It's getting cold here....

Yes! Autumn is here. The smell of cold has arrived. And I'm coooold....!!!!

No, im exaggerating a bit. It's not that cold yet. It has been a warm october and I hope it's gonna be the same for November.

No plan yet for Xmas holidays, maybe this year we will have the chance to go skiing. Finger crossed.

So far I have been quite happy with my time table for Master 2. Classes are in reasonable amount of hours. I have got enough free time as much as "learning" time (yea rite!)

The weekend was spent nicely. On saturday, I dragged Pierre-Louis to go to the gym with me to try "step" since there was a free try out for everyone. He was having a laugh of his life instead of working out. So was I!

He started laughing when the instructor came into the room. He was this cute bubbly gay guy with white trainings from head to toe. And he's so funny!

He kept laughing (pierre-louis i mean) when we started warming up, and finally he got lost with the coreography. It was fun for me, annoying for him.

On sunday, I met up with Evelyn who came down to Toulouse from Grenoble. It was fun to see her again. She decided to came by my house, then we headed to a salon de the to have delicious tea and cake. One of my favorite things to do in Toulouse. We had a good laugh, shared good stories, and more good laugh.

I didn;t take any pictures of pierre-louis in the gym, but I have some from our afternoon tea!

Lebaran di sini

I haven't posted anything about Hari Raya here in Toulouse. Anyway, this is will no-pictures post because I didnt bring my camera over that day. There are some pictures but I have to link it to somebody's multiply page.

Last day of puasa usually full of meaning, we have won one full month of "resisting" hawa nafsu of any man can imagine and if we have been doing extra ibadah, we know in this holy month of Ramadhan we would be full of blessing from Allah SWT.
I miss listening to the loud and beautifully sang takbir from the nearest mosque and I miss the joy, I miss getting staying late at nite one week before Lebaran preparing cookies with my mom in the messy kitchen. Waking up in the morning of Lebaran getting ready to go to the mosque to pray with the whole family and meeting those familiar faces on the way and start to ask for forgiveness and bersalam-salaman.

What I really miss is the Lebaran feast and buffet spread at my grandparents' house and our "forgiving" session which includes sungkeman (when my parents and grandparents sat on the couch and us, the children and grandchildren will take turn down on our knees and ask for forgiveness from them). Everybody will cry at this moment.

* me stop dreaming* Here in Toulouse, I didn't go to the mosque because I didn't feel like going alone. But we were invited to a open house at Bu Ninik's place, like usual. Hehe... (she's so kind...) I had a great time, almost everyone was there. My indo gang (we had to walk from the bus stop to the house for like 15 min. in my heels!!), the indo women, their french husbands and their noisy children. Very very merry....

Food was great, there was ketupat of course, gulai kambing, lontong sayur, es cendol!!!, and the rest that I could not remember cus I ate so much I just started grabbing everything.
There was even bottles of wine!! Haha...... no, I didn't drink any.

A day well spent. Eventhough nothing compares to celebrating Lebaran with your beloved family, but hey, I couldn't complain this time.

Long overdue posts

I have been wanting to blog about our trip to Stockholm, but gotten soooo lazy. Plus, we were busy cleaning up apartment, walking around in Toulouse, cooking for buka puasa (okay, im not THAT busy for this one), you know......useless stuff.

The old town with interesting architecture

Me eating my banana, we always packed our own lunch and eat it in the park

So yea...Stockholm. It was cold *d'uh*, pretty, clean, and the best is everybody speaks english!! Thank God for that because we were worried for not bringing swedish dictionary along. As you can see, we pretty much survived the daily life there.

Museum...something....forgot. Not a museum person I am.

In front of Royal Palace

Ryan Air was good. No delay no nothing, just a standard low cost airline. Somehow, eventhough we paid our tikets for 1 cent (42euro after tax), we had to spend for airport shuttle in Paris and in Stockholm, which came about 50 euros each. Huh!

Stockholm

Hotel was cute, an ancient boat abra kadabra-ed into a hotel located in waterfront facing the City Hall. Really lovely, except the part that they do not provide bed sheet! yea, laugh all u like... lucky we knew about it and brought our own. We are soooo not gonna pay 6 extra euros for stupid bed sheet.

Our hotel

Spent first day of course exploring the city which is made of 14 islands, so there are bridges everywhere. We even joined the boat tour together with all Chinese middle age tourists.

Cyclists are fierce!! They are serious when they ring those bells, means move away from the bicycle lane if you love your life.

However, everything is sooo expensive. Well, not much different from France but kinda confusing since they don't use Euros. We ate lotsa salmon and fish-like dish, one very good salad bought in the local market, tried the local pastries which did not deserve any shout out, even the coffees tasted weird.

Okay, back to the happy stuff. All in all it was a great getaway. I've always wanted to go to one of the skandinavian countries. There were definitely lotsa pine trees and cute-looking red houses on river banks on the way to the airport, lotsa blond people too. But the highlight of the trip was the ICEBAR!!! That was cool, literally. Everything made of ice, the bar, the table, the glasses, the wall, the floor, except the bar ladies. And we had to put this silvery-millenium eskimo outfit to fight the cold inside, since it's gotta be 0 degrees.

The ICEBAR!!!! And its curious bartender. That is pyramid of glasses.

Ice table

I was craving for hot dogs sold in those street hawkers like on TV, but booo hoooo, they are all made of pork. So there! I had kebab instead.sigh.....

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On different subject. Ifa finally made her way to Paris. Our meet was short and brief. She was tired and jet-lagging from the flight. She did not look so enthusiastic seeing Paris, quoting her "so this is Louvre museum, hmm ok, just another building" or "if your apartment is nearby I will be taking a nap or watching dvds" while visiting Eiffel Tower, mind you. Hehe.

I was not so sure whether she was tired or because she's just the kind of person who is not easlily impressed by something, or maybe she is just not a traveller....i dunno.

And we noticed (pierre-louis and I) that people do change with time and circumstances. Maybe we expected things to still be the same as in college 3 years ago. I guess we were wrong. As us, we have been through so many things here in France as well as Ifa in Maldives, I guess our lives have evolved so greatly that we did not realize it has changed us too. Let me just say that things are definitely not the same anymore. I could feel it from our conversation and behaviour, perhaps.

It was lovely seeing her, of course. But we should have expected the unexpected. And I am wondering now since Cecilia is sooo eager to come here, and we are both definitely sooo looking forward to meet each other, i miss her so much. Are things different now between us, has she changed, will she think I have changed, will we be close as we used to be. So many questions linger in my head about our friendship.

Let's just wait and see.

I am going back to class in 2 freaking days!!!!!!!!