dr h, see how i did that? i used s'agir! hopefully i used it correctly...haha.
anyway, i have compiled a list of things my dear readers might like to know about paris that i haven't talked about in any of my class posts. take a gander, mes amis!
1. i always sleep with ear plugs. my apartment is right near a main road, and there are always sirens going off in the middle of the night. i'm not really sure why. hence, i always sleep with earplugs these days.
2. a. all of the women here are wearing leather jackets. all of the men here are wearing leather jackets.
2. b. everyone wears a jacket. all the time. even when the metro is 6,000 degrees fahrenheit.
2. c. also everyone and their mother wears a scarf.
3. black, grey, white. those are the colors of choice here.
4. i have become a pro at the art of layering. seriously folks, i may look like ralphie's litter brother from a christmas story, but i'm not even mad about it because it helps me stay warm. take the other day at church, for example. i wore : a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, a jacket, and then on top of that another jacket. and a scarf. and BOOM! i stayed nice and warm (ish) all day.
5. i like to look at people's hands. some of you knew that already. if you didn't...there you go. anyway, i have observed on the metro that a ridiculous amount of people here chew their nails. mainly the men. it may or may not bug me a little bit.
6. also, my belief that all should use kitchen lingo in every day life remains in effect here in paris. yes, we should all say "corner" and "behind" all the time. and everyone should obey human traffic laws. like always stay on the right. that way you don't have any major traffic problems. the metro could benefit from that.
7. i love the bus. it is my new favorite mode of transportation in france. it's hard to take because it takes so much longer than the metro, but it is much less congested and you can actually SEE where you are. i like being not underground. if i were better at getting up early, i would take the bus everywhere...but seeing as i still have some improvements to make in that little area (mornings are just as hard in france as they are in the states), i take the metro more often than i would like to. my goal for myself is to be better at getting up earlier so i can take the bus more!
8. toilets are always an adventure! there aren't really public restrooms here like there are in the states. and sometimes you have to pay to use them, which goes against everything i stand for. but i'd rather pay and use the bathroom than be miserable! it's always exciting to see what kind of toilet you are going to use, and how you flush it. sometimes there is a button to press, sometimes a cord to pull, sometimes a lever to stand on...sometimes it's a squatter. you never know what you're gonna get!
9. i love my classes. it is so cool to have art history here in paris because we get to actually SEE the pieces we are learning about. like in real life. no more power points and googleimage photos. this is the real deal. cori and i were talking about how crazy it is that we went into the louvre for 40 minutes to study a few specific pieces for our midterm and then we just left. you know. no big deal. we just breezed past the mona lisa all nonchalantly. we walked past the most famous painting in the world and didn't even look back at her. how weird is that? just studying in a building filled with art that is hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old. this is my life, and i love it!
10. i love gardens. i love love love all of the gardens here. like the big public ones, like the jardin du luxembourg. i think that is my favorite one so far. i loved that garden and the gardens at vaux le vicomte (a little castle outside of paris). i love how immaculately kept they all are and i am totally loving the fall colors! it's beautiful. and i love them with the old buildings and grey skies in the background. so wonderful.
sage, annie, alicia, and i did this walk in two parts. partly because we didn't have enough time and partly because we felt so under-dressed. not an exaggeration. we had been serving lunch to the homeless earlier that day, so we were all in our grungy clothes haha. and we were in a pretty ritzy area, let me tell you what. i very much enjoyed it :)
we started our walk on the champs-elysées, and then crossed over to avenue de marigny, where we saw the théâtre marigny, which was designed by garnier in 1853. garnier later went on to design the famous opéra garnier - think : phantom of the opera.
after that, we saw multiple government buildings. i loved that none of them actually looked like government buildings. well, except for the security guards. ha. we saw the hôtel marigny (used for guests representing foreign governments), the ministry of the interior, and the palais de l'elysée (think : the french version of the white house).
