Ups and downs of the past 2 weeks or so...

It appears that it's harder than I originally thought to update a blog regularly. These past two weeks have been surprisingly eventful, so despite the probable length of the entry, I hope it doesn't bore you too much. Let's go chronologically, shall we?

Well, first thing's first: just before the last weekend of October, my parents flew from Seattle to visit me for about a week here in France. First they stayed in Nantes for a few days, and then - corresponding with my week-long break from school - we took a rental car and headed to Normandy and Paris. Despite my dad being a pilot, neither of my parents had spent any time in France up until this point, so they took the opportunity to cross the big pond, spend some time with their daughter, and soak up some European culture.

My parents and I on the ramparts at the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne in Nantes.

First, since I was still in school, we stuck close to Nantes. My parents stayed in the hotel St. Yves which is pretty close to the Cathedrale de St. Pierre in downtown Nantes. I never did get to see it, but they said that they loved it - not only were the rooms cute and inexpensive, but the man who owned it was very nice and treated them just like house guests. I called the hotel once to get a hold of them, and when I said my name he said "Ah, of course! Would you like to talk to your parents?" If it wasn't so endearing, it might have been creepy. During the few days they were here, I showed mom and dad around a little bit, and gave them a pretty basic tour of the city. Though really, I only had to show them one creperie and one coffee shop and they were hooked on those two, and barely wavered from them. We visited downtown, saw the giant mechanical elephant on the Ile des Machines and went shopping in the Passage Pomeraye.

After Nantes, I took a few extra days off of school to go on a fun little road trip with my parents. First, we drove from Nantes to Normandy, where we stayed at a hotel that was supposedly 'right on the beach', but really ended up being like a 5 minute drive from anything. It was still a very nice hotel, however - I had a lovely little couch/bed all to myself. While in Normandy, we made sure to check out all the historical goodies that are inevitably strewn all over the countryside, including the 360 degree theater that projects a film about the D-Day landings on all the walls surrounding you. We also visited plenty of museums and memorials, and of course the actual landing beaches themselves.

The tank standing in front of the war museum on Omaha Beach.

My favorite place in Normandy, despite being obviously the most depressing, was the American Cemetery. I'm fine with visiting museums and seeing remnants of gun-emplacements and all that, but the cemetery was what really hit home to me the actual cost of war. The weather was absolutely freezing cold when we were there, but we spent a good chunk of time inside the mini-museum before you get to the actual cemetery itself. They showed a lot of films and footage of Eisenhower and the troops, and had some cool artifacts from the war. When you step outside and walk up the path, you get a great view of Omaha beach stretched out in front of you. Then you turn and walk to the actual cemetery where there are a staggering 9,387 American graves, all facing Westwards, towards the United States. Though we got there towards closing time so we didn't have a whole lot of time to walk around amongst the graves - a security guard actually came up to me on a golf cart and told me that we had to leave - it was very humbling to see the vast expanse of white crosses stretched out literally as far as the eye could see. It was also strange, on the second day we visited, to see two men walking around mowing the grass in between the tombstones. I guess those jobs don't typically pop into people's heads, but someone's got to do them...

The design on the flagpole in the cemetery, with rain still clinging to it.

While in Normandy, we stopped for lunch at a very cute hotel, where we ended up talking to the owner as we waited for the kitchen to open. She was very nice and interesting to talk to, and my father ended up hooking me up with a potential job there over the summer, which was far from surprising. I'm going to have to mull it over A LOT before I come up with a final decision, however. Another discovery was my absolute hatred for the meat known as 'andouille'. At first, I was under the impression that it was merely sausage, and so I decided to be semi-adventurous in ordering an "Omlette Normande" which has Camembert cheese, apples and this so-called 'andouille'. Well, it turns out that andouille is closer to actual intestines than it is to any form of sausage that I'm used to, so I spent the remainder of our lunch eying my plate suspiciously, plugging my nose, and feeling sick to my stomach.

Panoramic view of the American Cemetery. This picture is rather small, but if you want a better view, either click on the picture or follow the photobucket link at the bottom of this entry.

