Christina catches up

And I'm back! I'm sorry for missing last week's post, I was in my last days at home before returning to France. I was feeling stressed out and not-so-happy about leaving and wanted to spend all my time enjoying home, so I flaked. Punish me as you see fit! So, as you may have deduced, I'm back in France now. Now that I'm over my jetlag I'm feeling much better and less angsty, but I'm still looking forward to heading back home in four months. I don't dislike it here, but I've figured out that teaching is not what I want to do with my life and now that I know that, I feel a bit like I'm just wasting time doing it. Now that I know I don't want to teach, I'd like to move onto the next thing instead of having to continue with the thing-I-don't-hate-but-don't-love-either for the next four months. I feel like my life is... stalled for the moment? I think that's a pretty good way to describe it. Seeing all my friends and family also made me realize just how much I had missed them and now that I know that and I'm away again I miss them more. Waahhh waahh I live in France waahhh. I must be so annoying right now! I will say that something I love about this program is that I get to travel all over. I'm going to be in Amsterdam with my friend Beth at the beginning of February and am very excited to see her and visit a city which I've heard lots and lots about! Anyway, I just felt like giving a little update.

 Okay, moving on to the topics... relationships. Well, this is fairly short for me because I've only had two romantic relationships, one of which was official; the other was never actually labelled. My first boyfriend was in my freshman year of college. I knew starting off that it probably wasn't the greatest idea because we lived next to each other in our dorm... yep. Well, anyway, I suspected that he was interested in me when some people in our hall were all watching a movie together and I kept catching him looking at me. Then after the movie when we were all back in our own rooms he friend-requested me on facebook and my suspicions were all but confirmed. We started hanging out and talking and then he finally asked me out to a concert and dinner. It was all very nice but also quite awkward since it was the first date for both of us and neither of us really knew what we were doing. Well, progressing with the story, we ended up dating and then were "boyfriend/girlfriend." I realized at the time and especially looking back that I never liked him as you're supposed to when you're going on with someone. Okay, I was happy to hang out with him, but I wasn't infatuated and didn't have any of those crushy feelings like you're supposed to when you really like someone. I realize now it was really more of a relationship of convenience. I don't know how he feels now about the whole thing, but from my point of view it seems like neither of us had gone out with anyone before, we found someone we got along with and liked to a certain extent, and said "hey, why not." That relationship ended up lasting two whole months, at which point it just sort of non-violently imploded. We talked and still hung out  for a couple weeks after, but then just drifted apart and it became more and more awkward to talk until we stopped talking all together. I think I'm starting to hit ramble territory so I will hurry on to the second "relationship." I went a few years without going out with anyone else and then I dated one of my friend's old roommates for a couple months. It was very casual and I still really don't know what to call it, so I'll just say we dated. We would go to restaurants, the movies, hang out and watch tv, so I think dating is an accurate description. That "relationship" was actually, I think, much healthier than my first one. It wasn't awkward at all, we could talk and get along well, we liked many of the same things, and there were no expectations (living next to each other really does crazily raise expectations for a relationship). We dated for a couple months over the summer, but when it was time for him to move to New York for grad school and me to move to France, no one was heartbroken or anything. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than my first relationship (I actually liked him) and at the end of the day it was a good learning experience. Well, I hope you guys got something out of that because I feel like I just rambled for the past 40 or so lines.

I'm a fan of the list of random things that make me happy, so here are some things that come to mind at the moment:

-the family cottage in Connecticut and the campgrounds
-tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil (aka caprese salad)
-hot tea
-novelty mugs
-Community
-the majority of the internet
-ice skating
-the winter Olympics
-Harry Potter
-seeing my friends and family (awwww)
-YouTube (I am pretty addicted)
-learning foreign languages
-speaking a language with little effort
-carnivals
-my hot water bottle
-reading!

I hope you're all having a good weekend and I'll see read you next week.

Monday is made happy by many things

Hello, girls! It's Monday!

Alexandra - I'm happy to hear that your marriage is going so well! And between you and me, "traditional" romance is overrated. I hope your honeymoon was lovely!

Carlyn - Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I remember those awkward adolescent dances . . . I wonder what Jerry is up to now . . .

Now, onto the topic of happiness!

So, if you Stumble around the internet long enough, you'll happen upon this quote:

"When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life."

Cheesy as it is, I've always like that quote. I'm a firm believer in the idea that a financially successful future and emotionally successful future are not the same thing. In other words, it's more important for me to find a way to do the things I love from day to day than it is to be paid well and make a lot of money, which is why I have a degree in theatre (though, you know, if it's possible to snag both, I'm gonna go for that option. Another quote you'll find on the internet is "Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable." Just saying).

But while happiness in the grand scheme of life is certainly a goal for my future, I've also learned to appreciate the fine art of being happy in the little things. My friend Meghan has had an ongoing project on Facebook for at least the past year that I really like. Her only status updates are the "Little Things" in life that make her happy at any given moment. She's on 384 or something like that, and those updates always bring a smile to my face. So for this post, I thought I'd imitate that idea. Here goes.

Cassie's Little Things

- a full tray of perfectly dipped chocolates
- a ten-minute West Wing quote explosion with my older brother
- sitting around singing Christmas carols with my family in my grandparents' living room
- "I used to live in a telephone booth, a telephone booth and that's the truth!"
- romantic stories about how my grandparents met
- pinky promises sworn via text message
- mulled cider and Maurice and Friday night movie nights
- The Princess Bride
- a well-adapted fairy tale
- cast iron skillets and hand mixers
- How I Met Your Mother and Neil Patrick Harris
- popcorn with cinnamon-sugar
- moments of silliness that no one will believe happened
- sharing my favorite books with someone reading them for the first time
- The Book Thief
- stories that make me cry
- writing something that is powerful and meaningful enough to make someone else cry
- completing a five grid, interlocking, sodominoku puzzle after a week's work
- sitting with my dad while he teaches me how to solve the puzzles in his Games Magazine
- sharing director's horror stories with my dad, knowing that he completely understands
- watching a show I've directed come together for the first time
- hearing my students say that what I've been teaching them is what they want to do for the rest of their lives
- being hugged on the sidewalk by eight-year-olds
- having a two-year-old fall asleep on my shoulder
- spending time looking at the world through a child's eyes
- Easter morning on the big hill outside of Hayesville
- My mother's Christmas Eve service
- Being read to by my parents
- Knowing that no matter where I end up or what I end up doing, I'll always have family to come back to.

And so many more.

Happy New Year, girls.

Week 43: The Seed of Happiness

This week's topic: What makes you happiest? (This could be people, activities, places, anything!)

I look forward to hearing from you!