Mais oui Paris

I honestly don't even know where to begin.  I literally had the time of my life this weekend.  I ate my weight in baguettes and cheese, stood among enough wealth to buy a good-sized nation, made a complete fool of myself in a language I do not speak, and found out firsthand why half the world is in love with Paris.  (The other half just hasn't been there.)  Here, in brief, is how it went down.

Our home: A rented flat, located in a quiet Parisian suburb, complete with full kitchen, bed space for everyone, a hot tub and sauna, TV, couches, treadmill, skylights, bamboo floors, and down bedding.  In an area three times as nice as the best hostel, with lower prices than the cheapest.

The sights: The Eiffel Tower.  Notre Dame.  The Louvre.  Sacre Coeur.  Montmartre (the artist district).  The Moulin Rouge.  The Catacombs.  The Arc de Triomphe.  The Champs d'Elysees.  The Palace of Versailles.  The Eiffel Tower...at night.  The Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house.  Le Marais (the medieval district).

The food: Baguettes.  Croissants (pronounced 'quah-sohn') - plain, chocolate-filled, raisin-studded, almond-flavored.  Cheese, both delicious and rotting-feet-esque.  'Petit cafe creme' = three tablespoons of coffee for 1.50 Euro.  One macaron pistache.  Quiche.  More baguettes.  Occasionally even a fruit or vegetable.

The people: Sometimes sweet, like the owner of the bakery near our flat who smiled at our feeble French attempts and waved at us the next time we passed his shop.  Sometimes awful, like the other bakery owner who got crazy mad at us and was not pacified by the fact that we didn't know how to say sorry in French.  Or that we didn't really know what to be sorry for.  Sometimes awesome, like the guy who put on a puppet show on the subway.  Sometimes creepy beyond comfort.  But always entertaining.

The bad: The Musée d'Orsay, home to the art I really wanted to see, being closed on Mondays.  Never quite understanding the train ticket system.  Staying in the Louvre so long that by the time we finally got out and found lunch we were about to literally eat each other.  Getting caught in a spontaneous typhoon and having our view from Montmartre hill blocked by fog.  Walking through over a mile of catacomb tunnels six stories underground with the bones of six million people stacked neatly on either side (fun fact: I'm claustrophobic about underground tunnels like that).  The hot tub exploding all over our bathroom floor on our last night.  Not being able to see the auditorium of the opera house.  Barely making our flight home.

But really, all these things are totally eclipsed by-

The wonderful: Coming up from the subway station and gasping at the Eiffel Tower right there.  Ditto for Notre Dame, and the Arc d'Triomphe, and the Palais Garnier.  Getting into the Louvre for free.  Being in cathedrals that have borne witness to millions upon millions of prayers.  Watching the sun set over the fountains of Versailles.  Coming up from the subway station and shrieking at the Eiffel Tower lit up at night.  Shrieking again when the lights started twinkling.  Perfecting my pronunciation of the sentence, "Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?" Looking in through the window of one of the upper boxes in the opera house and being able to see the ballerinas onstage rehearsing.  Coming home completely and utterly exhausted from such an experience.

Sorry that was all so vague and un-Melody-catastrophe-filled.  (It was a shockingly light trip for such mishaps.  I only got left behind like twice.  My luck must be improving.  And/or karma finally caught up to me.)  I am still mentally exhausted and mellowed out from so much excitement.  Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers.  Coming home is coming up, and I couldn't be more excited to see you all.


Love,
Melody

Brief Paris update

I'm on someone else's computer and we're about to get in the hot tub in our rented flat (yeah, life is hard), so I'll make it quick.  Basically Paris is amazing and I just had like the best day of my life.  Soooo get ready to hear about that.  :)

Love,
Melody

Paris, Missouri?

No, no.  Paris, France.

