Ty's misery face.

Misery Scale

Here's how it goes:

Anna: Tyler on a scale of one to ten what's your misery level?"

Tyler: "Eight for sure." (Ty never gets below an eight-depending on the crowd and heat level)

So we got so used to this that Ty started abbreving--"Anna, misery level? I'm at an eight"

This would come to be our most beloved phrase for the next few days.

So our program gave us one free weekend off and of course everyone immediately jet sets. So I choose Nice-in the South of France. I make the plans.

Hostel.

Train.

Boat.

Some how I managed to blow it on all of them.

I have never been away from Hunter for more than three hours-so he and Scotty Scott Scott Scott come to tell me bye and immediately stage one depression sets in. I leave to got to the train station alone at night (mood = afraid & sad).

The French also have this really cool Israeli thing going on where they dress their military up in uniforms and give them automatic weapons to patrol train stations, the Eiffel Tower, etc. So I push my way through the crazies to these armed machine-gunists and ask them where the regional trains are to Nice. They direct me. A few minutes later the same pack is coming back up to me trying (they don't speak English) to tell me the train is cancelled or something and to come with them.

So the armed soldiers take me down this long dark tunnel/alley thing and suddenly my only thought is "Great I fell for it-I'm the dumb tourist who went." But I survived.

The train was cancelled until the next morning. Shoot me in the face.

Friday

Nonetheless we arrive in Nice and it is so pretty! It is a major hub for trains and planes and is the largest city in the South. This of course brings in a lot of rift-raft (r&r, r-squared-however you feel most comfortable saying it). This makes it scary. This also makes Cannes, Antibes, Saint Tropez, Monte Carlo, Ville-sur-France, etc much more ideal locations for a vacation.

We get to the hostel which is in a good location-falling down but good location nonetheless. In hostels everyone sleeps in the same rooms-camp style and shares the bathrooms, etc.

Rasputin checks us in-this should have been a good sign for me to bow out gracefully. If you aren't sure who Rasputin is-only look him up during the daytime and preferably when you're not alone.

I didn't take a picture of the hostel-somethings are better off forgotten.

On the Promenade d'Anglais (Walkway of the English). It was built along the sea during the mid-1800s for English vacationers who came down to the Mediterranean.

This is the major square in Nice which was right down from the hostel. It was super Mediterranean-esque.

Seaside!

The most famous hotel in Nice- Hotel Negresco! Of course it is under renovation during the visit but still so cool to finally see in person. Pretty sure Tyler could have cared less- he saw it and went "misery level rising". For the trip we extended the scale to 15.

On top of a cliff-or going up to the top anyway. Ty is sporting the "Anna head tilt"-so rude. Oh and Tyler is not wearing the man-purse here. Thank goodness. Maybe this is why we didn't take many pictures. Just because we are in Europe that doesn't give us the liberty to further the many French blunders (man purses, manpris (man capris), male shorty shorts, man tight pants, man-any other bad fashion that resembles women clothing).

Top of the cliff overlooking the Bay of Angels.

On the way to this market area that has been open for hundreds of years. whatever. now it's a pick-pocket haven.

Saturday

In the harbor on a boat leaving to go to Saint Tropez for the day. So pretty!

On the boat. We always play the "guess the nationality" game. I am sure there was a boat full of Cubans-I mean the main guy was wearing a Havana hat. Tyler is convinced they were Pakistani. Whatever.

Just saying Cuba is the new thing. I have met a ton of people who all can't wait to go- that's right- to Canada/the Bahamas-then on to Fidel. I have no idea why. All I can't think is omg Che Guevara-who is apparently the new found fashion icon. Yeah it's cool over here to sport Che on the shirt/necklace/pin/etc. D.U.M.B.

This is just one of mine and Ty's "mini-fights". He was cold no wait he couldn't see over the dumb tourists no wait he wants to sit on the bottom deck oh wait Anna I thought you said you were coming down and on and on and on. So I go down to sit with him and immediately am getting splashed by water and salt. After 30 minutes I had a finite layer of sea salt covering me- sick. I was mad at him. This starts our day of high tension- wrong. We had already had a blow up attempting to find the boat.