we saw the palais de l'elysée better from rue faubourg saint-honoré. we were only allowed to walk on one side of the street because no one is allowed to walk on the sidewalk next to the president's house!
rue faubourg saint-honoré was fairly mind blowing. i have never seen so many designer stores all in one place. not to mention southeby's - the famous art auction house. i nearly peed my pants when i stepped foot in there. we really didn't get past the front door, but still. it was a magical place. trust me.
at one point, we were walking along the rue faubourg saint-honoré when suddenly there was money flying everywhere. it was very bizarre. i started picking up the bills and realized they were all 1,000 rubles each! we gave them back to the man who lost them (they fell out of his coat pocket), but it was seriously so weird. it wasn't really all that much money, considering the conversion rates, but seeing bills for 1,000 rubles flying in your face while you're walking down one of the most expensive streets in paris, dressed in grungy clothes? it's a really weird experience.
after crossing on to rue boissy d'anglais, we walked past two of the most exclusive hotels in paris, as well as the us embassy. it was all blocked off. apparently you can't just walk in, even if you are a us citizen.
then we made our way to the place de la concorde, which was originally built to commemorate louis xv. it is the huge square where marie antoinette, danton, and robespierre were all beheaded during the revolution. it's crazy to think that i stood where these people died. i've read about them all in text books, and i know that they lived...but now i am starting to think about them on a more personal level. they were real, they lived, they died. i stood where they once stood (and died). isn't that kinda cool?
we took a few minutes to look at the luxor obelisk, which was given as a gift to charles x in 1829 from mohammed ali, the egyptian governor. it is over 20,000 years old. say what?!
we then took a little stroll through the tuileries garden, which is a jardin a la française || traditional, symmetrical french garden.
super fun walk, over all! definitely one of the best :)
would you believe me if i told you this was a hair salon?
oh that HAT! killed me.
dear future husband, THIS. love, sydney
sage, alicia, annie, and i in our grungy clothes in front of chanel. classy.
la nuit blanche is an annual all-night arts festival in paris. soooo cooooool, right?!
(ps this is counting as my "anti-walk" for my paris walks class because we did SO MUCH walking.)
so that night, annie, sage, alicia, and i made some ravioli chez annie & sage. then we bundled up (it was raining, boo) and trekked into paris for what we were planning on being a 3 hour adventure.
we explored a lot that night. like...a lot. anyway, we didn't actually really know what we were doing, if i'm being completely honest. we just liked walking around and seeing everyone who was out all night long.
we did see some art, though. we didn't get into any of the major museums (we didn't plan this out very well) but we DID get into some churches with some pretty cool installation pieces.
after that, we met up with maddie and nateybabes. and we decided to head over to the eiffel tower. and stay out all night until the first trains at 5 am.
we spent quite a bit of time at the eiffel tower. it was really pretty. and i needed to find a bathroom. good thing paris has public restrooms. (note sarcasm)
so then we got on the metro...and then we tried to transfer metros, but we were informed that it was closed. it was 2 am at this point.
so the only logical option is to walk from the arc de triomphe to our metro stop, châtelet, right? yes. that was the only logical option we could come up with.
we finally found refuge on the champs-élysées in a quickburger. we got french fries and i found a bathroom and we felt pretty happy about that.
then we walked and walked and walked and walked...for a really long time. we pretty much walked over half of metro line 1, if that gives you any idea. we walked from the arc de triomphe, down the champs-élysées, past place de la concorde, along the seine, by the louvre and palais royal, and finally ended up at châtelet at some time around 4:30 am. and we sat down in the station waiting for our train and i felt very happy to be sitting.
it was quite the adventure! i wish we had planned it out better and had gone into more of the museums...but it was still an awesome night! i will never forget it. dead serious. haha.
strolling along the seine
alicia, annie, sage, and me in front of notre dame
this was a cross made of broken screens of some sort
me, sage, annie, maddie, alicia, and nateybabes in front of the louvre. this was like 3:30 am.
