miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2011

Tuesday November 29 – Working on a Project


                I did not do much today except work on a power point project for my Spanish civilization and culture class over Galicia that I am presenting Thursday.

Monday November 28 – Catching Up on Things


                I had so many problems with my computer, first the Mozilla Firefox crashed, causing my computer to freeze so I shut it down incorrectly. Then I restarted it but the outlet that my computer was in shorted out and it shut off incorrectly again. Then I restarted it again and it froze so I shut it off incorrectly again and then it did that about two more times, so my computer wasted about at least an hour of my time. Finally I was able to work on things after lunch.

lunes, 28 de noviembre de 2011

Sunday November 27 – Leaving Paris


                In the morning Scott, Valarie, Samantha, and I went to the Basílica Sacré Coer, the cool church that overlooks the city that my family and I went to four years ago. The inside is very pretty and there was even a service going on while we were inside, they had a lot of pretty stained glass there. Scott wanted to see this church’s catacombs so Samantha went with him and Valarie did not really want to go so I walked around with her while the other two paid to go inside the catacombs. On our walk we found a tiny but pretty park and just outside the gates it looked like there was a professional French film being made so we watched that scene they were doing for awhile.
                We all met up again and headed back and got crepes again, this time I just got one with chocolate. When we were getting ready to go Kevin discovered that his passport was no longer with him. Luckily, API always carries a copy of everyone’s passport with them and he was able to get his boarding pass. Even more luckily, they went to the lost and found at the airport and his passport was there. He had left his passport on the plane when he got off it the first time and they brought it there so everything turned out well. We landed in Sevilla and took a bus to Granada, on the way I introduced Trevor to many different country artists and I think that he truly likes quite a few songs of country now; I also found out that there were about another four girls that like country music in our API group. This trip I only spent about 46.50 Euros.

Saturday November 26 – Paris Day 3/ Eiffel Tower


                Today was the bus tour and we covered a lot but many of the names of the places I do not remember because they were French. The end of the tour was at Notre Dame where most of us went inside, it was a very nice church and there was a big clear plastic box that you could write a peace message on a piece of paper and put it in the box, I wrote a message and when I put it in the box it landed face up so people could read it. I found it amazing that as I was taking a picture of the box a couple saw my note and read it, I think that is just a small sign from God that He exists because I did not fold my note and I was hoping it would land face up so others could read it and He made it happen.
                Lunch time was just around so a group of us searched for a place to eat crepes. Most of them got a lunch crepe but I got a chocolate, banana, and apple crepe. Afterwards some of them wanted to go to the catacombs, a place where they buried the dead during the plague I was told, but Kathryn, Trevor, Scott, and I wanted to see other things than to pay to see coffins and bones. Trevor and Scott are big fans of the movie Borne Identity and there is a scene with a bridge in Paris called Pont Nuef so we had to go find it and take pictures on it. We found it and did that, there were also girls pretending to be deaf and asking of money. They had a paper that said it was a foundation for the deaf and asked for information about you. We know that they were acting for a fact because Kathryn, being the nice person she is, started to fill out the information but a guy came up to her and told her no and as soon as that guy said that the girl cocked her head back, sighed and walked off because she knew she had been found out. Next we went to a bridge that Kathryn wanted to see named Pont de arts; it was really cool because it was a wooden floor pedestrian bridge that had a bunch of locks on it with names and dates of people that had been there. Our next objective was to get to the Eiffel Tower, on our way there we saw guys doing amazing tricks with Frisbees just for fun and people playing bicycle polo.
                When we arrived to the tower it was still very much light out and we got in line. We took the line for the stairs like my family and I had four years ago. When we got to the next two levels the sun was setting and it was very cold and slightly windy. We quickly got in line to get to the top because we knew it would take a while to get up there. The elevator up was as thrilling as I remembered it especially since I pressed myself against the door, Katheryn and Scott would not look down while we were going up. At the top it was even colder and very windy, we stayed out there as long as we could and walked around all the sides and when we tried to take pictures the clouds rolled in. We then decided it would be a good idea to look around on the top but inside where we were away from wind and cold. There were heaters next to the walls on the inside and we got as close to them as we could while we looked down. We stayed up there for a good 45 minutes and then decided we had spent enough time there. We warmed ourselves in the café on the second level for awhile and then went down to look for food; we spent about two and a half to three hours near the Eiffel Tower.
                For dinner we bought two baguettes, two packages of meat, a wheel of cheese and a chunk of brie cheese, chocolate, and a bottle of wine and went to the hotel to eat it since it was too cold outside. That was my favorite meal that we had in Paris.
                After we went to the red light district to see Moulin Rouge at night from the outside and Melissa and Rita joined us. Melissa thought it would be fun to go into some sex shops and it was interesting for sure. There were things that I did not need nor want to see and I do not know why people would want to own a store like that, it was really gross. One of them that we went into kicked us out because they thought Kathryn was under 18 years old.

