Un beau week-end à Strasourg

I have returned from my weekend in Strasbourg and been greeted by...exactly what I expected...rain and other dreariness. Paris, you are beautiful on a sunny, windy day. But the other 83% of the time, I'd rather watch you from inside a toasty salon du thé with a book, a pastry, and a good cup o' Mariage Frères Marco Polo.
Strasbourg, on the other hand, offered the most beautiful 2 days of spring I've seen since....Florida in January. The French always perk up a bit when I say I'm from Florida. They know Miami. They see pictures in their heads of sandy beaches and sun :P oh if Tallahassee were on the beach.
Anywho, so Andrea (the other EDUCO student going) and I took the TGV from Gare de l'Est Friday afternoon, only a 2 hour ride from Paris to Strasbourg. Very comfy train, cool view on the way there...I actually go to see a bit of what we're learning(or trying to learn) in my archaeology class...saw the little towns all centered around a church (looked it up, this is called "un plan d'enveloppement" the roads kind of make circles around the center of town, and all the houses are grouped closely together centered around the church, which is the highest point architecturally). It completely bores me in class, but is interesting to see.
So when we arrived, the husband from the family she stayed with picked us him (his name was...Jean-something...its always Jean-Luc or Jean-Louis or Jean-Jacques or Jean-anything-you-feel-like-adding). We drove to the house I was staying at and all had dinner together. Jean-whats-his-name told us repeatedly how Alsacian everything we were seeing and tasting was. The wine, which is made unlike other wines in France, but more like wines in the US, is only made from one type of grape. We had a couple very fruity white wines, tasted like apples. He insisted on a different wine with each type of "tarte flambée" that came out of the oven. This also is tradition Alsacian cuisine...a cross between a flour tortilla and a thing pizza crust for the bottom, some type of thick cream sauce, with onions, mushrooms, (ham, bacon), and sometimes cheese, all baked. Very yummy. I was pleased to find that, unlike parisians, these families eat very messily, more than we would in the states. Everything was hands-on, crumbs all over the table, and then we left everything on the table for hours after the meal. We also had a delicious onion/egg tart, salad, and fruit salad. Dinner went till like 10:30, no surprise, and then we went to bed.
The family I stayed with consisted of Brigitte Blum, the mom, Laurent Blum, the dad, and their four children, two of whom are off in Africa (cairo and burkina faso), and the other two, Alphonse, 18, who is about to take his BACs to go to commerce school and apparently is a trouble-maker, and Mila, 8, who makes me want to be that young again so badly! She has all sorts of dreams and interests - she loves learning about other religions, she acts and does a bit of flamenco, she "meditates," she asks all sorts of questions and wants to learn about history and every other subject...and then she watches the simpsons before going to bed, haha. Needless to say, she taught me a good bit of French (and made it clear to me how much I still have to learn) and in exchange I taught her a tiny bit of english (how to say "8 years old," etc.). Oh, and how can I forget, their cute slobbery bulldog Calame.

Saturday: Woke up bright and early, the former being good, the latter not so much. Mila was sure to come knock on my door towake me up. We ate a little petit dej of chinois(think cinn bun and a coffee cake mushed together) and pain au chocolat, tea and bananas. Tea was really the theme of the weekend. Then Brigitte, Mila and I went and took a tour of the island. The centre of Strasbourg is encircled by a river all the way around, and then they have three trams that cross all through the center. We walked all through La Petite France(which apparently used to be a mental hospital for women), and into town. At one point we stopped at a tea shop where Brigitte knows the owner. We sat and had a cup of tea (or more like multiple tiny dishes of tea, she did the whole tea ritual (i dont know if you'd call it a ritual, and I dont know if its chinese or what the origin is, but first she rinsed the leaves, then rinsed our dishes, pouring the water over the head of the frog sitting on the drain-like part of the table. then she poured tea into little flute-like cups, put a small dish on each, then flipped them.). Brigitte was telling me that there are only three places in France that sell fresh tea, rather than the dry stuff we're used to. I wish I could remember the name of the tea we had, but she let us smell three of the different fresh teas, and they smelled amazing and all very different.
So after hearing about the owner's love life problems (she has many guys who work nearby chasing after her, but doesnt seem interested in any of them, lol Brigitte was very insistant when one of them walked in and talked forever, that she had gotten a very bad vibe from him, haha.) we left and kept walking. Eventually the two of them stopped at a library to rest (which apparently was on strike, surprise surprise, so they could only read magazines) and I walked around for another hour, and paying homage to dear Strasbourg, I had a mini-kougelhopf. Not anything spectacular, but a necessary experience I suppose. Pretty though~After that we met up with Laurent who had been out of town with his sick sister :( We were going to have Fish and Chips (they were insistant upon this) but the place had closed, so they had Donër and I had a vegetarian plate with couscous and eggplant and such. yum. EDUCO had told them I was a vegetarian, so they were always very cautious (it was cute) to find meat-free options. After lunch we rested at home, had tea(yep, thats three times today) and chocolate, then Brigitte took me over to the border where we crossed the big boat-like bridge into Germany.
I can't even begin to say how beautiful of a day it was. Sunny, breezy, warm and cool, everything was green, trees everywhere, and in Germany there were a bunch of little residential neighborhoods we walked through, so cute. Brigitte kept saying that she and Mila always pick which houses they want to live in so they can move and she can put Mila in a german school. I would do the same if I were her. I dont remember the name of the town we were in, but she insisted we stop and get ice cream, which was delish. I had karamel and vanille. Havent had ice cream in a cone in forever. What with that and Mila and riding the carousel and all the kids running around, I felt like I was young again...not that I'm about to pull out my walking cane or anything. But, oh yes, forgot about that, Mila had us ride the carousel or "chevaux en bois" (wooden horses) twice~

