Like the Back of My Hand

Talking with a few of my friends this weekend, I realized that I know Paris better than any other city I have visited or lived in/near.  Now, I realize that this is not saying much; I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I have actually had to navigate Indianapolis in the 20 years that I have lived in its' suburbs, I could hardly claim to escape the Tufts' bubble enough to know Boston at all, and I really only lived in D.C. for a month.  Still, it is kinda cool to think that I know my way around here, and I must say, I like the feeling of ownership and pride that comes with knowing and being comfortable in a city.  


It was even cooler for me this week that I got to show off a bit on Monday, when my first cousin once removed (yeah, I had to look it up to be sure), Greg came to town with two of his friends!  I was successful not only in navigating the Metro to make sure we got where we needed to go while we were together, but also in answering questions about much of what we saw, giving advice about what they should do with their short time in Paris, and giving them directions on how to get to the sites that they were set to see after I parted ways with them. I was excited to be able to help, but more importantly, I was thrilled to see him and meet his friends.  


Greg and I figured out this week that it has probably been 12 years since we have seen each other! Since we are family, we had heard basic news about each other, obviously - graduations, jobs, and changing cities - but nothing more, so it was great to have a face-to-face conversation!  It was clear to me why Greg had always been a favorite of my brother and I when we visited relatives as children. Growing up, I was always more attached to Greg's sisters (hey, they were really good at coloring and trampoline-jumping, from what I remember), but after spending some time with him, I will admit that he seems pretty cool, too :) I was grateful for the opportunity to get to know Greg as an adult, rather than a 16 year old boy (I'm also pretty certain he was glad that a 20 year old, rather than an 8 year old girl, was showing him around Paris).  


I am so lucky that I get to spend time getting to know Paris, and that, since I was in Paris when he visited, I was able to spend time getting to know a member of my family better!  A great opportunity on both counts!  I am so blessed with the ability to travel and especially with a great family!  Alright - picture time! 

Greg isn't a fan of traditional souvenirs, so after we visited the Basilique du Sacré Coeur at Montmartre and before we went to see Notre Dame and Shakespeare and Company (a famous bookstore where a scene from one of his favorite movies was shot), we stopped in Place du Tertre so that he could have his portrait done.  A great idea to remember the trip! He even wore (one of) his Chicago Bears shirts, since it was the Bears' Buccaneers' Game in London that brought him to Europe in the first place.  

Fun Fact #20: The artists who work in the square have been regulated by the Mayor of the 18th Arrondissement (administrative area of Paris) since 1980, and there are 298 artists who are authorized to work there! 

After seeing Greg on Monday, the rest of my week was pretty calm.  I went to class, ran, and did my work.  That would be pretty boring if this weren't the view from one of my school buildings.  That is the Pantheon in the background. 

Remember when I said that I have 400 people in a classroom build for far less, and that some people have to sit on the floor?  Well, this is the line to get into that class.  I was a half hour early.  I guess desks are preferable to the floor for note-taking... who knew? 

Friday, I went with a friend to see the Château de Fontainebleau, which was built by François I and was home to the "École de Fontainebleau," a school of art that came in the late French Renaissance and was known for its Mannerism.  It was also where Napoleon lived before he was exiled to Elbe. The horseshoe - shaped staircase in the above picture is where he gave his goodbye speech to the French people.  

The gardens at the chateau are gorgeous and quite large! It was the first time I had seen fall colors since being in France, and we had a gorgeous afternoon to take it in! 

Saturday, I went wandering in the Marais with some friends and we stumbled upon this chocolate shop, Maison George Larnicol.  The smell and the fact that he had won a "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" award were enough to convince us to buy some chocolate (like we needed a reason). Everything in the picture is real chocolate and 100% edible!  

After indulging our chocolate craving, we went to the Centre Pompidou to meet some friends and then checked out St. Merry's Church (in the background), which was like a hidden gem in the area- nobody had heard of it, but the architecture was pretty cool!  

Next we walked a little to find the Fontaine des Innocents. 

Finally, we ended up in the Église St. Eustache. The Church is reputed for it's huge organ, which is bigger than that of Notre Dame de Paris and boasts over 8000 pipes! 

Fun Fact #21: This is the church where Louis XIV received his first communion! 

