français) with lots of fear and trembling  because I was sure that I would fail as a result of my laziness and general attitude of skiving off classes. Luckily  all those hours of watching shitty French TV and reading every material I could get my hands on, helped. I passed the exams, getting a C1 (B2 is the required level) and managing to save myself a fairly expensive 230€ resit! After a lot of hassle,  I was able to register myself as a nurse...French administrative (in)efficiency is a subject for another post. 

Anyway, to celebrate  I pierced my nose and took a well-deserved holiday, managing to fit in a very tiring but incredibly fun 2 week road trip around dixieland (southern USA). 

On returning home (feels strange to call Paris that!) I started looking for jobs and after a few false starts found something at a psychiatric hospital in what was surely the hardest three months of my life. I was working in an environment where I had no experience, with protocols/equipment/medicines which were often very different from what I had used in England, and in a totally new language. Trying to communicate in French, in medical French, with psychiatric patients who used lots of slang and were often delirious was DIFFICULT! Luckily I survived the contract, and I  was able to discover a previously unknown aspect of nursing which I love. I work in a new hospital now, in acute psychiatry (even more "difficult") and I am thriving. 

In the middle of all this, we managed to find a flat and moved from one of 11m² (11!) to a much larger, prettier 54m². We each have our own rooms and my sister can now shut her door when she gets tired of me running around naked. Best thing about the flat though,  is the living room with a canapé-lit, which allows us to have people over. The stream hasn't really stopped since we moved in, in August! Although we love having people, I'm hoping things will slow down soon, because we're tired and I need to hibernate for the winter.

So anyway, at the moment I'm loving my job; although looking for something much closer to home, I've started learning Italian, and I'm back to singing in a choir (we're doing Dvorak's Stabat Mater).

In other news, I have been dating A LOT! Not sure why, but I seem to be very popular here in Paris, although that hasn't equalled finding "the one" or one of "the ones." I'll probably do a post on the craziness that has been my experience of dating in Paris...

Allora, baci e buona giornata a tutti!

Take Two :)

After a fairly long absence from LVDCO*, now's probably as good a time as any to clear away the cobwebs. Up until now, I have kept up religiously with everyone's blogs. However, following a self-imposed English ban**, I have decided that restarting my blog would be a good way to spend my newly liberated online-time. I will be writing only in French and Italian, as I really need to improve my  skills in these languages...

Definitely lots of catching up to do! First couple of posts will probably be picture-heavy summer/spring updates, maybe a few more detailed ones after that...
Alors. A vos marques! Prêts? C'est parti!

LVDCO* Lavideclarao
English ban** Keeping speaking, reading, listening, even thinking to an absolute minimum - exception: my weekly issue of the Economist