La Clé de Mon Coeur

Les Preparatifs continuent!

2010-07-01T14:58:00.003-04:00

In researching un peu plus I discovered a fascinating site that is quite informative on the Quebecois. Some interesting facts that I learned:

-If you are religious, you are probably a non-practicing Catholic. The Catholic church used to have a strong influence politically and socially, practically controlling the province, but that's not true since the Révolution Tranquille in the 60s which brought separation of church and state.
-You don't consider insects, dogs and cats to be food, but snails are, as are pigs feet.(Poutine and Ragoût de Pattes de Cochon)
-Traditional Québec cuisine is rustic and sticks to the ribs. Poutine, tourtiere (meat pie), ragoût de pattes de cochon (pigs feet stew), oreilles de christ (deep-fried salted pork fat yum) and maple syrup are familiar dishes that are usually only eaten around the holidays or on a trip to the cabane à sucre (where they make the maple syrup, dontcha know).
-Public transit in big cities is very good. If you live in Montreal, you don't need a car at all. Cabs, buses, Metro (subway) and a great network of bike paths get you anywhere you need to be. Planes and trains will take you anywhere in the country faster than driving.
-You speak French, at home, at work and at school, but you're bilingual or you at least know a little English because it's a requirement for most jobs. You may resent the rest of Canada for not making as great an effort to learn French.
-Dates are in the DD/MM/YY format. The decimal point is a comma. In official documents, the 24-hour system is used, 7 PM is 19:00, but in practice you use the 12-hour system. A billion has 12 zeros, 9 zeros is a milliard. You use metric mostly, except for height where feet and inches are the standard. Temperature is measured in degrees Celsius.
-If you're talking to someone, you get uncomfortable if they approach closer than about two feet. Maybe three feet would be better. However, kissing on both cheeks when you meet or leave someone you know well, family or not, is custom, especially for women.

and more.... at http://www.zompist.com/quebec.html

Bird's the Word!

2010-06-11T21:15:00.001-04:00

hehehe. happyfest

Canoeing + Sarlat

2009-11-20T18:24:00.004-05:00

I find it fascinating that this is as far as I got with my Paris blog, because this year in my French 362 class I was assigned a project on a French region- Bordeaux/Perigord. Perigord entails all of the Dordogne river and it's bordering cities including Bergerac and Sarlat. It just happens to be the prettiest of all regions, the home of foie gras, contains all of the castles filmed in Ever After, and truly captured my heart.

This the river Dordogne on which we went canoeing.

The restaurant on the Dordogne where Albert, the bus driver, took Fred, Emily and I to lunch after we canoed. Quel mec!

More of the Dordogne

The remains of an old Jewish town on the way to Limoges.

The public water closets were a little more 'public' for the men. :)

Hiking towards Domme after canoeing all morning; Rachel was tired.

The Sarlat market, the morning of our departure.

I look back on Sarlat very fondly because of the great experiences that we had there as a study abroad group and individually. We were nearing the end of our Study Abroad and thus our FHE, the first night in Sarlat, was all of the students sharing the life changing and memorable events that happened during the trip. Afterwards the Rachels passed out slips of paper for people to write love notes to each other on. It was wonderful to hear and tell everyone how much they had meant to us.
The next day was our canoeing trip. We took our time cruising along and really soaked in the countryside. Most people in our group weren't avid canoers so they didn't have as much fun as Rachel and I. I would steer us to the shore where the branches were just feet from the water. Rachel and I would lay back and watch the branches fly just above our faces. It was gorgeous. Fred, Rachel, Emily, and I were the only ones to brave the waters . . . which I probably did too much of. I jumped in to swim over and splash Becky and the professor at one point just to land on a sharp rock that cut the whole under side of my foot, and later on I found a deep diving spot, but came up in a shallow area skinning my whole knee. Like my father, I AM indeed accident prone.
You will all be proud to know that I was the only one in the SA group who did not get sun burned that day. They were all miserable that night (in our same hotel in Sarlat) while I was out meandering the streets of this preserved medieval town. In running through the center of town I ran into some construction which directed me down some smaller streets. I happened upon what I would deem as- Heavenly music. From a 3rd story window there was a ccappella music being sung by an octet or more of elderly French people. I sat below the window sill to listen a while longer. A French man walked past me and commented on how lucky we were to have this sort of soundtrack mixed in to our daily lives. How is it, again, that people despise the French?

Le Pélerinage et Too nice to be called La Popie!

2009-06-19T05:11:00.009-04:00

Le 11 Juin 2009
June 11th, the start of our small piece of the pilgrimage "Santiago de Compostelo" and a beautiful journey for the memories. Our hotel breakfast was from 6 to 6:30 and we had to be at the Le Puy en Velay Cathedral by 7:00 for mass. I ate breakfast quickly and started the 20 minute hike to the Cathedral. Arriving early I realized that I desperately needed to go to the bathroom before commencing the pilgrimage. I couldn’t find a bathroom anywhere (no surprise, there are never bathrooms in France) but I was desperate so I found the friendly looking Priest dressed in the fancy red robe and asked him as politely and French as possible if there was a bathroom that I could use. He showed me back into a tiny room that was marked “Privé” and I thanked him profusely. 5 minutes later he was starting mass. He led us by singing and with a beautiful unfaltering voice. He seemed so solemn the whole time. After the mass he had a separate meeting for the pilgrims. He welcomed each of us and asked us individually where we were from. I have never met someone so friendly and happy in my life! I’ve always pictured priests as serious people but he seemed so real to me. He told us after the meeting how he used to teach French in Iowa. Turns out that he speaks English as well, but he was impressed that we all spoke French and kept speaking it. Then he gave me a charm that represents the Saint Jacques path that all the pilgrims walk which I vowed that I would hold throughout the whole journey.

Me with Saint Jacques

The start of the pilgrimage is a descending stair from the middle of the cathedral! How poetic..

We started heading down hill following the “balises” or path indicators. I was separated from most of the group for a good while, but admittedly that’s how I had hoped that it would be. The time alone was really peaceful; the scenery, noises of nature were quite conducive to the endless comparisons of this pilgrimage to my life and Christ's. I remembered that the priest had prayed that we (those on the pilgrimage) would be able to find Christ, the path, and ourselves while doing the walk of Saint Jacques. What a beautiful prayer! I had earnestly chimed in with my 'amen' at the end of his blessing.

Part of the trail I hiked
epic scenery

epic scenery

epic scenery

Random longhorn that confused me for a second- "Could I possibly be back in Texas?" Haha.. no.

We hiked approximately 4 miles of rough terrain through beautiful scenery till we arrived at a little church and pilgrimage rest stop. It took us less time than expected to do such a short distance so we sat there in the little gathering place for 2 hours before the bus showed up. I took this time to wander through the small surrounding area and cathedral that was there. Unlike the endless cathedrals that we have been visiting of late, it was small and homely, which made it that much more endearing to me. It was dark and cool inside, a welcome feeling; the small worn hymnals and glowing windows were perfectly picturesque. Malheureusement, I have no documentation of the little chapel.

the tired hikers

the fountain at our stopping place

From there we rode the bus to a store called Géant Casino, which is a French Walmart but not as cheap. Everyone got lunch there. We drove to Rodez where we put up our bags and had dinner. It was a fish and trout entrée, then duck, then a white and milk chocolate moose bar sort of truc. The hotel didn’t seem too pleased with our group and the little amount of food that we ate off of our plates. They probably thought that we were too stuck up for their food, but I ate all my fish and other mystery food thus I claim my innocence. During dinner the professor and I had an intense conversation about the education program at Brigham Young University and how a teaching degree is useful to have, but the program itself doesn’t do much for the teacher. It was interesting to hear his perspective, I was glad to hear that it isn't only the students that find the requirements a bit proposterous, but I'll get through it I'm excited to teach French. At the end of a dinner a girl in my group asked if she could use my computer to book the BluVan (two girls still haven’t paid me back for paying for ours…) and of course I said yes. I waited in my room for an hour and a half and she finally came right before 11. Just as she was leaving another girl in my group walked in and sat behind her. There was a line to use my computer! And they weren’t even asking for permission anymore! Plus its not like no one had their computer. 75% of the girls brought their computers on study abroad, 70% brought it to the south of France so out of 18 other computers I’m sure they didn’t need me, but of course I'm the only one in the group without drama so it was safe to use me I guess? Le

12 Juin 2009
Friday morning we started at Sénergues and walked 10 kilometers. Part of the journey I was toute seule, a small part was spent with lovely Alyssa, and the greater part with 3 fine French ladies. They helped me with my French, talked to me about Obama, about Mormonism, our study abroad program, French idioms or expressive phrases, plus they actually seemed to somewhat enjoy my company even thought I can’t speak all that well (in their language). Every now and then Alyssa and I would sing hymns from our hymn books (in French) while walking which they said that they really enjoyed, but they didn’t ask any questions about what we sang. One of the idioms they taught me was “Je me suis cassée la figure” which the lady in pink said after she slipped down a wet narrow rocky path that was near the end of our days' walk. She said that its very informal and should be used only with friends but is great when someone has slipped up, not only when actually falling but when making a mistake as well. On the way, Alyssa picked one of each of the flowers that we saw on the path and made me a crown (une couronne) and called me “Princess Buttercup” throughout the day. I felt really ridiculous but left it on my head because it was so sweet of her. When I saw a group of pilgrims who had done the same thing except with the flowers in their hats; I was content to be like the real pèlerins.

The flower crown!

The four of us, the three lovely french ladies and I, came across a native who was living in a small home built in the side of a hill. He was excited to see pilgrims and ran to speak with us. He seemed most excited to see me, he said that there weren't enough young people doing the pilgrimage these days. The conversation continued for probably 10 minutes, it was exciting and challenging to follow what he was saying because his accent was so different from what I had become accustomed to in Paris. I didn't realized that I was in Conques and that I had reached my destination until the gasp had already escaped my mouth. The village was beautiful! All of the town is situated on this huge hill and in the bottom middle of it all is their cathedral, which as always was a sanctuary of darkness and cool dry air. The homes, shops, and buildings were uniformly a yellowish brown/khaki with brown rooves and shutters, endless greenery could be found climbing the walls of the buildings with beautiful red flowers escaping sporatically from the vines. I found a small intimate bakery and bought a mini-quiche for lunch and I split a strawberry tart for dessert with Alyssa. The young girl behind the counter at the bakery, like the priest, was interested in each customer individually. When we answered questions about our hometowns and our reasons for visiting Conques her eyes just lit up; if I were to bet, I'd bet she gets lost in all these tourists stories and writes them into something really incredible. If I lived in Conques, that's the life I'd live- I'd be an artist or a writer.

Some views of the village Conques where we ended our second day of the pilgrimage:

I then headed down through Conques exploring the beautifully quaint town on the side of a mountain. I ran into an elderly couple from Canada who said they were searching for ancestral roots in southern France. What a life! They told me all about a roman bridge just out of Conques so I high-tailed it down the road, following signs to Gomez and found this bridge that was built before the 7th century (they didn’t have a date but since its Roman it has to be really OLD). Only a few others and I were able to find it so we felt pretty special.

A pretty bridge, but not the roman bridge.

The real roman bridge

We met up with the rest of the group at the cathedral and the professor paid for us to go into the abbaye and see the relics of a girl "Saint Foye". Some people in the program thought that Saint Foye had died in Conques, but that is not the case- Sainte Foye died elsewhere in the fourth century, but her remains and belongings were stolen (by a Monk from Conques) in the 9th century to draw travelers and wealth to his small village. His plan worked did it not?

This day is the only day that I’ve been sunburned thus far and I was only sunburned in one place- the back of my calves. Oh my did it burn.From Conques we rode the bus to Figeac where we had a hotel right on the river. We got a room for four- Hannah, Jamie, Rachel and I stayed in it and our room lead right out to the water. We had the best dinner so far that night at a hotel called La Puce a l’Oreille (the flea to the ear). We were served a four course meal that started with cold vegetable soup (kind of tasted like Pico de Gallo, a chevre and tomato pastrie (its not sweet, so do you still call it a pastry when its flaky and amazing?), vegetables with chicken, and raspberry moose! Rasberry moose is like nothing I’ve ever tasted before. I wish we had things like that in the United States!

Le 13 Juin 2009:
We started out our day by visiting les Grottes du Pech Merle (of which we were not allowed to take pictures), which are underground caves where a person went down and drew bison, horse, and mammoths all on the walls and ceilings. The guide didn’t speak English and had the second craziest French accent that I’d ever heard. We then visited Saint Cirque la Popie, a town on a hill that stood almost higher than the mountains. It was extremely hot and miserable. The only solace I found was in this church and sitting in the shade when Kaylie and I were singing hymns together to practice for our musical number in Montauban on Sunday.We then drove to an Etap in Montauban and put our things up for the night. It was a really long drive plus we were all somewhat worn out from the previous days where we didn’t get much sleep. This night gets my vote for the worst dinner. We went to the supermarket called Geant Casino and found the food court and ate there as a group. It was nice to be able to choose what we were going to eat for the night but the food definitely wasn’t quite the same quality as we were used to, plus we all overate. The whole night, I felt like I was in Barcelona because it was so hot and sticky, more than in Texas, and there was no relief because our hotel rooms were even hotter. The branch that we were to attend the next day had asked us to supply an opening and closing prayer, a talk, a musical number, and the pianists for all of the meetings. Basically I felt like we were back at the Brighton branch.

