les photos

I have set up an album on imgur for all of the (good) photos I take in France.
I highly suggest you take a look. It's only viewable from the direct URL.

http://imgur.com/a/Mm6Vg#0

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Feb 3: Paris day 2

7:30

We just woke up in our hotel room and are now trying to organize what we're bringing today, and also go down to breakfast. It doesn't really feel like day 3 already since I left. Everything has just been happening around me the entire time with no breaks. Anyway, nothing has really happened yet today so I don't really know why I'm writing anything yet. 

8:15

Lots of bread at breakfast. If you were gluten free, the only things you could have would have been fruit salad, cereal and cheese and ham. Actually I suppose that's not too bad, but there was no guarantee that the cereal was wheat-free. The pastries were incredible. So fluffy. However, I should try not to indulge too much in the bread here. Also, I think you can just have crêpes with every meal. 

10:15

We are at Sacré coeur right now. It's this incredible church, completely white stone on the top of a huge hill. There are tons of tourists taking pictures (including me). Inside, where you're not allowed to take pictures, there are thousands more of intricate carvings and candles, and lots of ornate gold things. Including an immense mural on the dome of the church using gold paint or something. Also a great view of Paris from the top of the terraced gardens leading up to it, and atmospheric small alleyways all around. Now we get to go see the louvre with a 1 and a 1/2 hour guided tour. This, I'm really excited for, because last time I went to the louvre with my family we didn't actually go inside. 

13:00

We just finished the tour of the louvre. So many gold things. Did you know that a lot of the statues of Greek gods that we have are actually copies by the Romans? They needed the bronze so they melted down all the Greek statues that found. We saw one such copy of a statue of Artemis.  One of the only original Greek statues is of Aphrodite. It was discovered by a farmer in the ground and was then sold to the French government. My guess is the Romans never found it. What else is interesting is that it can now be proven that all (or almost all) Greek statues were painted over completely with vibrant colors, because of wax remnants (I think?) left on the statues. We also saw all the classics, you know, Mona Lisa etc. Personally, I enjoyed the less famous paintings more because there were less people standing around taking pictures, so I could actually see the painting. We only saw a fraction of the entire louvre though, because it is the biggest museum in the world. They still keep adding extensions, even now. The building was originally a fortified castle: the royal residence. You can still walk through the royal bedrooms and such. Only the ceilings are left, however, and they're pretty decorated, especially with pictures of Apollo (representing the Sun King Louis XIV). Then afterwards the king decided to move to Versailles, and the palace was given to the arts to be a museum. Since then extensions have been added so that it is as big as it is today. I gotta say, the louvre is impressive if only for the history if the building, not to mention the thousands of works exhibited there. 

It's amazing how efficient Paris has to be as a city to hold so many things and people all at once.  

We're having lunch at the louvre now, just a pretty average food court. Food from all over the world was available. Then we went shopping.  

17:00

We are heading back to the hotel now, after visiting the Champs Élylées. Not many interesting things to report. We mostly just walked around and looked at 2000€ handbags. There were lots of department stores, and little cafés. I'm starting to feel worn out again now, and my feet are really tired. Tomorrow morning we are leaving by plane or train to get to our host families. Dinner will probably be good again. 

18:20

Heading down for dinner in 40 min. K, no more today. I'm posting this right now. 

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feb 2nd, I guess?

I managed a bit of sleep on the plane, but not much. I'm ok, though. 

We just got out of the Paris airport and have organized ourselves into 2 buses. It's about 1 o'clock here, and four am in Victoria at the moment. 

We haven't actually started touring yet, but the plan for today is lunch at beaubourg museum, then a boat tour on a "mouche" boat on the rivière Seine. I'm looking forward to today, but am starting to feel the effects of jetlag. You know you're disoriented when someone says "last night" and you don't know when they're referring to. 

So the first place we went to was called Flunch (for lunch). It was a fast food/salad bar/ restaurant. What was really interesting about it was that at first, it looked like any other little place on the street corner, but when you went in you went underground into this amazing little haven of wonderfulness. The food was average, but the setting was pretty neat.  

Next we walked to Notre dame and took some pictures. It was really amazing. On the way though, we had to make our way through a gigantic Chinese New Year celebration. I think everyone in Paris was there today. There was even a permanent carousel. 

Notre dame was cool, but we had to move on pretty fast so I didn't have a lot of time to appreciate it. I couldn't get it in one photograph, it was so big. 

We are currently stuck in a huge traffic jam in our tour bus. I have to say, they have no traffic rules here. None at all. We are supposed to go on a river boat next but we might not get there in time (even though we could get there in five minutes if there was no traffic). The driver is having a heated conversation with the driver next to him. He just got out of his car and walked up to us, and I think he was swearing in French but I can't understand any of it. ... Now he's back in his car, still yelling, and... Yes! We made it to the bus lane. The whole bus just cheered and jeered at that car. Ha. 

Anyway, traffic jams aren't fun, but I think we just witnessed some real Latin temperament/culture there. Totally different from Victoria.  And we're out of the traffic jam now. We have gained 200m. On our way. 

...

Ok. That boat ride took about three times longer than expected. It's 7pm now and we are all back in the bus, talking about how every single one of us fell asleep multiple times on that tour (including me). It's dark now, and the Eiffel Tower is all lit up and it looks very pretty and romantic. They also put up Christmas lights that sparked like paparazzi cameras all over the tower.  I think a lot if the boat tour was lost on us though, just because everyone is ready to go to sleep. And we still have to eat dinner at the hotel. We took pictures of the Eiffel Tower and all the old buildings. We are. So. Tired. And we just learned that we have to wake up at seven tomorrow. So no more blogging today. Too tired. 

