Paris. Again.

Nogent-le-Rotrou. A much nicer place to live when you have friends to play with! Last week I had way too much fun with my new friends. Wednesday night we went out to dinner at a creperie, Thursday night we went bowling and then out for drinks, and Friday night we had a potluck/house party! I am definitely having too much fun here!

Saturday I went to Paris to visit my friend Eric. We finally rented the Velib (those public, rentable bikes) I have been eyeing since I arrived in September! We visited a British park Monceau, warmed up with a hot chocolate, fared the largest roundabout in the world (12 streets meet at the Arc de Triomphe) on bikes!!, and visited the Bois de Boulogne – a park in the middle of Paris! Here we discovered both a beautiful waterfall and that our hands were absolutely numb! Then we dropped off the bikes and wished one another luck in our future endeavors as we walked to separate metro lines. He is moving to Atlanta and then to New York and I’ll live in France until I move... somewhere else. So, until we meet again...
Good luck, my friend



This week I have been relaxing a lot - painting my nails, twice, watching Sex and the City and Greenwing, reading "The World According to Garp," and celebrating Christmas with friends and family. Read: doing everything I can to keep busy until I take a plane home TOMORROW!!! I can't wait!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Lyon, Lee On, Lion

I admit I owe Eric for having had two phenomenal weekends in a row. The people we travel with can make or break a trip – and Eric introduced me to the folks I met and explored with during the last two weekends. First, he introduced me to Jenny who met me in Paris for a showing of Disney’s The Lion King, Broadway style. The following weekend I went to Lyon where I met Eric’s old roommates’ older sisters’ former student and her fiancé: Sabrina and Antonin. Follow that?! And two girlfriends from college: Caitlin and Abby. All good people.

From the minute I arrived at the train station Friday afternoon, I felt generously welcomed by Sabrina and Antonin. Especially when they obliged my request for a shower upon arrival! Since I had gone out for a drink with some teachers the night before and Friday wasn’t “my day” for a shower at home, I felt quite dirty. After, we drove to the basilica and enjoyed a panorama of the city...


... until it started raining! Then we took shelter in a café and enjoyed a hot chocolate and a snack while we waited for the weather to pass. Luckily it did since the weekend I chose to visit Lyon happened to be the weekend of a lights festival! One of the universities in town requires their students to create an exposition for the annual festival. They must use lights and may include music, water, monuments, balloons, anything! The three of us spent a few hours walking around the city, searching blindly for expositions. And we were quite successful...


Place des Jacobins, setting up for the exposition


A Louis XIV statue inside of a temporary snow globe. This was the most popular exposition. You can also see the basilica on top of the hill on the right of the picture.


A real train station lit up for the night.


This exposition was hard to capture on film. But this is part of it with a background of Saint-Jean Cathedral.


Part of the exhibit was hand-written messages. These are two that I really liked. "I dream of a world without hatred, full of magic and fairy tales to make people smile."


"I dream of having adventures and intoxicating love!"


Here it is during the day with the basilica in the background.


This is an “aerial” photo of Europe’s largest ferris wheel and the giant snow globe right in front of it.


Q: A man-made construction over a body of water, usually a river.
A: What is a bridge?


A bridge over the Rhône with ‘old Lyon’ in the background.


We ate pain d’épices (spiced bread) – a glorious, traditionally French Christmas treat. We saw a royal statue of Louis XIV turned into a contemporary snow globe! We found ourselves captivated by illustrations and sounds of the jungle projected on and from a church older than any in the United States. And we even found ourselves in line for a phone booth. It was sealed, filled with water, and resembled a petite aquarium with seaweed and living fish!! Perhaps most astounding, though was the Place des Jacobins – normally the most bustling roundabout in all of Lyon, this place was transformed into a type of outdoor lounge. Red carpet covered the pavement around the central fountain and cascaded outward almost to the sidewalks. Red chairs, couches, tables, and lamps littered the pedestrian place.

Saturday morning I was reunited with two of my girlfriends from Madison. We spent the entire day walking around Lyon. It didn’t matter where we walked, we just went forward. We walked ourselves silly before we sat down for a sandwich at, yes, and American café. Caitlin and I have collectively spent over three years in France and neither one of us had EVER seen bagels here. Even in Paris. So we had to stop.


And then we had to take a short voyage at sea.


We stayed downtown until it got dark so we could enjoy the expositions.

These giant ice cubes were displayed on a new walkway down by the Rhóne, very close to the departure of our boat.


Louie would be proud!


Newton’s pendulum! This was really neat – the two balls on the ends were motorized to simulate a pendulum. The ball that was displaced changed to a different color and when it came back and hit the other balls they became said color. Ever changing and moving. Very well done!


