Twenty!

Okay so I'm totally copying Becky with this post but I'm avoiding reading a bunch of stuff for my classes. I have nothing to update on except that school is insane and I basically live with my team. A little preview: keep your eyes open for a post about Badger Creek sometime after May 5.

So this is the copycat post. It's purely for entertainment. It's also a little out of curiosity to what songs will come first. Basically my iPod is on shuffle and here are the first 20 songs to come up. Becky, I'm fairly positive I will be just as embarrassed.

1. Believe-Yellowcard
2. The Brilliant Dance-Dashboard Confessional
3. Permanent-David Cook (alright so far so good, nothing too bad)
4. Into the Rush-Aly & A.J. (here we go...)
5. Enchanted Suite-Enchanted Soundtrack (I don't think I have ever actually listened to this...)
6. Erase/Replace-Foo Fighters (Also, never listened to, gotta love people putting music on your computer)
7. Imagine-David Archuleta (this one I'm proud of :) )
8. Back to You-John Mayer
9. Stolen-Dashboard Confessional
10. A Lack of Color-Death Cab for Cutie
11. Sugar Rush-A*Teens (noooooooooo, I was SO hoping the flashback to my youth would not reveal itself)
12. No Boundaries-Kris Allen (American Idol all the way)
13. Because-Across the Universe Soundtrack
14. Whatever it Takes-Michael Buble (love him)
15. Under the Sea-The Little Mermaid (bahahaha yeah for Disney!)
16. Night Drive-Jimmy Eat World (fav band for sure)
17. Clockwatching-Jason Mraz
18. Blackout-Muse
19. Bella Luna-Jason Mraz
20. Come Together-The Beatles

Well that was thoroughly entertaining for me, I don't know about you. I'm glad only one really embarrassing song came up. Thanks for giving me an idea for something to write about Becky. Maybe next time I'll bring back another old Facebook/email forward.

Woah...

Alright, so I know you all loved the mile long posts and you read every single word. I'm sure you will be so sad to hear that this is a short post but you're just going to have to accept it.

I'm moved in to my apartment in Rexburg. I love it. I love having my own room and I already love my roommates. I have space to spare in my room which is a miracle in and of itself. My room is on the first floor and my window looks out on a busy-ish street and sidewalk so I get to people watch. Yes! I'm terrified to start school due to IBC but I'm also excited. It's going to be an entirely different kind of semester. I'm starting my P90X 90 days over tomorrow and I'm determined to finish them out. If anyone wants to join me, feel free. I have a full day of absolutely nothing to do tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. I had a weak moment at the GAP and bought some jeans and signed up for a card, but apparently I have good credit because I am one of the lucky few to get approved for the GAP Visa instead of just the in-store card. I went to my sister's graduate recital in Salt Lake this weekend and it was awesome. My sister's amazingly talented. I love love loved hanging out with my whole family too. Whoever is the last young gent to enter my family will have to have a good sense of humor because otherwise they might just feel awkward. My big bro has challenged the whole fam to complete a triathlon with him next year so I guess I'm kind of committed.

Well there you have it: a short post. Don't be too sad.

Paris...je t'aime!

Ahh the Paris post has finally come. Please forgive the delay, that is if I actually have any readers. Also, just a little side-note, I don't know if my title is appropriate French grammar but I'm going to pretend it is and if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.

So I last left off in Geneva. Our train to Paris left at 7:45 I believe so we had to be up by 5:00 a.m. in order to get ready, get to the airport, find the train that goes from the airport to the main station, then find our final train. It was a terribly long ride because I was so giddy to finally arrive in Paris, the city I was of course looking most forward to. When we finally got to Paris, my dad's first words off the train were "hold on to your stuff." Well, I don't know what sentence would get me more worked up than that one. I was already paranoid enough about getting my stuff stolen. I'm happy to report that I must have held on tight enough because I made it home with everything! Phew.

Our first stop in Paris after we found our hotel was the Galeries Lafayette for the weekly fashion show. I was of course super excited. I had seen this mall online and couldn't wait to experience the massiveness. There are six floors of shopping, a seventh floor for the fashion show, and you can also go on the roof. The mall is like a big circle, so therefore we got lost many times. We decided to check out the roof first and I got my first view of the Eiffel Tower.

Ta-da!