after sleeping the entire train ride to chartres, i was back to being a normal and happy person again. amazing what a little extra sleep can do for a girl!
i have wanted to go to chartres ever since my art history 201 class at byu. i loved how professor johnson was so passionate about architecture. he made chartres come alive, even though i could only see it in text books and powerpoints.
fast forward to 6 octobre, 2012. i was standing in front of chartres, and we got to have a group tour of the cathedral from the resident chartres expert - mr. malcom miller. he was very british and very wonderful.
up front, he told us that he wouldn't be able to tell us about everything. everything in chartres was symbolic, and he was still learning about the cathedral, himself. he did, though, tell us about the stained glass, the painting, the history of the building, and so much more.
one of the really interesting things that he said, and that i loved was, "the old testament is the new testament, veiled. the new testament is the old testament, unveiled." if you are familiar with the bible at all, take a minute to think about this statement. it's so interesting and true.
one of my favorite parts of the cathedral is the fact that the towers of the façade don't match at all. after a fire, one of the towers was built in the flamboyant gothic style, which does not fit in with the rest of the cathedral. it's really wonderful.
we actually got to climb up to the top of that tower, which was a w f u l, but so worth the 2,987,598,609,812,098,294,876 stairs. look at my photos. i mean, look at where we were!!
after lunch, we took the train home because it was time to take a nap before la nuit blanche!
this is probably one of the best things i have done in paris to date. jennie, dr h's wife, heard a group of us talking about how we felt so bad for some of the homeless here in paris. she quickly jumped on finding a way for us to help without giving away all of our change.
she ended up contacting the american church of paris. every friday afternoon, they organize a lunch for 64 people who are down on their luck. they sign up during the week and show up on friday around noon for a delicious home-cooked meal that we got to serve them.
annie, sage, alicia, and i showed up at the church at 10 am to help set up. set up went really pretty fast, so we were told to go buy ourselves pastries. we didn't complain. haha.
after eating our pastries on a bench overlooking the seine, we headed back to the cathedral for serving lunch. i was blown away by how nice everything was. this is no american soup kitchen assembly line where you scoop a pile of something questionable on a tray. we had full place settings for each person, used real silver ware, and they were able to have a three course meal, complete with dessert and coffee. we were given the low down on how things would work. each of us would grab two plates at a time and get food on them. then we would serve the women first, then the old men, and then everyone else.
before we began to actually serve, we had a short volunteer meeting and had a prayer. it was a really neat experience to work together with people who aren't of our same faith but believe in the same god and the same christ that i believe in. i loved that we all wanted to just do something good for these people who may not be able to do something good for themselves.
it was such a wonderful experience to serve these people. they devoured their food. scarfed it. i can only imagine how hungry most of them were. sage told me this story about how she was going to clear a crumpled paper napkin from one man's place. he stopped her and told her, "i want to keep it. i need to shine my shoes later." it broke my heart. but it also confirmed that i was in the right place.
everyone was so grateful. i loved that. i served one woman who clearly had a speech impairment, but every time i helped her, she made the effort to slur out, "merci madame!" and give me a huge toothless smile. i loved her, even though i didn't know her name.
after serving lunch and clearing up the tables, we were shuffled into the kitchen where we helped to dry off the clean dishes. it was fun to talk to all the people there. most of them have been doing this together for years and they have their own little family. it was really fun to hear their stories and how they came to be in france. when we were done, we all felt so good. it was just such a neat experience to give back and love these people we had never even met before.
if anyone is ever in paris on a friday afternoon and has a few spare hours and wants to serve...please look up the american church of paris and contact them for volunteering. it was the most wonderful thing i have done in france so far.
on sunday after church, dr h got us tickets for a concert at the cluny museum of music from the middle ages. it was actually amazing. the concert was held in my 2nd favorite room of the museum, the room of the king's heads (my favorite being the room with the unicorn horn, duh).
