Making the most of Spalding.

Yesterday I walked to the outlet mall! Woohoo! Not all that exciting actually. The walk was really nice. I pretty much just followed the river for a half hour and then there it was. It was a very pretty walk. This is St. Paul's Church of Spalding.


The only store that I was tempted to buy anything in was Gap and as far as I'm concerned, things weren't really as inexpensive as they should be in an outlet store so I managed to come out of there without having bought anything! It was good. Very good.

I wasn't the only one who decided it was a good day to go to the mall...


I'm really trying not to spend money on anything but transportation since that is so expensive and I do want to be able to get around and see places. I bought a few Christmas gifts but other than that I just wanted to go for a walk and find something new. Besides, buying people gifts doesn't really count as spending money. The gardens at Springfields, that's the name of the shopping center, are really nice so I walked around there for a bit too.

On the way back I found these plants near the river. I'm not exactly sure what they are but they look like the fake Chinese Lantern plants that Paige and I used to have in our room, so I had to take a picture. Those fake plants really made our room perfect. They have good memories.

I don't think that the kids know I'm leaving this weekend but things have been a little better with them. They've been a bit friendlier to me and I can tell they're trying to be more polite. There are still enough explosions of bad behavior that I know I've made the right decision about leaving. The parents have been very kind to me and I think I would feel welcome in their home if I ever chose to come back to Spalding. Things have been a little crazy here as some relatives were visiting this weekend and a new au pair has moved in. She actually was their au pair last year and they are SO excited to have her here. She doesn't speak much English but is very nice and I've enjoyed having her here because it keeps the kids occupied ; )

Today I want to my tap class and had a wonderful time! I've learned a lot just in the last two weeks and I can pretty much keep up with everything that's going on. It was a good feeling.

A little later on I ventured over to the farmers market in the center of Spalding. It was fun walking around the market and doing a bit of people watching. I bought some produce, some of which I used to make dinner, then did some grocery shopping and headed back to the house.

Dinner tonight was very successful. I made salmon and cous cous. I've never really been interested in cous cous because it's tiny and can seem mushy. Texture issue, you know? But I didn't really know what else I should serve with salmon because we just had rice the other day so I chopped up some red pepper, zucchini and sweet potato really small, cooked them, threw in some salt, pepper, butter, and garlic and mixed it in with the cous cous. It was quite lovely and I was feeling rather proud. I even ate some of it! I'm still not all that into eating dinner. Not sure why. I tend to only want cereal at this time of day. Actually, all times of the day : )

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I don't really have anything super exciting or funny to say so... that's it for now. I'll try to live funnier in the next few days so that the next post is more entertaining!

Peace.

Steph