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Published: January 5th 2007
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Uncle John's Enormous Christmas Tree
John and co. lighting the REAL candles on his beautiful Christmas tree during the Christmas party. He rigged up an ingenous system to ensure they didn't burn the house down! Well, I am no longer even surprised. I have come to expect complete inefficiency and incompetence from the Préfecture de Police and my tardy friends at the carte de séjour office. Yours truly called the Préfecture on the 18th of December to check and see if the card was ready yet, and it (predictably) was not. I called AGAIN on the 20th...my last chance to go get it before flying home for Christmas...and it was still not ready. I was told to wait until the end of the month to get it. However, since I flew home the 21st to spend 2 weeks at home for Christmas, I could obviously not pick it up then. I flew out on Thursday Dec. 21, carte de séjour-less, and anxious that I might not be able to get back into the country...all sorts of bad bureaucratic nightmares were running through my head, one ridiculous snarl of red tape after another.
However, I put that out of my mind very quickly and had a thoroughly WONDERFUL time being home for the holidays. I was able to see all of my relatives except one pair of grandparents, Jane, and Marie...as well as the Triggs, Rudies,
Heckerts, and all of my best friends from high school. It was fabulous! Being home and seeing everyone was the best Christmas gift I could possibly think of (although I got very nice gifts from all of them too, so thank you everyone!) I managed to cram in tons of activities during my stay...thinking back now, I'm not sure how I did it!
Here's the list of vacation activites and festivities:
-decorating the Christmas tree aka trip down memory lane
-celebrating my 21st birthday
-Flyers game with Taylor, Dana, and Brad...awesome!
-multiple Flyers, Eagles, and College Bowl games on TV
-trip to N.C. to see my grandparents
-Christmas party at John and Denise's
-Christmas as home...priceless!!!
-walk in the Laurels with my good friend Gregg whom I hadn't seen in a year and a trip to Longwood to see the lights with Gregg, Mom, and Dad (featuring a new ice-skating spectacle this year!)
-huge raclette party with the Dennison-Dijkerman-Rudershausen-Liska-Trigg-Heckert clan. One big intertwined group of fun and a killer round of Chinese Gift Exchanges! (Yay for my Stewie boxer shorts...thanks Derek ; )
-Unionville Class of 2004 Reunion without Unionville (great photos, Jess!)
-New Year's Eve at
Preparing the Christmas Dinner
This is an act of the utmost importance in the Liska Sr. household, requiring close supervision, frequent taste-verification, and at a minimum of four chefs in the kitchen... Cam's place (CSI & The Office provided the entertainment)
-my brother's best basketball game of the year (hooray! we beat Avon Grove!)
-and last but certainly not least, daily visits to my beloved YMCA. Oh, how I missed it.
So that is a brief summary of my wonderfully fabulous thoroughly spectacular visit home to good 'old Kennett Square. Don't know how I managed to do that much? Neither do it. But it was perfect, and nothing reminds you of what's most important in life better than being separated from it for a while...family and friends, you made my Christmas 2006 one of the best ever!
My return home to Paris this morning was smooth, although it took 45 minutes for my bags to come off the conveyer belt. (Inefficiency, anyone? Pattern? LOL). I decided to take the AirFrance shuttle bus back to Paris and hop the public bus from Etoile over to Villiers, which was much more convienent that taking the RER. (It's only 5 euro more, so I recommend the bus to everyone!) It definitely cut down on the lugging of suitcases up and down metro stairways, which was a welcome improvement and probably saved my back
The Liska Family
All of the Liskas (minus Mom, behind the camera, and Marie) in Wilton visiting Grammie. from distress.
Guillaume and Dominique were both at home today, having just recently returned from a ski trip in Tignes. Guillaume is studying furiously for finals, and Dominique is enjoying her 2 weeks off...public schools start up again on Jan. 8. Since I only slept about 3 hours on the plane, I was pretty tired and took it easy today...which was nice! Went for a jog, did the laundry, renewed a library book...all those mundane things that don't usually make it into my blogs. Life isn't always glamorous...although I am starting to hunt for a February vacation in either Spain, Istanbul, Lisbon or Tunisia! Hope that works out : )
Well, anyway, this was a rather random, circuitous blog, but I will end where I started: the ****ing carte de séjour. I called today, ready to go pick it up tomorrow, and guess what? January 20th is the new date to wait for. Go figure. Do they even have a calendar or are they just throwing random dates at me to make me go away? To be continued, I suppose...
Happy New Year to all! (Bonne année, Meilleurs Voeux, and all that stuff) I wish you all
The Microwave Pot
I just had to include this picture. You know the story if you're a Liska. a healthy, happy and fruitful 2007. It was wonderful seeing you over Christmas, and I look forward to seeing many of you again upon my return in July.
Best wishes from your Parisian (Soap) Opera Star,
Robyn
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Janine
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Haai Robyn! Wauw, your story about the cart the sejour is really unbelievable! I hope you will get it before you leave france :p haha. To bad I can't join you on your lovely planned trips... And wauw, what did Strasbourg looked nice... It's a pity I had all those exposés :s. See you soon, Kiss, Janine