Le 14 Juin 2009:
Church was at nine and was about an 8 minute walk from the hotel. I left for church at 8:20 because I needed to practice with some of the girls on a real piano. The people were so sweet and kept saying that we were angels who walked into their building. I couldn't believe the genuinity of these people. The meeting went really smoothly and our song went even better. The whole group sang Lead Kindly Light in French but inbetween the 2nd and 3rd verses Kaylie Clark, Maren Gardiner, Susan Garver, and I sang the first verse of Leady Kindly Light in English with four part harmony. I sang the tenor an octave higher. I was scared to look up from my book (even though I had memorized my part) because I wasn’t sure if we were blending but I looked up and there were literally jaws dropped. The people in that branch made my day. We drove to Rocamadour where we got in our hotel and walked down into the canyon or valley where there is a magnificent castle on a hill. This one was less exciting to me than Saint Cirque en Popie because other than the castle all of the town consisted of stores and restaurants so it didn’t seem realistic… just a resource for revenue. After wandering down the canyon we walked back up and we pretended to be on the edges of rocks for a bunch of pictures. We headed to the hotel and were going to take a short nap before dinner but decided to walk a bit anyways and see what the sign “Foret des singes” means. Little did we know- it really does mean Forest of monkeys. Dinner was ridiculous- it took 3 and a half hours. Yes French dinners are slow, but not that slow. The whole class took a (previously paid for) train down the canyon around the city where it was lit up late at night. They played Josh Groban on the speakers and we sat there in peace watching the lit up castle and town go past us.

Le 15 Juin 2009:
The professor let us stay at the hotel in Sarlat a little later than normal so that we could explore the town a little more, possibly do some shopping because it was no longer Sunday. Rachel L and I vowed to go see the monkeys. We realized shortly that the monkey forest closed for an hour (lunch/sieste break?) at 12 so walking there at 11:20 would be fruitless and a waste of 7 euros. We spent the morning around the little city. I found a store where I got a big pack of vanilla wafers- not really vanilla wafers but that’s all I can think to call them in English- tons of fruit and a drink for only 2.50. That is a miracle in France, and frankly in any tourist city. I also put my feet in the pool and hung out with the other students who were swimming. We left Rocamadour at 1:30 or so and went straight to Sarlat where we would stay for 2 nights! We arrived at the hotel at around 2:45 but it was closed for check-ins till 4:30? How obnoxious. So we went to a town just minutes further and toured their castle and their troglodytes! I went up into the troglodytes and crawled through some really dark inlets, I'd even venture to calling them caves. I got to the back of one and found out that I wasn’t alone. Ryan was there too! He turned on his cell phone light and I just started laughing. I had been absolutely clueless to his presence, it was impossible to see in there! We went back to Sarlat and checked into an incredibly cute hotel that I forgot to take pictures of... and we had goose for dinner! We're in the land of Foie gras, but unfortunately we haven't eaten any of that yet.

Was it just a dream?

2009-06-16T15:27:00.006-04:00

Le 5 Juin 2009:
I woke up in the middle of the night to a guys standing in an eerie bed lamp light in just a Speedo. He was whiter than me and freakishly skinny... Not the way I wanted to wake up.
Friday was our only full day in Barcelona so we started off by heading to the beach. Ryan, Rachel, and I wanted to do some surfing so we took one of the trains to a beach a little further away that was supposed to get waves. The train station we need was some distance from the hostel so we wandered the streets of Barcelona till we found it.

While we were wandering we happened upon the Barcelona Arc Triomf (they spell it funny). Why do they have one? I still do not know.

It turns out that all of the beaches have barriers that kill the waves, so even if there were any waves they wouldn’t reach us. Most of the beaches were empty. There were probably only 15 other people in sight from where we were on the beach. We found a swing set and a volleyball court, borrowed a ball from a lady at a nearby stand and played. The sand felt good on our feet at first, but it was actually unusually course so by the time we were going to play soccer my feet were raw. I’ve always known that my feet were sensitive but I didn’t realize that they were sensitive on the soles too! Ryan and Rachel played just fine while I was in pain. I should have just practiced my goalkeeping. We stayed on the beach till probably 2 or 3 o’clock at which point we took the train back. As we walked back to our hostel we found the chocolate museum, a couple of markets, the Picasso museum, and a shortcut to the hostel. We also passed about 30 people who were riding scooter bikes?!? I have definitely never seen those before.. We stopped by our hostel to clean up and then headed out to find the Hard Rock Café (not to eat there- Kristin has this thing where she visits every one!) and then we walked down La Ramba to the beach. Do you remember Bed knobs and Broomsticks with the Portabello Road scene? Colton always imitated the guys dancing? Well La Ramba was kind of like that, in a more modern sense- or like that one road in Santa Monica that the Jacksons, Katy, and I went down on Presidents day weekend 2008! There were pet shops, flower shops, guys doing tricks, dancing, and people dressed up in all sorts of costumes. There was one guy who was supposed to be headless? He had a dummy with no head on a chair, and then his head was on the table. The head would hiss and make cat calls, plus he had his donation bowl that would randomly start shaking and make loud noises. He REALLY scared me the first time I passed him. He kicked the bowl and made that noise and I screamed- and I’m not easily scared! I wanted a picture with him so I got out pocket change and went to give it to him after taking a picture. I went to put it in and he hit the bowl again.. at this point I was really freaked out and I just yelled (in English)”Do you want it or not?” and then I laughed at myself, put the money in and walked away.

We continued to walk through La Ramba, an open market, and we passed a lot of vendors till we got to the beach. We bought pizzas and drinks to share and sat on the beach talking. This one guy walked up to us and asked “English or French?” (we were speaking both) and we answered both, this is when I realized a tall guy creeping up behind us, where our purses were. I yelled to the girls to grab their stuff and the guys ran away realizing that their plan was killed. Pickpockets can’t get past me!

Le 6 juin 2009:
We tried to wake up early, but it ended up only being me. All of our hostel mates were out cold after being out really late and surprisingly- my friends were too. We ate breakfast and packed our bags.
From Left to Right: Ryan, Kristin, and Mandy (Mandy and Kristin went on the roller coaster with me a long time ago?)

We found the metro station we needed and went to Sangrada Familia- a beautiful modern church in Barcelona. We were debating going in or not because the sign said “9 euros” but we figured we came so far to Barcelona… as we passed the gates some people gave us these passes, that said the sixth of June open doors, that indicated that we had come to the church on the one day out of the year that it was free. What luck!
 We also visited the Picasso museum, talked with a sweet French vendor from Paris, and went to the beach for the last hour and a half of our stay in Barcelona. Rachel and I were having a competition with Jamie and Hannah to see who could get the coolest pictures on their weekend trips (the other girls went to London). We did a lot of crazy things, but I think I won:

We landed in Paris to a cold wet dreary day and kept thinking about the days we had spent on the beach. We were back in Paris and had been on the beach only 3 hours before… weird.
Le 7 Juin 2009:
My last Sunday at Versailles… This is not a happy thing. I love All of the people in this ward and once again, I made another little friend at church.
Little children are unbiased when it comes to language (even though I spoke French with them), they seemed to be loving as long as you smiled and treated them just right… a bridge of friendship I’m grateful that I have.
It was weird saying bye to my friend Erwan cause I literally will probably never see him again, or anyone else in that ward for that matter.
Sunday was not so restful. Our Navigo or Carte Orange cards ran out today so we had to take our large suitcases (that we weren’t taken to the south of France) to the professors which means I had to pack everything! We were late getting packed after dinner so instead of taking us to the metro, monsieur just kept driving… I was really confused when he turned on the highway and I kind of put up a fight when he said that he was taking us to the Professor’s apartment at Ecole Militaire. He had tricked us! But I was so grateful he did, because instead of taking two hours to get there and back, it took 45 minutes! Boy oh Boy did that save time.
Le 8 juin 2009:
Madame N.D.F. went all out for dinner tonight. We started with diced seasoned beets, which Jamie and I were absolutely terrified of, that actually weren’t half bad. I remember having beets at a Thanksgiving meal at my Grandmothers house and actually throwing up after eating them. I guess we all have to grow up sometime! We had mixed vegetables which were buttery and sweet with bread and three kinds of cheese of course. The main dish was some delectable duck which was more than half fat. Poor Jamie had to try and cover up choking; she hadn’t realized it was fat until it wouldn’t go down . Then for dessert we had a cake that comes from the South of France. It was fluffy on top and bottom with crunchy white sugar pieces on top and a yellow moose cream-like filling that was kind of citrus but sweet. At the end of the meal she brought Jamie and I little wrapped gifts- it’s of the sights of France from an airplane! I’m pretty excited about it, but I’m doubtful that it will work in American DVD players or even my laptop. At this point Jamie and I ran upstairs to get our cameras for family pictures and the quilt that we were going to give Madame. She was absolutely delighted and said that it would perfectly match her bed.
Le 9 juin 2009
My last breakfast in Croissy sur Seine, Madame bought me a pain au chocolat! We were running a little late so Madame heated it up for me and said “Depechez-vous” (even though Jamie wasn’t ready yet), but it was so hot I couldn’t eat it! Monsieur drove us to the RER stop where they both gave us slightly wet Bisoux. I was so sad to leave that it took me 10 minutes of debating whether or not I wanted to wipe off my cheeks to actually do it.
We spent 2 hours on a train to Lyon and then 20 minutes on a Harry Potter look-alike train to get to Vienne, home of the Gaulo Romane artifacts from the 1st century. All of Vienne is gorgeous! First thing when we arrived we put our baggage in our rooms and then found lunch, which we ate in this quaint little park. Then we went to the Gaullo Romane museum, ate popsicles in another park, the church of Saint Maurice, and laid on a dock by le Rhone for 2 hours.
(they all fell asleep)
It’s such a beautiful city, comparable to our programs favorite- Ghent.
We had dinner right by the church that we had previously visited and afterwards: Emily, Fred, Hannah, Jamie, the Rachel’s, and I walked across the river and watched the stars until about 11:30. It was such a beautiful night and we had so much fun just talking with each other.
I did some homework before going to bed and then crashed. I guess I didn’t realize how tired I was because I fell asleep almost immediately. So like my mom I’m a very light sleeper, but for once in my life I didn’t wake up when an alarm went off. The scary part is, this time it was a fire alarm. The fire alarm in our hotel was going off for probably 10 minutes when Jamie started shaking me to wake up, there were other girls in the hall asking her if I was okay because I wasn’t waking up. I guess I should catch up on those uh.. 40 hours of sleep I’m lacking from this trip.
Le 10 Juin 2009
The first and only day that I will ever sleep in while in Europe; we didn’t have to get on the bus till 11 AM! I still woke up pretty early though, got ready, ate breakfast, packed, did homework and visited with the other girls. I really valued that sleep although it was still less than 8 hours. Maybe one day… DC?
We all followed the professor down the street, but he was leading us to this smaller bus… no it couldn’t be… yep. The only small bus we’ve had for this whole study abroad and it’s the one that we will have for the full South of France trip. There are only two empty seats meaning that there are 29 plus the drivers, the seats are really close together, and there’s no bathroom on board! Today I was helping everyone put their bags under the bus (luggage space is tight as well- Paces are known for knowing how to pack cars ) and so I got on and got one of the worst seats- like when the professor leaned back his chair he was in my lap bad. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t really sleep on buses, which today I was extremely reconnaisant for. I stayed up doing my homework and got to see the amazing sights which 90% of my group missed. We arrived in le Puy en Velay mid afternoon, took pictures from up a mountain, settled into the hotel and separated every which way to find lunch and visit the sites. My group got croque monsieurs for lunch (another first) and then we went to Saint Michel Aiguilhe.
(Saint Michel Aiguilhe) We met up for dinner at 6:45 on the stairs of the Cathedral where we’re attending mass (la messe) tomorrow before we start our pilgrimage. We were discussing dinner afterwards and we think that Puy en Velay might just beat Ghent. The food has definitely won over all of our hearts.

Proposal ---> Barcie

2009-06-13T17:10:00.004-04:00

Le 3 Juin 2009
Angelina’s is the restaurant known for the best cup of hot chocolate in Paris. It wasn’t exactly a cold day, but the professor was paying for Becky Poulsen and me because we had completed 14 walks out of the 20 (only 12 were required and most people didn’t even have that yet). Angelina’s is found between the stops of concord and the tuileries. It’s in the strip of stores by the Palais Royale. The chocolate was amazing! Its African chocolate so it’s a little rich and darker than I’d regularly preferred but I appreciated and loved it regardless. The tiny pitcher of chocolate comes with a tasse of unsweetened cream that most people use to calm their thick chocolate, not what you’d pour into your mouth like my family does at home.