Thanks for reading, everyone.  Happy Halloween! Or, Happy All Saint's Day 

Fun Fact #22:  In France, only little kids celebrate Halloween.  Adults don't really do anything.  This is unfortunate, because everybody in the whole country has the day off on November 1st to celebrate All Saint's Day. On the other hand, Americans throw parties on Halloween and DON'T get the next day off.  I think we should arrange some kind of compromise.  

~SKS

Familiar Territory

One of the most exciting things about being abroad is that, almost every day, I get to experience something new.  Whether it is new food, a new museum or monument to visit, new people to meet, or even just new vocabulary, my life here is filled with firsts. As exciting as that can be, I am never one to turn down re-visiting places I have been before and loved.  For me, the feeling of returning somewhere special is just as exciting as seeing it for the first time.  


This weekend, I went with my program to Normandy (and Brittany).  Our trip was packed; in just two short days, we saw Bayeux and its' famous tapestry, Omaha Beach and the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer, the Point du Hoc, Le Mont St. Michel, and St. Malo. It must also be said that these locations are not necessarily very close to each other, so we also spent hours in busses and trains. Certainly a busy time! 


Since I studied abroad in Brittany with the IU Honors Program in high school, I had already had the opportunity to visit each of the locations that we saw this weekend, and was excited to go back.  Obviously, I did not remember every detail of each place, and I was still able to learn new facts and see things from different perspectives. Having already visited, I had the luxury of enjoying the activities without worrying about having to see everything there was to see without missing anything! Plus, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Bretagne (Brittany in French), so it was great to get to go back there! 

Saturday, we left Paris on a train headed for Bayeux.  The town is best known (let's face it, probably only known) for the famous Tapestry that it houses.  The tapestry tells the story of William the Conquerer and is nearly 70 meters long! However, the town also boasts a flamboyant gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Bayeux,  that is quite impressive.  

The visit to The American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer is something that I don't think should be missed by Americans if they have the opportunity to visit.  I was very moved by the tranquility and the simple beauty of the memorial.  Last time I visited on July 4, 2008.  With the American band playing, and people walking through the cemetery laying a red carnation on every cross and a little stone on every Star of David, it was really a manifestation of how deeply people were affected by the war, and how it still touches people today.  

This visit showed me a slightly different side of the memorial.  I took time to see the visitor center, which is basically a little museum telling the story of D-Day.  I had not done that before, and it made the memorial that much more impressive for me.  Then, I took the time to walk all the way to the back of the cemetery (which is kind of the front, because all of the headstones face the West, which is away from the visitor center but looking towards home) and see the memorial from that perspective.  I was particularly struck by the grave markers, like the one above, that simply said "Here Rests in Honored Glory A Comrade in Arms Known But to God." I was brought to tears by the thought that, unlike most of the families with a child or parent or sibling buried there, the families of those who could not be identified never even got to choose if their loved one would be buried in the land they fought to liberate or in the land they called home.  

Fun Fact #18: The American Cemetery and Memorial were actually given to America by the French after the war so that they could build their monument.  This means that we were technically in America Saturday, but more importantly, it means that the brave men who lost their lives on D-Day are buried in American Soil.  

From the Cemetery, there is a path that leads down to Omaha Beach. It was an absolutely gorgeous day with not a cloud in the sky, and the beach is pristine.  I found myself thinking about how different it must have looked on June 6, 1944. This picture looks down the beach towards the Pointe du Hoc, which is barely visible on the left in the distance.    

Our next stop was the Point du Hoc, which was a German stronghold taken over by the U.S. Army Rangers early on D-Day to keep the weapons there from posing a threat to The Allied attacks on Omaha and Utah beaches.  Unlike the Omaha Beach Memorial, this site remains largely unchanged.  There are barracks and weapons storage buildings, wholly or largely destroyed in some cases, that remain on the site, and the current terrain, which the picture above shows as rocky and rugged, was created by arial bombs and grenades during the two-day fight there.  

Leaving the Pointe du Hoc, we headed about 2 hours north in a bus to a small town near Mont St. Michel, where we spent the night in this adorable little hotel.

  

Early the next morning, we got up and headed to Mont St. Michel, a Monastery built on an island not far off the coast.  In fact, when the tide is low, it is possible to reach the island by land.  Today, you need a guide to do this, though, because the quicksand there can be dangerous.  This building has been standing, despite modifications due to fire and other disasters, for nearly a thousand years! 