After my lovely lunch-time experience, my parents and I packed up and headed to Paris, stopping at one more WWII museum on the way, of course. The drive took about three hours, most of which I spent reading. I was actually reading for a good portion of our trip, but I will explain that later on in this entry. Upon arriving in Paris, I experienced one of the first lows of the past two weeks when I passed out for unknown reasons in our hotel lobby. I can safely say that there was absolutely no alcohol in my system, thank you very much. After a long day of driving and trying to find our hotel, my parents and I had settled in for a nice dinner at the fancy restaurant on the bottom floor of our hotel, and halfway through dinner I started feeling a little bit nauseous. My mom gave me the room key and I tried to quickly make my way back to the room, feeling worse and worse even as I walked. I was standing in front of the elevators when I heard my knees and hands hit the floor and I woke up a few seconds later laying flat on the marble floor. A mixture of embarrassment and worry made me drag myself up, clamber into the elevator and push the "21" button as quickly as possible. When I was more aware of my surroundings (despite the fact that there was ringing in my ears and my vision was filled with white spots), i became aware that there was a frightened looking man standing across from me in the elevator. I'm sure he thought that I was drunk, but I suppose I would've thought so too if I had been in his place. He helped me figure out the right floor, and I eventually made it to my room and went to sleep on my pull-out bed until my parents got back from dinner. I still haven't figured out what was wrong, though in retrospect, it probably had something to do with the fact that the sausage had grossed me out and I didn't really eat anything all day.

My parents in front of the Arc de Triomphe. (Photo courtesy of my mom's camera).

We didn't actually end up doing all that much in Paris, to tell the truth. My parents only had two full days to be there, but we didn't want to play the whole stressed-out, try-to-see-everything-in-one-day tourist gig, so we took it easy. Well, my mom and I did. My dad did some sight-seeing on his own when I hadn't even woken up yet. Our first day, we wandered around Montmartre for a little bit, but the weather was absolutely terrible. It was freezing cold and raining all day, so we only walked around for a bit, went into a restaurant and then turned around and headed back towards our hotel. Being the horrible and spoiled daughter I am, however, I dragged my parents along with me down the Champs Elysees to find a bookstore so I could feed my newest literary addiction. (Again, I'll explain later.) I'm actually glad we did that, however because it would've been sad if they hadn't at least seen the Champs Elysees, and we found the Starbucks that my dad was trying to find throughout our entire trip.

One of my all-time favorite paintings, "St. Sebastian" by Pietro Perugino.

The next day was when my dad did some sight-seeing before I was even out of bed, and my mom and I ended up getting a pretty late start, lounging around our hotel - she was checking her email and I was reading. After we finally got up and got dressed, we headed out to meet my dad at the Louvre where we spent a solid three hours or so walking around and looking at paintings. I'm glad we did though because even though I've been there before, the Louvre is huge and unless you want to spend literally all day there, it takes a few trips to be able to see everything. I'm probably going to go back at least a few more times before I head back to the states. I was glad, at least, that I got to see the Venus de Milo statue this time as I somehow managed to miss it last time.

Me in front of the Venus de Milo, finally!

After Paris, I parted with my parents on a rainy Saturday morning, stumbling groggily out of a cab and into the Montparnasse train station in Paris. It took me a little bit to get tickets, but eventually I got back to Nantes and settled in for a good weekend full of reading. And this is where my newest obsession comes in: Twilight. I know, I know - I probably just lost a lot of respect, but I figure at least I'll be honest about it. Let me explain:

Twilight is the first book in the series, and is followed by New Moon, Eclipse, and finally Breaking Dawn. They follow the story of Bella Swan, a teenager in Forks, WA who falls in love with Edward Cullen, the super-hunk vampire.

During this vacation, I became obsessed with the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer. I had started reading the first book the day before my parents arrived, and the time I got back to Nantes, I was already reading the fourth and final book of the series. Yes, they may be targeted towards a pre-teen audience. Yes, they may be about a girl who falls hopelessly in love with a vampire and has a werewolf for a best friend. Yes, I may have gone a little overboard, taking fewer than 36 hours to read each book, despite being a notoriously slow reader. But you know what? I love them. I haven't been so smitten with a book series since Harry Potter and I guess since those are done with, I had to find another series to cling to. Unfortunately, the movie is coming out while I'm over here in France so the odds of me seeing it in English within the next year are fairly slim. Internet bootlegging notwithstanding, of course. I'm honestly just glad that the Twilight series has rekindled my interest in books in general, seeing as one of my personal goals is to read more. I'm a little depressed now that I've read all of them, but I feel that the reading void that I've been left in will finally drive me to continue with the Harry Potter book that I started reading in French. It's been sitting on my shelf for quite a long time.

