live fabulous Archives - Page 7 of 12 - Rhymes with Fabulous

January 10, 2016

The Best of France

I’m obsessed with the best of France. Partially, because I’m still stuck on this “beautiful grace of French community” thing. Partially, because after seeing the country-how can you not be obsessed?! I mean, honestly. I first travelled to France in the summer after my freshman year of high school, in a determined attempt by my parents to: A) Make sure I was doing something vaguely more productive than learning to smoke cigarettes (this had been the crowning achievement of the previous summer, and it turned out, was highly useful in France)B) Get me out of our hot, crowded apartment and expose me to some non-televised cultural activitiesC) Increase the overall…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

January 6, 2016

New Year’s Resolutions

It is the time of year to consider New Year’s Resolutions. Lose the cookie weight, go to the gym, etc. Instead, I’m considering television. It may be relatable to New Year’s Resolutions. It may not. Let’s see. In college, I spent a memorable year living in a house full of girls that loved video games. Specifically, Mario Kart. I exclude myself rather emphatically from that category. Sometimes, I would leave for a weekend and come back to the girls sitting in basically the same places I left them, scattered around our living room with a pile of Keystone Light cans expanding around them in every direction. It was kind of…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

December 15, 2015

Holiday Decorations

It’s important to appreciate holiday decorations. This simple thought came to me yesterday as I realized it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Madrid. The city decorated for Christmas two and a half weeks ago. Yesterday, sitting in a cab and practicing my slow breathing, I finally noticed. There are lights up on all the major streets, massive fake trees up in all the plazas, and hordes of slow-walking Spanish old ladies strolling arm-in-arm on every sidewalk. But I’ve been so busy at work, I never looked up to appreciate it all. Bad choice. Holiday decorations are almost meditative in their quiet beauty. (I think it has something…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

December 12, 2015

What’s important?

To define ‘what’s important’ sometimes you need to take a step back and think. Sometimes, instead of thinking, you plan frantic back-to-back weekend trips for three months at a time. I consider myself ‘Exhibit A’ in this example. Where have I been, you ask? Let me tell you. In the last 3 months, I have been in: -the South of France-Barcelona-Morocco-Italy-London-Valencia In addition, I have been working 60 hours a week, teaching 3 separate subjects to 110 students. I’ve written comments and assigned grades for all of them twice. I’m taking 2 different types of Spanish classes and desperately trying to give my wonderful boyfriend some measure of meaningful…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

October 3, 2015

How to Deal with Grief

How to deal with grief varies from person to person. There’s no magic cure for the weight of sadness. But telling stories helps. So here goes. My best friend growing up was Polly Noble. We met on the first day of nursery school. We both had adorable bowl haircuts. Our apartments were 4 blocks apart. The rest, as they say, was history. We spent years of our childhoods laying on the floors of each other’s bedrooms, playing Uno and Guess Who. We have seen the movie Grease together 2,659 times. At her apartment, we would play tag in the hall with her dog and have juice out of these endlessly…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

September 28, 2015

What Defines You?

On Sundays I enjoy doing nothing. Walks, lunch, pedicures. Pondering serious life questions like this one: What defines you? In this view, I’ve recently branched out Sunday “nothing” to include watching documentary films on iTunes. In this vein, during the latest quest of nothing I discovered Lizzie Velasquez. She’s 26 and weighs 64 pounds due to a rare congenital disease. She gave a TED Talk in 2013 about a YouTube video labeling her “The World’s Ugliest Girl”, which went viral complete with thousands of comments from strangers demanding that she kill herself. In her TED Talk, she said when she considered how to deal with the video, she asked herself…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

September 7, 2015

Hope for a Monday

I’m constantly searching for news that will give me hope for a Monday. Lately, I’ve found it in the posts on “Wait But Why?”. It’s changing my life. The latest series of articles (on Tesla Motors and Space X) have given me a naive, college-freshman-level of hope about the state of the world. Definitely enough to get through your average Monday. Call me a dreamer, but I find hope in positive environmental change. It started in college. Granted, for me, college happened in Boulder, Colorado. It’s sort of a ‘positive environmental change’ mecca. We launched all kinds of campaigns. Environmental campaigns, eradication-of-world-hunger campaigns, Earth Day campaigns, stop-cutting-down-the-rainforest campaigns, pay-more-attention-to-my-campaign campaigns,…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

September 5, 2015

Saturday Plans

The first day of school was a smashing success. More importantly, the first day of school was on a FRIDAY, so I am already faced with the first of 42 (but who’s counting?) glorious weekends to make relaxing Saturday plans. An example of how I plan a relaxing weekend below: Conversation with self, Wednesday 10 PM. “Oh, there is a language exchange hike outside of the city this Saturday! It is only 90 minutes traveling each way. I should definitely do that because I might never be able to go hiking again! And I will get back with at least 15 minutes to run home, shower and change for dinner….

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

September 2, 2015

Happy New Year

Teachers (in their adorable, dorky teacher way) like to say “Happy New Year!” when they see each other in September. I started hearing the phrase almost immediately when I went back to work 2 days ago. This “Happy New Year” business means two things: New Year Facts Fact 1: I moved to Spain a year ago. Fact 2: SCHOOL IS STARTING. Literally: school is starting in 24 hours. What I really should be doing is rooting myself in the reality of Fact 2 and frantically preparing course materials, lab manuals, neatly organizing stacks of colored index cards, etc. Instead, I have been lingering around in the dreamy realities of Fact…

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

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