Fun fact #19: Mont St. Michel was the only island never to be captured by the English in the 100 years war.  

After Mont St. Michel, we headed to St. Malo, which is in Bretagne.  This meant that we got to enjoy some of my favorite things about Bretagne-- the foods! I ate traditional Galettes for lunch and, for dessert, enjoyed a Kouign Amann, which is a traditional Breton pastry that is filled with butter and sugar and is absolutely delicious.  They are the ones on the right side of the above photo. 

After a delicious lunch, we walked along the ramparts of St. Malo, which is a walled city.  It was a great day to enjoy the view of the English channel, though the water was not quite as inviting as it looked.  

Hope everyone has a great week! 

~SKS~

Icing on the Cake

Sorry for the delay! I would like to say that this post will be worth it, but that is for you to judge. However, I can present you with a reasonably defensible excuse for my failure to find the time to write a post on Sunday: my parents were here!!! (Really, I assure you they were, and I bet they would even vouch for me on it! My brother's more-frequent than normal visits to local restaurants no doubt serve as further evidence supporting this claim, but if you still don't believe me, there are pictures to follow.) 

Whether I am being visited or visiting, I always love to spend time with friends and family. I love the comfort that comes from knowing someone, reminiscing about the past, and learning things about my loved ones that I did not know before. In short, the opportunity to spend four days with my parents would have been awesome in and of itself.  The fact that I got to both explore London with them and show them a bit of Paris?  Icing on the cake.  

Except that, when you really think about it, cake without icing is pretty much just chocolate bread.  Good, but not cake. I don't mean to say that four days with my parents at home, without the 'icing' of being abroad, wouldn't be good -- it just wouldn't be the same thing. It was thanks to the fact that we were in new places that this weekend was what it was. Since we were away from home, we were all away from the things that tend to take us away from each other - work, chores, friends to see, emails to answer, and other distractions were mostly out of the picture. We had all dedicated the weekend solely to spending time with each other. I can't imagine that ours is the only family for which this is rarely the case, and I am fairly certain that we would not have been able to spend so much time together if we had been at home.  

I am so thankful that I got to spend time "icing the cake" with my parents this weekend! We made great memories in London and in Paris, and had good conversation, both lighthearted and serious, all around. I got to hug my mommy and teach my dad French (he is now an expert by the way... he even knows the word for french fries!) I even got to introduce them to my host mother, Patricia, when we all went out for brunch. Sharing part of this incredible semester with the two most important people in my life was wonderful; the fact that they would give me this incredible opportunity by sending me here and then find the time to travel across an ocean just so that I could talk their ears off about my experience is astounding to me. It is such a blessing to know that, no matter where I am or what I am doing, there are two people who love me unconditionally and who are happy just to see me happy, even if they have to look on from afar.  

Now that we have established the all-around awesomeness of my parental units and come to an agreement that there is no such thing as cake without icing, maybe we should get to the pictures of the awesome weekend I spent with my parents.  

Okay, so this picture was actually from Wednesday night, before my parents arrived.  I took it while I was waiting for my class to start.  The Louvre looked so peaceful with so few people outside and all of the lights on. Definitely a moment that made me want to pinch myself! 

I left Paris via Eurostar through the "Chunnel" at 6:43 am on Friday morning.  I arrived in London at 7:59 am local time and met my parents at their hotel. That day, we did a Fat Tyre Bike Tour so that we saw all of the major sights and learned interesting things about many of the monuments. We even happened to be riding past Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard! 

Fun Fact #14: On July 9, 1982, a man named Michael Fagan entered the Palace gardens through and scaled a drainpipe to go through an open window into the Palace.  He was inside for quite some time, observing portraits, drinking half a bottle of wine that he found, and even sitting on the throne before eventually finding the Queen's room.  She awoke to him sitting on her bed, and when no police came (after two calls... seriously, if the Queen calls the police I would think they would come), he sat on the end of her bed talking to her for about 10 to 15 minutes.  

We continued our ride through London, stopping for lunch at Trafalgar Square. 

Fun Fact #15: This is Nelson's Column, and it commemorates (surprise!) Lord Nelson, a British Naval hero who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar, where Nelson also lost his life. He was so well respected that his men did not want to bury him at sea. The problem was that they were 6 weeks from home, and clearly a body cannot make it that long without preservatives.  The men rather ingeniously decided to put their fearless leader in a cask of brandy so he would not decay.  When they got home, though, it is said that about half of the brandy was gone, and the officers found that the men had been drinking the brandy to pay homage to the great man Nelson.  Apparently, to this day when someone is caught drunk in the British Navy, it is called "tapping the admiral." 