I met up with Rachel H, Rachel L, and Hannah on the Champs Elysees because Rachel L wanted to look for a certain perfume at Marionaud. There on the Champs Elysees as I waited for them I ran into an old man with a beer belly who wore a “Papy Dance” shirt and danced. He didn’t do much but I was impressed cause he really put himself out there. Ever since I visited Fragonard I have appreciated all different kinds of perfumes and normally sample a scent when I pass the stores during the day. I like smelling good (my sleeve has come in handing when passing cigarette smoke or urine infested metros) while in Paris and I must admit that its harder to sport perfumes around the family. Perfume is a big deal with my family, n’est pas? Even the guys would comment on a scent that someone wears.
The Musee D'Orsay
I had yet to visit Musee D’Orsay I ran over there with Rachel H (the others were cooking dinner for their host family) and saw the things I really had been wanting to see (Picasoo, Monet, Matisse, and the porch with the view to the rest of the city).
Through the clock in the D'Orsay
We quickly got “Louvre legs” and found a nice rounded stone bench to sit on. One of the guards from the expedition that was just closing came over to talk to us. I figured that someone who worked at the museum would be a safe native to make small chitchat with? He asked us about what we were studying (cause I was taking pictures and notes) and we explained. We also explained that we were from the United States and he looked absolutely shocked! He asked us why we would ever go back to the silly United States when there is France and we can obviously get by just fine. I told him that I loved the United States and France but that my family and heritage was in the United States. I told him that I would love some excuse to live in France for at least a couple of years and that my French was definitely not satisfactory in my mind. I know that I have a lot of French to work on. Anyways- this is the point at which he proposed to me and shortly after we left.
While riding RER C on the way home we encountered 9 skimpy dressed, loud American girls. They were teasing each other about how they looked gross and how they would have to take showers before meeting up with the boys in their group later. Then they bantered about how long each of them took to take showers and who would go first. All of this was Very loud. Then when their stop came they freaked out because the doors didn’t open. If only they had seen “appuyez, push” written right above the button before I went to help them open the door.
Picture from the Musee D'orsay Terrace
Le 4 Juin 2009
Almost directly after class Ryan Bakow, Kristen DePalma, Mandy Robinson, Rachel Laulusa, and I took the RER to Charles de Gaulle to catch my fight to Barcelona! The flight was stalled for an hour and the section of Charles de Gaulle that we were in was not air conditioned so in the miserable heat, everyone but me fell asleep.
We arrived in Barcelona at 8:00 or so and headed to our hostel in Gothic Point Barcelona which is approximately a 12 minute walk from the beach. The hostel already was crazy fun! The colors were insanely fun, we had nothing but sheets and a pillow and I felt so free. There were 8 bunks (4 bunk beds) in our room so we got to meet a bunch of new people, within the safety of our group of 5, during the 2 nights that we were there. One of the guys who stayed with us is named Jeremy and he goes to Baylor. There were actually a bunch of people in the hostel from Texas, everyone spoke English, and there was a buffet each morning which totally made everything else worth it. We spent our first night wandering the streets of Barcelona together. We found the beach and played in the water a bit and started to walk home. At the end of our walk to the hostel we saw tons of people, way more than when we started walking earlier that night, and that’s when I remembered all that my madame had said about Barcelona. It’s a young peoples’ city so no one really comes out till 12:30 and then the party starts! No worries we didn’t ever really join the party but it was fascinating to see how different things worked. More on Barcie later!

Never enough time in the day...

2009-06-11T17:55:00.004-04:00

Le 1 Juin 2009
After class there was an optional concert at the Musee Kluny. The professor advertised it as medieval music including Gregorian chant. In high school we sang a lot of songs that came from Gregorian chant and these songs always fascinated me because of the way that their voices resound and hold out these perfect pitches for extended periods of time. Many of the students opted not to go, but of course I had to see what they were all about and plus the professor was paying for our entree so I decided to go. What could possibly persuade me to do otherwise? Lets just say, I did not regret attending this concert. My friend Fred and I opted to sit on the front row and thought that they were amazing. Multiple times I had to remind myself to close my mouth or stop smiling because I’m sure I looked like a big goon/dooger (take your pick). It honestly was probably the best concert that I’ve ever been to and probably my 1.5 hours best spent in Paris. I caved and bought a CD which doesn’t quite measure up to what I heard in the concert. We had three encores because I just couldn’t stop clapping and the last 5 songs or so were all made up on the spot. Ah! All of the guys (there were 5) were perfect for their parts and the leader had this agility to his voice that I’ve never heard before, but even more than that there was an homme who sang the baritone part who kept me in a stupor throughout the performance. His voice was incredibly resonant and sometimes I felt, despite his knee bending and swaying, that he was singing right into my ears with this fuzzy fervor to his voice. Fred was kind of teasing me afterwards because I was still so impressed. He kept telling me to go talk to him, to tell him “Vous avez la voix d’un ange” but I was scared that he’d start making serious talk to me afterwards and I would look clueless and scared so we didn’t talk about it at all.
When I’d bought the CD I headed up to the second floor to look at all the things that we were learning about in our class. I especially focused on an arrangement of tapestries surrounded around the theme of a unicorn. Does anyone remember these?
Rachel wanted to buy one of the bracelets that all the tourists fall for in front of Sacre Coeur.
Sacre Coeur. No pictures inside?!
After running around Paris for awhile we headed to Sacre Coeur and mounted the steps (here we met the two Rachel’s, Hannah, and Emily). Sadly Sacre Coeur was somewhat rushed and I probably was only there for about 45 minutes, but I loved it for every minute of it!
Home for dinner with the host-fam then Right back out to the Eiffel Tower where our whole study abroad group met for FHE and a ride on the bateau mouche!

Eiffel Tower before Bateau Mouche
Notre Dame from the boat
Eiffel Tower after Bateau Mouche

Le 2 Juin 2009
After class Jamie, Fred, and I went to a Greek restaurant and got some Kebab sandwiches with fries to go. We watched the Roland Garros (French Open) on a tv screen that was probably 10 feet tall and 16 feet wide while eating our food.
We met up with our other friends at 1 by the Conciergerie and outside the fence of Saint Chapelle. Turns out that the church was closed until 2:30, so everyone decided to go to Notre Dame and see the inside until Saint Chapelle opened. I had recently been inside and outside so I decided to sit on a bench across from the Conciergerie, study, do some homework and just think. The time went by faster than I thought it would as it always does in Paris, but still I was able to avoid almost all Parisian smoke, watch the tourists and natives for more than an hour, study my scriptures and do some French homework. Beautiful Paris!
We got in line for Saint Chapelle went through the security check, paid to get in at the guichet at which I left my student ID card. An American couple ran after me to return while screaming: “mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” In very broken French, but it was cute. You’ve gotta love those Americans.

Downstairs Saint Chapelle

Upstairs Saint Chapelle

So there aren't many attractive guys in Paris so, trying to prove to someone that they exist- I had Rachel stand in front of this guy reading the paper. Yay!

Normandie et plus

2009-06-01T01:09:00.016-04:00

Le 27 mai 2009
Today I did the walk "La Route des Manifs: Canal Saint Martin, Republique, Bastille, Viaduc des Arts" with Jamie, Rachel H, Rachel L, and Hannah. The roads here are labeled on the walls of the buildings so often when one is at a large intersection and don't know the roads well, they have to actually cross all the big roads to know where they are! This walk was that case, it didn't help that half the roads weren't labeled at all! I ended up speaking to a painter on the side of the road for directions. This man was clueless but a friendly old man woke up and told me how to get where I wanted to go. He was so helpful and he seemed clueless as to the fact that I was not French- yay! We then headed down boulevard Jules Ferry and walked along a canal of the Seine for a bit. We stopped on a beautiful bridge and tried to soak in what we could of Paris. We returned to the confusing intersection, found our next street and followed Boulevard du Temple until we arrived at the Place de la Republique where there is a statue that represents the restoration of the republic in France. This was not one of my favorite walks, it didn't have much to do or even look at. There were supposed to be rioters or picket lines on a couple of the roads that we walked on and I saw none! which was slightly disappointing.
We didn't know what to do before we met up with the others for another walk so we decided to go to line 14 because none of us had ridden on it before and its the newest existing metro line (tout neuf). This line is also different from all of the others because there is no metro conducteur. Generally there is someone sitting at the front and driving every metro but in this one there are big windows on both sides. Why do you ask? Because the path (la voie) is blocked off with a hallway of glass with automatic doors so line 14 never has to worry about suicidal citizens or things getting thrown on the path. It is the one metro that is Always on time. (Note: there really are people who try and commit suicide on the metro. I was an hour late getting home one night because none of the trains were going my path because of "an accident" sad huh?)We took this line all the way to Olympiades where we wandered for an hour before finding a place to get crepes. They were amazing! It was my first sweet crepe in France! We then hurried back to the station to meet up with Fred and Emily to do "Of Art, War, and World's Fairs: Invalides, Musee Rodin, Tour Eiffel". Sadly as soon as Fred and Emily arrived at our meet up spot, the rest of my friends decided to go shopping instead of doing the walk- aka third wheel time again! (I must confess that this is the Least painful third wheelship that I've ever been in because we are all such good friends) Here I got to visit the two palais (grand et petit), the musee rodin, the musee's garden, the outside of the invalides, and we walked up to the eiffel tower before heading home. La Porte de L'enfer from the Musee Rodin
I spent most of my time in the garden of Musee Rodin which was really refreshing. Almost no one was there so I got to sit in peace in a little park in Paris, by myself for quite sometime.

I hurried home after the walk so that I could watch the Barcelona v Manchester United game. Amazing! I miss soccer so much...

Le 28 mai 2009
Once again, another early meeting at the Professors for a trip-this time we went to Normandy! Our first stop on the trip was Giverny, France where we visited Monet's gardens and house (not allowed to take pictures in his quaint house). No wonder the man was so inspired! Everything was so beautiful!
One of the gardens
Does this scene remind anyone of anything?
So I heard that dad asked if I was really having THAT much fun? Well I am. :)
Many more of these to come I think :P

Our next stop on our Normandy voyage was in Rouen. There I visited another LDS church, a huge gothic church, and the church and death place of Joan of Arc. We've been studying Joan of Arc in class. Did you know that Joan of Arc and St. Genevieve had almost exactly parallel roles in their government, but Joan of Arc was burned while St Genevieve was practically worshiped. The difference in the two? The English were behind her trial, they made sure that she was burned at the stake 3 TIMES!
The place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.
At Rouen we also ran into 6 missionaries who were headed to a district meeting. They are in every city we visit! Yay missionaries!

We left Rouen and headed to our hotel in Bayeux, France. The professor had arranged a dinner for the whole group and decided what we were eating-the entree was smoked salmon and minced salmon with some bread. AchK! disgusting... But I told myself when I came to France that I would do more than try everything, I'd eat it. So I ate the whole thing. Are you proud mom?
After that they brought some more edible food. The dessert was this amazing thick brownie with cinnamon and carmel ice cream on the side, I have never had ice cream quite like that...

Our hotel room was huge! It had a queen bed, a twin bed, and then a bunk bed so four girls slept in there: Jamie (as you can see in the picture), Emily, Rachel H, and me.

Le 29 mai 2009
Early the next morning Emily and I went running through Bayeux. The night before I had sat at the front desk talking with the hotel owner for 30 minutes, scheming where we could run to. I really wanted to run to the beach but the closest one was 10km away (probably 6 miles?) and although I think we could've done it and it would've been completely worth it.. we didn't have that kind of time. We have to sleep sometime! Anyways we ended up running up to the Cimetiere Militaire Britannique et the Memorial Britannique or at least that's what we tried to do. The second we stepped outside the hotel, our jaws dropped. I have never (even after living in Texas) seen so much humidity in the air. I couldn't see more than ten feet in front of me, but we ran anyways because the city was dead at 6 in the morning. It was like running through a cloud! Our clothes and hair were soaked completely through. We ran to the memorial, admired all the tanks and searched high and low for the cemetery. It was supposed to be right across the street from it, but we ran through all the different sides and it wasn't there. We didn't have much time so we just ran back to the hotel.

We got ready as fast as we could with one shower and four girls, with our hair still slightly damp we walked to the museum of the Bayeux Tapestries. My class was assigned to identify all the transitions between scenes in the abnormally long tapestry, we did this after studying the comics and comic theories of Scott McCloud. I actually really enjoyed myself! The whole tapestry was about Duc Harold and William the Conqueror.

Before the day was over we visited Juno Beach, Gold Beach (The German Bunkers there), Arromanches Les Bains, the American Cemetery, Point du Hoc, and ended the night by eating (at a Creperie- ham and cheese dinner, nutella dessert? I don't know if I can leave...) and sleeping in a hotel in Saint Malo.

On Juno Beach- the Canadian territory in France. I put up the fists for Dustinn :)

I must confess that Juno Beach was probably the prettiest one.

This is Ryan after he waded into the "interdit" sectoin of Arromanches les Bains where we got a tour of the museum and were taught the history of the beach.

This is me sitting on a German Bunker gun? It is also right before this happpened.....
----------> (although the 2 are unrelated)
Yes, I twisted my ankle. And this is not right after.. its actually two days later. Depressing huh? Its okay- I can walk!

