Cheese, Pastries and Children: My Year in France: If your dreams don't scare you, they aren't big enough.

So I haven’t written in a long time and I apologize. Like I’ve said before writing about all the experiences after they happen are hard. I do still have to write about me and my mom’s second half of our trip in England. It was great. And I will get to that soon, I hope to promise. Maybe this weekend, I think I have some free time.

Currently it is late in France, 11pm and I am waiting up to make a phone call at 12:30am my time. The time change really creates issue when trying to communicate with people back home. I never would have thought it would make that big of a difference, six hours, but goodness. It’s exhausting. I wake up with 1000 notifications and texts and I get calls at 3am my time, which is normal back in the US.

Everything is going good here except I keep getting sick. I have no idea why but its starting to really take a toll on me. Constantly being sick and chasing around kids and walking in the cold rain is awful. None the less I recently got over my most recent sickness and I’ll be going out this weekend, some with my family and some with friends.

I know I bring this up often but music. Music is life. I can’t say it enough. Lately I have been listening to three albums constantly…check em…(the Hozier album is incomplete)

Maroon 5-V

Corey Smith-Maysville in the Meantime

Hozier-Hozier

I kinda wanted to write a quick post about two things I don’t normally talk a lot about; terrorism and running. I absolutely hate what happened in Paris. It was senseless and stupid. People don’t need to die for the reasons they did, ever. Innocent people carrying on with their daily lives; honestly it’s complete bullshit. I don’t make political statements like ever because it’s no one’s business what I think or believe and I don’t need to justify anything in the public. I just don’t. But I have to say being here when this occurred and seeing what happened is amazing. The French people are interesting and people have plenty of stereotypes and beliefs whether they have been around French people or not. Some of them are totally true, I admit it but some are not. The French people are a proud people. It was amazing to me that IMMEDIATELY after what happened people were in the streets showing their support and showing their disagreement with what happened. People were in the streets the very night the shooting occurred at Charlie Hebdo. Honestly, the only demonstrations I have heard about in the US recently have been destructive and disgusting. This was something totally different. I watched so much news and was able to see what was happening so close to me. (the US news was giving crazy reports and stuff) I was lucky to be able to be here and witness something amazing from the human race especially in the face of tragedy. I read an article that an old high school classmate posted on Facebook and it was essentially addressing that the US was so supportive of what happened here in France and the US people were all for free speech and were saying “Je suis Charlie” ( I am Charlie) along with everyone else in the world yet in America things aren’t exactly like that. It isn’t PC to say certain things and people would have been angered over the things that were displayed in the paper and really, who knows if it would have even been published. It made me thing. I really pride myself on being an open minded person and listening to other people because how can I expect to get through life on my own accord. I don’t know everything and yes I have my beliefs and my thoughts and my morals but it doesn’t mean I am always right and it doesn’t mean there isn’t more than one way to get from point A to point B. Think about it. Remember what happened here in France and remember how the people came together. I am glad my experiences here aren’t just black and white and one dimension.

The trials and tribs of a fat food lover running. Let me just tell you. Lately during my runs I have been thinking a lot about running and who I am as a runner and how I got to this point. My blog isn’t about running because it’s just a hobby and you can find 150,000,000 other blogs on running. But I felt that I had to say this. I am not a skinny person. When I started running I wasn’t in shape. I was an angry person and I needed to get my shit together. That’s why I started. That and it was a way to connect with people and friends. When I started running I could only run a mile and in the 4 mile circuit that I was running, it was a 15 minute mile on a good day. It took forever. I had to walk most of it. I threw up countless times. I started running last July. Seven months ago. I do not run as consistently as I should, I don’t eat right or “clean” I mean come on, I live in France. I eat bread, cheese, drink too much wine and almost all our meals have some sort of cheese or cream based sauce. But I have lost a stupid amount of weight. I can run 8.5 miles without stopping. I have shaved minutes…MINUTES…off my average per mile, my resting heart rate is so slow that the doctor questioned me for a long time about what I did for exercise and my diet and all the other things he could think of. The point of what I am saying is it doesn’t take much. I can’t imagine what would happen if I started eating better, laid off the damn wine…and cider…and beer. It doesn’t take a lot to get healthy. It really doesn’t. It might sound cliché and it seems that exercise is like a new fad specially with yoga, and plio, and pilates and crossfit but it doesn’t have to be any of that. Walking. Walking is exercise. Take one shitty thing out of your diet. Motivate yourself to do something just three times a week. Youtube is a blessing. They have millions of exercise videos, stretching videos, yoga videos. Everything. Try it out. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I wasn’t shocked by what my body is currently capable of. And like I said, I am still not skinny and I eat like shit. But the human body has amazed me in so many ways. Get off your ass and do something!!!!

I will get to writing more later. I am trying to promise. Here are a few pics for your viewing pleasure for now!

Title quote: pinterest of course. have dreams. go after them. life is too fucking short.