Mon Oeil!!

Le 10 mai 2009
Getting to church on Sunday was SO much better than last week, but still it was really time consuming. I left my apartment at 7:30 and I got to church two minutes before it started at 9:30. Thus in essence we travel 4 hours for 3 hours of church. Crazy huh? Was it this bad for you (Katy, Genny, Val)? Don't get me wrong, I think the trip is beautiful and it doesn't feel that long, but the professor did give me permission to visit the Paris ward if I like.

Some things I want to remember: The vielle dame who I sat next to in church gave me fake flowers after we talked for a bit. The old ladies are SO incredibly sweet, why are the current adults so much colder?
I don't think that the Versaille ward has a primary (une primaire), because there were 6 children in relief society with us on Sunday. One of these children is SO loud. Actually its the little girl that I took a picture with last week? She has this sweet shrieky voice but some times it becomes a low growl when she is playing with her toys, and I think its absolutely adorable (my roommate thinks its creepy).

In Sacrament meeting they encouraged all the kids EFY age to go to EFY. They had them stand up and they asked their parents to help them have this experience just once, and they informed them when sign ups would happen.

Also, the mission President had all 5 of his blond californian daughters in town (they really stuck out), none of which speak french. So they all had headphones on and the missionaries sat right next to me, translating in English.. which really hurt my head because I was trying to listen to the french.

Le 11 mai 2009
Today our whole class went to Saint Denis. I guess I didn't realize that they don't actually know which tomb is his.. pretty disappointing. Personally I think its okay to open them and see which skeleton has a head attached, but I guess that's just me.

Saint Denis
Marie Antoinette
One of these graves is Saint Denis

Afterward Jamie and I found a bench under the trees to sit on, despite the fact that it was raining. We finished preparing and writing our FHE lesson and then we headed out to the Professors. I was really nervous for the lesson, I wanted it to go really well but I knew that I would mess up my french all over the place. I'm not used to speaking in French about religious things. Its hard to get my point across, but I think it went pretty well. I used the Mormon ad that mom gave me. It has a picture of a little chick pecking out of its shell and on the top it says "Adversite peut-etre un source de force". Thus I told stories about helping dad with the little chicks and seeing how even though we could get them out of the shell faster, they have to do it on, and that it strengthens them. I hope it went well. I know for a fact that I messed up a sentence but I think that that was the only one. *fingers crossed*


Le 12 mai 2009

In class today we studied the lineage of the French kings. There are a million of them! I can't believe that we complained about learning all the Presidents! Here in France the power is constantly switching back and forth between rulers, families, and countries because of marriages, deaths, and wars verse us, where we switch in between parties. We probably seem so boring to other countries.

We weren't very hungry after class so Jamie and I bought a pastry to share. Its called a millefois frais and it was absolutely amazing.

After class we did a promenade the "Marais Walk". The professor who wrote it didn't do very well with it, in fact some of the directions were just all together wrong, but we didn't give up. In this walk we (Jamie, Me, Maren, and Richelle)visited the Hotel de Sens, Lycee Charlemagne, l'Eglise de Saint Paul, l'Hotel Sully, la Place des Vosges, le Musee Carnavalet, et le Jardin Georges Cain.
Saint Paul
L'Hotel Sully
Jamie and I
They have defibrillators in their museums. Talk about major safety precautions!
I'm a gryffindor!
This is Richelle. She was sitting on a chair, but it doesn't look like it. Cool huh? I told you, everything is smaller in France. Even the chairs.

We had dinner with the Madame tonight. It was less stressful for some reason.. odd because we were both tired and didn't want to be there at all. She fed us salmon, and rice like stuff (I forget what its called in English), plus grapefruit, and then a vanilla bean ice cream with syrup on it. I was kind of concerned that there might have been rum in our ice cream tonight. I don't know how to ask if there was alcohol in it, but she knows that we can't drink coffee, tea, or alcohol so I assumed the best. After dinner Jamie and I snuck back into the kitchen to find the bottle of syrupy stuff that she had put on our ice cream. Jamie had watched her making it and knew which bottle it was. We found the bottle right away with the name "Crème de Cassis" on it. It had no list of ingredients so we remembered the name and ran upstairs to check it out. Wikipedia says "Crème de Cassis is a blood-red, sweet, black currant-flavored liqueur, and is an ingredient of kir, an apéritif." We're pretty freaked out about it. I can now say that I know what alcohol tastes like... its disgusting. I guess the deed is done: anyways I don't feel unusual at all so that's a good sign. Have you guys ever had close calls or slip ups with that?

Time to do lots of reading homework. I hope I can concentrate.
Jumping on a teeter totter :)