One of the craters at Point Du Hoc where the Germans fired their bombs.

Le 30 mai 2009
We never get to sleep in! I will need a LONG time to catch up on the sleep I've lost from this trip. We woke up early and headed to the ramparts of Saint Malo. I wish we could have spent more time there because the beach and ramparts were like nothing I've seen before. I wish I could Really capture it.

Note that these first two pictures were taken from on top of the huge walls around parts of Saint Malo-the ramparts.

From top left to right: me, then Hannah Butcher (I think we're related somehow), Jamie, Rachel L, then on bottom Left is Amy Dawson, lastly Rachel H.

After Saint Malo we headed out to the famous Mont St Michel! We had a tour guide for an hour I think? She spoke to us in French and English.. as soon as our tour guide was over I saw her with a Japanese group, speaking Japanese. Why is it so easy for Europeans to learn so many languages? :(

I still can't believe how many sheep there were! There were probably 4 of these pictures worth of sheep on the side of the road.

Not sure why there is a force field around it? thank you camera.

Inside the chapel that is built at the very top of Mont Saint Michel

Sinking Sand! You're not supposed to walk on it because it is that dangerous.

So I've always kind of struggled to sleep in cars, buses, planes.. you get the jist. Obviously no one else in my group does! The bus ride gets pretty boring sometimes. This was taken on the 4 hour drive back to Paris.

When we arrived in Paris most of the girls headed out to St. Germain-En-Laye which is a castle at the end of our RER line (2 stops past mine). It actually has the largest castle garden in France?

Le 31 mai 2009Sunday! I should have worn an ankle length skirt because I got several comments about my funky left ankle. :( Church was great though! We were doing an exercise where there are devils and angels calling to those who are blindfolded? anyways I was a demon out in the hall.. and one of the people who was blindfolded had a little boy who ended up wandering out there when his dad wasn't watching so I took him under my wing-and ended up keeping him till 15 minutes after church. We played games, he spoke to me in French naming colors, numbers, and animals (he was probably 2 years old) and then he fell asleep in my arms. I don't think I'd really realized how much i miss having little children in my ward! His dad kept asking if I wanted to give him back and I said no (of course). His dad did take him for the sacrament but the little boy clung to me and almost started yelling.. yes I am still a baby charmer. :) Watch out sibs, Bubs will shortly be under the spell. haha

After church Jamie, Kaylie (she was in my Freshman ward with me), and I walked around La Defense before going to a play of Monnaie's. Inside the theater, once the doors were closed it was probably 100+ degrees. I've never felt so out of control. Fred was sitting in front of me, and I was honestly horrified that I might throw up all over him. I limped and moaned all the way home as soon as they opened the doors to the theatre. I'm still not sure why I felt so sick cause I'm fine now?

Vague de Chaleur

2009-05-25T16:35:00.007-04:00

Le 23 mai 2009
One of my absolute favorite days in France. I woke up at 4:30 because I had to take a shower and get ready so that I could leave the house and be at "Gare du Nord" by 7:00. (an hour on the metro, 30 minutes walk to the metro, eating breakfast, + personal preparation) En tout cas, all of this was done so that I could go with my friends Fred and Emily to St. Quentin, a city in the very far North of France. We had to take a train from "Gare du Nord" for an hour and a half north, its really far away! We were going with Fred, because the professor required that he go with at least 2 others, to visit an old mission companion of his. Sounds boring huh? Well it wasn't.

His mission friend- Sam, and his mom picked us up at the train station and drove the 5 minute drive to their house. We were walking along this road and I had no idea that I was walking by a house because it was just square and looked the exact same as everything else on the street- oh but it is in no way the same as all the rest. So there is the rez de chausee (with the kitchen, family room, dining room, front room, parlor, laundry +), le premier etage (with all of the separate bedrooms (they have 5 kids), et un deuxieme etage (with a movie room and a large wood floored room that reminded me of a dance studio). But thats not it, they also had a sous-sol and a sous-terrain, basement and 2nd basement? I know how sous-terrain translates literally but I don't know the word for it in English. Anyways the sous-terrain in their house is lots of old dark wet muddy hallways that were used in world war II to get to and from the other houses surrounding theirs. It was absolutely incredible with multiple exits, stairs, ladders, and shrinking walkways (kind of like Willie Wonka). My camera as we all probably heard me say a thousand times in El Salvador (when it mysteriously stopped working) has no flash, so all the pictures that we took are not on my camera and I'll have to post them later. It was really incredible though!
Here are those pictures!
This is the ladder that started breaking as I was climbing it.. wooden ladders from world war II- bad idea. :P

Another reason why I loved the trip to St Quentin is because I got to speak in French A LOT, with natives, and they understood me! Every now and then one of the kids in the family would yell something across the room to me, and I'd be responding in French before I even thought about what I'd say. It is such a wonderful feeling to have French come somewhat naturally. :) During this trip I ate dinner with their family, played frisbee in the yard, played wee with two of the brothers and Fred, and visited the old Cathedral of St. Quentin (where they have his bones and hand on display. they also have his head but it is Not on display thankfully)
I took the train back to Paris and met up with all the study abroad girls that live in the Banlieue at La Defense, from there we went to the church building for the "bbq" aka potluck. There was nothing barbeque about it. Every single guy who walked in the room, went around the room and gave bisoux to each girl. I have never touched so many cheeks in my life! We played a game called singstar! Its basically rockband but only with a microphone. Its a competition against one other person to see who gets the most right notes. I got to sing a Dido song. One of the guys on my team gave me his shades to wear and my whole team cheered for me as I beat the other guy by over 7000 points. :)

We found out too late that the last bus that goes back to the station leaves at 8:20. So we decided to walk, only we had no idea where we were going. Jamie and I seem to have a pretty good sense of direction though so we started leading the girls, and one random YSA boy who had to go the same way. I found a map, found a "vous etes ici" sign and hurried off in the direction that I knew was correct. The group was following me, but decided to turn back and look at the map themselves. 4 girls followed me and we took the shorter way to the train station, beating the others there by a half hour or more. woot woot!
Le 24 mai 2009
So I taught my Sunday school lesson today! Crazy... It went pretty well but I must admit that I didn't get much time to teach it. Emily and I split it up in lots of different parts. I did the first part, than she did the second, then.... I said my testimony and closed (the majority of my lesson was supposed to be after hers). Anyways, it went pretty well! There was a guy in the class (who introduced himself to me before it started) who was just visiting. He came from Reins and just wanted to go to another ward? I still don't really understand why he came, but the whole time he was there he followed me around at church and asked me questions. We talked in French and English (he recently returned from a mission in England) and some people teased me about my tall skinny French boyfriend by the end of church. Oddly enough he gave me his contact information before leaving to go back home. Maybe if Rolf and I work out I CAN live in France forever? haha :)

Le 25 mai 2009
FHE Monday. First we went to the Louvre with our class and then we toured the flea markets. It was a little late in the day so most of them were already closed, but they were really interesting nonetheless. This day we had a "vague de chaleur" or heat wave. It was absolutely horrifically hot. We were all sweating as we toured the flea/antique marchets and ended up standing in the offshoots of a water fountain. It was so nice and humid. mmmmhmm. I miss Texas.
Flea Market Phone Booth (even hotter in there)

I decided to buy the batmo-ped haha :)

The fountain that refreshed us.

So for our activity for FHE we walked outside and took pictures as a big group in front of the eiffel tower. Some of the people in our study abroad group don't like games.. is that sad or what? Anyways I don't have the main group pic but I have one with Jamie! We've taken pictures by it, every one of the five times that we've been. haha
Yes I made this face on purpose. I'm starting to take the Eiffel Tower for granted.

Le 26 mai 2009
Maybe you've noticed from my accounts of early mornings and late nights, but I haven't been sleeping much! It doesn't help that twice in the last week I've had excruciating Charley horses (one was my night in Ghent and the other was last night). I've always been told that they come from lack of hydration, potassium, or too much stress- none of which seem to be relevant for me. I've become accustomed to getting them right before auditions so I know that the stress theory proves true, but I'm not stressed right now. Why is this do you think? Anyways, they are excruciatingly painful- does someone else in the family have these as often as I do? Gen do you remember when we were playing water basketball and my leg kept getting a cramp in it? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry... they are so weird! When it happened in Ghent I started awake and screamed at the first shoot of pain through my leg, my poor roommate thought I was having a heart attack or something. :(

Today I did 2 and a half promenades (its getting close to the end so I have to make sure that I do at least 14)! The promenades were named Place de La Concorde, Tour de Montparnasse (the 1/2 walk) and Time Travel Tricks and Treats around Saint Sulpice. Treats was my favorite part for sure! I got to taste 2 macaroons: Rose and Jasmine (Jasmine is better I think), plus I add a little apple tart from the best bread shop in France. It was SO good. Love French food... The macaroons! They look fancy huh? thats the bag they came in!
Thats right, the Frenchies love Obama!
Da Vinci Code, the Saint Sulpice gnomon. Do you guys remember this? It points to the rose line? Anyways... the church has actually put up signs saying "Go ahead and take a picture of the gnomon like all the other tourists (they told me to so I did), but please, don't go knocking around for hollow tiles hiding clues to the Holy Grail. It's hidden under the Louvre pyramid anyways remember?
The next walk of the day, I visited the 2 palais' all the embassy's, Concorde, and the tuilerie garden(s)? This is me in front of the American Embassy, which you are not allowed to take pictures in front of. It is the only embassy that is guarded by more than two guards- instead it has over 15 emergency protection vehicles parked in front of it, plus there are fences and guards everywhere that have fenced off BOTH sides of the road surrounding this building. The guards seem to do more "give me your camera so I can delete that picture" saying than actual protecting. Luckily I got away with a pic.
A couple in the Tuilerie Gardens, I just couldn't resist. Jamie called me a creeper...

I need to sleep..... We're leaving for Normandy tomorrow (written mai 27th) so I don't have time to put up pictures but I'll add them when I get back. Love you all! Lindy

PS did anyone watch the soccer game tonight? Manchester United v. Barcelona? Amazing! Barcelona totally deserved to win, so i'm glad they did! :)

There are 8% more antioxidants in the crust of bread. What do I get for eating the Cheese Rind?

2009-05-22T15:09:00.016-04:00

Le 18 mai 2009
♫♪Monday Monday...♪
Sadly, I have absolutely no pictures for Monday. I spaced and left my camera at home, which turned out not to be so bad because it was even less eventful than usual. After class the professor decided to take us to a museum that is filled with replicas of other famous monuments from all centuries. We have been studying a lot of French architecture according to the century and style, so he used this opportunity to quiz us on what we've learned. It turned out to be quite difficult to differentiate between the end of the Romanesque era and the beginning of the Gothic. The professor walked us through, discussing all of the statues, altarpieces, and building parts for probably 2 hours+. Afterward Jamie and I went through once again to review and solidify what we had learned (he was giving us a test the next day). In the end, we didn't have enough time to do an actual promenade for class before FHE started so we did our "anti walk walk" which is the challenge that professor Marc Olivier gives to the Paris study abroad students- to "Get Lost". We wandered all around the streets finding little markets, papetries (I still haven't found a journal that quenches my Paris journal thirst), and happened upon a break dance/hip hop group. They were pretty good! And they dance to English music.. no surprise there.

At Family Home Evening, we learned about being "one" as a group, which I think was a very suitable topic for our group. We're not really clicky, we all seem to love each other, but I do worry about us having the same resolute desires (some Will not speak french and some are being left out I think). I was in charge of the activity and I decided to play the game with the water bottle lid? Two of the girls knew how to play already and they called it thimble! Good to know huh? All the students are trying to organize trips for the first weekend of June and so I waited for Jamie after FHE while she tried to figure out plans for London. We were late for dinner (no worries we called our family) and so we didn't get to eat dinner with them.. but she reused the salmon in a quiche for us! haha.. I will continue to pretend to like that.

