Week 22: Birthday week

After a relaxing evening at Mathilde's, I started March full of motivation: after a run (yes, I know I shouldn't), I cut my bangs, went shopping, had a meeting with Bubs, looked for and found cupcake molds, taught my recorders, and in the evening, I went to Rémi's WG with all my stuff and cupcakes. There, we had a delicious Kenyan (!?) dinner with Quentin, played Shithead and circle games like "I'm going to the Island Keinikeinu", and of course, celebrated my birthday!

Wuuhuuu 25! On my birthday, I worked in the morning as usual, distributed cupcakes to my colleagues (only to the nice ones, of course), and was delighted to receive a package from home when I arrived at my apartment. The best part: chocolate muesli from DM!

I spent the rest of the day in Paris enjoying the beautiful sunshine. I finally took the time to eat at L'as du fallafel in the Marais, which is according to the internet and many recommendations the best falafel place in Paris. And I was not disappointed! The twenty-minute wait was definitely worth it, and I had a really delicious falafel. Highly recommended! Strolling around Paris in the sun, receiving calls from friends, and browsing beautiful shops kept me going throughout the day. In the afternoon, I had birthday cake with Luca and received flowers from a florist. Unfortunately, I had to be back home by 6 pm due to the curfew, but I ended the evening nicely and relaxed with various video calls. Usually, I love celebrating my birthday in a big way with many people, but that didn't stop me from making the day as beautiful as possible.

On Wednesday, as usual, I had classes and Chloé surprised me with a gift at school: speculoos! I love it! Julia, my German colleague, also invited me to have lunch with her, which made me very happy. After work, I sat on the balcony in the sunshine and started answering my messages from the day before. I also tried to install various video editing programs on my laptop, but it seems that my graphics card is not powerful enough, so I might have to go back to using iMovie on my phone for editing our new Bubs video. I've already started and tried a bit, the basic idea worked, but the execution was rather funny!

After going for another short run, I treated myself to sushi and watched some Netflix in the evening.

On Thursday, March 4, as it will be regular from now on, I had online singing lessons with Michael at 10 a.m.! I upgraded my cell phone plan to 20GB per month and used it as a hotspot for the Zoom account on my laptop. It's not perfect, but it works! After my lesson, I stayed in the music room a bit longer until Julia knocked on the door and announced a rehearsal with two other teachers. I was allowed to listen to the rehearsal and enjoyed these 45 minutes very much. Julia sings incredibly beautifully, performing Schubert's "Erbarme dich" and Goethe's "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" in Russian, set to music by Tchaikovsky (this information is not guaranteed). It was so wonderful to hear live music again, and such good music! After my lunch break, as the music room was occupied, I spent the rest of the day there. First, I filmed a video for Bubs' "Kaleidoscope", and then I recorded a rendition of "SLT" by Suzanne for Vocal Journey. It took some time and nerves, but it was a lot of fun. I arrived home at 6:15 p.m., met Amelie at 6:30 p.m. to take care of some contractual matters for Bubs, and had a Zoom meeting with Caro at 8 p.m. It was an exhausting but exclusively very nice day!

Oh, except: Yesterday, I realized that if I want to start my Master's in Teaching in October, I also have to take an entrance exam, and of course, this entrance exam requires an application. Unfortunately, the deadline was on Monday (March 1st), just like the applications for the Bachelor's entrance exam, for which I registered early! How stupid!! But when I asked for tips in our semester group, it turned out that I'm not alone. We are now three, haha!

On Friday, during my breaks at work, I edited the video for Bubs and came up with some nice combinations of faces. In the evening, we inaugurated the new beer dispenser in Rémi's WG with Mathilde and his roommate Quentin.

I invited a few friends to my place for crêpes on my birthday on March 6th. Chloé, Luca, Anne-Lou, Rémi, and Mathilde were actually able to come spontaneously because I only invited them on Thursday evening after the announcements by the government (lockdown on weekends or not). It was such a beautiful afternoon, I just love being able to invite friends to my place and spend time with many people. With 6 people, we were completely corona-compliant. Florence helped me prepare the crêpe batter in advance, and she recommended me a wine cellar near Republique where I bought good champagne. When I came back from my shopping, there was a little flower with birthday wishes on the table and a "Happy Birthday" garland hanging in the window. That made me very happy! Apart from that, thanks to my friends, I'm now very well supplied with books. Yesterday, in my class at the collège, Héloise surprised me with a book, and I also received books from Anne-Lou and Chloé as gifts. Unfortunately, everyone had to leave at 5 p.m. to be home on time for the curfew at 6 p.m. As always, Luca didn't really care and stayed a bit longer. Completely exhausted and fulfilled from the day, I went to bed at 9 p.m. I realized that I will be very sad when I have to leave Paris in three weeks.

I spent the whole Sunday working on the video editing for Bubs, and Ronja did some photo editing.

Amelie also sent me a nice photo: