I'm Sarah, I'm 19 years old and I live in Canada. I like funny stuff and books so that's what you'll find here. My ask is always open.
This weekend is VERY exciting for me because it’s my last weekend in France! It’s also a little sad, but because it’s been four months since I’ve been home I am definitely more excited than sad. I’ve been packing and cleaning all weekend, and I can’t even explain how ready I am to be home. The past week at school has been a little sad because I’m saying goodbye to all my students and teachers…
This week’s post is a really difficult one. It was difficult to write and I’m sure it will be difficult to read. I know it’s late, too, but I’ll post twice this weekend just to make up for it and to make sure that there is a happy post to read if you don’t want to read this one. This post is going to be about the last week of my trip around Europe, which had a lot of connections to WWII including…
So last weekend I was in Amsterdam for VidCon, which is an event for people who create YouTube content and those who watch that content. I watch a decent amount of YouTube videos and I now write a blog online, so I figured the conference would be really interesting for someone like me. I also was really excited to meet some of my favourite YouTubers like Jon Cozart (PAINT) and Hank Green ½ of…
This weekend is the beginning of my vacation, and I’ll be in Amsterdam for the first couple days. I’m so excited for my trip, but I don’t really have a ton planned. I have all my flights/busses/trains and hotels booked but not really any tours booked or anything like that. I think before my trip in February I sort of spoke about this, but I like to be able to improvise and be spontaneous on my…
For the past little bit I’ve been sort of debating how I feel about going home in a month. I haven’t really been sure if I’ve been looking forward to leaving, if I’m sad about leaving, or both. Now that I’m a month away from going home I’ve realized that I am very much looking forward to leaving. I miss the ease of being able to talk to friends and family, and I miss not having to calculate what…
I think at this point we’ve all realized that I’m terrible at being on time with posts, so sorry about that. I will try to do better in the future. I am going on holiday in a week so I won’t promise to be perfectly on time for those weeks, but I’ll try to pre-write some stuff or at least just remember to post in general. Last weekend was a little bit crazy for me, so that’s why I didn’t post…
I’ve been feeling pretty sick the majority of this week, and this weekend has been the absolute worst. My entire head feels stuffy and I’ve been sitting in the dark all day because if I open my curtains my room will be too bright for me to handle. This post could possibly be incredibly short because I type all my posts out on Word and the stark white is kind of killing me. But I am determined to…
Let’s just quickly ignore the fact that I completely forgot to post this yesterday and pretend this went up when it was supposed to, okay? Okay. Great. I’m glad we had this talk. On Friday I had an awesome dinner with the other assistants in my little town in France. We had a German dish called spätzle, which is a pretty simple pasta dish with cheese, onions, and bacon. The best part was the…
I was back to work this week after two weeks of vacation. It was great to be back at work, but I think I enjoy teaching a little less because after work I go back to my room and sit by myself for the rest of the night. I have some people around me to talk to and I can talk to friends and family back home, but it’s different than actually being with them. Living abroad is a solitary life, but the…
Hooray I caught up on blog posts! Three posts in one week was a little crazy to do, but it was pretty interesting to force myself to write that much. Hopefully I didn’t drown anyone in posts, but either way I’ll go back to my regular schedule from now on. I’ll also try to pre-write when I know I’ll be away for a weekend so that I don’t have to play catch up. For now, let’s get into this week’s…
So, my post replacement schedule isn’t going exactly as I had planned. I was visiting my sisters in Sabaudia, Italy, and they don’t have wifi in their little apartment. I’m on my way back to France now so my schedule will go back to normal after this weekend, at least until I go on another adventure. Since I’ve been travelling a bunch, I thought I’d talk a little bit about how I feel when I…
First of all, I’m going to apologize for missing the last two (!) weekend blog posts. My boyfriend came to visit me during school break and we were pretty busy travelling in France and Germany for 10 days. Our time in Germany did inspire this first post though! I plan to post 3 times this week: today, (Tuesday), Thursday, and then my regular weekend post on Saturday or Sunday. For now, let’s get into this first make-up post.
My boyfriend and I spent our time in Germany in the lovely town of Frankfurt, and it reminded me of home in a weird way. Winnipeg and Frankfurt have about the same population, and they’re both cities that grow in population during the work week because people come in from smaller surrounding towns. They’re also both great tourist cities that are often overlooked by tourists for bigger cities in the country. In Germany people go to Berlin or Munich instead, and in Canada people go to Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal.
We took a free tour during one of our first days there, it was well worth it so if you’re in the city I highly recommend it. Here is the link to their website.
It was really interesting for me to see the Römer, which is the part of city with all the old architecture that is often associated with Germany. We were in a beautiful picturesque square when our tour guide explained a bit of shocking history. We were surrounded by beautiful buildings and everyone was busy taking pictures when our guide told us that every single building except one had been destroyed in WWII. Everything we were seeing had been rebuilt within the last 75 years, despite their aesthetic. The one building that survived all the bombings was an old house off in a corner that is now a restaurant, and I’d be lying if I said that learning that fact didn’t hit me pretty hard.
A lot of people would say that the world is in a bit of turmoil right now, but it really depends on where you’re looking. People say America is struggling, which it is, but only in comparison to what people think America should be like. They think it’s a developed country so bad things can’t happen there. Countries like Syria are much worse-off right now than the States, but people expect it so the bombings there become monotone while a president tweeting becomes a headline. Meanwhile things like global poverty levels are steadily rising and children around the world are much more likely to live past the age of 5 than they were 20 years ago.
I think that little bit of information on a free tour of Frankfurt humbled me. It’s important to realize that you are one life amidst 7 billion others, and billions of lives that ended before you were even born. It’s also important to realize how many lives will come after yours. People worry a lot about how things will affect them right now, but they forget to think about their futures or the futures of others. When the buildings in Frankfurt were being bombed, no one thought about what a shame it was that a 20-year-old Canadian girl wouldn’t get to see the original buildings in 2017. I think people today need a reminder that yes it is our earth and our home, but it’s also our great-great-great-great-grandchildren’s home. We should not only make sure they have an amazing home to explore, but also make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to do so.
I’ve included some pictures I took of the Römer, though I realize now that I didn’t actually take a picture of that one building that survived the war. Whoops.
It’s February! This week I’d like to talk about something that I really love, and that’s makeup. I’ve only really gotten into makeup in the last year or so, and that’s for a couple different reasons. I’m glad that I started to experiment more because I do find makeup a lot of fun and I think it’s so interesting to see how different colours and products can produce such different looks on the…
Last week I said that I had been talking to my students in France about a couple things, and then I only talked about one of those things. This week I’ll tackle the other, which is travelling. I’ll start off by saying that all of my students are incredibly curious about North America and always ask me plenty of questions about life back home. My students range from 14 to 21 years old, and as I…
I have to say that his week was pretty fun for me, despite it being colder here in France that it was back home in Winnipeg. On Tuesday it was well below zero and there was quite a bit of frost and ice on the ground. Because of that lots of busses that usually bring in students from smaller towns weren’t running, meaning about half the students in the school weren’t present. It was interesting…