I cannot blame it all on him. I am not great at directions- I am not great at knowing left from right. By not great I mean- I don't know my left from right. And I get really mean when I get hot. My face starts burning from my acne medicine and I loose all capacity to be civil. True story.

Views along the coast. Ahh I also took a picture of the hospital where Brangelina had their baby. Kind of cool. But France? You know they flew in American doctors.

When Hunter sees these pictures he goes "Oh my gosh you're wearing a bow?" I go "Like oh my gosh don't I always?" shocker. You know you can't really get others to take pictures of you-not safe. So we tried multiple times to get some.

So we ride this boat for 2.5 hours down the coast. We go to:

Nice

Antibes

Cannes

Islands off Cannes

Other Places

Saint Tropez

Guess what big deal houses we saw:

1. SIR Sean Connery

First of all I have been Extreme Elitist Patrol since Thursday night. Please keep this in mind.

2. SIR? Elton John

3. Mercedes-Benz family

4. Chelsea's owner (English soccer team)

5. Gorbachev

6. Tom Selleck

7. Bridget Bardot (just learned who she was)

8. Other Really Big Deals

9. Super bummed they didn't show us Posh and David Beckham's house-you know they have one.

10. Al-Saud family home (Saudi Arabia's royal family) (talk about Elitist) (yeah Elitist is now forever capitalized)

I really had a lot of pictures from St. Tropez but I have no idea where they went. So basically St. Tropez is this small-quintessentially mediterranean village that harbors billionaires. So we get off the boat and have all day here. We start walking to hopefully find a beach but instead find a harbor full of Big Deals. This is no joke. There was gigantic yacht after gigantic yacht. So really unless you are a billionaire yacht owner there is no point in going to Saint Tropez. There are no beaches. We attempt to get to some via the tourist information office. I am convinced they immediately labeled us as category 2 rift-raft and sent us to some secluded beach by way of taxi. Seriously though we get to this "beach" and realize that it bore an awful resemblance to Siberia (also worth wikipedia-ing). Pretty sure that the strip of "hotels and restaurants" was a section of falling town trailer houses selling hamburgers. As I told my mother--pretty sure Posh Spice wasn't there-so there was no reason why I should be.

So after the initial dip of depression we call back the taximan who tells me "I think it better if you speak English" to come and pick us up to take us back to Saint Tropez.

We then spend the rest of the day strolling around looking for Gorb. to come out and play. For some reason all of these yachts were from George Town, Cayman Islands. Long trip. It is pretty cool because all of the yachts have the French flag and their own flag flying. There were lots of Italians. You can see where everyone is from.

There was great shopping however! Not that we did any but ideally it is a shopper's paradise.It was saturday and a lot of shops were closed.

We go back to Nice and meet up with some girls from our program. There is a torrential storm so we go back to our hostel.

Monaco

Sunday, we get to Monaco via the rift-raft train. All the cool kids clearly copter-in, yacht-in, or Benz-in. The tension gets high on my part- Tyler was good. For some reason I was in a bad mood early on. Maybe this was because I woke up to find a couple in the hostel (old couple) in the twin bed (same twin bed) together-ABOVE me? Idk. But for some reason I was terrible for the few hours or so.

First we go to the The Highness Gracious Sovereign King Lord Prince Albert's castle. (This is how they refer to him-everytime & I'm not exaggerating on the adjectives)

Pyongyang.

aka Monaco. This is district with the Prince's palace aka Europe's Most Bald Bachelor instead of Most Eligible Bachelor.Sarcasm aside-it's beautiful! We also had perfect weather. Like 65 and breezy with minimal sunshine.

Then we separate and Ty goes to the aquarium. I couldn't help it. I didn't want to go- I'm not into the aquatic. We meet back up for lunch. We eat with some Brits who dramatically change Tyler's opinion of Brits in general. Before they were all pale and had bad teeth. Now they are cool and maybe he wants to go to England.