I loved being on the roof...all except for the extremely passionate couple that was having a "moment." Anyway, moving on. So we went down to get in line for the fashion show. We had second row seats which was pretty cool. The show was really cute, my poor father felt a little awkward though. They had all sorts of designers and different themes. My favorite was one of the suits the male model wore. It was BRIGHT orange! Like blindingly bright. I tried to get a picture but the lighting made it absolutely impossible. I don't think I will ever forget it though. The only bad part about the show was that some of the clothes were very revealing. I don't know why it shocked me because you see pictures and celebrities wearing really revealing clothes but seeing it in person was a little different for me. After the show finished, we wandered around the mall for a bit. It didn't take long for me to realize I wouldn't be purchasing anything. I had a bit of sticker shock. It was however very cool to see famous designer's clothes, for example: Valentino, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc.

Yep, I was excited until I made that whole expensive designer connection

Wow, this is already a long post and I'm only on day one! Anyways, so we left the mall and went across the street to the opera house. We didn't go in, we just kind of decided what we wanted to do for the rest of the day. While we were sitting on the steps, this group of black kids started a little dance show. I was so happy my dad was willing to let us sit and watch. One of my secret addictions is watching break-dancing/tumbling type stuff. I was planning to post the video but I'm too lazy to wait for it to upload so if you want to see it, go to my facebook. After we watched them, we went to Notre Dame. I was blown away by this church. Most of the other churches we had been to were interesting but not my favorite. They were all pretty depressing. I was mostly blown away by Notre Dame because of its massiveness and all the carvings. I had to ask my dad a lot of questions about some of the images though because I totally did not understand a lot of them. After we hit Notre Dame, we decided we had had a long enough day and were ready to go back to the hotel and SLEEP! Well...first we had a baguette and pastry and then we went back to the room. :)

Okay so now it's Saturday and we decided to go to Versailles. Holy moly, that place is the most ginormous, extravagant, over-the-top, ridiculous thing I've ever seen. The king sounded like a big spoiled baby to me but maybe he did something useful with his life? It was cool to see the palace though, even if it was insane that someone built it for themselves to live in. I do wish we could have seen it in the summer when the gardens are all pretty. I enjoyed the queen's palace more because for one the marble was PINK and it wasn't quite so outrageous...and plus her bedroom was hot pink so it really couldn't get any better. I honestly don't have much else to say about Versailles, it was really cool to go but so exhausting. 

The back of the King's Palace. Well at least part of it.

Coolest room ever.

Despite our major exhaustion from walking around Versailles, we made the decision to see a few more things before we called it a night. When we got off the train, we wanted to see what the line was like at the Eiffel Tower. Since it was Saturday it was enormous and we did not want to stand in a huge line with as sore of feet as we had. Instead we went to the Champs Elysee to do some shopping woo-hoo! Before we hit any shops, we went to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Oh man it was a hike up all the stairs. My poor mom looked like she was going to have a heart attack. My dad stopped with her and I went on up. I was determined to prove to myself that P90X had made my legs unstoppable. So we all made it to the top successfully and the view was incredible, as if there would have been any doubt. 

 

I took a nice cheesy picture, I figured I had to get at least one.

Once we got our few pictures and a good look at the city, we finally got to go shopping! Most of the stores were just as expensive as the Lafayette but I found one that was perfect. I had a ball with the affordable yet adorable clothes (word cutesieness not intended :) ) We came out of the store and it was pouring so we ran to a restaurant and then hit a couple other shops then finally went back to the hotel. Little did we know that Sunday would be just as exhausting.

On that note, Sunday came and brought museums with it. We figured this was probably the most appropriate activity on our list for a Sunday. We went to the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay. I'm just going to say it, I was so bored at the Louvre. I felt like I was looking at the same painting over and over again, except I did see the ever famous Mona Lisa. Also, I do not like seeing nudity in paintings, regardless of it being art. I don't care if it is considered art, I still don't like it. I tried to just accept it but I had definitely had enough after 5 hours. On a happier note, I loved the Musee d'Orsay. I was in love with Van Gogh's paintings. I finally understand what my Humanities teacher said my freshman year about seeing the raised paint on the canvas. It really is amazing. I also loved Monet and Renoir's paintings. I know it sounds cliche that I'm only mentioning the really famous artists but there is a reason why they are so famous, their work is stunning. Okay so thanks to my journal, I remembered a story from our experience at the Louvre so here goes another random tangent. My dad was dying to find the pyramid that Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) looks down at the end of The DaVinci Code. We found it underground...

