Phase 1 of our European Christmas Adventure: Strasbourg!

I know that this post is well overdue, but we have spread ourselves so thin with sightseeing and walking that I have been far too exhausted at the end of every day to crank out a blog post.  However, thanks to the excellent Wifi connection at a friend's house in London where we are staying, I am able to send out this quick little update.  Actually, to begin this post, I have to give a shout-out to my iPhone.  While I am currently writing this post on my dad's little Acer computer that we brought along with us, my trusty little phone has been my lifeline to the outside world throughout the course of this trip.  Thanks to generally great Wifi connections in our hotels, I have felt close to friends and loved ones despite the several thousands of miles that separate us right now.  So thank you, iPhone :)

Moving on...I had been missing Strasbourg dearly in the two-and-a-half years since I last visited it.  I studied there a whopping three years ago (I know you older readers may take offense to this next melodramatic statement, but boy, does that make me feel old!  It feels like the study abroad stage of my life was only yesterday!).  Hopefully none of you want to punch me right now!  Allie and I visited the city at the end of our study abroad year as a day trip from Paris, and the city was certainly different in early-summer warm weather, not to mention SUNLIGHT, something  I had been severely lacking when I had left the city in December. 

When we pulled in to the train station a week ago, I felt as though I had never left.  I think that, even in my state of exhaustion (after having made it through a transatlantic flight during which I had slept little, and then a connecting flight on an itty bitty flight that would have been terrifying had I not conked out before safety instructions were even read), I had butterflies in my stomach.  I was reconnecting with a little part of myself that I had been missing over these past three years.  And I was coming back at CHRISTMAS, the part of the year when I most fell in love with Strasbourg.  Even as the weather turned gray and dismal and the temperatures plummeted, even as I wanted to rip my hair out while studying for finals in my seven (count 'em, seven!) classes, I had the Marché de Noël beckoning to me from downtown, just a short tram ride or a slightly longer walk away.

Strasbourg is the self-proclaimed Capital of Christmas, and it sure isn't afraid to flaunt it!  My mom and I dropped our bags at our hotel, and, since our room wasn't yet ready, went out again immediately to begin exploring (even if we had been able to get into our room, it would have been unwise to nap at that point).  We walked around the city for a few hours, grabbed lunch and then went back to the hotel for a little bit to crash.  Each new corner we rounded, each street we went down, felt like greeting an old friend, and I was so happy that I had gotten the chance to share this part of myself with my mom.  We did end up napping for about 2 hours, and then, with renewed resolve, walked around the city some more, at that point, blanketed in darkness. 

All of the markets are wonderful to look at during the day, but at night, once the lights are turned on...wow, what a sight to behold!  It really is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen, resplendent in its Christmas glory.  Tucked away in little town squares are rows of Christmas Market stalls for as far as the eye can see.  In those stalls are young adults making crepes, which really is an art and a science; vendors selling everything from strands of Christmas lights, build-your-own nativity scenes, ornaments of every kind, the largest gingerbread cookies you have ever seen, and hot wine, among other things.  In Place Kléber, one of the main town squares sits the most beautiful (not to mention one of the tallest) Christmas trees you've ever seen, and it certainly puts the White House Christmas Tree to shame!!!  Essentially all of our time in Strasbourg was spent winding down little side streets and crossing town squares, taking in the lights, the smells, the sounds, and the general joyful spirit that you couldn't help but adopt for yourself.  To partially alter a quote from Love Actually, if ever I grow weary with the state of the world, I picture myself wandering through the Strasbourg Marché de Noël, which, for me, is, however infantile it may be, the pinnacle of joy and happiness.  People from all over the world come to this much-celebrated market, and I was overjoyed to be wandering through it with my mom.

After two full days in Strasbourg, we headed to Paris, which, since this post is getting wordy (true to form), I will have to save for another day.  Once I get home and am able to make some sense of the hundreds of pictures I've taken, I will post some of those as well, so that you can see a little of how I spent my Christmas vacation!  I hope that you all had a marvelous Christmas with family, friends, and other loved ones!

The Post In Which I Bemoan My Packing Procrastination

Okay, I just have to start by saying that I am not at all a procrastinator (in fact, when I was in college, I would set artificial deadlines for myself for days before papers and theses were due, and, damn it, I stuck to them!), but this packing for Europe thing has got me befuddled.  For those of you who know me, you know that packing light is not one of my strengths, so planning for less than 50 pounds (in fact, 45 would be preferable) is not exactly my strong suit. 

