" Never say good-bye because good-bye means going away, and going away means forgetting."

Well, this blog post will be my last.... and without pictures too. How lame is that? Turns out I left my cord in France. Blast!

This post is really pointless and I don't know that anyone is even reading this anymore but I will do it for me anyway. Might as well finish what I started.....

Well, I will try to sum up my last few days in France. It wasn't a lot of stuff but it was a good last week. Guillaume invited me to dinner at a French restaurant next to his house to pay me back for helping him with his thesis. It has food from the part of France that he is from. Landais I think it is called... So, that was the plan. In the end, Amelia came with us and we all just paid for ourselves. It worked out so much better that way. I felt better about it anyway.... :). Well, it was a really great experience. I am so glad that I can finally say I have eaten French food! I ate little things here and there but for the most part all the food I ate in France was the kind of things we eat in America.... just better quality :). So, I will just tell you what we ate. First we had the salad. It had duck meat and raw ham in it. It was really good :). Along with the salad there was a little slice of bread with this.... thing on it. I had no idea what it was. Amelia described it to me as "like peanut butter but it's meat." Gross. I wanted to try it though. I was determined to eat everything I got. Well, it turned out to be Foie Gras..... I was still willing to eat it even though I have never in my whole life wanted to. Well, it was disgusting. I honestly was absolutely willing to give it a chance but.... I hated it. After a couple bites I really couldn't eat anymore so I gave it to Amelia and Guillaume to share. Gross. I will never eat it again. I promise you. It tasted so wrong... but anyway.... Next we had Duck (again. It must be a big thing in Landais...) with fries and this filled tomato thing. It was pretty much delicious. I ate every last bit of it. And finally, for dessert we had Creme Brulee. That was obviously delicious. So pretty much it was a good night. I can say that I love French food :)........... (I count the Foie Gras as more of... pigs food.)

I also went to Restaurant L'Entrecote, finally. We went on Wednesday night. I had been babysitting Celine's kids all day so I went straight there. Adeline was right at the front :). Yes! We got in. Well, I have to say that I loved it. It wasn't as French as the Landais restaurant but I loved it. They only have on menu. You get some salad, steak, fries and a dessert (Profiteroles. Ice cream filled choux/cream puffs smothered in chocolate sauce. ). But of course these are all better than you find in America. It was absolutely delicious. I loved every bit of it. As I was eating my dessert, I got to the point where I really believed that one more bite would just.... I thought I was going to puke. Pretty much. I had eaten so much. Luckily I didn't. I was able to finish almost all of it. I think I just got used to being in France where people don't stuff themselves. I wasn't used to it! So anyway.... that was really a fun night. Adeline is really cool.

Hmm.... what else? Saturday, the day before I left, Amelia and I just spent all day together. We were feeling bad because we thought we should do something with her dad.... so we did. We walked up in the Suspended Gardens and then over to Auchan to get some Pastries. We just talked and took pictures and ate pastries. It was a good day. That night Amelia and I went to Estelle's (Amelia's cousin) 18th birthday party. It was fun. I didn't know most of the people, but I had a good time anyway. I had Amelia.

Well, on Sunday was the Primary Program. It all went wonderfully. The kids were so cute. Afterwards it was a time for awkward goodbyes.... I am bad I know. They were though.... I can't deny it. It was so cute though... Amelia brought her camera and was just taking pictures of EVERYTHING the whole day! It was so funny. I got a picture with the bishop. He really is so cool. It was kind of random but... Amelia suggested it. Not me. I am glad though. I now have pictures of all these people! She is just wonderful..... So then..... Marc gave me a Christmas present! I don't know what it is yet... seeing as it isn't Christmas. I am sure it will be just great though. I thought that was nice. Hmmm.... what else? I guess that is it for that. After Church, Guillaume took us home, we had a completely bland goodbye, and I went upstairs to make sure I was all packed. Well, I was planning on just sticking some pajama pants under my dress I had worn to church, and then going like that. Well, my bags were a little overweight. So... Amelia suggested I wear more clothes. So in the end, my outfit was just absolutely ridiculous. It was something to be proud of, really. It is at times like that when I am so grateful that I have a mom who loves me even though she should be ashamed. Haha... oh well. Great. So, Amelia's aunt Veronique took us to the airport. Like I said before, Amelia was taking pictures the whole day. She probably has a thousand of me and was just getting a picture of anything she could. I don't know why she would want to remember that day. I don't like to..... So anyway.... it was good. We said our goodbyes and then I was off. This is what my trip home looked like. 6:20-Fly to London. 8:00-Take a shuttle to other airport. 9:00-Spend the night. Spend the morning. 1:30-Fly to Iceland. 4:55-Fly to seattle. 8:00-Take a shuttle to Yakima. 11:30-Get picked up. So.... needless to say, it was miserable. But.... I am so grateful because I could have so easily got stuck in Iceland (which was a huge stress to me!) but by some miracle I wasn't. I was just praying the whole time that everything would work out, and it did. I was taken care of the whole way. The worst part was spending 16 hours in the airport. I slept a little and ate a little. I guess it was all ok though. Could have been worse..... It was so great to see my family waiting for me! My mommy :). Haha, she bought chocolate milk and eggnog to celebrate. We drank it in the car :). So great.