P. S. The water bottle dilemma: in the bus on the way to the hotel, they gave us plastic water bottles. I opened mine up, and the cap fell and I lost it somewhere on the ground. I wasn't about to go rooting around under the seats (especially since everyone was dead quiet and sleeping), so the way I saw it I had two options: drink all of the water so that I could go to sleep like everyone else, and I forget what the other one was (I'm tired, ok?). So I drank a lot of water while half asleep for 20 minutes. Now I'm at the hotel and I'm really really really extremely tired and I'm going to go eat dinner. I hope it's good. 

Update: diner was amazing. I didn't end up taking any pictures, though. It was chicken, gravy, Mashed potatoes, and cheesy cauliflower and broccoli. They also had a HUGE array of desserts, including crêpes, Nutella, île flottant, and some peachy thing. Ok good night. 

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Toronto, local date/time: Feb 1st, 10pm

I'm starting up this blog again because I'm heading off on another trip: this time an exchange to France. We're spending a couple days in Paris before us OSEF kids from all of Canada split off and go to all of our host families all over France.  I get to take a TGV from Paris :)

So we left Victoria today, and got on a plane to Toronto. I took several beautiful photos of the rockys en-route, and tried to get as much sleep as I could, with some success. It was a pretty uneventful flight, and I was still exhausted from getting up at 4am that morning. 

Well, I was writing that on the plane before take off, but this paragraph is written in the air. We were delayed for 2 hours (sigh) while the plane was de-iced. It was snowing and icy the entire time we were in Toronto. My seat mate, Kelsey, (another OSEF student) has just started watching Cloudy with a Chance of meatballs 2. But I haven't seen it yet so I'm going to try my hardest to ignore it and finish writing this and then get some sleep. 

Anyway, nothing much to report today, just lots of waiting around in an airport, and in airplanes, and contemplating the fact that before we get to our hotel in Paris we won't have really adjusted to any new time zone yet and just finished a travel day of 16 hours. We will also, before the hotel, be visiting Notre Dame, Le Louvre, and 3 more tourist sites as soon as we step off this plane. That'll be fun. It'll be like a challenge: who can stay awake the longest. 

Darn I just looked at the screen next to me. I'm getting spoilers for the animated movie I hope to see sometime, preferably with my family. Maybe they'll have it by the time I get back? (Hint, hint). 

Moving on, I don't know how interesting this is going to be but I'll tell you about my day. 

First we left home at 4:20am, (me, Lise, and Wendy) and arrived at YYJ airport and checked in and checked my gigantic suitcase. It was a couple pounds overweight, but they let it through anyway. I had decorated it the night before with various colors of duct tape, most notably a white tree which resembled the tree if Gondor (maybe Lise could send me the pictures if it from her iPod for me to post?). Other colors included rainbow, red, and blue. 

Kelsey has just informed me that CWACOM 2 is not actually very good and that in fact it is terrible, so apparently I'm not missing anything. 

Back to the story: so, after my bag had been checked, I went through security and said goodbye to Mother and Auntie. Then I met up with all the other tired, zombie kids wearing blue OSEF backpacks (a discussion of the (bad) quality of said backpacks could be an entire post on its own) and found Elsa and Eva. Then we got on the plane. Four hours later, we were in Toronto. The rest is even more boring: we waited for 6 hours in Toronto (and there was this one ad that kept playing with the same annoying little theme music. Every time it came on there was a collective groan), I bought a sandwich, then later some sushi and a chicken caesar wrap. Now I'm on the plane to Paris, very tired, will be going to sleep now. Bye. 

Quick note on airline food: it's not that bad (quite bland, but good considering) only next time try not to run out 

of pasta one seat before mine.

P. S. Some of you might know they're filming Gracepoint in Victoria with David Tennant? Well, now someone's watching the fourth Harry Potter movie, and I just realized that the guy who casts the dark mark at the Quiddich World Cup is played by him. I guess the first time I saw that movie, I'd never seen him as the doctor before, so I didn't recognize him :)

P. S. Photos will be up and running later when I have access to a computer. They will be on Imgur. I'll let you know. There might also be one per post on here, but if you want more go to imgur. 

K we are home

I'm back home and very busy again and happy to be. That was a fun trip and I would do it again, but not for so long this time.

P. S.
To all of you who came out on songhees to welcome us home- thank you so much :)

Four days

I wrote this awhile ago:

We're now in New York off the ship and in only four days we'll be home. And then I'll be really happy. :)
Here's some pictures from the ship (I took some watercolor art classes) (And I made another tricorn hat for Tobin, like the one I made in Denmark).

Devon, then heading home finally

Sorry I haven't posted in forever, but five months is a long time to keep up a blog. Anyway, we're in Barnstaple near Devon in England now and being in England the Olympics are huge and everywhere. Just thought I'd say that.
Anyway, we've been to a horse riding place and a dog and horse fair recently so I'm in a farmish mood. Not to mention we're staying in an old barn converted to a house very damp and heated by fireplaces and similar to freelandsmuseet houses we saw in Denmark. If you want a full update go to my parent's blog:
http://hockingsheadout.blogspot.ca/?m=1