Sooo after Germany(i feel like i earned some cool points, being able to say i've been there and all, haha), we rested and had dinner. Dinner was the only time I ever saw Alphonse, but his parents werent happy since apparently he was out till around 5AM the night before :-\ He seems like a nice enough kid though. Anyways, they made pasta for dinner with eggplant and tomato sauce, mmm, and grated beets w/balsamic and apples, yum, and they put out a plate of sardines, lol, which I tried for the first time since Dad and I used to eat them when I was little. I always looked forward to that, weirdly enough. I dont have much of a taste for them anymore :P too salty. And then salad, and cheese, and bread, and wine, the works.
After dinner Mila and I watched the Simpsons in French~

Sunday: They are in the "Communauté du Chemin Neuf," the "New Way" community, an ecumenical group (Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, etc) that meets once a month. We met for this month's service at a lutheran church in one of the cités (an area with a lot of housing constructed for the poorer communities). The pastor preached a sermon that infuriated Brigitte. She immediately got up and went outside afterwards to vent...it was interesting to hear how strongly she felt. The sermon was on a parable of these chickens and an eagle that is raised with the chickens and a voyager who comes and tells the eagle that it needs to fly free. And the moral is supposed to be that we need to look up to the sky, up to God and fly freely. But the way the pastor preached it was very much in a victorious, above everyone else sort of flight. Everything about the service actually used a vocabulary full of power-obsessed, almost warlike words - victory, power, destroying, etc, all which have their place in relation to Christ and in the service, but it was all nuanced in a more degrating, hierarchical sort of way. And then Brigitte kept bringing up the relation of the eagle with the Third Reich. And I did agree with her, it was not the type of sermon I want to hear every Sunday morning nor one with which I agreed. But I was just happy to have understood it of course, being that it was my first French church service :-)
Anywho, so we sang a lot (literally before and after anything we did) and had a potluck lunch, and watched a movie about witnessing in the cité, and then we talked for like 20 minutes with someone we didnt know - easy for me :P - and fortunately the person i found was from england, so we had a nice convo. Then we had tea at home on the patio, and then it was train time. All in all a nice weekend, numerous long silences due to the slight(more than slight) language barrier. My french gets worse when I'm around real french people, lol, and my accent becomes atrocious, but it just shows me that I need to work on my vocabulary a LOT. I want to like tape words all over my wall like in preschool with the matching pictures.

I think this post might be long enough now. maybe. Still room for one last picture, this one's a test to see if anyone made it to the bottom, haha, actually, its for katie if she still reads this, an awesome sign I saw:

woot. Three Chevaliers! One for you, one for me, maybe we can auction off the third one and make enough $ to pay for two lovely southern homes and some pretty Scarlett-style dresses~

La Vache Kyri(e)

Haha. That'd be a french/greek/choir joke. I quite enjoyed it. (La Vache Qui Rit [a type of cheese] + Kyrie Eleison... get it? qui rit and kyri...same sound...haha...ok, probably not that funny).