We then may or may not have rode around on a little tourist trolley. By may or may have not I mean we most certainly did.

It took us to the three main districts- I have forgotten alllll of their names except Monte Carlo and am too lazy to look them up. But since Monaco is very hilly and by hilly I mean mountainous it was nice not to have to walk.

Apparently EMBB (Europe's Most Bald Bachelor) is really into parks and nature. So this is a seaside park.

The view from the backside of the Palace. This is the mini-harbor with the trillion dollar yachts instead of the main one where the gazaillion dollar ones sit.

After the trolley ride we walk alllll the way back to Monte Carlo. Elitist haven. Seriously.

This is the Casino! Monaco is everything I ever thought it would be. It does not disappoint. At any moment I felt James Bond could appear. Well, him or the Saudi King. Both = the same kind of fascinating.

Hotel de Paris.

It goes like this:

Rolls Royce

Maserati

Aston Martin

12 year old driving a Maserati

Bently

Bently

Endless supply of red Ferraris

Maybach

Mclaren

Pagani Zonda

Rolls again

etc.

and on and on and on

Audi

Benz

Porshe

all three-sorry old news

Monte Carlo is perfectly wonderful. Elitist activity yes but wonderful nonetheless.

Picture of a painting of Princess Grace in front of the Casino.

It was pretty legendary just being here. I thought it was great.

BUT being the political scientists we are- we must conclude that Monaco can also be referred to as Pyongyang- the ominous capital of North Korea. The only place I have seen a leader's picture in EVERY everything is in a Communist dictatorship. . . & Monaco. I am sorry EMBB the free cable doesn't do it for me. Maybe this should be further investigated.

We then had a night train back to Paris. We went from Monaco to Nice then Nice to Paris. Our train was at 9 pm and we weren't scheduled to arrive until 7:45 am. MISERY at its finest.

Apparently we failed to receive the memo that it was the geriatrics train. I mean I know it happens to all of us but maybe they should be supervised. They were seriously out of control the entire time. All we had were chairs that supposedly reclined- but I am not going to use the verb recline- it was more like seats that gave a little more than my mom's wooden chairs. We faced this ALLL night and by night I mean the geriatrics had lights on all night. So it was more like "Anna and Tyler took the day train".

We arrived in Paris in time for Tyler (pronounced by the French-Teeler) to go straight to his class. I on the other hand went home to wash my hair.

I got torrential knots again. I go, "Ty how am I going to get these knots out?" He responds-those aren't knots-those are African dreads".

My mother and Aunt Sharon can directly attest to their severity. Luckily Tyler brushed many of them out so as to leave me a nice poodle-poof for the ride home. He kept saying, "can't you just put that in a pony tail." I responded: "Absolutely not".

FAMOUS last words of John Tyler. . .

In class the next day a girl goes, "So Tyler how was Nice?"

Tyler with a monotone pitch replies: "Too soon."

This seems negative but I can't really convey the difficulty I have when it's just kids trying to survive in the world alone. Like hitting rock bottom in the hostel- I always think it is a larger reflection of my future life. So I get panicky and have to get reassurance from my mother that it's temporary and that just because I experience something so terrifying it doesn't mean I'm subjected to it for my future.

Also I fail to think things through- like oh when I exit the train station theoretically I should know where to go/what to do next. Moves like these make traveling difficult.

So in sum I guess I am going to have to have Marv come with me wherever I go-for the rest of my life.

"Where are they?" -game of the century

See one of my favorite games to play here is the "where are they?" game. Let's be real here-it mostly focuses on where is Miley (yep, Cyrus). So we see a house and we are like, "yeah pretty sure that's Miley's house" ha. But another favorite is with the Bourbon descendants-like all the King Louis' relatives. I mean it's a legitimate question much like the Brady Bunch kids: where are they now?