 

...but we could not for the life of us find it on ground level. We searched and searched and walked around what felt like the entire museum and we could not find it. We finally went back underground and found it again, subconsciously making sure it really did exist, and my dad counted his steps from where it was at to the outdoors. Thanks to his counting, we located it, well sort of. Apparently it's in the middle of this big round-about surrounded by shrubs, which explains why when we were underground we couldn't see anyone walking on top of it. My dad was super relieved that he finally found it but then he got annoyed that they were deceitful in the movie because Langdon just walks right over to it, not going through any shrubbery at all. Ah movie magic.

After the Musee d'Orsay, we were once again ready to sleep. We ended our night with crepe sampling. It was beautiful. We went to 3 or 4 different creperies along the street and tried like eight different crepes. I was so sick by the end of the night but it was sooooo delicious!

Monday. Great things happened today. We started with shopping in this little shopping district. It was the best place we had shopped the whole trip. We went to this cute little baby boutique to get my niece a Parisian outfit. It's adorable, just sayin. While we were in this area, we found the Parsons Paris design school. I got a tour of the school and some information about it. I think I have finally figured out what I'm going to do with my major! Design Management. This way I could work in a creative environment but still be part of the business aspect. Apparently designers and financial people don't really understand each other but I can fill the gap and be the go-between! Unfortunately any school with this program is insanely expensive but I'm hoping my major and minor I have right now will help me. Anyway, the school was really cool. I so wish I was at a design school, the environment was just awesome, I don't know how to describe it, but I liked it. :) So we shopped some more then got some lunch and ate it at the park across from the Eiffel Tower, where I took this lovely picture haha. 

Next stop after lunch was Napoleon's Tomb. I won't waste too much space with this, it was a giant tomb in a giant building: The end. Then more shopping, then more eating, then it was back to the Eiffel Tower to finally go to the top! We had to race a bunch of Italian kids that were on the metro so we didn't have to wait in line behind them. We were booking it, I was not going to let them win. Thankfully, we won, however we still had to wait a couple hours to get on the elevator. The ride to the top was honestly a little scary. I'm not really afraid of heights but watching the city get farther and farther away was a bit frightening. My dad on the other hand is terrified of heights and he had to close his eyes and get in a zone so he didn't pass out. The top was so incredible. My mom and I went all the way up to the floor that's just enclosed with a fence but my dad had to stay where it was all enclosed. I was super giddy. On our way back down it started sparkling and we stopped on the second level so we could get a better look at the sparkling and the city. 

This was proof for my family that dad made it to the top

Well, we did have on more day in Paris before we flew home but all we did was shop and wander some more streets. Instead of talking about stuff that is really not all that interesting, I'll keep the blog ending with the Eiffel Tower. Basically Paris was just as amazing as I expected. I really hope I can go back someday. 

Our last look at the tower before we left

Trip of a Lifetime!

Alright so it's been a week since I got back from Europe and I'm finally going to share some stories! First of all, it was the most amazing trip of my life. I have never been out of the country. The coolest vacation I've been on is Disneyland. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Disneyland. I talked my dad into taking our family to Disneyland instead of Hawaii one time...some of my family wasn't quite as excited as me. Anyways, I'm not talking about Disneyland, I'm talking about Europe. Basically, it was an entirely new experience for me and I feel so darn blessed to have such awesome parents who wanted to give me the experience of a lifetime. So I really don't know how long this post will be. I saw so many things but I've been having a hard time putting into words how I felt those two weeks. At this point it's honestly a little surreal. It's hard to think that I was actually in Europe. Well I guess I should get on with my actual trip.

We started off in Marseilles. It was totally not what I expected. It was so hustle bustle type living and all the people wore black. Only black. I felt like my red trail running shoes were unique. Our hotel room was hilarious. It was tiny and had bunk beds. But to make things better, the bunks were hot pink and orange so I felt like I was back in my own room...well not really but the colors matched. My favorite part about Marseilles was Chateau d'If. We almost didn't get to go out there, we luckily caught the last boat out. I took WAY too many pointless pictures at Chateau d'If, I was overly excited to start taking cool pictures. I for some reason felt the need to take a picture looking through every window in the prison...none of which were actually interesting when I got home. Oh well, just less pictures I had to pay to develop. This is one of the less lame pictures from the island.

Chateau d'If was of course not the only thing we did in Marseilles...but it was my fav. When we got off the island we had to hurry to catch our train to Arles. By the time we got there it was dark and we had to walk from the train station to our hotel and my dad didn't know exactly where to find it. Luckily a biker passed us and gave us directions. We walked through the old streets and found our hotel. This one was definitely a step up from the bunk beds. Instead of describing I'll just give a pic, please ignore our mess we just collapsed on the beds and threw everything. There was even a chandelier, so cute.

