Le premier jour

Bonjour! (Most cliché way of starting a French travel blog, check!)
I am currently in Satrouville, France, which is about 30 minutes away from Paris, visiting my relatives for the next three weeks.

Sunrise when I landed in Paris (6:30 AM here, 12:30 AM in the states):

After my 7 hour flight, we stopped by a pâtisserie for breakfast, where my aunt bought une baguette, les croissants, et pain au chocolat. So French! My mom warned me that people in France stick the baguettes under their armpits so I shouldn’t eat any but this one was wrapped in a nice hygienic bag. After I took a jet-laggy nap, we went to the mall pour faire du shopping. The month of juillet is known for les soldes (sales) in France, so the next few days will probably consist of us going shopping before les soldes are over.

After you bite into a pain au chocolat, this is what heaven looks like:

I feel like I am living in the French version of Full House. There are 15 people including me under the same roof. There are the grandparents (the grandmother is my grandma’s sister), then the daughter (my mom’s favorite cousin) and her husband and their three kids, and then the son (my mom’s other cousin) and his wife and their five kids. Honestly I do not remember all these kids’ names…they have nicknames and “real” Vietnamese names and I think French names too.

So far I like the eldest cousins of each family the best, probably because they aren’t afraid to speak to me. But I just bribed the rest of the kids with gifts from les États-Unis so we’ll see what happens tomorrow. It is so freaking cute to hear the little kids speaking in rapid French. I am practicing my French with them and they are practicing their English with me, and when we all get confused we switch to Vietnamese. Or Spanish.

Today (Yesterday?) was one of my cousin’s birthdays. We had gâteau au chocolat, which I thought was a brownie cake at first, but it is much, much better.

Les cousins et gâteau au chocolat (WHY AM I SO DARK):

Well I hope you liked this first blog post! If we are close enough friends and you have a smart phone, download Voxer so that we can walkie-talkie/text internationally. My most faithful voxing buddy so far is my 8 year old American cousin. Shout out to Mandy!