Unfortunately, it started raining just as we were getting started. So we skipped the light show and graciously accepted a ride from Antonin back to their place. We ate and drank and laughed for hours, trying our best to strike a balance between English and French conversation to include everyone. Slowly, everyone retired for the night. Sabrina and I were the last to go. And I mean it. We couldn’t stop talking until 4am!!!! I had a breakthrough with my French (I was able to talk and listen to French for hours without thinking about it) and I got a great new friend out of the deal! The next morning, Sabrina and I got up at 9 to keep talking – there was so much to say! Abby and Caitlin joined us after a couple hours and then we all went to the train station so I could catch my afternoon train home for dinner.


Caitlin, Me and Abby


Me and Sabrina

An Exceptional Trip to Paris

Myself, Phillip, and Jenny in front of the infamous Notre Dame.


Jenny and I, still glowing from the musical, especially Rafiki. SHE was phenomenal!


Looking up the Champs Elysées, toward the Arc de Triomphe.


Looking down the Champs Elysées, toward Place de la Concorde.


Pictures just cannot do Christmas lights justice, can they?



The weekend of December 1st I headed to Paris to meet one of Eric's best friends. Jenny Thumann comes from Cincinatti but has called many places home. She went to school in Saint Louis where she met Eric, last year she lived in Japan to teach 3 and 4 year old kiddies, and this year she is living in Sion, Switzerland, working as an au pair for 2-year-old Zach! But that doesn't start to explain the complexity of this wondeful new friend of mine.

Meeting up with Jenny was like meeting up with an old camp friend - someone that you once knew really well and shared all of your secrets with, but who you haven't spoken to for years. The friendship is still just as strong, but the time that has passed between then and now allows you to talk incessently for hours on end. You can walk and talk for hours, sometimes noticing the intricately carved, decade-old canes in the shop windows and the very french women walking past, hurriedly trying to get inside and out of the rain, and other times you have to read the map at a random bus stop to see where the heck you are since you haven't looked at a single street sign for an hour.

We enjoyed Paris, but only as an aside. We were both there to meet someone who is loved by our dear Eric. And to see The Lion King!! Friday night we visited Fountainebleau where Jenny's friend Phillip is working as an au pair. The three of us, thirsty for conversation with people from our own culture stayed up until the wee hours of the night telling embarassing stories of French language mistakes, comparing the quality of our boarding, and of course re-living the gems of the 80's. Saturday we took a train into Paris and wandered through neighborhoods and around monuments, searching for nothing in particular. Saturday night Jenny and I abandoned Phillip to get ourselves gussied up for a night out on the town. We were going to see Rafiki!! And the rest of the characters in The Lion King. After the most beautiful musical I have ever seen (with one of the most beautiful voices in the world portraying Rafiki), we headed to the Champs Elysées. With dinner and Christmas lights on our minds, we meandered across town. Then, as was the theme of the weekend we RAN to the metro and got the last metro of the night, a long ride (which would have been a much longer walk) back to our hostel. Not ready to retire for the night, we found a table at an "Irish Pub" and ordered two Irish coffees. Coffee in hand, we enjoyed a Justin Timberlake concert playing on the tv until we were approached by two Scots. One was too drunk to remember which glass was his and the other was the funniest man in Scotland! We stayed, laughing, at the bar until 5am when we knew we had to go to bed so that we could see more than our pillows the next day.

Sunday we made the requisite trip to the Eiffel Tower. Despite the hurricane. I know you don't think that Paris has hurricanes. But you're wrong. If this wasn't officially a hurricane, then it was just as strong. In this type of a situation one can either choose to be furious or one can laugh. We obviously chose to laugh - it's what 'old camp friends' do together - and we were happy to see that most of the people around us felt the same. Despite our good attitudes, we decided to leave the tower and head back to the hostel for our things. We wanted to sneak in a coffee and a dessert before we parted ways mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, our easy-going attitudes got us in trouble in the end. Just as we sat down for our goodbye treat, we noticed that we didn't have enough time to actually indulge without missing our trains home. I ran inside with the money, asked to pay immediately and have our desserts to go. No problem, he said. Until he came out with our deserts on plates. Then we had a problem. I asked for them to go, again, and he hustled inside, arriving minutes later with our deserts at the bottom of bulk fruit containers, covered in tinfoil and connected with plastic wrap - an enormous package for two deserts, each of which were about the size of my fist! We had to laugh. And then we had to run! We ran to the metro, tore at the plastic wrap to disconnect our pleasures, and blew kisses as we each ran toward a different metro. Minutes later I had already connected to my second metro line when I received a text from Jenny. We were to meet at Chatelet because she had missed her train. About a half hour later we were reconnected and so were our desserts. Not wanting to risk missing the next and only train home for the two of us, we stayed close to the metro station. In a bar, or course. I explained to the bar tender that we had missed our trains and that we would really like a drink to accompany our desserts, and would she mind if we ate them in her bar. She made us a stiff Irish coffee and invited us to stay as long as we wanted. And we did.

This time we walked tranquilly to the metro station, had a proper goodbye with hugs and near tears. But by the time I arrived at Montparnasse train station I was running again! I ran across the passage between the metro line and the train lines, arriving at my platform with one minute to spare before the last train left the station towards Nogent-le-Rotrou. Whew! Another successful weekend in Paris!