Le 19 mai 2009
I didn't forget my camera today! But there was absolutely no need for it... The professor gave us our study guide and our take home test. It wasn't due till Thursday morning and it was closed book/notes so I wasn't about to take it before I was really ready. Worried about having time for preparation we (Kaylie Jamie and I) studied in Paris for 2/3 hours and then headed home for the last few hours of concentration before dinner.
Dinner was awesome- okay I'm being ridiculously nice here. Remember the salmon quiche from yesterday? Well we had it again, except she put a few eggs cooked sunny side up on top of them. can you see the excitement in my typing. I figured it was worth it to eat gross food if I got to discuss a few of the conversation class requirements with Madame, but she quickly told us about her horrid headache and left us to eat alone again. Quelle Chance? I ate as much as I could stomache and returned to my room to study. Tuesday wasn't exactly my favorite day in Paris.
Le 20 mai 2009 Joyeux Anniversaire Maman!
Wednesday was the day for Chartres. We met up at the SNCF Montparnesse train station and took an hour+ train ride to Chartres, throughout this ride everyone in 361 (History of France) was studying. Our first stop in Chartres was the stain glass museum. We watched a movie that showed how to make them, but it was so intricate and they showed so many different ways with different vocabulary each time that I ended up watching more for process then technique or instruction. I wish I had understood better, because when the movie had ended I went down the stairs to find a gallery of modern stain glass art- they were INCROYABLE! I thought they were so beautiful and expressive and I had series of daydreams about having stain glass windows in my house or bedroom. There were some that were part medal with holes in it to let the light shine through the blue glass behind it, which portrayed the sand on the beach with puddles of water. Another stain glass creation had many pieces of glass that had colored shards wedged between them. The colored shards normally made some sort of picture.
There was one piece in particular that fascinated me. I have no idea how it was made or why I liked it so much but I did. It might have also had to do with the caption that I read below it. It said "Let there be peace and let it begin with me"
I took this picture with my reflection in it thinking of letting the peace begin with me, my attempt to be artsy

I went upstairs and searched the gift shop looking for detailed instructional books on how to make these even though I don't see stain glass making, close in my future. I absolutely loved the place! As I was walking out the door of the museum I saw an open door with glass pieces all inside and a lady cleaning up. Susan and I asked permission to come in and wandered around this stain glass art room where she explained how the different colors were painted on the glass, how they were sealed, and how the ovens worked for them. It was just what I needed to hear, I was so grateful to get a special tour of the classroom. She had glass for sale and if I had spoken better French I would have requested a lesson and tried to make one myself, but time was pressing and she would have quickly become frustrated with my lack of glass vocabulary :).

We had left early that morning for Chartres and for the first time in about a week I had forgotten to make a lunch. Almost everyone else had brought theirs and I decided to flaner off on my own to find a boulangerie or something of the sort. I ended up at Chartres looking over the paysage wondering how I got to such a beautiful place.

It took me about 45 minutes to settle down at a boulangerie (most of them in the area were sit down restaurants which take 3x as long as in the US). The one that I discovered was extremely cheap! I bought a Jambon des feuilles. A sandwich with ham and leaves, in this case leaves of delectable croissant bread material. Have I mentioned that I love France? Also there was a delightful creamy sauce mixed in! It slightly reminded me of the twisted cooked sandwiches that my mom makes for me!

I went and met up with the group at the church for an hour long guided tour of Chartres. Our guide was British, obsessed with the church, and funny in a way that only an old British man could get away with. We were listening to his descriptive story of one of the stain glass windows when 6 or 7 Asian people started sprinting down the aisle of the nave towards the exit. He looked at them in slight frustration and overcame it by turning to us and saying, "the Japanese have to be in Madrid by this afternoon". It was so random and cute with his accent, but I'm still frustrated with his joke.. I think they were Chinese :)
When the tour was over we all climbed the millions of stairs to the tower/overlooking section of Chartres. I have never climbed so many steps in my life. The group stopped for a break midway but the anticipation was too great so I ran up by myself, which I'm really glad I did. I had the whole thing to myself for 5 minutes or so!

(This green skirt is another million stories all in itself! I had been wanting to wear it for awhile but kept chickening out because its so cold and shaving doesn't really work but I decided I would do it anyways. This skirt is the "traveling skirt" for Dana (who is now married), Salamander (Amanda), Nikki Martino (who just got her mission call to Argentina), Camilla Pendleton (who is currently serving in Rochester, NY) and me! They generously invited me to take it to Paris and I accepted. This is the absolute most comfortable skirt plus its reversible with a darker green on the other side! This is the brightest article of clothing that I brought with me.. French people don't really do bright. I learned the hard way. Walking through the metro station in bright green while everyone is in black and earth tones really gets you some funny looks. I had a woman actually stop in front of me with her jaw dropped. My roommate felt awkward and didn't like to stand too close to me, almost like I smelled bad that day haha At first I felt uncomfortable and then I realized how absolutely funny it was. I could never look them in the eye, speak perfect French, and I'd still get ridiculous looks from all the French people because I wore some bright green skirt. I plan on doing it again very soon because it made me feel so cool haha)

The bus ride home consisted of more studying (its Wednesday so I HAVE to take my test before thursday morning), except this time a few of us girls invited the professor to study with us- aka answer all of our test questions. It was really quite helpful! Wisest study plan ever. Note to self: find someway to have a sit down chat with all professors before tests and completely change the topic to the controversial or confusing test topics!

Instead of going straight home Susan, Jamie, Kaylie and I went to the pizza restaurant sandwiched right in between our houses. The pizza was so good! I got the four cheese pizza (most of the pizzas have fish on them) and thought it was glorious. I'm not sure what kinds were all on there, but I know that rochefort was in there and I actually really liked it! It gave the pizza the perfect kick. Oh and for dessert I had creme brulee! woah.. they make creme brulee really well here.

I stayed up late finishing studying and then I started my test at 11:30 or so. Which is not the smartest thing to do because you don't think as rationally late at night, but its hard to avoid when the professor takes you to Chartres until 7 or so. It was all for the best, I felt really good about the test. The essay was a bit concerning because I can't express myself or my theories as well as I would like in French, but I felt like it went really well nonetheless.

Le 21 mai 2009
So obviously I stayed up way too late for this test of mine, which made getting to the professors by 8 am really hard. We had to leave for the metro by 6:45 which means I woke up to take a shower at... you don't want to know.
Why were we meeting at the professors you ask? Well to get on the bus of course! Why were we getting on the bus? To go to BELGIUM! Our first stop was in a town called Bruge. Everything was so perfectly picturesque! There is a lot less smoking in Belgium, the people speak a different language, less stuff smells like urine, more people speak English, and the Fried, Waffles, and chocolate are all undeniably better! We (Fred, Emily, and I) wandered around the city comparing their architecture to that of Paris! Bruge is known for being stuck in the 15th century so everything there looked very different, in a spectacular way. Bruge

We found a man playing the bagpipe after being in Bruge for probably 5 minutes max.
Emily and I with bagpipe man!

The main reason for visiting Bruge was to see a processional that the whole town put on. Professor Hurlbut is a specialist in the history and theories of Bruge and the origins of Brussels. In the processional they have a clear gold vial that supposedly holds in it the blood of Christ. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the vial as they marched by with it. This processional was nothing like a parade in the US, they really went all out. Think hundreds of sheep with real shepherds- the sheep really obeyed the shepherds! Think of all the old testament characters portrayed and marching around the city and millions of children dressed up to represent different characters, a color guard, 50 plus people dressed up on horseback, jokers that were scarier than Heath Ledger as joker (didn't think that was possible did you?), a lady playing a manual organ while men carried her float on their backs, and most of all people playing instruments and singing. I wish I had understood everything!
One of the groups in the processional that passed

We then remounted the bus and drove to a city called Gent. Here we dropped off our bags and ran down the canal to our reserved restaurant.
The Canal
Beautiful Gent

After dinner we wandered around the town till late. No worries! We were in big groups and we had already been told exactly where we would be safe in the town. At one point one of the girls in our group whipped out her Mac laptop and we had a 10 person dance party in the square by our hotel. It was amazing! Who thinks of doing such things in Gent, Belgium? Some of the other kids in the group looked on either in mockery, amusement, or disgust.. it was hard to decipher the looks we were getting but I must admit that it kind of disappointed me. In France we have to wear this "I'm French" look 24/7, but here where they speak Flemish? there was no fooling anyone, plus we were alone in this square in a beautiful town. I don't know it just seemed like a great memory to make and I wish that everyone could have enjoyed it?

This is (L to R) the girl band picture for Rachel, Rachel and me. Yes they are both Rachels haha

Le 22 mai 2009
Not only did we stay in a B-U-tiful hotel for the night, but they had a buffet. It has been quite sometime since I Really ate breakfast. I few pieces of toast aren't really that fulfilling when you need so much energy! There were all sorts of pastries, breads, jams, nutella, juices, meats, eggs, sausage, yogurts, and more. Yay for Belgium! They didn't follow the tiny food trend!

Literally next to our hotel, was the church that holds the Annunciation by Jan Van Eyck! I couldn't take any pictures of the actual thing, but the imitation in the outside chapel looks quite similar?
Sorry I forgot to turn it!

We got to wander the city of Gent a little bit more before running off to Brussels. Brussesl was the shortest stop yet! We got there at 13:06 and we had to be back on the bus by 15:00 but the center of the city was already a 15 minute walk! We were extremely pressed for time... but we didn't realize it quite yet.

My Varm Vaffle

So we got Varm Vaffles, Chocolate, and Greek food. While eating the Greek food we (Hannah, Fred, Emily, and I) realized that we had 15 minutes to get to the bus and we had wandered probably 30 minutes in the opposite direction. We started running with all that greasy greek stuff in our stomach but quickly realized that we had no idea where we were. We don't speak Flemish/Dutch, we didn't have a map, we quickly found out that our phones didn't work in Brussels between the students and that the Professor was not answering his phone. I tried to ask one of the bus drivers where all of the buses were parked outside of the city, but he looked at me with confusion when I tried French and English! What to do? We had worked up a sweat running who knows where and we were 15 minutes late for a bus that was told to leave at 3:00 pile (on the hour) and would wait for no one. Finally the professor called us back, he asked us where we were and our hearts lightened at the thought that they hadn't left us! We tried to describe where we were and the professor said.. hold up, I see you! How could he have seen us we had to be on the other side of town from the bus by now? We WERE, but so was the professor. The girls gave our group funny looks when we got on the bus so late but I didn't let it get to me. Brussels cannot be seen and eaten in 1 hour and a half.. even the professor got lost!

I'm now in Paris. Safe and sound! Is it pathetic of me to say that I miss Belgium!?

Paris.. the place where you can never possibly be on top of everything.

2009-05-18T15:39:00.006-04:00

Le 15 mai 2009

First day of Castles (other than Versailles of course)! We took buses to and from them. The first day we went and walked around Pierrefonds and Chantilly. But I personally think they're much better on the outside. Really though, all of them are better when you just wander through the grounds and look at the outside architecture..

Pierrefonds through a rainy bus window
Chantilly
Chantilly room
Chantilly gallery with Rachel (the other rachel). She is coming to Barcelona with me in the beginning of June! (sorry some of these are sideways! I forgot to turn them.

Le 16 mai 2009

Today we saw Fontainebleau and then Vaux le Vicomte. I'm kind of castled out for a bit I think..
Fontainebleau
This peacock kept coming straight at me!

Vaux le Vicomte
In the rain at Vaux le Vicomte
After getting soaked in mud on a golf cart with crazy driver-rain. Its kind of hard to see here. I should have turned more.

Le 17 mai 2009
Sunday the day of rest, also known as the day where I spend the most time on the metro. I woke up to find a curious little 7 year-old walking aimlessly around the house. I started talking to him and we talked for a long time. He was so cute, and it was really fun to get to know a little french boy. His name is Constantin- he asked for my number so he could call me in the US? :) He also ate a lot of my favorite french candy, stole my crayon a pencil (mechanical pencil, dropped my camera and tried to use his lacking Karate skills on me. Then we got in a heated debeat over whether dragons or airplanes are cooler. (I'm reading Eragon in French and he is reading a book on airplanes) All in all, I was glad to have more interaction with the French people.

Oh and exciting news! I was in Sunday school class and the teacher asked anyone if they would teach next weeks lesson bc they don't have anyone called for the position currently. He asked everyone one by one if they would teach, he also asked Emily S. She initially said no, but then turned to me feeling guilty and said that she'd do it if we taught together.. so I'm teaching sunday school next week in the Versailles ward in Paris, France- In French. Its "etablissez... une maison de Dieu" so basically it is about the temples (establish a house of god). Any quotes you think I should say? any thing? I would love all the help I could get with this one.
Constantin et moi.

Versailles +

2009-05-14T16:32:00.006-04:00

Le 13 mai 2009
so Versailles was absolutely incredible! I spent 7 hours there yesterday! I ate in front of the castle and then I spent 2 hours going through, then I walked through the gardens for a couple hours, and then biked through for an hour after that. It was the absolute perfect day.. the weather, oh my. It was indescribable really. After taking art history with Professor Magleby at BYU (which my far was my favorite class thus far) I thought I would go crazy when I got there, with all of the things that I learned flashing back to me. Turns out that the castle wasn't all that cool on the inside.. the hall of mirrors was great but a lot of the other things didn't meet my expectations. PLUS the mirrors in the hall of mirrors are really old and fuzzy so they didn't reflect light all that well.
One of the ceilings in the Versailles Castle (this is impressive!)
Me in the Hall of Mirrors

The garden, oh the garden is where you should spend your time. Biking was absolutely incredible and totally worth the pay.

The "doing the baha" path that I biked down at Versailles (one of the many I should say
Sad thing- the Trianon costs extra so I didn't get to see either of the Trianons.. but I'm planning on going back. Its okay. :) (I go to church like 8 minutes from Versailles)

Baby Swans at Versailles
Versailles from the back of the castle

Before I went to Versailles yesterday I did a walk all through the latin quarter of Paris. The Latin quarter is so cute.. tons of restaurants, tiny little streets, monuments and more. So I was crossing the street towards the statue of Saint Michel. The little green walking man popped up and I looked both ways to make sure traffic had stopped. The closest car to me was a huge tour bus and the bus driver gestured to let me know that it was safe for me to cross. I saw the car next to him had stopped and continued walking just as a moped whizzed between the two cars. My life literally flashed before my eyes. I was mid walking so I was only able to hop back a bit.. the moped guy slammed on his brakes and I tried to move out of his way as much as possible. When all was said and done, I was standing over the wheel of his moped after being given a slight nudge. I feel really really blessed, cause I shouldn't have been walking after crossing that guys path. Cool story though eh? Crazy mopeders. Most French people would have started yelling at him, but I gasped, looked at him in horror and quickly finished crossing the street. Watching all the peoples' eyes in their cars follow me to see how badly hurt I was, was pretty funny.