So we had to get this text (okay as I am typing this this same dumb bird has flown into my room 4 times-it keeps taking stuff off the floor and flying off-this shows you what kind of place I am staying in)

Parisian Park- prettyyy sure TG Hunter forgot to tell us the name.

Anyway one night we went on a guided walking tour through a Parisian park (Hunter as the TG (tour guide)). In our text book for school there are recommended walks. So we end up in this cool park that backs up to the Arc de Triumph and the Champs Elysees.

BUT as we were walking we found what I believe to be one mansion of the current Bourbon descendants (gated and all-which is a big deal for Paris-just saying). This size of house in this arrondissement of Paris means that you are either Miley or a Bourbon. But since the waiting list for this sort of real estate is like 100 years- I've ruled out Miley and placed the Bourbons as the winners.

And this is only part of it- my camera couldn't capture it all

We then walked through the area of town where Big Deal Muslims live--probably the descendants of the Shah of Iran, current King Abdullah of Saudi, Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, and potentially even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran (obviously there was no sign indicating this-but I firmly believe in the potentiality of it).

For safety (my own of course) reasons I did not take pictures. (It's Foch Street or in French Rue de Foch- google map it) (please)

ALSO there is this fabulous pastry shop/restaurant/macaroon capital of the world called Laduree

The logo pic/pictures from their website are all you get because you can't take pictures inside. This is because of all the Big Deals-like Miley that go. SO of course I went- totally bummed because I didn't even find a Spice Girl and they are old news.

But me and Katherine obviously had to buy something since we went inside. So we bought a box of six famous macaroons-I'll probably never eat one again-and by probably won't I mean I will never.

So first of all I am totally dressed down so I'm already intimidated coupled with the fact that I don't speak French--making the potential of my experience being successful low. Me and Katherine go in and she moves through beautifully. I freeze & panic. I have no idea which ones to choose OR how to say them French. So I go by color first and flavor second.

I get:

1. Vanilla (that says vanilla)

2. Chocolate

3. Cherry

4. Raspberry

5. Mint?

6. ROSE PETAL (it looked the prettiest)

We then go to meet up with Hunter, Tyler, and Scott for lunch. We bring the macaroons. So after lunch we proceed to try them all. All is fine until I get to the rose petal- a part of me died inside. it has yet to come back. As Tyler so finely put it- it's poison.

It's like eating perfume- but worse.

The mint- also did something very terrible- I was imagining mint chocolate chip-but negative. I should have envisioned a mint plant- mint leaves made chewy- no lie. still not over it.

So macaroon days are forever gone.

This is week THREE of TEN by the way! During this time we have added a new one to the group-Alex. He's from North Carolina and talks like it. He actually was added earlier but I was not accepting it due to I can't remember now but something rude he kept doing-repetitively.

But none the less he's a ginger. This is really hard for me because at home- I make ginger jokes-weekly.

Ginger Club now formed-

Hunter and Alex teamed up-they are the only ones qualified to join.

So it goes like this: oh hey look it's the ginger club.

It's clearly exclusive. I always tell Hunter he's a risk to marry- a risk that one of the kids might turn out to be one. But with Alex- it's a for sure. No worries- he embraces it.

This picture was taken at Les Invalides. This is where Napoleon's tomb is. For some reason this day was really hard for me to pay attention. Could some one ask Alex why he has to carry a bright red backpack? I feel like that just encourages me to laugh at him.

The next day we make Louvre trip number 2.

Famous words of Hunter: "Yeah Anna just meet us at the Loo Vra". (correctly spelled Louvre). So funny--that's West Virginia for you.

Anyway today was the first day we saw the Mona Lisa- Hunter was slightly disappointed in its small size- I was too. I am not sure what was worse its small size or the large, overwhelming crowd of tourists that seem to never leave it.

The tourist heads actually speak more than the painting- literally dawn to dusk this is what the exhibit looks like.

This Louvre day = lots of play time and little listening time. It was so hot, crowded, and I was overly laughy (if that's a word).