anyway.
the concert was made up of four people - three men and a woman. they all sang beautifully. they used crazy harmonies and used their instruments - l'harpe || the harp, le violon || an older and larger ancestor of the violin, and la cistre || an ancestor of the guitar - were used very sparingly.
each of the songs sung told a story - and they felt very elaborate. not that i could really understand them. but i understood that they were beautiful and that the performers were very talented.
i mean, come on.
feast your ears on this for a second. (enjoy the view of the notebook in my lap.)
forgive me for not knowing the technical terms...but there are two high parts in the song, and one of them is a man singing. impressed? you should be.
i loved this activity. i loved being able to listen to music from the middle ages and appreciate it for it's beauty. i loved being in the cluny, surrounded by statues from the middle ages. it was such a great look into french history, seeing it from another perspective. it was so cool!
first of all, you should all know that this song was stuck in my head all weekend :
normandie by the shout out louds
[yes, this is a bakery song, and no, i am not ashamed to admit that i actually liked some of the songs played at the bakery.]
on to the important choses || things.
this past weekend, my paris family took an amazing weekend trip to normandie. normandie is the region in northern france that we all know for it's importance in wwii (jour j || d-day), but it is also know for its fantastical dairy products, bien sur! (can you say cheese-and-milk-lovers paradise? because that is exactly what it is.)
just a side note : this post is going to be long. i was only gone for three days, but it was such an emotional roller coaster for each of us. i want to be able to describe what i was thinking and feeling as accurately as possible and i want to remember everything, so forgive me if this becomes too long for you to read all of it. this will be organized by events. skip around as you please. also, i won't be too offended if you just look at the photos. i do that too, sometimes.
another side note : if some of the things i say don't make sense, please forgive me. you see, this week is french challenge week (fcw), which means were are only allowed to speak french (there are exceptions, of course, like blogging). right now i have the most confusing mix of french and english in my head...so i'm sorry if i say things that don't make sense.
fashion week in paris
yes, it's true. it was fashion week in paris this past week (good thing i knew that, right? sarcasm, i had no idea). i was definitely a participant. as you can see, i traveled in style. no way was i lugging around my duffle bag again, especially on the metro, so i opted for a backpack. good choice. i also remembered that i love backpacks more than i love purses, which was great because i happened to have my trusty camelback daypack with me. so i used that, too. i ended up wearing two backpacks at once. and no, i didn't get any weird looks. i have no idea what you're talking about.
giverny
giverny was claude monet's home and gardens. i kid you not, this is one of my new most favorite places in the entire world ever of ever the end. when we got to giverny, it was grey and a little bit rainy. but i love that we were there in the rain. i think gray skies make colors pop more. the waterlilies may have been my favorite part. they weren't in bloom, but the pond, the bamboo, the bridges, the weeping willows...it all made for one of the most beautiful gardens i have ever been in. the gardens closer to the house were all color coordinated. i'm talking rainbow effect, here. i loved it. (ocd? of course not. i just like color coordination.) walking around giverny, i can see why monet was so inspired. being surrounded by nature and so much color will do that to a person. after not nearly enough time and after spending way too much money on a print and a nifty "claude monet" tshirt, we got back on the bus and headed off to rouen.