This is a crazy video of us girls biking. Today my group was Hannah, me (the first 2 in the video), Jamie, then Rachel (a different Rachel) and then Natalie. We were going to be late so we were hurrying back, Hannah runs into a tree at the end. Take note :) Oh but she didn't get hurt, it was just funny haha

Le 14 mai 2009
So the professor is out of town, I guess I forgot to tell you that. He was out of town today and yesterday, hence the long trip to Versailles. He got invited to give a talk at some convention in Belgium on a book he wrote or something.. I forget. Anyways so class was canceled yesterday (we were all told to go to Versailles) and then he left homework that we had to do in the Louvre. Jamie and I might up with our friend Fred at 11:00 and didn't leave till six. My feet get more blistered and callused everyday. Poor feet... The whole time that we were in there, we were doing research, deep discussion, taking pictures, and notes so our heads and feet were exploding by the time that they announced that the Louvre would be closing in 15 minutes. So we didn't mind leaving, plus we had recently finished. The pictures I have from it.. are pretty boring because they are all of small artifacts but I do have a picture of one person from the day!
This is Fred. He likes to stand in Front of the things I like to take pictures of. What a goof.
Oh and tonight I saw my first Paris sunset. I'm not sure how I've missed it every other day.. but today I saw out the metro window coming home.. I'm lucky we got off while it was still there, but I wasn't in a good place to take pictures sadly.
The sunset (sorry about all the nasty surroundings..)

Mon Oeil!!

2009-05-11T16:07:00.009-04:00

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 :)

My mother told me to always play it on the safe side, which didn't exactly save me from running into metal poles.

2009-05-09T12:10:00.010-04:00

There is so much to do in Paris! Its not really possible to keep up with it on the blog, but I'm not giving up yet!

Le 7 mai 2009
Thursday was one of our less eventful days in Paris, mainly because we got out of class early, had no idea what we wanted to do for the day, and the majority of our group left this weekend for the Pays-Bas (Holland) and L'Iraland (Ireland). The rest of us left to get tickets to something {next day!} and go to the Louvre (last time we didn't actually go in).
These are the girls who stayed this weekend and went to the Louvre with me.

When people say that the Louvre is huge, they are not lying. Its ginormous! We went to the Mona Lisa (Of course), Venus de Milo, and through most of the Egyptian art which took about 4 hours. At this point we realized that one of us girls Really needed a bathroom and that we were all artsy-worn out for the day. We followed the exit signs which lead us around the Louvre for 45 minutes before actually getting to an exit. Jamie took a video of all the girls freaking out when we couldn't find our way out. THAT is how big the Louvre is.
The ceiling of the statue portion of the Louvre
Jessica (she was on my flight with me)with the Venus de Milo.
On the stairs in the Louvre

After the Louvre, we all split up to get some dinner. Jamie and I went to the Latin Quarter desperately searching for the Subway (I know its not French but we wanted a good deal for dinner). It turns out that it is much more expensive than any of the boulangeries or patisseries so we turned around in search of those. We were distracted by hunger and talking quickly in French deciding rapidly which way to turn. I looked towards Jamie for maybe 2 seconds. I turned back and shrieked. Luckily I have good reaction time still I barely had enough time to get my hands in between my head and the oncoming pole. After the shock of almost getting knocked out had passed (I had not been moving slowly) I grabbed the pole multiple times. I'm sure the French thought that I was crazy, but I just could not believe that the pole was real or that it had really been there. No worries, no harm done!

We moved on and found a cheaper boulangerie {which are everywhere in the Latin Quarter}, "Le Salon de Thé", where we bought sandwiches. My sandwich has this ranch like sauce, feta, ham, tomatoes, and lettuce. I love Paris.

My Sandwich

When we had regained our sanity by eating and ran off to the school building where they hold institute on Thursday nights. I got up the courage to speak in French and share one of my favorite scriptures and describe why it was so great. I was absolutely terrified and was shaking afterwards, but I'm proud to say that I didn't say anything grammatically wrong or with a bad accent (in my opinion), but I wish I knew how to describe it more thoroughly. After one of the other study abroad students spoke the teacher asked everyone if they had understood everything that she said, which they all answered yes to. He didn't say anything after mine and I'm not sure what that should mean to me...? I also got to know 4 of the 61!! Paris institute attendees pretty well. I played Foosball with them, which is known as "baby-foot" here.

It was pretty late when I started heading home after institute. I'd never really seen Paris in the dark, but I wasn't disappointed! It was still really really pretty.

Le 8 mai 2009
Another Holiday in Paris!
We don't have classes on Fridays so Jamie and I took our holiday and slept in. Sleeping in means waking up at 8:11 here (Fun Fact: 8 and 11 are my lucky/favorite numbers fyi- just like Kates does, except with a different number, I always set my alarm with a number ending on a 1)
We woke up and took showers but didn't actually do anything till 11 when we went to the grocery store once again. It is only one street over in the same place as our house, it's pretty convenient.

We bought food for our potluck with the professor that night and food to refill our fridge and shelves (we didn't buy much the first time). Then we went home and got dressed up to go out on the city. We all wore Sunday clothes or casual business. Then we met up with other Banlieue girls and headed to the Professors place. There we had amazing pizza that had ham and 5 different kinds of french cheeses on it, a vinaigrette salad with all the fresh works that they have at the market, orangina, bread and cheese, sweet crackers, a sugary cake, chocolate bread, and little meat samplers (which personally reminded me of dog food, I searched all over the package for any reference to pets or a dog but did not find one). After chatting with the professor and the other girls for an hour plus after we headed to:

(I'll let Emily introduce it)

Did you get it? We saw Dom Quichotte (which is the French version of Don Quixote) at the Comedie Francaise Friday night!
Most of the girls who went, I think we're missing 3?

On the stairs up to the theater.

It was awesome and honestly pretty confusing. I'd been so proud of my french until I got here. I probably understood about one third of each sentence, it was pretty rough. Turns out that I understood more than most because most of the girls in my group gave up trying and went to sleep. Sad!! Even if I didn't understand I would have watched. The music was amazing and so were the sets! There was one girl (not at all a main character) who played one of the mystical beings in Dom Quichotte's dream.. her voice was absolutely incroyable. She just had this agility and lightness to it, seriously its indescribable. And she did all of it without a microphone!

The beautiful chandelier. I sat on the highest level of this huge theater. The seats run straight up and down here, and we had the cutest friendly french usher. All the boys in France are howtie towtie but he was just swell.. I don't have a flash on my camera so I couldn't get a picture of the sweet homme. :(

The stage at the final curtain call
Trying to make the metro and get home before it stops! The play got out so late! But we made it.. :)

Le 9 mai 2009
Early this morning Jamie and I went for a run.. we ran probably 2 miles through this park and had to quickly run back when realized how little time we had left to get ready to meet Emily and Rachel to do a promenade. Today's walk was titled: Lifestyles of the rich and the famous. In this walk we visited Le Musée Jacquemart-André, Le Parc Monceau, and Le Muséee Nissim de Camondo.

Sadly none of the museums we attended allowed us to take pictures, but they were amazing! They were in (what is called in France) hôtel particuliers which means that they are homes of wealthy people who have been made into museums or galleries.
On the steps of Jacquemart
Jacquemart was filled to the Brim with artwork. It had portions of the walls that could be taken apart to make the whole bottom floor of the house into one room, and some of the paintings by Fragonard had Fragonard perfume sprayed all around them. Crazy huh? Us 4 girls probably spent 3-4 hours in this one museum. It cost a fee so we thought that we'd get the most out of them. Once you had entered into the museum you were given an audio tour guide (gratuit!) mine was in French but some of the girls were in English. It was so cool to hear the stories of all the rooms and paintings. There were around 10 rooms on the top floor of this grand house (my roommate said that she thought of derbyshire from Pride and Prejudice the whole time that she was in it) that were dedicated just to artwork done on wood boards. It looked amazing and I couldn't believe how well they were preserved.. and then I noticed the humidifiers in the room and the moisture tight cases that all the artwork was in. WOAH.

Walking to Parc Monceau we saw this sign. In the US we want French Manicures- here they want american nails? go figure... I wish I knew what "American Nails" entailed though.

Le Parc Monceau was just up the road from this museum. We walked in and all took turns listening to Jamie's song "Au Parc Monceau" which perfectly fit the occasion. The guy in the song sings about having his first kiss in this beautiful park. Ahhh.. the life of those who live in the city of love.

Some Parc Scenary

Us girls on a bridge: Rachel, Emily, Me, Jamie

And some more parc scenary

We figured that we would be too tired to do the last museum since we'd already spent five hours doing the first two things on the walk.. but we got there and the ladies were all so friendly! They took our bags, let us in free, and the museum was basically empty! This one was very different... There was practically no artwork in the house. Instead all the original furniture and houseware had been preserved, from the floor boards, to the kitchen, to the toilet, ceiling, and bedspreads. They even had genealogy photos in frames around the house. We were able to learn a lot about this one family and how things were back then. It was really fun to imagine living in these big fancy shmancy houses in the middle of beautiful Paris. Even looking out the bathroom windows to a small alley reminded me of the wonder that France is. :)

Oh I forgot! At the front door, the ladies took my backpack and gave me a number, but I insisted on keeping my Paris walks book with me so that I could read what the professor had to say about the museum. A lady kept walking around me, starring at me funny and I just kept thinking about how odd some French people are. Turns out that her daughter had done BYU study abroad two years earlier and she was using her study abroad book. She had seen me at the other museum and was curious about me, until she saw my book, at which point she no longer held back. She said out loud: "You're American! And you go to BYU!" I was so disappointed in myself for letting someone see through my facade until I realized how she recognized me. She said that she saw me coming up the stairs and had been following me getting up the courage to ask how the program was going. She was really jealous of my book. She said that BYU makes it better every year and that she would trade me straight across for mine. They don't sell them at the book store or in the International Studies office. You can ONLY get them if you're going on Study Abroad as a student, this lady knew.. she'd tried. It was good to see a happy Mormon mom- they are one of a kind.

The walk was over before we wanted it to be, we returned to the suburbs, did some homework and met up again. The girls (Emily and Rachel again), brought some pizza while Jamie and I brought Flan. We tried once again to watch Harry Potter which didn't work... our families DVD player has some how lost its cord that connects it to the tv? I'm not sure how that happens.. en tout cas: we got to know Emily and Rachel even better. They are absolutely wonderful and so fun to be around. I'm so grateful for such a great study abroad group.

Long showers me miss.

2009-05-06T14:30:00.008-04:00

Monday le 4 mai 2009
The legendary Saint Denis without his head, which he then carries five miles before really dying.

Monday the whole class went to the Pantheon after learning all about Saint Denis. It was pretty incredible and the professor paid for it which was pretty cool! The crypte was very very quiet. Jamie and I found parts in this circle walk way where our voice would bounce back to each other or to the other person. We also got to see the tombs of lots of famous people like Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Madame Curie, and Voltaire! Wowzers...
The inside of the Pantheon

The halls in the crypte underground (below the Pantheon)

Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas.. They share a tomb room. I wonder what they talk about, or write together??

After that we found a "Champion" and grabbed a quick something to eat, which we took to the Lutece Arena. There we watched some kids play soccer, ate our lunch, and read some of our reading for the next day. Our readings are SO hard-REALLY! We spend probably an hour each night reading everything that he has given us to learn and we don't get much out of it. Its pretty impossible to decipher.

We do la soiree familiale (FHE) on Mondays at 4:40 for those who have dinner with their families that night. We hurried to the professors flat to meet everyone else, got there early for once and got to get our cell phone! We're excited to be able to contact the other students when we can't find each other. Oh and Jamie and I volunteered to teach next weeks FHE (in french!)so if you have any ideas or suggestions for a good study abroad topic.. let me know.

Tuesday Le 5 mai 2009

Tuesday was the first day that class interested me. We talked a lot about architecture and the professor told lots of interesting stories! When class was over Natalie, Rachel H., Emily S., Jamie, and I wandered over to L'eglise de la Madelaine (Gorgeous). We were doing our first complete Paris walk that day. I love the Paris walk book (and whoever wrote this walk did it very well) because of all the descriptions it gives, the symbolism, and the maps are especially helpful. This walk was titled in french "putting your nose to the wind" which is kind of an idiom the french use to go wherever the wind takes you.. which the writer also used to indicate a smelling walk. We started at the flower markets next to the church, then we went inside and read everything. The whole walk we did was located in a ritzier part of town so we took pictures by Chanel and such. The walk book had us go into a patisserie and told us to get some macaroons because they are the best there. Of course since they were tiny tiny tiny tiny and tres cher we didn't actually by them, but they were definitely drool worthy. Then we turned the corner and went to a tiny little church. It had seats for the congregation that made a semi circle around the pulpit and behind us there was a tiny set of organ pipes. The way they were laid out reminded me of the Mormon Tabernacle choir.. just itty bitty.