The twilight books being the second greatest high-point of the past two weeks, let's get to the lowest point of the past two weeks. Actually, probably the lowest point that I have had in a really long time - the loss of my beloved iPod. If you know me at all, then you've probably noticed that I'm connected to my iPod like it was an IV. I'm not trying to purposely ignore anyone or be rude, but I find it hard to live without music. I'm not only obsessive about collecting music and making playlists to fit any possible mood, but I've also known to freak out if I don't have my iPod with me at all times. I suppose I should've realized that this would eventually lead to trouble, but I was content to live in my music-filled world and ignore possible dangers, merely assuming that people are nice. However, taking a break from reading the last installment in the Twilight series on Monday evening, I decided that I deseperately needed to go to the grocery store, seeing as I had thrown away all my perishable food before I went on vacation with my parents. On the way back from the store, I sat down on the tram and settled in to listen to one of my meticulously created playlists. Throughout the tram ride, there had been a group of young teenagers, probably jr. high kids, wandering up and down the tram but I hadn't thought anything of it, apart from internally smirking at how cool they all thought they were with their hoods all pulled up in an attempt to look like 'thugs'. It wasn't until after they grabbed my iPod right out of my unsuspecting hand and ran through the tram doors and disappeared that I realized that they had been checking out which idiot was holding their iPod in their laps, just itching to be stolen. Not only were my reactions too delayed to have prevented this, but even if I had registered what was going on and tried to chase them, the doors shut too fast and I had my huge bag of groceries nestled in between my knees, preventing me from making any quick movements. I guess in some ways I had it coming, but I've always thought that people were inherently nice, and it never occurred to me that the petty crimes that you see on TV do happen in real life. It's just one of those "it'll never happen to me" circumstances.

In a pathetic attempt to look on the bright side, I had been planning to upgrade to a new 160gig iPod before I came to France, seeing as my music collection has vastly outgrown the 80gig iPod that I grew to know and love as Rupert. I guess in a way, it's better that I lost an iPod I was going to get rid of eventually, as opposed to the brand spankin' new one that I've been dreaming of for so long. Not to mention that this will hopefully make Santa's job a whole lot easier. *hint hint, parents* For right now, I can live without constant music, but eventually, I know I'll reach the breaking point.

The last existing picture of me with my iPod, Rupert. Photo by Mira.

Well, after having bawled my eyes out in my room for a while and lost any scrap of faith in humanity on Monday, my Tuesday was a lot better, for obvious reasons. Just in case you didn't hear, Senator Barack Obama was elected as the next president of the United States. Not only was he elected but he won by a landslide. To quote John McCain, "The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly." I almost felt bad for him, knowing that he realized how much of a landslide it was. Almost.

The mini election party in Daniel's dorm - "Vote for peace!"

Because of the time-difference, it was a lot more difficult to watch the elections here in France. The group of Americans here at Fresche Blanc originally reserved the TV room in the lobby so that we could watch, but we couldnt' find any channels in English and the French channels covering the election were very, very boring. Eventually, a few people decided to go to bed and check the results in the morning. Only the very strongest of us re-grouped and headed to Daniel's dorm to watch CNN's live coverage online. The dorm rooms are tiny, but we packed 8 people in there, and surprisingly only got told once to quiet down, and that was before we all started screaming and clapping at 5am when they finally announced Obama's victory. We all toasted with champagne and we went outside so the boys could have victory cigars before watching the acceptance speech at 6.

Champagne toast for Obama!

After the raucus cheers of joy that erupted when we first heard the announcement, it was almost startling to see the silent state of reverie we all sat in while watching Obama's acceptance speech. Even I was almost moved to tears, and it takes a lot to make me cry. I'm just so happy that this was the first election I got to take part in, to know that my generation actually does care about something enough to make change happen. Now I'm no longer dreading returning home next summer, and I'll finally be able to tell people I'm from America without hanging my head in shame. Can we look forward to the next four to eight years making history, but in a good way? Yes, we can.

Barack Obama, future president of the United States of America.

Well, now that I've written a novel-length entry, I think I've said just about all that I can say for now. Thank you so much for stoppin' by to read about my silly, humdrum life. I hope you enjoy reading these blogs just as much (or more!) as I enjoy writing them. Don't forget to check back in whenever you can, hopefully I'll be getting the hang of updating more frequently.

And, as always, to see more pictures from my adventures, click here.