Anyways, that brings me to my happy (procrastinating) subject of the day, le jour de Pâques!! Happy Easter, a day early :D I know I wont have time to post tomorrow, so I thought I'd take a break from my writings on 16th-18th century french cuisine(seriously, ask me anything about french cuisine...i am the master now) and do a little cultural analysis. Or more likely, just talk about what Easter is like here.

Difference #1: Pas de lapin de Pâques. No Easter Bunny. sad story. But fortunately "les cloches," bells ring on easter(after three days of silence in mourning) and drop easter eggs/baskets for all the kiddies. So all over the grocery stores here one can find gold-wrapped chocolate bells, and what more, CHOCOLATE CHICKENS! XD Like said poule ici:

I don't have the heart to break into her. However, being the ovo-vegetarian that I am, her eggs were not off-limits. Unfortunately they don't compare whatsoever to Cadbury eggs. But I would have to cross the English Channel to find those right about now. So I hope you all are eating my share! Apparently I have the Germans to thank for this chocolate chicken...i believe they do have an easter bunny...anywho what sense does an easter bunny make anyways. its all about the chicken that can actually lay the eggs. :P

Difference #2: Un Jour Ferié! So, France may not like to be showy with religion, but it does like to take a break whenever possible. And so, everything in cancelled for Easter monday. No class, everything's closed. Well, I have a meeting w/a professor, but true french people are sitting at home eating large numbers of chocolate chickens.

Difference #3: Okay that'd be it. Really, its very much the same. The services we're having at the American Church in Paris are going to be absolutely gorgeous. I'm beyond excited, except for the getting up at 6:45AM part to be at rehearsal at 8. I'm singing with the choir, and there are trumpet players and handbells in addition to us. We're singing Schubert's Gloria and Kyrie. and the Hallelujah chorus which we sang once today...and its much more difficult than i thought so I hope we'll rehearse it more ><

Happy Easter to everyone!

On one more note, some exciting news, my name was pulled out of a hat by our program to take a weekend trip to Strasbourg, France and spend three days with a family there! I'm so excited! I leave this friday and take a train there.

Gloria in excelsis deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, glorificamus te, adoramus te.

Mange, Prie, Aime

I googled english bookstores in Paris the other day in a desparate sudden urge to read "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don't know if it was because I needed an escape from all the french reading or whether I just really wanted to read this book, but the second I stepped into the "Village Voice" bookstore in the quaint little St. Germain des Pres quartier my day was immediately brighter. Seriously, kid in a candy shop effect. walls and tables and more walls of books -- all in english! and my book was just sitting there in the middle of one of the tables, calling me :-). Needless to say, 2 days later I'm already 1/3 through it and trying to read it as slowly as possible a) because its like the perfect book for my life right now...I identify almost too much with this woman...and b) because if I finish it now, I'm going to be compelled to buy another book and the bank account is not gonna be happy about that....I mean, 13 euro for a paperback book is pushing it, its only 8 pounds in the UK....I'm sure its like $13 in the U.S. So not fair :P

Anyways, so my plan for today was to go check out the Club Quartier Latin, a gym nearby that has all sorts of fitness classes, machines, a pool, etc. and a "formule fitness" (a pass to access all that) for 15 euro/day. Probably the cheapest in paris, and I'm dying for a gym. So I force myself up at 8:30...ok...9 on a Saturday morning, take the metro like 6 stops up, and get off at Maubert Mutualité. Immediately I run into the most amazing weekend morning fruit/veggie/meat/cheese/homemade goods market ever. >< maybe not ever, but since I havent really visited one, and I realize this right this moment, since I got to Paris, I feel a sudden urge to browse. I force myself past it though and come upon the gym...pause....think about not walking in and just taking off on a random walk (i wonder if the french word "randonnée which means a hike/ride/trek has anything to do with the english word random...doubtful, but close~) around paris....pause again and force self to enter. It looks a little bit like a school gym and is humid/sweaty inside. Seems reasonable enough, but I miss my american air-conditioned, carpeted, sleek-looking gym that makes you want to get fit....a peach-tiled old high school gym does not motivate me whatsoever. Anywho, so I walk in, get in line, make a sudden to decision to flee, pretend I just came in to grab a copy of "Fusac" which has all the classifieds in it....and I peace. The weather outside is SO perfect today: breezy, sunny and 60's. The perfect day for a promenade in Paris. And for the first time since I've been here, I really felt like I loved this city. Not to say that I haven't enjoyed Paris and all its culture, but Saturday Morning Paris is what I've been missing. I will sleep till noon no longer.