Oh and after we got checked in the lady led us through this cute little courtyard to the other building with the rooms. It was adorable.

We didn't do much in Arles except wander the streets, eat amazing pastries and baguettes, and shop. We went to a street market and it was so cool! It was huge. I couldn't believe how many tables and tables of interesting things there were. I was however grossed out by the section of fish. I was not a fan of seeing SO much of the fish. We also saw an old Roman amphitheater which was pretty cool.

Next stop on the trip was Avignon. It was a lot like Arles, so much that I can't remember which things we did in which city. The highlight of Avignon was the family we met on our first day when we went to church. They were from Tahiti and were so nice. The dad wanted to show us around on Monday and then they invited us over for dinner and Family Home Evening after. Before we met up with him on Monday we took a little drive through some other cities and saw some other sights. We went to l'Isle sur la Sorgue and Fontaine de Vaucluse and then we met up with the guy. He took us to a city called Gordes which was by far my favorite place we saw. It was this huge city built into a mountain all out of rock. It was definitely breathtaking. I had so much fun wandering around this city. I loved the staircases. The view from the city looking over the valley was also beautiful. Ah man I just loved this city.

Yeah...view from one of the staircases. Awesome.

This is the family that invited us over. They were so welcoming. I loved being in their home.

Wow it's already time for Switzerland. We of course were in a huge rush to catch our afternoon train from Avignon to Geneva. This turned out to be the worst experience for travel. We got a little ways out of Avignon and the train stopped. We sat on the track for like half an hour because apparently a motor on the train was broken. They kept giving us different messages. First we were going to go back to Avignon to fix the problem, then back to Marseilles to switch trains, then some other options came about that I don't remember (partly because it was all in French and I'm going off dad's translations). We ended up going back towards the train station, then we passed the station, then we sat some more, then we just went back the same direction without doing anything. Apparently the train fixed itself? We were supposed to have a connecting train in Lyon and we of course missed it and we arrived in Lyon at exactly the time another train was leaving for Geneva. We were all crowded at the back of our car ready to jump out, with all our luggage, to run across and jump on the other train before it left, again with all our luggage. And of course we hurried for nothing. The train sat there for another twenty minutes since they knew our train was coming. So we were finally on our way to Geneva and we made it, it was late but we still got there! Well, that was certainly a long story. We didn't really see any of Geneva until the next day. We wandered around the city and yeah it was ridiculously expensive. It was so cool to see so many designers and famous brands though. There were like five Rolex stores I swear. I had no idea they were so freaking expensive. We saw a watch that was $10,000. I was shocked.

We didn't stay long in Geneva, we left that same day to Neuchatel. It was a long but BEAUTIFUL drive. We drove along the river (or lake, I'm not really sure ha) opposite the Alps. Incredible. On the other side of us were vineyards. Miles and miles of vineyards. I am still in awe at how many vineyards we saw in both France and Switzerland. The ones in Switzerland were prettier I must say. So we arrived in Neuchatel and I hate to say I have another long story. We got to our hotel, once again late at night, and we couldn't find anyone. The hotel was deserted and there wasn't a front desk. My dad was yelling Bonsoir trying to get someone's attention. We wandered around the hotel and finally found a group having Bible study or something. The guy came out and showed us our room. By this time I was giggling. He took us up four flights of circular stairs (no elevator...keep in mind we had three loads of luggage) into a hallway that reeked of cigarette smoke. I literally could not breathe. Even our room smelled of smoke, just not quite as bad. The guy bent over to pull my comforter from the bottom of my bed and yeah saw way way way too much. At that point I burst into another fit of giggles. I tried to contain myself so as not to be rude but it was hopeless. The whole experience was too funny. This was most definitely not my favorite hotel we stayed in.

 
We had a fun day driving around the next day as well. We went to the cheese factory to fill my new obsession with Swiss cheese. I could not get enough of it. I got to drive our cute little rental car that day which I loved. Pretty sure I belong in one. We also went to some other hilltop cities but I don't remember any of their names. They all had the same gorgeous views and I loved it. Let's see and we went and saw the Switzerland temple which was so cool. It had like a forest behind it which I quite enjoyed. My dad being the social butterfly that he is struck up a conversation with the two groundskeepers and took their pictures.

Well, after a packed day we headed back to Geneva, hunted for a laundromat, found some food, and went back to our first hotel only to wake up at five something a.m. to catch our early train to PARIS! I liked this hotel so here is a picture of our room!

I think that's enough for one post. I wasn't planning to write that much about southern France so I guess Paris is just going to get its own post...later though when I can give it my full attention.