heather, me, cori
waterlilies
me & alicia
rouen
rouen is a medieval town in normandie that is known for being the town where joan d'arc || joan of arc was burned at the stake. we stopped here for lunch and to walk around and explore a bit. cori, heather, nate, the hurlbuts, and i got kebaPs (it was spelled wrong at the restaurant) and then adventured in the rain a little bit. cori and i got separated from the group at one point and found ourselves in a fish market...barf gag. but then we all got to go to the wax museum that told the story of joan of arc's life. have i told you how much dr h loves joan of arc? he says she was his premiere amour || first love. "i was ten years old and saw a film about a girl with a sword. of course i fell in love." then we explored the city a bit more...and we found this building (why can't i remember what it was called?) that was built on the place where 2/3 of the population of rouen were buried during the plague. on all the woodwork of the building, there were skulls and bones. that was pretty sobering. then jennie and i ran to monoprix to find a cake for nateybabes' birthday. after finding a "cake" and some birthday candles (who knew birthday candles were so hard to find?) we ran to the bus. phew. hurrah for bonding time in monoprix with sister h! :)
dr h and a wax figure of joan of arc
l'abbaye de jumièges
this old abbey was so cool! it was in ruins. i'm a big fan of ruins, especially this kind. it was basically just the skeleton of this benedictine chapel. jennie explained to me that this was from the gothic period, but it lacked the ornate decorations that classic gothic cathedrals have. she explained that whenever there is a new movement, there is always a counter movement. while classic gothic was moving towards flamboyant, saint philibert, who built the cathedral, followed the counter-movement and wanted his cathedral to be as beautiful but as simple as possible. i loved all the old stones everywhere and that when we were "inside" the cathedral, we could look up at the sky. it was so fun to explore and climb and play ring-around-the-rosy.
bayeux
in bayeux, we went to dinner at this great little restaurant. our first course was raw salmon. i'm pretty sure it was raw. i drenched it in lemon and ate it as quickly as i could. lucy cheered me on. she's just so great. then we had duck and these amazing fried potatoes. je l'aimais beaucoup || i loved it a lot. it more than made up for the salmon experience. i find that i'm eating a lot of fish here...i figure it's a great growing experience? or something? for dessert we had baked apples with this cinnamon flavored ice cream. delish. after dinner, some of us walked around bayeux with the hurlbut's and we stopped in front of a statue of alain chartier, who wrote the poem "la belle dame sans mercy" || the beautiful, merciless woman. we got to hear all about him, as well as dr h's quest to find out who actually wrote l'hôpital d'amour || the hospital of love, which wasn't chartier's poem, but was attributed to him. i'm excited to read it when i get back to provo! dr h has a copy of it in his office on campus. that night, we had a girls night in our hotel room. alicia, olivia, lucy, cori, heather, corine, annie, and i did our nails and laughed so hard. i don't think i've ever laughed so hard in my life. i'm not even exaggerating when i tell you i looked like a raccoon. look at my photos to see why. maybe you have to know olivia to get the full effect...but it's a beautiful thing.
bayeux part ii
woke up, went to breakfast, and had a wonderful experience. at our hotel, there was a british wwii veteran who fought on the beaches of normandy. i typed out my experience on my phone (i didn't have my computer with me) while we were driving to gold beach later that day because i didn't want to forget it. here's part of what i wrote:
this morning at breakfast in bayeux, there was a british veteran from dday. i watched him and his wife eat their breakfast while i ate mine. i didn't want to approach him because i thought he wouldn't want to be interrupted. he was in his uniform, a navy coat decorated with pins and medals from the RAF.
i finished my breakfast and realized that if i didn't thank him, i would kick myself for the rest of my life. how many times do you run into a veteran from normandy while you're in normandy? not often. i walked up to him and shook his hand while i said,
"thank you."
he locked his eyes with mine through his thick glasses while he spoke and said,
"we couldn't have done it without you." his hand held mine the whole time. it was rough and worn and warm. "it was the americans who made all the difference."
he proceeded to tell me a little bit about his experience in the war, and about how he was so grateful for roosevelt and the american soldiers coming to the aid of the british. he smelled like coffee, and in the hand that wasn't holding mine, he was holding a sugar cube. he asked me why i was in france, and i told him about our study abroad. he told me to cherish it because it is an amazing experience to live abroad. i told him i would.
he smiled.
i loved him and his british accent and his faded ribbons on the lapel of his jacket.