It was brought to my attention that I somehow managed to leave out what we're actually doing whilst in Paris.  (No, shopping and chocolate and amazing is not the entire itinerary.  Shocking, I know.)  Sorry.  So, a little delayed, here it is:

- The Eiffel Tower.  Obviously.
- The Louvre.  See above.
- Notre Dame.  I really really want to go to a mass there, but this would require breaking away from the group and the immaculately for Sunday morning.  We'll see how it goes.
- Sacre Coeur and Montmartre.  Really cool cathedral on top of a hill, surrounded by an apparently really cool neighborhood.  Which includes the Moulin Rouge.
- The Catacombs.  I don't care so much about these...so I might skip out since I could go to Mass during the time the rest of the group will be there.
- Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomph.  Photo ops and stuff.
- Versailles.  I hope the Versailles on our itinerary is the real Versailles...there doesn't seem to be sufficient time allotted to getting there?  Further background research might be necessary.
- Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera house.  This is the opera house that Phantom of the Opera was based on!  I'm so excited!  You can expect approximately 200 pictures of this building alone.
- A Paris flea market!  Apparently these are awesome and I want to go to one.  Christmas gifts, sorted.

Um.  I think that's it.  If you know of anything else I should see, do please let me know.

Love,
Melody

I'll turn YOU into a goon

I just looked at the current weather for St. Louis.  This is me shooting you an extremely dirty look for your stupid 70º and sun.  It was so cold here today I kind of whimpered every time I stepped outside.  You'd think that since I'm from South Dakota, I could handle it.  And you're probably right, and I'm probably just being a wimp.  But seriously.  Cold here doesn't mess around.  It goes straight to your insides and makes you never want to leave your flat again.  It's a little bit of a comfort that it's snowing in Spearfish right now and I know that's something that will not happen here.  It did, however, hail today.  Not promising.

I found myself today having to explain to my German flatmate the meaning of the word "goon".  I explained that I'm really the only person I know who uses it in normal conversation, but I still couldn't quite describe it.  Then it occurred to me that it comes from that "Little Bunny Foo Foo" rhyme.  I didn't really feel like singing the song for her, so, like the internet-dependent savvy teenager young adult that I am, I YouTubed it.  And, to the utter delight of all involved, this is what I came up with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a84IowoW00w

Watch it.  Please oh please.

Oh yes, my European friend, this is a nostalgic song from my typical American childhood...accompanied by cartoon images of a bunny brutally murdering a couple dozen mice.  Just fantastic.  She was really impressed.

Anyways.  I just made a rather fantastic discovery: our trip to Paris is being headed by a type-A American wondergirl.  She just sent us all a nine-page Word document filled with maps of the Paris metro and bus systems, information on ALL the major things we want to see, a tentative schedule, detailed directions to and from each destination, and key phrases in French.  This is AWESOME!  I'll be honest, it does take the smallest bit of excitement out of it all, but on the bright side it will probably save me from being eaten alive by Paris.  But really, in case I haven't said it, I'm just super excited to have a group to go with.  Mostly because 1) I'm bound to do something ridiculous, and it's just better if there are people you know to openly laugh at you, and 2) I know approximately five French phrases, and only three of them are the least bit helpful.  Okay, and I guess I'm excited for the companionship.  :)  The group is mostly girls, so you know it's going to be SHOPPING and CHOCOLATE and AMAZING.  OHMYGOODNESS I'm excited.

Update: Tina tried to coach me in French pronunciation and I failed.  This should be a really good time.

I've been typing this post disjointedly over the last six hours or so.  In that time I also managed to correctly make my chocolate chip cookies.  After three tries since being in the UK, I have finally assembled all the necessary ingredients.  No incorrect substitutions.  And they rock my world a little bit.  These cookies are definitely my secret plan for world domination.  Don't tell anyone.   (PS Niko, you can be co-dictator with me since you co-discovered them.)

All right.  Six hours later, I have finally managed to assemble a suitable post.  Kthx.  Time to go to bed because I have a 7:30 prayer meeting in the morning.  Rock it.

3 days until Paris.