I have been so busy this week (mostly with baking, which, as I declared to my roommate during my third straight night of baking on Wednesday, I hate, which, for those of you who know me, is utter blasphemy) that I really haven't had too much time to pack. I did pick out the 7 outfits that I will be bringing for my 14 days on the Continent, and for me, it was difficult to limit myself to that many.  And sure, there are some things that I won't be able to pack until Sunday night, but I am anticipating that I will need to pack and re-pack after weighing my bag, because I refuse to let my bag be overweight.  I am determined to turn over a new leaf!!!  It could be an interesting Sunday afternoon indeed!

But, moving on to more important things, my mom and I are leaving for Strasbourg on Monday! It is surreal to me that our departure is so imminent.  I know that, when we get to Strasbourg and I am frolicking at my beloved Christmas market, it will feel as though no time has passed at all, when, in actuality, I lived there THREE YEARS ago (God, that's so depressing, to think that it's been that long!).  I know that it will be very emotional for me to reconnect with my old city, and I'm so excited that I'll get to share that with my mom before we meet up with my dad and Tim in Paris.  In the few days that I have left in the States, I will be feverishly trying to wrap up projects at work, saying goodbyes to friends, and spending lots of quality time with Dan before I leave him for two weeks :(.

Now, as far as blogging while we're on our trip, it will entirely depend on how much time I have and what the internet connectivity is like there.  My main priority is having email access to message loved ones, but, if I have the time and a strong Wifi connection, I will make every effort to pen some quick updates.  If not, you can expect a GARGANTUAN catch-up post when we return on January 1st. 

As a quick aside, something that has kept me entertained this week is the Georgetown Hipster meme. Now, being that I am not a hipster, the word meme has only come to my attention within the past week, but, for whatever reason, the outside world (obviously, people who have never set foot on this campus that is just oozing with preppy people) believes that Georgetown is a hipster school? Erm, okay then...I did look through a lot of the memes, though, and chuckle to myself, and I am thankful to this website for adding a little bit of humor to an otherwise stressful week.


I am wishing you all, my dear readers (all five of you haha) Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Favorite Christmas Movies

What would Christmas be without some Love Actually clips, right?!?

Some of my favorite scenes from the movie:

• "To me you are perfect".  I wish people actually said things like that!
• The scene when Hugh Grant sings Christmas carols thanks to the heart-meltingly adorable pleading of three little girls (sorry, terrible video quality)
• Hugh Grant dancing.  Come on, how could you not be amused by this scene?!
• And.....my all-time favorite clip from the movie (probably because I am both a hopeless romantic and a language freak) is the scene where Jamie proposes to Aurelia.

Ah, love, ain't it grand!  Dan will be watching this for the first time next weekend, and I can't wait to 1) witness his mocking laughter, and 2)see if he actually enjoys it.  Fingers crossed! 

Some of my other favorite holiday movies:

• The Holiday
• The Family Stone
• Home Alone 1 and 2
• Elf
• The Grinch (both the animated and the Jim Carrey versions)
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Muppet Christmas Carol (I just saw this on Saturday and thought it was really cute!)
• I also bought Christmas in Connecticut and White Christmas this year, so I have high hopes for those!  Gotta love the Christmas oldies!

My goal is also to watch A Christmas Story all the way through.  Even though it is pretty much playing 24/7 on ABC Family during the Christmas season, I have yet to see it in its entirety.

Do any of you have any Christmas movie recommendations?

Happy Weekend!
Kristen

My Crafty Christmas

This Christmas, I decided to change things up a little bit in terms of gifts.  Now, I can't give away what I gave all of my friends and family, because not everyone has received  their gifts yet, butI have to share one in particular because I thought it was especially crafty on my part.  Thanks to some inspiration from Pinterest, I decided to make a friend's wedding invitation into a Christmas ornament!  I was really pleased with the result, so here is a picture!

How I did it: I copied the invitation onto gold vellum paper, so that I could keep the original copy of the invitation.  I then cut the invitation into strips and curled the ends with scissors.  Next, I strug some clear fishing wire through a few lines (I tried to do 3-4) and then fed each of the lines into the ornament.  Once all of them were in, there was definitely some maneuvering that I had to do, but I was very pleased with the result.  I topped it off with a ribbon, and voila!  (Note: the ornament is a hard plastic one that I bought at Michael's.  It has a removable top- perfect for putting the paper into the ornament!).

One of my coworkers also gave me a recipe for Santa Hat Brownies, so of course I had to make them!  I made them last night, and was very pleased with the result!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!  I got slightly soaked when a car drove through a puddle and got me wet this morning, but luckily, I was wearing my raincoat that reminds me of those plastic ones you have when you're five, so I didn't get as wet as I could have.  Despite being a little bit soggy, I am determined that today is going to be a good day (maybe it's because we watched Elf last night and I'm just in a cheery mood.  Dan pointed out that I really resemble Buddy in a lot of ways, and I have to agree with him haha)!