bayeux tapestry
the bayeux tapestry is such a cool piece. it is 70 yards long and tells the story of the battle of hastings in 1066. we got an audio guide that narrated the entire tapestry for us. i loved it. i was super impressed and entertained by the embroidery. we also got to watch a 15 minute video on the tapesetry, and we watched in once in english and in french. good thing i fell asleep. (thanks for letting me use your shoulder, nateybabes. i owe ya one.)
me & my audio tour
gold beach
our first stop on our tour of dday sights was gold beach. this was where the canadian armies began the offensive on the germans on june 6, 1944. when we arrived, the thing i first noticed were the flags. there was a flag for each of the allied countries, as well as germany. i really liked that. we got to go down on the beach for a few minutes, then we got to explore a little bit while we ate our lunch. some of us decided to explore the giftshops for a minute and i totally scored and found some sweet-awesome rings. don't be jealous because my rings are cooler than yours. jokes. but really.
sage, annie, alicia, & moi
moi! yes, that is a toothpaste stain on my pants. it wouldn't come out, ok?
mon bague || my ring
bunkers, aka "pill boxes"
our next stop was at the german bunkers. these bunkers were so interesting - these weird cement mounds in the ground that looked like pill boxes. these houses cannons that could shoot out into the ocean at ships that were up to five miles away. kinda blew my mind. it was actually a really beautiful place, and it was hard to imagine that this was once the sight of one wwii battles. i was standing on top of one of the pill boxes, looking at the ocean with noah and i told him, "i can't even imagine what the germans were thinking when they were standing here." he said, "are you kidding? they must have been scared out of their minds!" sometimes we forget that. in our minds we think of the germans as "the enemy" during wwii. i realized that we put a label there, and sometimes we're able to forget that the germans were human, too. thanks, noah, for the insight on top of that pill box.
american cemetery at normandy
there is a sign at the entrance of the cemetery refers to this place as "hallowed ground." i don't know how else to describe this place. of course i had seen photos. everyone sees them in text books. but i don't think anything could have prepared me for seeing it in person. the cemetery is actually right on the coast. it's about a half mile away from omaha beach, where the worst casualties were experienced during the normandy invasions. to get to it, you have to walk along a little path that curves along the coast. it is all lined by trees. when we were there, it was beautifully sunny. we followed the curve of the path and suddenly, after views of the beach and trees, all i could see was white.
9,387 blindingly white crosses and stars of david.
the organized rows went on forever. i really couldn't breath. it's hard to imagine that there are even more men who could have been listed there, but aren't. our entire group dispersed - we all wanted to be alone. i took my time looking at the crosses and stars. each were inscribed with a name, state, rank,
death date, and dog tag number. some of the crosses were inscribed,
"here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to god." what i really wanted to do was stop in front of every single one of them and say a silent "thank you." i wanted to thank each of these boys - because for the most part, they were my age and younger - for all that they did. on the chapel at the cemetery, these words are inscribed : "these endured all and gave all that justice among nations might prevail and that mankind might enjoy freedom and inherit peace."i can't think of better words to describe and thank these boys. the certainly deserve this beautiful place dedicated to their memory. even writing this is making me tear up a little bit. while at the cemetery, i'm pretty sure i was on the verge of tears the entire time. i was doing pretty well holding it all in until i ran into nate. i had to leave asap because i was going to break down. i ran away and had my own little moment, thanking heavenly father for all of my blessings and freedoms. i thanked him for the men who gave their all to the cause of justice and freedom and peace. i thanked him for my country and for the opportunity that i have to live abroad. i thanked him that living abroad not only has helped me to appreciate other cultures, but also to appreciate the united states and all of our blessings there even more. it was one big fat cry fest. and i kind of loved it.
the chapel at the cemetery
after wandering the cemetery, alicia and i decided to visit the beach. we were quiet the whole time, neither of us felt like talking really. i collected a couple of sea shells. they were all broken. i liked them that way. it felt appropriate. is that silly? anyway. omaha beach is one of the most beautiful beaches i have ever seen. it was so hard for me visualize it as a the site of a wwii battle. (don't worry. that comes later. and you'll get to read about me crying again. excited? you should be.)