The last stop on this walk was to the Perfume museum (mom would have Died I think). There were so many different fragrances and all of them were very strong. The teacher told us to take sprayed strips of them, write down their names and smell them again later. We'd been smelling them so often that our judgment in smells was kind of off. It was pretty interesting to see how they were made though. Oh and as we finished our walk- the closest metro stop was at the Academie Nationale de Musique! I wish we could've gone in.
The perfume museum: Fragonard
In front of the Academie Nationale de Musique

When all our senses were used up, we all had back to chez moi and I let the girls use my internet for hours upon hours. Our Madame was really excited to meet our friends, she is pretty cute.

Mercredi le 6 mai 2009
I'm kind of tired of writing.. but I don't want to forget so I'll post the pictures. Kay?

These pictures are kind of out of order.
THE coolest metro station "bouche"
The underside of the Louvre
A "Flaming" Gothic Church where we sat in for a mass today
The ceilings of the Notre Dame (we went inside today right after class so this should be first))
More Notre Dame photos
In the garden of the Palais Royale
A boy climbing a tree in the garden
Me, Jamie, Natalie, and Becky in the gardens again.
We went to study and rest our feet in a small park.. I ended up playing
A much cuter kids playing in the park. :)

Le weekend j'ai vécu sur le metro

2009-05-03T14:45:00.006-04:00

Pour Samedi et Dimanche, je n'ai pas pris beaucoup de photos et la majorité de mes photos sont du metro. :(

Saturday and Sunday were... interesting. Friday night while at the fair (la foire) I was invited by the YSA's and some others, to play soccer. Of course after hearing this, I went crazy with excitement and anxiety. I didn't think that I'd get to play soccer while here. The boys were surprised that I would want to and they said that I'd be the only one, nonetheless I got directions and promised to meet them at the metro stop called Noisiel sur RER A at 11:00 am. Anxious to go, I woke up at 8:20 the next morning and got ready. Jamie (she wanted to come along for kicks) and I left the house at like 9:45. After looking at the metro map the night before, we decided that an hour would be more than sufficient for getting across Paris to Noisiel because we were going on the fast train. Turns out that even the fast train isn't fast enough for our expectations. We didn't arrive at the Noisiel station till 11:30. I searched high and low for the boys but found none of them. I thought for sure that at least one of them would be late. At 11:40 we decided that we had missed them and tried to leave the station to find the field. As I tried to leave I heard that "enh" noise again and was restrained. I was so so so confused. It took me a minute to remember that my carte orange doesn't have unlimited access. I looked at a map and Yes, I was ONE stop out of district four. I looked out all the windows and decided that I wouldn't be able to find them anyways. I descended the other stairs and took the next metro back to my house. C'est la vie.

Apres que j'ai retourné I studied and changed out of my soccer clothes (which were kind of embarrassing to wear on the metro in the first place), but I didn't have much turn around time because I was supposed to meet two other girls from Croissy sur Seine and go to the market with them. I got to the metro stop where I was supposed to meet them at 2 minutes till. I waited on a park bench outside the sortie and they never came. Eventually I used my card and searched all inside for them. I waited until 3:35 to leave and finally gave up. The metro really let me down on Saturday. I went to the market anyways. Jamie and I bought a hair dryer (sechoire) and some things for lunch. I got a baguette with tomato paste/ragu stuff just like Kate always said. I also got some weird chips cause I just had to try them. They're called Poulet Braisé meaning Braised chicken. They kind of remind me of Willa Wonka's 3 meal gum because I really felt like I was eating crunchy chicken when I ate them. :) Oh and guess what? The 3 foot long baguette that I bought was only .45 E! Aren't baguettes like 5 bucks in the US?

We returned to the house, ate our food, did more homework, watched Amelie and got to bed early. It was the first Saturday that I've done that in... a long time.

Sunday we had our first day of church at the Versaille ward (paroisse). Our professor had no idea when it started and guessed that it started at 9. I didn't like being so unsure so I checked online. The LDS website said "our worship service starts at 11:20) so I told Jamie and we planned on leaving our place at 9:30 so we'd have plenty of time, even if we got lost. WELL we didn't get lost. We took all the directions of our instructor and arrived at approximately 12:20. Turns out that the "worship service" only referred to sacrament meeting which was the last meeting for them. We got to hear the last 2 testimonies and we sang the hymn with them tout en sitting in the foyer. It was so so so disappointing. Once again the metro had failed us and it had taken over two hours to get to church! That's what happens when you have to take 3 different metros and a bus! We won't let it happen again. The sister missionaries gave us some tips for the faster metros.

AND they had a ward break the fast in the gym so we still got to meet everyone and talk to them. We probably stayed for 2 hours after church just socializing- it was good to see other humans. :) It was especially great to play with the little french children. Seeing as there aren't very many little kids here, it was great to see them and speak french with them. I got to know two girls pretty well; a girl named Gladys and her little sister. Her little sister was probably 3 years old and I had no idea what she was saying all the time so I never figured out her name but she was sweet to me. We were drawing on a chalk board and I wrote some words on it. She pointed to one and said "What does that say?" (in french of course) and I said- it says I love you! and she said- Awww.. Je t'aime aussi! -and went back to drawing like it was nothing.

One of the girls- Becky -told us that a bunch of people were meeting at the institute to do something later. We showed up at the Institute 20 minutes late but luckily they were still there. (gah! those metros!)

Saint Eustaches
Looking the other way
Fred, Maggie, Becky, Jamie, Ryan, me, Landon (Fred and Ryan's Host Brother), Kylie, the Professor went to the church of Saint Eustache for an Organ Concert tonight! It was absolutely beautiful! I thought I would be bored out of my mind, but I really found it quite fascinating and I couldn't get enough of the building and its construction. It was funny though, I looked over during the concert and saw that 5 out of the 9 people who came were asleep on their laps. Only Fred, Moi, Becky, and the Professor stayed awake and it was only a half hour long!

A really weird painting that didn't match anything else in the cathedral

Everyone sleeping- note Jamie sleeps sitting up (she is closest to the camera) and Kylie just sat up from her "sieste" :)

OH I forgot! There was this lady sitting in front of me wearing the most hideous shirt/chemise EVER. seriously.. i had to turn off my flash and take a picture for this one, but she was right in front of me so it was hard to get a good picture without her or her husband seeing me.
The base of this shirt could be pretty, but then there are multi-colored crocheted (sp?) sleeves and there was a fur collar and base of the shirt. It was rockin'.

We ate dinner with the Madame tonight and she made us pommes de terre again with some sort of meat patty thing on top of it. We also had a salade and a huge strawberry tarte: lots of strawberries in some form of jam on a crispy flaky crust (the crust was more like a croissant than pie crust). Mmmhhmm

Que Faire? Ou Meilleur... Que Ne Faire Pas.

2009-05-01T16:14:00.014-04:00

Le 30 avril, 2009 (my camera wouldn't take a good picture. It wasn't this dark outside but it freaked out when i tried to take a picture of the sun so I guess this is the best I could get)

The other night I kept waking up. In fact I woke up and was worried about being late because the light was already coming in my window. I checked my clock and found that it was just after 3:30 AM. Why does the sunrise at 3:30 here?

Yesterday I had my first true French breakfast at my temporary home. It consisted of a little bread, and a little cereal with some weird shelf safe milk. The milk isn't as bad as I thought it would be! After breakfast, Jamie and I were getting ready to leave when the "Madame" told us that we would drive to the train station that day. I didn't want to argue with my Madame, but I felt that I would have to because our professor had specifically told us that we could not operate any sort of vehicle without his permission-even a bike. We got to the car and she had us both get in the back seat *phew*. Turns out she wanted us to verbally drive to the train station (basically she just wanted to make sure we knew how to get there so we could walk from then on).

After our first real day of class, we were let free. Jamie and I wanted to try a new pastry/baguette shop so we started looking for one. I thought there were patisseries on just about every other corner, but its not true! Jamie and I walked for probably an hour before we found somewhere to buy some food-but it was worth it! They made fresh crepes Kates! I ordered one with ham and cheese, I think it was swiss cheese?

We ate and were pestered by a beggar who pulled the "do you speak English?" trick. Katy had warned me about this so I quickly said no, but I hadn't forewarned Jamie so she said Yes-of course. The girl then showed her a paper that explained in English how her brother was in Iraq and had no food to eat. Thus Jamie was confronted and guilted into the money giving, while the girl completely ignored me.

We then decided to walk to the gardens of Luxembourg. It was so pretty! My favorite part was going to the park and watching all the little French children play and speak French. Its so fun to understand everything! Visiting the jardin was comforting because we saw lots of joggers! I had seen very few throughout Paris before this and I was concerned about how American I would look. Turns out that it is kind of becoming a new fad in Paris to jog. Supposedly 'Sarkozy does it'?

On the way home we tried many many many times to put the money for May on our Carte Oranges-our metro passes. The machines were acting really funny and there was no one au guichet (ticket window). Eventually we just had to get cash to make it work. Luckily the program pays for these cards so it wasn't too bad. I must admit, not having those 90 euros in my backpack all the time is a huge lifted weight. Our metro ride home was absolutely horrible, the worst so far. We got on RER-A and quickly claimed some seats. After we started moving, the absolute cutest little boy walked up to me and started begging me for money- it was heart breaking. I couldn't help but look at him, but then I remembered that if you don't plan on giving them money that you're not supposed to look at them so I quickly looked away. I felt so cruel! His mother followed right behind him and give it another shot, but this time I was prepared. I found a focal point and never looked up, although she tried to persuade me for probably a good ten minutes. I got a huge headache from the guilt I felt, but somewhere under all my guilt I felt a bit proud of myself for learning how to act like a true Parisien.

Paris metros are very very quiet. If people speak on the metro they whisper (even the beggars were whispering). At one of the stops two Arabic men entered our car of the metro and were immediately too loud for the social norm. They were yelling, laughing, hitting each other, and loudly discussing their pornographic magazine. When our stop finally came, my head was spinning. The man across from me had smelled strongly of alcohol and the one across from Jamie had sneezed a thousand times all over her. She thinks she's getting sick now... poor thing. To top everything off my ticket to exit the metro didn't work. It kept getting rejected but it was the one that I had used to get on the RER so it should have worked! And... it was my last one because I would start using my carte orange the next day. Like a true Parisien I hopped the machine. There was no metro controller on the exit side of the metro from whom I could buy a new ticket. What was I supposed to do? Stay in there for life?

Although we were exhausted from all our walking, Jamie and I headed straight to the Champion, which is a sister store to Carrefour I believe. There our credit cards worked, so no worries it was just the metro machines.

When we got home we started our homework: 50 pages of reading on philosophy and 12 pages from a history book, in french. Lets just say, finishing all the reading was impossible! But I was able to read enough to answer all the homework questions so I felt that it would be okay. Our heads were aching so we decided to watch a movie: we found Harry Potter et la chambre des secrets in Madame's bookcase and wanted to watch a half hour of it, too bad they don't play on American laptops. Silly Frenchmen form their DVD's differently. They're unreadable in my laptop! So we just went to bed instead

Le 1 Mai, 2009
C'est Vendredi. Jamie and I got to class early despite the disaster that we came across in the metro stop "Chatelets". Never again will we get off there instead of at L'hotel de Ville. The metro stop is HUGE and the signs in there lead you around like a chicken with no head. Speaking of heads my carte orange did something funny today. Jamie and I had taken a weird exit in the metro and wanted to get back in to find the correct one. I waved my card over the strip and I heard the "bing" saying that I could go. The doors that open when your card is clear move fast so I didn't waste anytime. I was just moving through the doors when I heard a "enh!" (think dad's noise for the dog when she does something bad. not ep-the other one). The machine had changed its mind and wanted to reject my card, too bad I was partially through the door so when those quick doors slammed shut they caught my head and my left hand in them. OUCH- it didn't hurt as much as it sounds... the doors are framed in rubber but nonetheless I was very humbled.

When I finally got to class we talked about Louvre passes and all the philosophies we studied... I was sufficiently prepared. We got out of class late Again, but because it is the premier may we had to better figure out what to do with our day. No one works on the first of may in France, its sort of like their labor day. Thus finding a place to eat was a little difficult again, but because it was- most of the class stayed together for the day. We ate at the institute and played ping pong. I got a sandwich called The Texan! Appropriate, eh?

Then we went to the Eiffel tower again. Most of the museums were closed, plus a lot of the group hadn't been yet And I wanted to get better pictures and get to know the group better.
Jamie, Me, Rachel (in the red), and Kaylie (who was in my freshman ward)
Everyone again but Jamie

After the Eiffel Tower we decided to walk down by Les Invalides and the Ecole Militaire and apres find the closest metro stop. We took the metro for probably 45 minutes to the stop right next to the fair! Its the first of may and no one was at work so the Fair was PACKED. Okay saying the word "packed" is an understatement. I held my backpack tight in front of me the whole time because I figured that there were pickpockets flooding that place. We met up with the Paris YSAs and went on some rides with them it was really really fun!