Let the Festivities Begin

Much to my delight, Christmas festivities are well underway here in DC, as was evidenced in particular this weekend.  There's nothing like some good old-fashioned Christmas cheer to make a cold, dreary day just a little bit brighter.

We had quite the weekend of pre-Christmas fun here in the nation's capital...not that I wasn't in the spirit, oh, a month or so ago (a slightly embarrassing fact that Dan reminded me of the other day).  On Friday night, after an exhausting, yet rewarding week at work (I was prepping for our biggest event of the year), Lauren and I went to the annual Christmas tree lighting in Dahlgren, after which we met up with Molly for dinner at Tombs and then met up with Joelle for Lessons and Carols at Dahlgren.  As if the night could get any more Christmasy, Molly and I went home afterward and decorated our apartment for Christmas.  While it's still very much a work-in-progress, here is the general gist of it:

Christmas tree lighting in Dahlgren- Merry Hoya Christmas!

                                                       Our apartment, looking very festive!

On Saturday, Dan and I (as well as some other friends) went to our first Hoya basketball game of the year (being that none of us have tickets this year and are completely delinquent fans), thanks to a free ticket offer for faculty and staff.  I was pleasantly shocked by how amazing the seats were!  It wasn't a particularly close game, but it was great to be back at Verizon.  We were sitting next to a guy who was a Class of 1986 SFSer, so it was fun to listen to him re-live his glory days.

After the game, we decided that it was finally time, after having lived in DC for six years, for Dan to go to a Smithsonian museum.  We decided on American History, which is one of my favorite museums in the city.  We particularly liked the war exhibit (basically an exhibit dedicated to US military history) and I liked the First Lady exhibit, especially because, unlike the last time I was there, Michelle Obama's STUNNING Jason Wu Inauguration Ball dress was on display.  It was even more beautiful in person!  From there, we walked over to see the Christmas tree at the Ellipse.  While I am generally a fan of all Christmas trees, this one is not a particularly attractive one, mostly because it is a normal tree that you can't even see through the cage of lights around it.  However, it is still a Christmas tree, so I still wanted to go see it.  In addition to the primary tree, there are smaller trees for each state and territory, each bedecked in ornaments created by children of various ages from that state or territory.  It was fun to judge each of them (Massachusetts' was really disappointing, much to my chagrin).

After walking around the general Metro Center area in vain looking for places to eat, we decided to head back in the general Georgetown direction.  We had a delicious dinner at Paper Moon, followed by milkshakes at Johnny Rocket's.  Then we went home and watched Muppet Christmas Carol.  All in all, an absolutely fabulous day.  It was a nice blend of Christmasy activities and touristy ones, so I'm very grateful to Dan for being so on-board for such a jam-packed (yet fun!) Saturday!  It was the perfect way to kick off December!

 HOYA SAXA!

Looking ahead, my mom and I will be in Strasbourg in exactly TWO WEEKS!!!!! I can't wait for what promises to be an incredible trip!

Giving Thanks in 2011

2011 has been quite an exciting year for me: starting in chronological order, one of my best friends moved back to DC, I met my indescribably wonderful boyfriend, my parents moved back to DC, my best girlfriends got to be reunited several times (once in Chicago in February, and twice in DC, with trips to Austin and Chicago hopefully in the works for next year), I moved in to a wonderful new apartment, and my family is preparing for what promises to be an unforgettable European Christmas vacation.

I truly am blessed, and I try to take a moment each day to give thanks for my amazing family, my wonderful friends, my incredible boyfriend, my job, the roof over my head, my good health (other than some pesky ankle injuries) and the health of my family.  I know that Thanksgiving is a great time to reflect on all of those things that we have to be thankful for, but I really do have to pinch myself every day, because I truly am blessed. When I think of all of the amazing and inspirational people in my life, it is impossible to imagine my life without any of them, so I am so grateful for each and every one of those people.

Having my family back in DC has been such a blessing.  You really can't underestimate the convenience of having your parents just a metro ride away, so I have definitely taken advantage of that (in a positive way) and have gotten to spend some quality time with them.  To know that I have an open invitation to stay there if I need a night away or a home-cooked meal is such a comfort, and I am so grateful to my parents for opening up their home to Tim and I, not to mention Dan and both Tim's and my friends.  My mom has been a saint for, among other errands, driving me all the way up to Rockville when I was still ensconced in my Comcast drama, and I could not be more grateful to her for that (did I mention that this was at rush hour?).  I look forward to all of the memories we will be able to make as a family now that we are all reunited in DC.