as cori put it in her blog, after what seemed like not nearly enough but entirely too much time, we left the american cemetery.
that place changes people. i'll be the first to tell you. omaha beach
after a short bus ride, we were at another spot on omaha beach. there was a huge memorial sculpture that i actually loved. it was made of steel and it reflected light all over the place. this part of the beach is a little bit more open to the public and we felt like we could play. we took some jumping photos...i was a sherpa because i have waterproof boots...it was great.
nateybabes & moi
annie, nate, carine, & moi
my new rainboots are great.
point du hoc
point du hoc is the outcropping of rocks that separates omaha and utah beaches. it is covered in craters from cannon balls. i don't think there was a single place there where the ground was level. there were amazing views of the coast and atlantic ocean, but what really got me was the damage the cannons did. it has been almost 70 years and these craters are still at least 4 people deep and maybe 6-8 people wide. crazy.
after point du hoc, we drove off to caen, where we had dinner and spent the night. that dinner...oh it was a hilarious night. kayla and alicia both got some raw egg yolks with their dinner on the side and just left them there. i made some comment about how gross they looked. i was sitting next to noah, who turned to me and said, "hey, if you eat those egg yolks, i'll give you 30 euros." and do you know what? i did it. and do you know what? he gave me 20 euros and a pastry of my choice here in paris (he didn't have the full 30 on him at the time). and i'm not even mad about any of it. alicia and i couldn't stop laughing...that was funny. and i had the best dessert in the world. it was french vanilla ice cream with a strawberry purée, fresh peaches, and chantilly (vanilla whipped cream). it was divine. after dinner, we had a laughing fest in the hotel and were then told to be quiet...oops.
noah, 20 euros, moi, & the cup the egg yolks were in
heaven on earth
wwii museum in caen
so the next morning after eating my weight in toast and nutella (i love hotel breakfasts) we went to the wwii museum. it was super interesting. and we got audio guides (I WAS SO HAPPY). i love audio guides, in case you didn't know. especially when the narrators have british accents. anyway, it was a super cool museum. it was very interactive, with an overwhelming amount of information about france during wwii. my favorite (and least favorite) part of the museum was at the very beginning. we were looking at posters and information about europe after wwi. it was really hard to listen to the audio guide and process the information because in the background there was a continuous drum beat and cheering. it wasn't super loud at first, but it got louder and louder as we approached this dome inside the museum. when you entered the dome, you were standing, facing a projection of hitler. it was just you and him. and german chanting and drum beating. it was so loud and i had no choice but to listen and stare. it was so creepy. but it really helped me to understand why the nazis believed what they did. it was all they heard. crazy.
we also watched a video on the dday invasions at the museum. it was actual footage of the attacks. it was so hard to watch. men unloading from pontoons and running through the ocean up to the beach. at the end of the film, the screen was split in two, with footage of soldiers being shot down on omaha beach on the left and footage of the beach today on the right. the juxtaposition of the footage made me cry once again. (i told you it was going to happen.) it was so hard to watch but i couldn't take my eyes away. once again, i was reminded of how grateful i am.
loved my neato audio guide
fromagerie
so then we went to a fromagerie. it was stinky and wonderful. we got to watch these silly little videos about how cheese is made and then we got to try some. free samples! it was like costco, only not so big and there was only cheese and...i guess it wasn't really like costco. but it was fantastic.
we share pretty much everything.
the end
then we had a 2 hour bus ride back into paris, where we ate american cereal for dinner and then we returned to our host families.
olivia, me, & alicia
normandie was such an amazing weekend. way too many emotions, but i wouldn't have had it any other way. i'm so glad i got to experience that. after weekends like that...you look at things differently. i appreciate things more.
if you made it to the end of this post...you deserve 6 sparkle points. :)