Most of the tour was through parks etc.  This was taken towards the end.  LOVE THEM! 

Saturday morning, we headed from London back to Paris.  My dad thought it was appropriate to wear his Pierre Garçon Colts jersey, since garçon is a french word meaning boy.  

Fun Fact #16: Garçon is the only player in the NFL who has a circumflex (the thing under the c) in his name.  

Saturday night, we went to Le Relais de Venise (L'Entrecôte) for dinner.  It came highly recommended by anyone who has ever eaten there, and was absolutely delicious.  It was easily worth the wait for the famed sauce, delicious hand cut fries, and the all around excellent meal! I will be back. 

Sunday, after brunch with my host mother, we explored the Montmartre area and the Latin Quarter.  After a quick dinner in a park, we headed to the Eiffel Tower, where we met for another Fat Tire Bike Tour.  This one was a beautiful  night ride that ended with a boat cruise and red wine on the Seine.  One of our stops had this view of the Notre Dame Cathedral.  

Our tour ended back by the Eiffel Tower.  I like it so much better at night!! Monday we saw the Louvre in the morning and then after my class enjoyed a relaxing afternoon together.  I was just glad to get to see them! 

Fun Fact #17: The Louvre Museum houses over 35,000 pieces of art in 652,300 square feet.  It has a mall in it's basement and was at one time a palace.  No wonder we didn't have time for everything when we went! 

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone is having a good week! 

~SKS

Coming Soon!

I promise this week's blog is coming! Sorry it will be a day (or maybe two) late, but as my PARENTS have been here and I have been busy showing them around and exploring with them, I have not gotten a chance this weekend to sit down and write!  In the meantime, here is a fun fact for you! 


Fun Fact #13: The ipod is masculine in French.  Not a big deal, it would seem.  The Academie Française, the 'protectors of the French language,' actually debated about this for a long time, though.  Eventually, it was decided that it would be masculine, since it's grandparent "le baladeur" or "the walkman" was also masculine.  


More to come (with pictures) soon! 

~SKS

The Return of Routine

The first week that I spent in Paris, I had only one meeting that I had to attend.  As most of my time was free time, I was free to plan my own days and schedule all of the touristy sightseeing I could handle.  Since then, my days have grown progressively more occupied by "routine" activities - things like class, running, homework, and meetings which are not unique to Paris, but a part of student life. This past week marked the completion of that transition, as it was the first week that I had all of my classes.  Additionally, since I am practicing with a team now, track has once again become part of a routine, rather than fitting in whenever I feel like scheduling it on a particular day.  

At first, I felt like I was not able to do or see enough in Paris, since I no longer had big blocks of free time, but by the end of the week, I had come around to my schedule.  I now realize that I can still cross things off my (ever growing) list, but I might just have to choose only one each day, rather than three or four. While the first week of a new schedule is always difficult, eventually things settle down, and you learn to use the free time you still do have.  I am still learning, and since I was in unfamiliar territory this week, I did not have a very productive week as far as sightseeing is concerned, but I can say that I kind of enjoy having a set schedule. Plus, now I know when I can plan things in the future! I guess some things never change- I have always been a "routine oriented" person, and even in Paris, it turns out I take comfort in knowing in advance what I have to do each day.  

Though I didn't do much this week, I did take advantage of the weekend (which starts on Friday for me, as I do not have classes) to get out and explore the city! Turns out, I can go to school and still have time for extracurricular activities.  :)  

Leaving my art history class through the Marly Court at the Louvre on Wednesday night.  

Friday was a beautiful day for a visit to Montmartre and the Basilique du Sacré Coeur, a young church by Parisian standards, but one that has a phenomenal view of the city.  This church has been celebrating Eucharistic Adoration non-stop since August 1st, 1885! 

This weekend was also the Fête des Vendanges, or celebration of the wine harvest in Montmartre, so we got pictures taken with some of the people participating in the ceremonies Friday morning! 

Saturday I visited the Sainte Chapelle with some friends.  The stained glass is absolutely breathtaking.  

