Punkt slut.

I've never really closed this blog and I guess that time has come to do it now.

The main purpose of the blog was to share my experiences and feelings about living abroad with the people who were far away, but now that I'm back to France, it kind of loses its sense.

As a final post, I wanted to reverse the situation and share with my friends living in Sweden, my first experiences and feeling about being back to France.

The first thing I wanted to tell you is that even if I've had 2 fantastic years in Stockholm, it feels like the right place for me to be here, in Paris. Or in France at least.

I think I've found a really good balance in my life.

I like my job, it's quite challenging, in a nice atmosphere with fun colleagues, and the least I can say is that there are things to do !

I'm close to my family and my friends. It feels SO good to have all of them around me and to be able to see them regularly, and to not have anymore this feeling of "I-have-to-enjoy-this-moment-as-much-as-possible-as-it's-gonna-be-over-soon". That's what I've missed the most during my stay in Stockholm.

And the last point : the dancing/training. I've stopped all kind of training except for dancing because I had to make choices. I'm working longer hours than in Sweden, plus I'm going out more often, and I just don't have time to do everything (if I wanna have time to sleep I mean). So I kept the focus on the dancing. But that's definitely worth it !

One of the things I was the most afraid of while coming back to France, was to be disappointed in terms of dance classes. I've enjoyed SO much going to Åsa's classes at SATS (and to other instructors as well of course : Julia, Jossan, Robban...), that I had VERY high expectations... So before coming back, I had done some researches about teachers and dance schools in Paris, watched lots of videos, and after a while, I decided to go and try Nathalie Lucas' classes at Studio Harmonic. I liked her style, the music she chose (see videos)... and it actually was kind of "love at first sight" when I tried it. The same as when I tried Åsa's classes.

I'm so happy I found this class. It's different from the classes I took at SATS, I don't like it less or more - the perspective is just not the same, the pedagogy is totally different, the population of the class is not comparable... But the feeling at the end remains the same. You know when you just can't stop smiling - even though you're superover-tired - and you can feel the endorphins in your entire body.

One of the things that I like as well, is that it's a very good opportunity to meet people whom you would probably never meet if you didn't have this passion in common. :)

Ok, I'm sorry, the dancing part was a bit long but if you're reading this, you know me and you probably won't be surprised then ;)

Thank you everybody for reading this post until the end, as well as for reading the other posts.

I hope I haven't been too boring !! If so, don't worry, it's over !

Point final.

Exciting event !

Gotta tell about what I'm doing this weekend.

As most of you know, I'm working for a public transportation company. Here in Sweden, we are operating the bus traffic mostly in Stockholm but also in some other cities (Göteborg, Jönköping, Sundsvall...).

A few months ago, we won a tender for a HUGE new area. When I say huge, it is the equivalent of 5 normal traffic areas as we call them. It is the areas of Söderort (that we already had), Huddinge, Botyrka and Nacka-Värmdö, all of them on the "Stockholm territory".

People have been working on this start-up for months now, and on Monday, we are finally starting to operate the traffic, and lots of things need to be ready by then. The new depot in Gubbängen, some material for the drivers, all the buses... To give you an example, one of the areas that we now call "Stockholm Sydväst" (ex Huddinge, Botyrka, Söderort) counts a bit more than 500 buses and 1300 drivers. So there is a lot to prepare !

So I'm spending my weekend at Gubbängen depot, helping them to prepare everything. And I'll be in Söderort at 4am in the morning on Monday to hand out stuff to the drivers and serve them breakfast !

That's completely non paid and volunteer work, but I think it's fun to be part of this event/project and that's also a good way to show that us, people from the huvudkontoret, are interested in the operations, that we are not just spending time behind our computers and that we know what running a bus in the traffic involves :)

Here is Nyboda (Söderort) depot :

Now, time to sleep ! Gotta be there at 8am tomorrow... Zzzzzz..........

From Paris with love

It's always the same story. Each time I go back to Paris, I need some time to adjust.
At the beginning, it's a bit hard, like I know this environment, but I don't feel like home and I only see the bad sides (people are stressed, the metro is crowded, it smells bad, longer working days...) - and then, I spend some time with my family, my friends, and I finally realize that it is where I should be.

I really love Paris. I definitely like living in Stockholm but I think I like Paris more. First of all, in terms of architecture, there is no denying that it is beautiful... Then, culturally speaking, there are always lots of things happening all the time everywhere (WAY MUCH MORE than in Stockholm - sorry Swedish peeps, no offense ;) ), it's really easy to talk to people that you don't know, and to finish, one thing that I think is pretty amazing is that people are beautiful and very well dressed !!! Parisian girls look so good in general. No matter if they are thin, big, tall, small... They all have so much style and class ! As for guys, even though not all of them are handsome, they all are sooo charming. Well, of course that's a bit general, but when I'm there, I feel surounded by beautiful people lol, both boyz and girls !