From Left to Right--> Mandy, Kristen, and Me after riding the King. It was pretty rough :) which I loved. (see the messed up hair?)

A bunch of people from YSA and the Study Abroad group. On the back row, the first five from the left are Parisien YSA goers and the next 3 are in my study abroad group: Kylie, Fred, and Rachel again.

The sun was starting to go down so Jamie and I hurried home to go jogging before it got dark. We ran all along a little river in Croissy sur Seine and it was absolutely beautiful. During the run Jamie turned to me and said with a big smile "Has it really hit you that we're running in the suburbs of Paris?"

My Host Family, Home, et Plus...

2009-04-30T17:11:00.009-04:00

I woke up in my small room at the etap hotel at 6:20- 10:20 pm Utah time. Jamie's new alarm clock didn't go off so I decided to sleep in and let her shower first because my hair dries straight. The showers and bathrooms are so small and there is nothing that divides the shower and the toilet so there is water spread across the whole 3 square feet.
Turns out that we both aren't typical Mormons. No Mormon Standard Time here! We were both at the buffet for breakfast 10 minutes before we were supposed to meet the others. Thus Fred (one of the students who helps the professor with a lot of things) asked me to get the concierge to open up the room where we would all keep our bags for the day. I went to speak with the concierge and two girls, who wanted to put their bags in the room before breakfast, were just giving up convincing the concierge of what they needed. Apparently the concierge didn't want to open the door till everyone was there. They told me that she wouldn't budge. Of course, I had to try! I politely explained to her that I had already collected 10 of the 26 students on the second floor who were waiting for her. I said that the hallway was too crowded for all of the students and their bags and also that a bunch of the students needed to leave early to run some errands. As soon as she felt that she was "needed" she was the most helpful concierge you'd ever ask for. Yet still after all that work, only 4 of us girls were at class on time.

Once we had all arrived (except two girls who NEVER found class that day) the professor started giving us our bus passes and family assignments! Ahh! I immediately looked at the zipcode on the address for my family and found that it wasn't directly in Paris (all the Paris zipcodes are 75001-75017). Thus I was in the "Banlieue" which is exactly what I wanted. In the Banlieue the students often have bigger families, more bedroom space, and its much safer to jog in a little subarb than on the small sidewalks of Paris. The room got quiet for a minute as we all turned to hear footsteps in the back. There we saw a large man in a raggedy trench coat. He had black and white hair that stuck straight up on the left side, and I'm sure that he hadn't shaved in a Very long time. It was quiet as he said in perfect English "Can I join your class?" Our professor quickly pulled him outside of the room (I think some of the girls were scared for their safety) and explained to him that he couldn't and that this was a selective group. I felt bad and thought that we should have referred him to another class that he could attend--> the missionaries! They have an "open-door" in the same courtyard as our class!

After class we had a small break to get lunch:
(not all mine, we shared so we could try more things)At the top was our baguette with meat, cheese, tomatoes and lettuce, nothing too dangereuse but in a french baguette nonetheless. To the left is a croissant like pastrie but it was a bit more dense with creamy chocolate, powdered sugar, and an almond creme inside of it. The last one (on the right) was a delightful cake type crust, but a bit harder, with a creamy white substance on top and lots of strawberries. Ummm.. french food.

After lunch we went on a walk as a class. We went to saint-michel, un beau jardin, le saint-etienne de mont, the wall that used to surround Paris like the great wall of china (but is now almost completely torn down), to sorbonne, and some other miniscule things that I don't remember the name of.

Saint Michel

This is a view from Saint-Etienne. In the far distance is Luxembourg where the senate of France lives but we didn't have time to go there yesterday.

Jamie and me

Our whole study abroad group sauf the professor

I told you I don't have jet lag!

After our little excursion we ran to the nearest metro and got back to our hotel as soon as possible. We took sometime to squeeze all of our bags out of the little water closet but eventually we got down stairs where our bus (for those in the banlieue) awaited. Jamie and I were the first ones dropped off in Croissy sur Seine. Our host family picked us up and le madame immediately gave us bisoux. The professor was beaming as monsieur NDF helped us get our bags. Madame NDF was amazed at how little we had brought, even though we each have two bags: one carry on and a large other one.

I was so excited when I realized we would be in a house and not an apartment like all of the students in Paris.

The road to the house
La maison
The back of the house. My window is the second from the left.

My room is so chic and very yellow! I realized today that I've never had my own room before. I don't think I like it very much, to be really honest. But the rooms would be a little too crowded with two beds in them I think.

Ma chambre
The view from my room

Le Premier Jour: Paris

2009-04-29T14:48:00.010-04:00

I'm alive! Stop worrying!

First comes first. My flight was different than any other flight I've taken. The plane was really wide, but not very long. A Boeing 767 and it wasn't anywhere near full! I had a whole row to myself and despite the sleeping pill I took I didn't sleep. I think this has something to do with the ginormous amount of tension I had in my stomach and my constant subconscious desire to always defy the way all the things of this world work- like my sleeping pill which is "supposed" to help me sleep.

I knew that I was on an international flight when a multitude of monks/priests (I'm still not quite sure what they were) boarded the plane. There were probably ten of them, wearing long black robes that went to the ground that had pleats from the knee down. All but one of these priests were wearing hats that resembled a cross between a beret and a yarmulke. The one who didn't wear a hat had his whole head shaved except for a line of hair that went in a circle around his head. I have absolutely never seen anything like it and I think it would be considered an "extreme" hairstyle under the BYU honor code. Can monks have extreme hairstyles?

My first view of France.

Getting off of the plane took Forever! I was waiting in one of the two lines that was not moving and was willing to do pretty much anything to speed up this process. I saw a bag in a overhead bin that had not been claimed and heard a french woman at the front of the plane complaining about how someone had taken her bag. I asked her if it was hers and got it from the overhead bin. When I had the bag 2 feet from the ground a flight attendant began yelling at me. "Non Mademoiselle! You will hurt yourself!" Thinking I was in trouble I froze with the bag in the middle of the air and then slowly passed it off to the flight attendant. He then started rambling off about how girls are obviously much stronger now. I "debarque" the plane and looked for one of the buses that would serve as a shuttle to the airport. I started walking towards one and I heard some people behind me say--> "Let's follow the strong girl" which I got a big kick out of, of course.
After the flight I searched high and low for the 7 other girls from my program who were supposed to share a shuttle with me. I had ordered and paid for the shuttle 3 days before the program so that we'd have no problem getting to our hotel. Turns out that the SLC airport had had a lot of problems that day and four of the girls were detained (no worries they were put on direct flights later). I know this doesn't add up. I'm not sure why 2 of the other girls weren't there but they are here now so all is well I guess.

After finding the hotel called "L'Etap de la Porte d'Orleans", I faced my fears by speaking to the concierge and got a key to the room where we were supposed to keep our bags until our rooms had opened up (it was probably 10 am in the morning- 2 am Utah time so our rooms were not yet available). So Jessica (the only other girl on my flight) and I took our bags upstairs and ran into 9 other study abroad students, one of which is my roommate Jamie. Jamie immediately ran and hugged me. She said "It is SO good to see your face. Can you believe we're really here?" It was really sweet. She is an amazing roommate already.

After putting our bags in our room, we quickly went out to see the city. My first day in Paris was so eventful! I saw the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc de Triomphe, crossed La Seine, Les Champs Elysees, and I rode the infamous Paris metro. I tried not to be too touristy and take a bunch of pictures, but no worries, I didn't let any of the picturesque moments get away from me. Just as we got on Les Champs Elysees some of the girls wanted to get a picture in front of a fountain. I didn't really care for it, plus I had no idea what it was so I offered to take the picture for them. Just as I reached out for the camera I felt something fall on my shirt. I gasped and looked down, knowing that I had let one of the rats of Paris get the best of me on my first day. How disappointing. :( The funny part is that just as I was telling Jamie that a bird had got me on the front of my shirt, Jamie reached up to run her fingers through her hair... she'd gotten one too. Pauvre Jamie

After the horrid pigeon did his duty.

At the Eiffel Tower

At the Arc de Triomphe (sorry I can't remember most of these names in English). The boy in the background is Ryan.. somehow he is in the back of a bunch of my pictures?

Just on the first day I had some very interesting interactions with the french men, and not just any french men. Les vieux hommes (the old men). The first one that talked to me, chased me across the crosswalk making kissy noise. The next time it happened I was walking with my professor and an old man separated us and told me "Je vous aime beaucoup". My professor started laughing out loud, which didn't help me ignore the man and the last man who owned a restaurant chased me down the street in the Latin Quarter telling me "Aujourd'hui pour vous, c'est gratuit" (Today, for you its free). What did I do to get all this unwanted attention. I am currently being teased by half of my study abroad group. SWELL!

Oh! Le metro is incredible by the way. I felt so smart when I showed everyone in my group how to use their tickets and that they shouldn't go to the machines that say "reserve" because those are for the cartes d'orange only. Just before I left Katy was telling me about how sometimes either herself or Genny would forget their "cartes d'orange" and have to squeeze through the ticket gate together. I had to do this on my first day! One of the girls in our group slid her ticket in upside down, and it didn't work but Jamie slid hers right afterwards and the girl didn't realize that she was using Jamie's ticket to get through. Our professor was on the other side of the gates with a very confused look, but because Katy had told me how to do it I just grabbed my ticket pushed Jamie to the front and we kind of waddled through together. The professor gave me a high five on the other side.

Sur le metro

An amazing orchestra in the hall way of the metro. I was actually tempted to buy their cd. it was that good.

We met up with our whole group at 4:30 and I saw the Notre Dame, L'hotel de ville, l'institu, et le pompi deu (spelling again?). At this time I also saw my first "manifestation" or strike. It wasn't very big but it happened. I guess people strike all the time in France? From what I could tell it was a large group of teachers who were marching in a circle protesting a new law that France made or is trying to make that restricts their researches in some way or another? The posters were really hard to read...

My first real french meal was in the Latin quarter at a restaurant with "classic french food" or at least thats what it was called. I had a salad with goat cheese, entrecote- which is the pork found between the ribs of a pig?, chocolate mousse, and an orangina which was all paid for by the program. C'est chouette, oui? Of course the professor asked us to sit by people in the program that we didn't know very well so I sat at the end of a table of girls (who didn't obey the rules and all knew each other) and the professor sat across from me. Ahhh! I spent way too much time with the professor in the first day. Speaking French with him is kind of frustrating because I'm afraid to mess up, so I stumble all over my French. But my french is already so much better in the first day! Oh and it is also very comforting that a lot of the other students don't speak very well or have pretty bad accents. Not trying to be mean! They haven't taken half as much french as me, they're very brave for coming.

Ma famille- I'm sorry it took me so long to call! You should know that my costco international phone card doesn't really work yet. I'm not sure why.. I got through all of the verizon requirements but when i dial I always get a busy tone and yes I am using the country code. Que faire?

For Val-My first impressions of France/Paris:
It's really pretty and really green! Which of course I love. I've only seen one "crotte" from the dogs on the sidewalk and only three dogs so those rumors of nasty dog remains all over the sidewalks hasn't been true for me thus far. The Eiffel tower is taller than I remembered. EVERYTHING in France is small. The hotel rooms, the showers, the toilettes, the cups, the sinks, the sidewalks, the roads (there is no shoulder to any of the roads, there was a fender bender in the middle of the paris ferrique [spelling?] and the guys just stood in the center of the highway yelling at each other and shaking theirs fists) the pastries, the sandwiches, the drinks, the cars, the chairs, and even the trash cans! and lastly, its true- everyone in France smokes. I coughed and made big disgusted gestures the first couple of times that I passed a smoker, but gave up and sadly don't even cough anymore when I pass them. Eww- thats how much smoke I've inhaled.

The side of the Notre Dame with a rainbow. :)

Its been a long day. I'll post about today.. tomorrow?

Oh lastly- I was writing a list of all the things that I did on my first day last night and a note fell out of my notebook. A note from Ashlyn that I didn't find till then. What an amazing roommate. I love you Ashlyn! Oh and everyone else bien sur.... Vous me manquez!

PS Kates- I have heard 3 girls say "maint-now" already. I guess its a common mispronunciation? haha

L'Interro avec les titres de chansons

2009-04-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

Utilisant seulement les titres des chansons d’une artiste, reponds aux questions:
(Ne répète pas les titres)

L’artiste: Édith Piaf

Are you male or female: Une Dame
Describe yourself: L’accordéoniste
How do you feel about yourself: Non Regrets
Describe where you currently live: Dans les Prisons de Nantes
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Sous Le Ciel de Paris
Your best friend is: Comme Moi
You know that: Rien de Rien
What's the weather like: Avec Ce Soleil
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called? La Valse de L’amour
What is life to you: C'Est Merveilleux
What is the best advice you have to give: Pleure Pas
If you could change your name, what would it be: Céline