Well, that is pretty much all the information that anyone would be interested in. I have related all I can remember. I hope it is enough.

I guess this is goodbye..... I'll make it short.

"Merry Christmas, and may God bless us, every one!

"Ah, but remember... faint hearts never won fair lady."

Salutations.

So I've been thinking..... I really have the best life. Sometimes I think things should go one way, and they just don't. I have been getting this slammed in my face night and day the past month it seems like. I really have learned to take it though :). I don't even mind any more. I have learned to just "roll with the punches," as they say... and I am loving it. I realize (Amelia and I have talked about it a lot recently) that we are all such whiners! What is the deal with that anyway?? Life isn't even that bad. In fact, it is really enjoyable. There is always something good that we can find out of the whole thing, and most of the time things turn out better when they don't go how we'd like them to. Really though... life is so good.

Well, this past week we had many magnificent plans which we never did... of course. It looks like it will just be lazy days again this last week :). It is ok though. I am coming back, so I will have opportunities to see it all. Plus, it is nice to just hang out with friends... namely Amelia :). We have way more fun than anyone over 5 should ever have.... If you saw us at night, you would be shocked. Amelia's dad ends up begging us to be quiet and go to bed :). Woops. Oh well. I only have 1 week left! I am entitled to some childish fun I think.....

Well, this is the Pumpkin pie. We gobbled it right up. (Of course we had help from the Guillaume, the students living with us and Amelia's English students... it went pretty fast.) You will notice that it is burned slightly on top. That is because it was making me late for my Solfege class, so I cranked up the heat so it would cook faster :). So there you go. It turned out wonderfully. I think I already told you about it, but I thought I would show you. It looks just like real pumpkin pie, no?

Well, this week it snowed! Apparently it never does that this early, so I thought it was cool. As much as I hate cold and snow, it just made Christmas even more exciting for me. It doesn't feel like Christmas time without snow. At least for me. That is because I am from Utah though....

Well, out of all of our plans, we only got one done. Shopping. Well, even that isn't done. We ended up going at night, and by the time we had come to the spot with good stores, everything was closing. Poo! So, I need to go shopping again this week. I only have bought things for 2 of my family members and nothing else. Blast. But... it ended up working out just fine because after shopping we had planned to look around at the Christmas lights. Well, they were beautiful! It just makes me so happy to see all these Christmas lights everywhere! Well, as we were looking at Christmas lights, I was attracted by a very lighted area. I am so glad I was! There was the "Marché de Noël" going on. It reminded me of when my cousin and I would go sell candy with my Grandma. There were just these cute little shops everywhere covered in lights, and people were drinking hot chocolate and eating waffles, etc. I ended up buying something there actually. It was so fun though. I definitely want to go back. It was a magical place. There was this CUTEST old carousel all covered in lights. I love it! New favorite place. It should be in the North Pole or something. Anyway... needless to say, I wanted to buy ALL of the hot chocolate and waffles. Too bad I didn't even buy one. But... I think Amelia and I will be going back so we can maybe get some then :).

You can't really see all the shops very well, but this is it... kind of :).

This was a "Shoot the Santa" game. Heehee... how terrible. Don't worry, I didn't play it...

I don't know why, of all the things on the Carousel, this is what I got a picture in front of... but there you go. Yes, that is a fake smile. Don't even worry about it...

This is my lion. Of course I had to get a picture of it :). Too bad I didn't stand in front of this one, huh?

These are some Christmas lights. This is the Regent Hotel. The super rich one across the street from the Grand Theatre. This is the rich part of the city. They sure do show it too. They had a lot of lights. It was really beautiful.

Well, we went inside one of the really expensive chocolate shops. Heehee.... I felt really bad. We just looked for 5 seconds and then walked out. THEN I took pictures of the stuff :). We thought we might get in trouble if I did while we were inside.
First of all, there was this Audrey Hepburn picture right outside the door. I had to get a picture of it. They were apparently showing/maybe selling clothes from the 40s to the 80s upstairs... I don't know..... We didn't stick around long. We were obviously outsiders... :)

Don't these just look magical? Macarons! "All the colors of the rainbow!" I still haven't had one...

These were things they had made out of Chocolate. Some of them were pretty impressive. Also, they looked SO GOOD!

I don't know if this was supposed to be like a wedding cake or something.... but I thought it was pretty.