Apart from that I've spent one week in my new job. One quite crazy week as I've been working until 11pm one evening and 1am another evening... But it's gonna be really interesting so I'm happy. However that's gonna be a big challenge for me at the beginning as I'm supposed to do 5 budgets while I have almost no knowledge on the different contracts... But that's a good way to get into the subject, right ?!

Coming back to Stockholm tomorrow. Starting to be a bit fed up with planes and airports, but that's life !!! (a hard life, I know !). And on Sunday I'm gonna spend the day with Leila and Ludivine at Yasuragi Hasseludden spa, a japanese spa, in the Stockholm area.
Couldn't have found a better way to finish this great, but kind of exhausting week !!

I'm a dancer...

Well, not professionally speaking of course, but in my heart definitely.

This afternoon I was supposed to go to a dance class, but as I had trained BODYPUMP yesterday and BODYBALANCE this morning, I felt quite tired in my body and almost cancelled. But eventually I heard that my nice friend Josefin was coming to the class, so I thought it would be fun to go and dance together...

So I went there, and... well, that's almost impossible to explain this feeling that you get after such an intense dance class. You're exhausted but at the same time you produce so much endorphins that it feels amazingly good in the body.

I very often get this feeling when I go to a dance class and I just love it. It's really not comparable to anything else... It probably sounds like a cliche, but I know that all dancers and dance lovers see exactly what I mean.

As I said, I'm not a professionnal dancer, but I surely am a dancer, and I'll do everything I can to keep dancing in the coming years. I've stopped different times the past few years for different reasons, but now that I've got back to it, I'm not ready to give it up again... <3

Bara en månad kvar

Wow, my last blog post was already almost 2 months ago...
I actually thought of giving up the blogging activity as I'm not so regular to it, but when I come back here, I'm happy to write and share... so... we'll see :)

It's only one month left for me in Sweden. I had very mixed feeling but now I really start to feel that I've made the right choice, and I'm actually very happy to come back to France.
I'm sure gonna miss lots of things here, especially my friends, but also my job that I really like, my dance classes and all that comes around, my apartment, my neighbourhood, the city itself... I'm also probably gonna miss the swedish winter a bit, but not too much ;) hehe
But all good things must come to an end, right ?!
And I know that I have lots of great things to enjoy in Paris as well :)

Plus I already have some new projects in mind, and I realized that those projects, those personal goals are really driving my life, whether they are small or big.

So now the goal before I live is to enjoy as much as possible all the things that I like here. So spend as much time as possible with my friends and take as many dance classes as possible (and train as much as possible), go out in my favourite restaurants, bars...
I'm actually not willing at all to meet new people, to discover new places... And that's pretty natural I think.

So now that the weather is nice, I'm gonna leave you and go out !
Have a great day beautiful people :)

Could someone freeze the time please ??

Aouch... Last post was already one month ago... But where is time going ??
I can't believe time is flying that fast. That's really crazy.

Actually, quite a lot of things happened in one month.

First of all, I found a job ! I think the last time I wrote, I was going to France for job interviews. Well, it happened that I got the 2 jobs I was applying for, and I signed my work contract last week for one of them :) So, I'm happy and very satisfied with everything. The only "small detail" that needs to be fixed is the apartment, but I'll look for it once I'm there. So I'll be working in Paris starting from September 5th !

Also I went to New York during one week... An amazing week. I'm just deeply in love with the city. It might sound stupid or I don't know but, it feels like there EVERYTHING is possible, all the dreams can come true. I know it's very idealistic and there are probably lots of bad sides as well, but this feeling that you can do anything, achieve anything, this freedom feeling... it's not comparable to anything else.

It was my 3rd time in the Big Apple, and it surely won't be the last one... oh no !! ;)

So the come back has been really hard those past few days.
Hopefully I have quite a lot of nice things to look forward to. First of all, I'm soon going to meet my friends that are arriving from France for this long weekend. Some of them are even staying until next Thursday, so one week !
Then it will be some training in France for my new job, and in 2,5 weeks, I'm heading to Norway for a road trip with 3 crazy girls : Ludivine, Leila and Ophélie.
The winning quartet :)


Yeah I know, my life could be worse... ;) But I'm working my ass off so I think I deserve it, ha !

Ok so now if I look at my calendar, my next blog post shouldn't be before the end of June, beginning of July lol.
See u !!

Thursdays after jazz feeling :)

Just got home from a super great fun awesome dance class, and I'm wondering something : how is it possible to be so tired and so full of energy at the same time ?
I can't sleep those past few days, I've done so many things, so I'm really exhausted. But now I could just turn the music on in my apartment and dance for hours and hours.

I'm gonna miss those dance classes SO MUCH when I get back to France in a few months. So I'm definitely trying to enjoy them as much as I can now. So I won't have any regrets at the end. Well, I prefer to not even think about it...

Anyway, I hope I'll have the same amount of energy to prepare my bag and get up at 4.00 to take my plane tomorrow... !! Going to France from tomorrow morning till monday evening :)