Fun Fact #11:  Sainte Chapelle has two levels, the bottom being for lay people, and the top being for the king.  The stained glass is found (logically) in the upper chapel, or the chapel of the king.  Interestingly, the whole building was built to be a storage place elaborate enough to house the Passion Relics that the King possessed, including at that time the Crown of Thorns and portions of the real cross.  *Keep in mind that this is when the relic trade was a big deal. It is said that if you were to combine all of the portions of "real cross" that existed in Europe in the middle ages, you could make over a thousand trees!

Next, we walked though the court in front of the Louvre and through the Tuileries gardens to the Musée de l'Orangerie.  

L'Orangerie houses Claude Monet's Nymphéas, or water lily garden paintings.  They are absolutely huge and are panoramic. This section reminded me of one of the pictures I took when I visited the garden a few weeks ago.  

We went to see La Nouvelle Guerre des Boutons, one of two remakes that is currently in theaters based on a classic French favorite. The movie was really good, and in it one of the characters actually referred to the theater where we were watching it! 

We ended our night at Montmartre, for the fireworks celebrating the wine harvest.  It was quite a good show, especially with the Basilique du Sacré Coeur in the background! 

Fun Fact #12: "Brunch" (yes, they kept the english word) is VERY popular with the french right now.  Many restaurants are now offering brunches, and it seems to be a very chic thing to do. I personally got to go to two this week, one with a good family friend at her hotel, and the other this morning when my host sister, visiting from London, had her friends over so she could see them all! Both were delicious (how could something not be when it involves Nutella?)!

Have a great week! 

~SKS

Positively Paris

I tend to be an optimist, so the following observation may be a mere reflection of that character trait, but I'll share it anyway: The mere act of reminding myself (or others that I am with) that I am/we are in PARIS causes a distinctly positive shift in the mood.  Example:  It has been very hot this week as the "Été Indian," or Indian summer, continues here in Paris.  This is usually not a problem, as it is still pretty pleasant in the shade, and at least we have sun.  However, the metro is NOT air conditioned.  This means that, coming home from class one night, I was standing, sweating, in a stuffy metro car with hundreds of my closest friends. Clearly, this is not the ideal situation, and it was easy for me to start to get a negative attitude... Until I remembered that I was on the metro car because I had just gotten out of class IN THE LOUVRE, and that, really, there are much worse problems to have than being a student coming home from class in a spectacular art museum in Paris. When I put it in that light, it really did not seem like a problem at all, but a privilege.  


Using this logic, sitting on the floor in my history class that was 200 over the room's capacity due to new construction on an 84 degree day with no AC became a cultural experience, sitting in traffic became a good way to gawk at the Notre Dame, and waiting for a group to make a decision turned into time relaxing in a park with friends.  I am not saying that every experience is pleasant, or that this train my thoughts are always on, but I do find myself thinking this way often.  Ultimately, though, I know that absolutely everything I do here is making a memory, and I have total control on my attitude, so I am trying to make positive memories that last a lifetime.  I figure that I will eventually laugh at the memory of even my worst day here, so I'm just skipping ahead, and choosing to be positive. :D 


Sidenote: I am lucky to have been brought up to think optimistically.  In fact, each time I even think of the phrase "be positive"  I hear my mother saying "Be positive: that is my attitude and my blood type." In fact, when I typed that, just now, I felt that I should skype her to verify that my memory of her saying that was correct.  When she answered, I asked: "Mom is B+ your blood type?" and she responded by saying: "Yep.  My blood type and my attitude."  Maybe optimism is genetic... 


Anyway, it should be clear that, while this trick of reminding myself that I am in PARIS has made some unpleasant situations bearable, I have only employed this logic on very rare occasions, since I LOVE IT HERE, and 99.99% of my time here is positively perfect anyway! This week was great because I had a mix of visiting monuments and downtime.  Plus, I got to spend lots of time with friends who were visiting Paris this weekend! 

On Monday, I checked out a Resto U with some friends before heading to Gibert Joseph in the Latin Quarter to buy my books for the semester. I will be reading Molière, Diderot, Crébillon, Chateaubriand, and Marivaux.  While this will probably mean a lot of time spent reading, as it takes me at least 1.5 times as long to read in French as in English, I am willing to bet that the quality of the literature will make it worthwhile.  

Tuesday was a pretty relaxing day, but I thought that everyone would be glad to know that my friend Adrian and I are pretty sure we found the bank upon which J.K. Rowling based Gringotts.  