Also, their Christmas trees. I have to admit... they have a lot of cool lights on the streets and buildings, but their Christmas trees are pathetic. I don't even know what they would do if they saw Temple Square lights! Here they just kind of drape the lights on. So lame.... Oh well. They really do have some cool stuff though, so I can't complain.

Well, on Saturday Adeline had offered to take Amelia and I to this really good French Restaurant. It is called Restaurant L'Entrecote. It is really popular. We even got there 15 minutes before it opened and there was already a huge line. We waited and waited. Well, we got ALMOST to the door when the restaurant was full. We decided to come back another day because we didn't want to wait until someone finished eating. It was freezing.... It is ok though. It was a good night anyway....

So, on Sunday Amelia and I played a Christmas song in Sacrament Meeting. It was an arrangement of Greensleeve which is also "What Child Is This?" Neither of us played our best, but... everyone really liked it. Guillaume even said that the "feeling" stayed with him a while after. That is exactly what I was hoping for and that means a lot coming from him. He wouldn't say it if he didn't really mean it. That is why I play music! I love the songs that really impress you. I love being able to make songs do that for people :). It was good. I have said it before and I will say it again.... I LOVE playing with Amelia. She is the easiest person I have ever played with. I think both of us have the exact same musical soul... or something :). We feel the music the exact same way every time! It is so wonderful. I think we were meant to play together :). I don't even feel half as nervous when I play with her. It just seems like the most natural thing to me. I love it :). So anyway, it was really good. I am so glad we got to play it again together. (We played it for our Christmas Program in Utah when she was there.)

Well... after we hung out at her Aunts' house, we went over to Guillaume's for a few minutes to see if he was ok. He seemed pretty down when we saw him at church, so we wanted to go make sure everything was alright. It was :). These were some lights on the way to his house. You can't really see it very well... Amelia was just trying to make the most of me being in a picture... The lights were really awesome though. Just believe it.

Well, on the way home we were talking about chocolate. We had some chocolate at home and we were wanting it. Amelia had remembered that, while she was in Utah, she had tasted some of the "Butterbeer" that my family makes. I know... we are such nerds. We made up our own recipe for Butterbeer... from Harry Potter, yes. If you tasted it though, you would absolutely join in the nerdiness of it all. We (meaning my mom) did an absolutely perfect job. It is the most delicious/fattening thing I have ever tasted. Mmmmm. Well.... on with the story. Amelia remembered tasting it and she also remembered loving it. We decided that we wanted to try to make something like it when we got home. So we did :). It was kind of a white hot chocolate kind of thing, but it was creamier and way more delicious. It was a total success.... I know it just looks like milk in the picture but it wasn't. Just imagine something really delicious. (The things in the middle are these sort of cookie type things. They have raisins and almond paste in them and they are coated with powdered sugar. They are actually really good. I used to never eat raisins either before I came here... now I do. What is going on here? Eggs, raisins..... what next? )

Well, this morning Amelia and I brought breakfast over to Guillaume's again. Well, we did half and half. I had to go help Guillaume with something, and Amelia had to go practice at her aunts' house, so we decided that we would just both go there for breakfast and then do our own things afterwards. It was great. We ended up being almost an hour later than Guillaume had said... woops. It was ok though.... "All's well that ends well." Guillaume has been having me read some papers/articles on Men in Non-traditional occupations ( Nursing, Childcare, Teaching, etc.). They are for his Thesis he is writing. They are in English and the writers were trying to show off how many big words they knew so he had a really hard time reading and understanding them. So, I read them and underlined certain things and then today I went over it with him and explained them. We were doing so good. We were just on a roll. We were separating them into the certain subjects and we were just doing great. Well, right when he was about to say "we're finished" and save it, this old lady from down the hall turns the power off. To the whole building. !!!!!!!! AH!...... it was so depressing. All of that work down the drain. Oh well... we are going to do it again tomorrow.... Hopefully the darned lady won't ruin it again this time....

Well, I better go. I have been working on this post for a few days now. I am just so sick of it..... I can't promise I will post again before I leave. This may be my last one. I plan to make the most of this last week, so I guess we'll see, huh?

à bientôt.

"Well, it's not like being stuck with the dreadful nose you get. One does have a choice to whom one loves."

Hi :)



I figured it was about time to write again. I don't really have that much to report though. My time is drawing to a close, and I am just trying to fit everything in.



So, this first picture was when Amelia and I were going to Stake Conference on Saturday night. I tell you... France has the prettiest sky! I can't even believe it! I just love watching the sun sets... They don't have the bright colors like some sunsets, but it just just so beautiful. It really reminds me of heaven. You know that picture of Jesus' second coming (I think) with all the angels behind him, blowing trumpets, etc? Well, that is what it reminds me of... So pretty. The camera can never take really good pictures of it though. This will have to suffice though. It is still pretty, just not as pretty as in real life.