Love,
Melody

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Yesterday - as you may actually know, given the strangely large number of American Facebook statuses about it, but I definitely would not have had I not actually been here - was Guy Fawkes Day.  Also known as Bonfire Night, it commemorates the day in 1605 when a group of Catholics led by a dude named (surprisingly) Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament, killing the king, in order to put a Catholic on the throne instead.  The plot was foiled, Guy Fawkes was tortured and killed, and now once a year all good British children burn effigies of Guy and/or the Pope (I kid you not) on top of giant bonfires.  And they set off fireworks.  So in honor of this blatantly anti-Catholic bit of British tradition, our flat climbed Calton hill to watch these fireworks.  To be honest, I didn't expect much of them, because, you know, we're American, we're like the master of fireworks with the Fourth and everything...um, wrong.  They were pretty fabulous.  And then once the main show was done there were dozens of fireworks popping up from all over the city.  It was a really beautiful view of Edinburgh as well, especially because it was at night.  And then we went to Starbucks and sat and talked.

This morning I went to St. Andrews with the American guy from my small group, Andrew, and an older man he met at church who had volunteered to take him sightseeing around Scotland.  So we spent the morning driving at leisure up the coast, stopping to see Edinburgh from across the Firth of Forth as the mist rose.  He treated us to lunch at the Anstruther Fish Bar, home to 'Scotland's Best Fish and Chips'.  They were, in fact, really, really good.  Following that we continued up to St. Andrews, where he gave us a quick overview of the town and then sat down with his book, leaving Andrew and me to explore.  It was incredibly historical, so we spent several hours going into free museums, gaping at incredibly old St. Andrews University buildings, and wandering through cathedral ruins.  We also checked out the beach where they filmed the Chariots of Fire scene and I picked up some seashells from the North Sea.  It was really quite a fun day.

Also this week: I tried Marmite for the first time!  It's the British version of Vegemite, that weird Australian thing that no one understands.  It. is. NASTY.  Ugggghhhh.  I took one bite and gagged.  Apparently it's 'yeast extract'...oh my gosh.  So disgusting.  It's just incredibly salty and...ew.  Nope.

ALSO this week: I finally baked a pumpkin!  I didn't get to do it with the jack-o-lanterns; it was too warm in our kitchen and by November 1st they had completely molded over on the inside.  So I got another one, baked half of it, and made the other half into pumpkin soup.  The soup turned out really incredibly well, actually.  I thought it was delicious.  Tina even said it was better than her mum's.  I was so proud.  :)

Paris next weekend!!  OHMYGOODNESS!!!

Love,
Melody

Even non-surprise parties can be surprising

Yesterday was a wonderful day!  I was really surprised by it.  I just kind of chilled all day, went shopping, sat in one of the incredible cathedrals for a little while and prayed over this year...and it was good.  Then for dinner, Tina (my German flatmate) had promised to make these incredible meatballs that she's made before and I'm in love with (which is really saying something, given how often I eat meat of my own volition), so she did and they were awesome.  And then a few other girls came over around 8:30 to just hang out, and one of the Wash U girls brought some blow-your-mind-amazing toffee fudge crumble something bars, and we had Oreos (I thought they didn't exist here but they DO)...and somebody else brought a birthday cake!  And they even lit candles and sang.  :)  So we sat and ate sugar and talked nonstop until 1:30.  It was kind of like a slumber party but better.  So yes, it was a good birthday.  :)

Me, the twenty-something...

It's my birthday.  :)

I tried to get up early and take myself out to coffee/breakfast before my 9:00 class.  I was up on time; the coffee shops weren't.  Incredible, right??  It was 8:30 am and nothing was open.  Finally on my fourth try, I found one that was open and so had a mocha and the best banana bread of my life while speed-walking to class.  I could taste the sugar to the point of it being almost - almost - crunchy between my teeth.  So delicious.  Planned celebration: informal get-together tonight, high tea (!!) with the flatmates sometime possibly this weekend, and Boyce Avenue concert in two weeks.  The fun does not stop.  :)

Also: I have a plane ticket to Paris and a train ticket to London!!  AAAAARRRRGGGHH EXCITEMENT!!!  Also I was invited on a day trip to St. Andrews on Saturday.  I don't really know what's there...except for the university that Prince William went to, which is, um, awesome.  Plus there must be other cool things.  I'm just generally excited for life right now.

All kinds of crazy love,
Melody