So after 30 minutes of being banged around by tourists (I can't write which kind because it might make me look like a racist of the worst kind and obviously I am in France to experience, mature, and learn new things).

Nonetheless, there was one certain kind of tourist group that kept running us over. Then as we are studying some art Tyler looks at me and is like: Anna-go pull her pony tail. I look over and die laughing- then run after her to take a picture.

I don't know whether to be jealous she has this much hair or sad that the only thing I think is: horse.

We spent a majority of the day taking pictures of odd people rather the subject material of the class. As I would say, I can google that and get a better picture on the internet (i.e. Mona Lisa)-pretty sure I'm 100% right.

This is Hunter and Megan. Megan- hilarious! She's North Carolina too. She helps me survive long museum days.

Megan & Anna

The two days before this I wore my hair up- they kept telling me I looked Asian. so rude.

This is my rule: if I walk into my room from the shower and feel the least bit warm--the hair goes up.

FRIDAYYY!

Friday night was a definite highlight! It was the first night of the World Cup! So we went to the Eiffel Tower and watched France vs. Uruguay on a huge screen.

We brought Hunter's bed blanket ha and all sat together.

Alex, Caitlin, Sarah, Hunter, Lacy, & Scott

Sarah, Hunter, Lacy, & Scotty

VERSAILLES

Saturday was definitely Versailles day. I cannot say I was over joyed about this at first because last time I went I was miserably hot, stuck in rooms with no air and wayyy too many people, had to avoid Jamaicans selling trinkets no one cares about, and did not understand French history.

But I went and it turned about to be so sweet. It was rainy at first but mainly just overcast and cool. The wind was blowing and all signs of heat were gone. It was also kind of embarrassing because I definitely sort of matched it- I wore the sparkly gold leggings that were supposed to be worn the week before but it was too hot. So I had to adjust my outfit schedule. haha.

But we just went at our own pace with a handheld thing that told us history instead of an annoying tour guide. Hence the nerdy strings around some of our necks- basically everyone minus myself.

Please keep noticing how everyone is wearing their audioset strings ha.

Hall of Mirrors! Last time I was here half of it was under construction-so whoop for getting to see it finished! I actually love French history sooo I thought it was great.

oh hey it's Hunter. Another famous Hunter quote: "I mean I feel like all of this sort of looks the same."

BUT the BEST part was after the palace we took a mini-train through the gardens to the Grand and Petit Chateauxs. So Cool.

Apparently even on the grounds the royal families felt the need for a "vacation" home. This is the big chateau- my second favorite. Even Napoleon spent a great deal of time here. I also get that it looks like I have a butterscotch shade of leggings on- in person they definitely fall into the gold category. Maybe I'll never take pictures in them again. ha.

Grand Chateau

MY FAVORITE! Yayyyy! This is Marie Antoinette's Petite Chateau that Louis XVI built just for her. It's def. not petit. And yes, we still had to go through Tylers TTP spill. . . at every stop!

Tyler: "Hey guys true to period? doubtful." haha so funny.

This was also one of my favorite places- it's a mini house for parties! This petite petite house is in the garden behind Marie's house. Here she could open up all the doors and have a party. So cool! Me and Hunter ran around and looked in all the windows--I was wayyy in to it.

I attempted to take a picture through the window- you can kind of see! So pretty!

? Found in the book shop. Idk.

I feel like this is another example of a failed translator. It's so hilarious. You find these places around Paris where clearly someone is clearly trying to be cool and use English but the translator/machine has totally butchered it. One was a restaurant/food shop called "Snack Take Way". hahahaha.

So I am about to leave to go to the South of France/the Rivera/the beach. So yeah I am def. taking like a 12 hour train to get there. So since the French do not have a legitimate FDA like the U.S. I just went to the pharmacy and asked for sleeping pills. They just give them to you (like the U.S. prescription kind). Odd. So anyway I googled them and they are the same kind found in Heath Ledger. What does this mean? I am using them anyway. Hopefully this will be as painless as possible.

Marvin will once again be proud- at my door sits one backpack and one purse. huge, huge accomplishment.

Bonjour tout le monde!

Okay so this phrase is probably a trademark of our trip. It all started when our program leaders would greet us with, "Bonjour tout le monde". So the literal translater/terrible French speaker I am- I translate it as "hello entire world". So now we walk around saying it in a very loud and exaggerated tone. So funny. Our leaders think we are taking it seriously. But clearly we are not. So this is me and Katherine on a boat ride down the Seine River saying "Bonjour tout le monde"!!

Sooo it has been a while since I have written-consider this a good thing. If I was such an active blogger this just might be a reflection on my lack of a social life. Week 2 was such a great week-see it all started with French placement exams. One by one students were marched into humiliation and forced to take an oral exam.

But the funny thing is--that for me there was no pressure. I have finished all my necessary French classes for school credit. So basically I wanted to be in a low Elementary level while all my friends wanted to be in Elementary 3 or Intermediate 1 or 2. So we all go in and I come out laughing. It took me approx. 30 minutes to figure out she wanted my name. Seriously. But the next day-we go to check and some how I got put in Intermediate 1 and all my friends got put at like Elementary 1 or 2. So funnyyy--they really hated me.

Later in the week we went on a boat cruise down the river that divides Paris. It was super sweet- but me and a few friends almost missed it. It is so embarrassing because we got lost in the Metro and had to run for our lives to make it on time. But the embarrassing part is that as we were running to the boat all of the passengers (including all of our program) were standing on the boat watching us run to catch it. SO Tyler decides to video us stragglers.In the front is Hunter and some girls. They are running. . .then you hear Ty go "wait for her" (referring to me) so there I come running, in the back, with my large purse. But what the video doesn't catch is that Katherine screams out my name-so naturally I wave. But all the camera captures is me waving like an idiot. So everyone is hustling to make it and I'm in the back "waving" to everyone. So embarrassing. They keep threatening to post it on Facebook. I'll defriend them if they do.

This is all of us on the boat as we are crossing in front of the Eiffel Tower (Literally I have to keep asking people how to spell Eiffel-like once a week at least)

Three days a week in the afternoons I have my Art and Architecture class. We meet all over Paris like at the Louvre, Orangerie, Musee d'Orsay, Carnalvalet, etc. It is actually really sweet-but sometimes we "observe" a naked statue, painting, etc for multiple sets of ten minutes. So Tyler takes it upon himself to tell us what in the museum is true to period and what isn't. So this is how it works. We see something and 90% of the time he goes "pretty sure that's not true to period." So funny! For instance, Marie Antoinette's lock of hair.

This is Anna & Ty at the Orangerie. We are surrounded by Monet's paintings-while our teacher reads poetry & cries. You can imagine our ability to control our laughter.

For our 2nd excursion they took us to the Loire Valley.

So in French class we had to read this book called La Princesse de Cleves (now I am going to say I did read this but it was most definately only the "version anglais"). It is about the Valois Dynasty and Francois the First. He basically had a mistress, Diane de Poitier, who went on to be the mistress of his son-really inspiring I know. So nonetheless this first chateau is known as the women's chateau because for so many years it was first built, remodeled, and protected by women. It is now privately owned by a family that makes chocolate. It is called CHENONCEAU.

This is it! We kept imagining ourselves as women in huge dresses only because of how hot it was. Tyler kept laughing saying he would have pretended to faint if he was one of them so he could throw himself into the river.

So this is us as we are about to walk into the chateau. I'm just saying that if anyone wants to make a lifelong investment-there are plently of chateaus available in the Loire Valley. This is only if you are not into electricity or indoor plumbing. This is Tyler, Anna, & Katherine.

Notice his shirt: Tyler the day before went with his French friend to Roland Garros/the French Open. He really wanted this "Roland Garros Red" shirt but it only came in small. So he decided to buy it anyway. Of course I had to do the belly shirt check & he clearly failed. He was embarrassed the rest of the day. I frequently catch him in belly shirts & he frequently gets embarrassed about it. So why does he keep doing it?

Now this is Anna & Hunter. It only looks like a nice, serious picture but really we look nothing like this. We always play the "fake push" game. But for some reason I kept deviating and fake pushing him but not catching him. So Tyler is like Anna so you really just "push" him & I was like well yeah. He gets really mad when I do it-esp. on busy streets and the metro tracks ha.

Ty, Anna, & Scott in the gardens at Chenonceau. This was so long ago I have totally forgotten all the jokes of the day. I do remember being hot and being on a 1970's bus for the homeless. The 70's didn't want and now it is more like a death trap. It was citrus yellow and orange with no air-well only warm air coming from somewhere. It was miserable. This is in comparison to the week before where we had Benz buses-I would have opted for two mediums instead of a high and rock bottom.

Yeah I know I have a wow excited look on my face-clearly it is because we are standing in front of the Mistress' bed (Diane). It is the Aggie pic. How odd is it that you embrace that identity when you are away from it. While I'm immersed in it-I run. Idk.

Oh so after this, you know how last time I mentioned the "surpise" that our leaders gave us- well once again they gave us ANOTHER one. Actually it was really really hot all day. As opposed to the previous weekend where I was dying of cold. Well, this time it was wine tasting. Everyone was excited about this except for myself. I am not sure why. Maybe because we were all tired and hot BUT after the wine everyone was buzz happy minus myself since I don't drink. So awkward? maybe a little. It could have been better had I had some bread to eat. But they blew that for me when they added the fermented cheese to all the bread. I take that back- lesser of two evils it was either moldy cheese or some kind of liver paste or something sick on all the bread.

We also went to Leonardo di Vinci's house- it was super cool but I can't really talk about it right now/post a picture. See my flighty teacher told us that he was gay. Apparently Michael Angelo was gay too & maybe they were even gay together. I am still trying to come to terms with this. Obviously as W (George W.) would say, she's a "revisionist historian" for sure. I don't believe her. Truth is I can't post a pic of it because of computer issues. But it was pretty fascinating.

NEXT DAY!

This is day two! at Chambord. This was a chateau built by French kings. Francois the First only used this ONE hunting season. No other kings really used it- such waste. This is the prime example of why I am not in a homestay-castles do not open up rooms for students. So when they do-I will opt for a homestay.

Anna & Tyler. The weather was great! It was super breezzyyyy. This chateau was huge and the boys have coined the phrase that everything in Paris looks the same. So they are not exactly up for in depth touring of these places--so it was a short tour for us.

I can say that the night before we were all so happy because we stayed in a nice hotel where our feet could actually touch the floor (unlike where we live).

We then had another surprise! Row boats in the moat!! So me and Ty get in one. Of course two are supposed to row but I epically failed. I kept crashing into the stone walls and other boats so finally the man in charge was like ma'am that oar is not supposed to come out-let him do it. This is as the oar is out of its holder and swinging around dangerously. I then became the official picture taker.

I tried to take a video to capture the moment. This one is appropriate unlike the last one I couldn't post.

We actually got one more surprise for the day-cookie tasting. haha I was going to buy a box for my "loved ones" but realized I would eat it all by the time I got home. Apparently they are renowned cookies-ttthe French are always claiming something of theirs to be. It's weird but I dislike apricot things and it's like the French love them. I don't think I can even identify one but it seems like all here is pistachio or apricot flavored.

So this was last weekend. I have lived a full week past this and will post it soon. I have to go to bed because tomorrow I have an early date with friends to picnic at Eiffel (us and all the Jamaicans selling rip-off tourist gear). But before I go to bed I am determined to finish the Sound of Music.

Also, it is really cold here again and feels well cold. Zero humidity. On the misery scale I typically stay below a 4. Tyler, who we nick-named deb (for debbie downer) rarely hits a 8. Also, my pet owl that annoys me daily has taken flight. I am currently sleeping past seven.