So, as I mentioned, last weekend was stake conference. We had an adult session on Saturday night, and then we had the big one on Sunday. Amelia and I ended up 1 hour late for the Saturday one... :S. I honestly don't know how it happens. We are late for EVERYTHING. It is ok though, we made up for it on Sunday. We were 30 minutes early, but that is because Guillaume had to go early and we were getting a ride. In fact, I am quite proud of myself. I got ready in 5 minutes. Believe it. I didn't even look that bad.... awesome. I am so cool.

After Stake Conference, we went over to Amelia's Aunts' house. We had dinner and then just sat around and talked for a few hours. I actually really love her family. They are really cool. I love it because, they all talk a lot :). It isn't annoying though. It is fun. It keeps you from falling asleep :). Also, guess what I ate on Sunday? 2 runny eggs. Believe it. I never have in my whole life. As long as I wasn't thinking about what I was eating, it wasn't half bad. (For those of you who don't know... I have a problem with eating eggs. Especially half cooked eggs....) I just dipped some large pieces of Baguette in the yolk and then chewed and swallowed. Not so bad..... I wouldn't eat them every day though. But anyway, this is boring.... So, yes, we talked and talked. Adeline invited Amelia and I to go eat dinner at this restaurant that is apparently REALLY good. It is always full she says. We are going on Saturday. Adeline is so cool. I really like her and she likes me too apparently. She is convinced that I need to live in France. She says I seem more French than American...heehee. She is just thinking of anything that could keep me here... School mostly. I guess we'll see.

Also, this is the new dog that they got. AH! SO CUTE! I cannot tell you all how perfect this dog is. It pretty much potty trained itself in a day. It is the quietest, sweetest dog you have ever seen in your life. You can hold it for hours and it will just sit there. I'm not kidding! This is the most perfect dog you have ever seen! And it is just a puppy.... crazy. They got it for Nadine (Amelia's Grandma. Adeline and Veronique take care of her.) because she really wanted a dog. It is so cute too because it's almost like the dog knows why it is there. It just sits down by Nadine's feet all the time, which is exactly what she wanted. She said she wanted a dog that would follow her everywhere :). She is such a cute old lady. I love her. I just love their family.

Well, Sunday night we came home and planned out the next two weeks. Every day is full. We need to fit everything in before I leave, you know? Then, we were getting ready to watch Little Women (love it) when we both decided we were hungry. Well, what better to have at 9:30 pm than Crepes? Nothing. We made them.....

I was not so good at them.......

She was licking out the batter... heehee. Why is she so cool? I love her!

Best ever.

Delicious. I loved them. We were pretty much out of everything, so we just put jam on them. It was pretty delicious anyway.

Lovely. This is how you look when you are eating crepes. Believe it.

Well, after we ate we watched Little Women. Can I just say, that is the best movie. I love it. For some reason Amelia and I both feel like it is a Christmas movie, so we have been waiting until Christmas time to watch it. Well, Sunday was the day. We finally did and we loved every minute of it. Especially the minutes that were filled with Christian Bale :). Perfect. I would just encourange every one of you to watch it.

Well, this was a funny thing. I was at the tram stop, waiting for the tram to take me to Solfege class, and... I saw this. It was called "Legumes de France" (Vegetables of France). It was a pyramid made of Vegetables. Believe it. Random, I know. They have weird stuff here sometimes.....

These pictures are all from right outside the Music School in Belges. (That is the one I go to.) They are some sort of artwork. I think they are hilarious. I finally took pictures. So funny.

Hmm... well, today Amelia's dad comes back from his Opera trip. It has been a whole month. Which reminds me, Happy December everybody! This morning while eating Croissants and drinking Hot Chocolate, we listened to Christmas music. (The students may or may not have been studying at the time.... and we may or may not have cared... :). ) A perfect morning obviously.

Well, lets see... this Saturday Amelia and I are going to spend the day in the Country. Yes! I have been waiting all this time to see it! Too bad it is winter.... It was actually snowing at one point yesterday. It was also raining though, so it just melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it WAS snowing. I saw it with my own eyes.

Last night, Amelia and I took our newly made Pumpkin Pie and Whipped Cream over to Guillaume's house. We watched Inception while eating Pizza and Pumpkin Pie. Best night ever. So good. Also, the Pumpkin Pie turned out really great :). I think I should make it out of a real pumpking EVERY time. It is so much better! Amelia and I liked it, but Guillaume said, "It really is good, but too sweet for me." That didn't really surprise me though. The French don't like anything too sweet... which is why they eat Yogurt and Fruit for Dessert :). Good thing Amelia is only half French :).

Alright, well... I need to go. Listen to LOTS of Christmas music :).