I feel consistently grateful for the amazing support network of friends that I have, both friends who are in DC and friends who are far away.  I am such a lucky girl, and I hope that my friends know how much I love and value them.  To those who don't live in DC, I hope they know that I am always thinking about them, even when we haven't talked in a while and all have our stresses that keep us from staying in touch as much as we once did.  I am so glad that we did get to have as many reunions this year as we did, so I look forward to many more of those next year :)

I wake up every morning and go to bed every night feeling so blessed that I met Dan.  I'm not going to gush too much in case he's reading this (I once gave him my blog URL so he could look at one of my past posts, and I don't know if he actually reads it), but he is such a sweet, loving and giving boyfriend, and I really couldn't ask for a better one.  Even if I'm having a terrible day, even a text from him, never mind actually seeing him, is enough to instantly lift my spirits, and I can honestly say that I've never been happier.  I think that, come Christmas season, he will absolutely regret having met me, what with my abounding holiday cheer, but I think he'll come out the other side just fine :)

I really can't wait for a Thanksgiving holiday of relaxing.  We'll be visiting my grandparents for a few days, and then I think we'll be back in the city, but it will be so refreshing to not have any pressing engagements!  I wish you and all of your families the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Kristen

Post "Miss Representation," Take II: Let's Talk Body Image

Obviously, no discussion of how women are represented in the media would be complete without a discussion of body image.  We are constantly bombarded with issues of [seemingly] flawlessly beautiful women who fit the bill of what Michael Kimmel, the author of Guyland, would refer to in his point that men (or, rather, young men in the 16-26 age bracket) think of the ideal woman as effortlessly perfect.  That is what these women in movies and TV and on magazine covers look like: effortlessly perfect.  They can balance all of the pressures of daily life, and still look freshfaced, thin and stylish.  Easy, right?

Wrong.  What we all know deep down to be true (but, yet, what no one tells us), is that these women are, first and foremost, airbrushed.  There was one part of the movie that showed the extent to which a model was airbrushed to the point where she no longer resembled her former self, so that is a lot of what is at play here.  Not only do they have airbrushing, but many of them likely have a personal chef to cook them nutritious meals, a personal trainer to work out with them for hours upon leisurely hours (because c'est la vie of an entertainer to have lots of downtime while not working), an assistant to do all of their time-wasting errands for them, a nanny to take care of their children...the list is endless.  So NATURALLY they're going to look a little less haggard than your normal, everyday woman. 

The problem is that so many young girls and women get ideas about what they themselves should look like from the images that the media presents them with day in and day out, to the point where they begin to lose sight of what is normal, not to mention healthy.  I am the first one to admit that I have certainly felt insecure about my body (in fact, I would say that I have spent the majority of my life feeling that way, not necessarily all day every day, but it is definitely something that is more often than not in the back of my mind), and I would argue that you would be hard pressed to find a single woman who has NEVER felt insecure about any aspect of her physical appearance.  If such a woman exists, then I will worship at her feet and ask her to divulge all of her secrets to escaping self-loathing and masochism.

I am partly to blame for my own at-times negative body image.  I avidly digest every last bit of pop culture news, checking People.com and UsWeekly.com daily for the latest in the lives of the stars, so I let myself be more bombarded than most by those images (in fact, Dan brought a rare pop culture event to my attention that I wasn't aware of, and he said jokingly, "Come on People."  Okay, I deserved that).  I think that the important thing is knowing where to draw the line, understanding that those celebrities are airbrushed and have an extensive team at their beck and call to make their lives just a little bit easier.  Us mere mortals do not have that luxury.  So I know how to spot a fake like this when I see one (jeez, Photoshop much?).  The actual model is, while still thin, much healthier looking than this ad, in which her head appears bigger than her waist.  How are we supposed to break the culture of women who torture themselves to be thin when we have such prominently-featured ads as Ralph Lauren's portraying this unachievable standard.

Now,  I'm hardly the person to be preaching to the choir, but, in my experience, the best role models are those who take good care of their bodies- those women who are athletic and strong.  Yes, it is important to exercise, but it is also important to eat a well-balanced diet.  For me, I look at female distance runners and I think, 'Wow, that is what I want to look like.'  If you take care of your body, it will reward you by allowing you to do things like run marathons :)  That's what I'm aiming for next.  Of course, accepting one's body is a work of constant progress, but the less we take our cues from popular culture, the healthier our attitudes will be towards our bodies.