Wednesday, a friend and I planned a day of sightseeing! We started with the Arènes de Lutèce, a small 1st century arena that is a remnant of the time when Paris was under the Roman Empire.  In the modern day, it was home not to gladiators, but small children playing soccer, young people pick-nicking and old men doing what appeared to be Tai Chi (they are barely visible in the upper right).  

Next, we ventured to the Musée de Cluny, the French National Museum of the Middle Ages. This picture shows the 6th in a series of six tapestries called "The Lady with the Unicorn." In each of the first five, she is shown doing an action that represents one of the five senses.   In the final one, she is in a tent that says "To my only desire." My art history professor actually told me that, next week, we will be discussing this tapestry! 

Fun Fact #8: Apparently, in Europe during the Middle Ages, unicorns were believed to be real.  The Musée de Cluny even has a narwhal tooth on display because in the Middle Ages, someone found it and assumed that (logically) it must be a unicorn horn. 

Leaving the museum, we went to a grocery store and got the appropriate items for a French pick-nick, which we then ate in a park on Île de la Cité. Perfect meal on a day when there was not a cloud in the sky! 

Next, we visited La Conciergerie, which used to be a Capetian Palace before Charles V turned it into the seat of the courts of law.  It is perhaps most famous as the place where Marie Antoinette spent her imprisonment, including her last night before she walked to La Place de La Concorde to be executed on 16 October 1793.   

Leaving the Conciergerie, we walked in the general direction of the Louvre and stumbled upon L'Église de Saint Germain L'Auxerrois, which was gorgeous, though not particularly famous.  

Later, after having completed the "classroom" portion of my art history class at Sweet Briar's office, my class reconvened for the recitation... A visit to the Objets D'Art Exhibit of the Richelieu wing of the Louvre.  This picture features some classmates studying a sculpture of the Virgin Mary with the child Christ.  It was really cool, because class lasted until 9:30 (when the museum closes) this week, so at the end of class instead of a bell, we had approximately 10 people in suits and wearing Louvre employee badges to tell us (in French, English, Spanish and German) that we needed to leave.  Plus, the museum was nearly empty the whole time we were there.  

Thursday was especially fun because I got to meet up with Andrea (center)! She was a senior captain of the Track team at Tufts when I was a freshman, and she spent the last year living in Italy! Now she is touring Europe with her sister and her boyfriend, and their travels this week brought them to Paris, which means that we were reunited! As evidenced by the photo, we were tired after a long afternoon exploring Paris! This was taken in the park behind Notre Dame Cathedral.  

Andrea and I remarked that, despite having seen each other every day during my freshman year, we had not seen each other (except on Skype) since then! Once we were together, though, it really was like no time had passed and we had such fun! We met up again on Friday, when we climbed the Eiffel Tower and then enjoyed a pick-nick underneath it before wandering towards the Luxembourg Gardens, Pantheon, and finally the Latin Quarter for dinner. A busy day, but a good one.  Seeing friends is always wonderful! 

My friend-filled weekend continued on Saturday! Some neighbors/fellow Lutherans/ family friends are in town for about a week, and they arrived on Saturday morning. Since they are apparently immune to jet-lag (if only, right?), they decided to rent a car and drive to Reims, Champagne for a tour of Taittinger Champagne Company's wine caves and they invited me to tag along.  The caves held over 3 million bottles, and represented the "small" traditional-stlye cave.  The other, more modern facility apparently houses more than 19 million bottles! 

After the visit to the Caves, we explored a bit in Reims, found the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims, and enjoyed pastries and caffeinated beverages before the drive home.  It was a great day and good to catch up! I am so blessed to have such great family and friends, and it makes me so happy to see them, especially when we can meet in such an awesome place as Paris! 

An exciting week was capped off by another gorgeous day today! The day was made even better because I was able to join a French track team for the first time today!  It was great to be with a team again, even if it is not my team, and to have a coach instructing us! Plus, who can say no to 3 hours outside on such a great day! 

Fun Fact #9: There are no tracks in the city of Paris where Javelin can be thrown.  All of the tracks in the city have soccer fields in the center to conserve space, and since the turf for all the fields in the city is astroturf, which can easily be damaged, the clubs don't allow Javelin or hammer to be thrown there.  

Bisous! 

~SKS