Friday November 25 – Paris Day Two/ Le Louvre/ Aphrodite/ Mona Lisa/ Arc de Triumphe


                API went to the Le Louvre, a great museum of art and other cultural items in Paris. While there we saw the glass pyramids that they use for an entrance area, the sculpture of Aphrodite, and the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is not very big, and some people in our group were disappointed with it but I thought it was cool to see since it is so famous. Also, I saw many paintings that I studied in one of my classes at Kansas State University so I was very excited to get to see those ones in person.
                A fairly big group of us left together from Le Louvre and started to head towards the Arc de Triumphe on La avenida de los campos elíseos. This street had many Christmas shops set up along the sidewalk and it made me feel like it was going to be Christmas soon with the lights and the music and the weather that was much colder than Granada. I think I was missing home a little in that moment and I wanted some hot apple cider but all they have is hot wine. Trevor bought some and it is one of the worst things that I have tasted in my life, I would not recommend hot red wine to anyone.
                Our group became smaller along the walk and ended up Trevor, Kathryn, Scott, Samantha, Valarie, Rachel Woods-Robinson, and me that went to the Arc de Triumphe. We could not figure out how to cross to get to it because it is in the center of about six lanes of traffic but we finally found out that we had to go underground. There is only a stair case up and it happens to be a spiral one so I got dizzy and my left ankle was still in a good amount of pain especially since we had been walking all day. The view was incredible at night, the Eiffel Tower was pretty and it had sparkling lights on it and La avenida de los campos elíseos was pretty with all its Christmas lights. We stayed up there for a good amount of time and we even watched the traffic below for a little while because there are not lines in which the cars have to stay, they just weave back and forth as they need. There were all sorts of almost crashes and there were bicyclists that rode in between the cars, I would never do that in my life. When we decided to go down there was some type of military procession that led to the bottom of the arch from the avenue that we took to get there.
                Kathryn had to Skype her family so her and Trevor went back to the hotel while the rest of us headed towards Le Louvre to go see more of it since our tickets were good all day. We took the metro and had a very hard time for some reason figuring out how to get where we wanted to go. We found the train that we needed and go off at the right spot but now could not find our way out. There were many sortie (exits) around but none of them actually led us outside; one even led us to another gate that we needed a ticket for but we just snuck in behind someone that was going in front of us. We took a moment to circle up and have a pep talk not to freak out and that we could find our way out. After about 15 or 20 minutes of searching we finally found our way to the street. We were all so tired that we needed a break and so we went to a café to get a coffee but I did not get anything because it was too expensive. The others said theirs tasted like dish soap so I am really glad I did not get one.
                At about 8:30 we made it to Le Louvre, there is a different feel to it at night. We went to the Egypt section of the museum because we were told it was a cool place. There were a lot of neat things to see and not enough time to see all since we thought it closed at 10:00 but on Fridays it closed at 9:30.
                After we walked around some more to sight see and we found a crepe stand and I bought a Nutella crepe. They were still hungry so we looked for another restaurant and we ate there as well. They girls wanted to go back to the hotel and we wanted to do more but we were all pretty tired, so we went to bed.