So I walked a little past, then back-tracked to the open-air market. Here's the evidence:

Grapefruits [pomelos roses] - sorry Florida, I've betrayed you, these are Moroccan grapefruits, 3 for 2 euro. Can't beat that here.
Ground Nutmeg [muscade moulue] - so expensive here, usually 5 euro at least, but 2 euro at the marché!
a Jazz Apple [pomme jazz] - one of my faves, up there with Pink Ladys, which are popular here, but expensive
Cashews [noix Cajou] - just recently discovered I like these...the guy who sold them kept making fun of me because i kept asking for less than he was giving me :P
a Red Pepper [poivron rouge] - a great deal here, cheaper than in the states.

So after that stop I wandered. and wandered. and wandered. I had a general idea of where I was - walked past notre dame, saint-chapelle, crossed the seine, saw loads of tourists (i guess tourist season has begun), and made a big circle all the way around to Hôtel de Ville and to the Bastille. Once I found Hôtel de Ville I began purposefully heading into le Marais where I found another open-air market to wander through (and a humorous boucher (butcher) singing about "pommes de terre" or potatoes to the tune of Old MacDonald, haha, and then headed towards the amazing patisseries in the St. Paul area.

I suppose all of this wandering was inspired partially by Elizabeth Gilbert's talk of indulging in all of italy, foodwise, and partially by my recent frequenting of this blog: The Girl Who Ate Everything which has lovely photos of Miss Manon and Aux Désirs de Manon and the Atelier du Chocolat, all located in le Marais right near Charles V where I have one of my classes. I decided to follow in her footsteps and indulge in the wonderful delights that I've been avoiding for about a month now.

Step 1: Rid my skepticism of everything pistachio flavored. I love pistachios, but doubted forever that pistachio ice cream, pistachio macarons, and pistachio pastries could taste at all good. Wrongo. This lovely roulé chocolat pistache was amazing and amazingly rich, like eating solid pistachio chocolate sugar butter in airy flaky form:

Step 2: Follow EDUCO staff member Valérie's instructions and go get real chocolate from a chocolaterie. Good choice #2. I didnt even look at anything else and went right for the feuilleté blanc - white chocolate covered milk chocolate praline. Like a creamy hazelnut crunch bar on the inside. If I might borrow from rachael ray, yummo.

Step 3: Recharge phone minutes, yeah, not too exciting, but it had to be done.

Step 4: Wander around for another hour, make my way home having only been unable to resist the pistachio thingy, take pictures of all food, then devour said pistachio thingy and the chocolate. Wait an hour. Get request from Sophie to go get falafel....think a second about the morning's gluttony. Go for the falafel anyways. Here's to being in Paris!

Needless to say I haven't quite passed the "Eat" section of the book. But I'm praying that I haven't gained 5 pounds by tomorrow, and I loved every second of today. (and I did walk for three hours...maybe the french women don't get fat theory comes into play here? maybe?)

I-should-be-doing-work-related vocab of the day: s'ensevelir = to bury oneself (dans un travail/in one's work)

Tutorat

Not even 24 hours after my last entry, but I was pleasantly surprised with my day today and wanted to note it. I had signed up for my first "tutorat de français" at our EDUCO center. They have French tutoring session almost every day of the week, usually for people to get help with grammar for papers. I didn't really have much of any paper written, but I had forced myself to sign up for one in hopes of motivating myself to get on these papers. That didn't happen all too much, but I ended up writing down a bunch of little conversation question, mainly things like slang (how to say "i know what you mean" or "really?" or "that makes sense" properly) and differences between 2 french words that have one english equivalent (noir and foncé both mean "dark," etc.). We had some funny/interesting conversations about figuring out the french equivalents of all those little expressions and all the 'meaningless,' casual, and oh-so-necessary words in daily conversation. i.e. "like" "ya know?" "whatev" etc.
In french they say "bon alors" (literally "good then"), "eh bien" or "eh ben" and little things like that over and over...as well as saying"donc" (therefore), "alors," and lots of other little connector words like that a lot.

Anyways, enough with the mini-french lesson. I was taking notes of every little thing she said :-P I've noticed these are the things that are gonna help me transition from stuttering not-at-all fluent french student to somewhat natural. And then the even more helpful part of the session was me asking her on a whim about the structure of the introduction of a french paper. The french system is sooo concerned with this exact structure, whereas I feel like my papers are normally much more relaxed, as long as there's a solid thesis statement and some paragraph organization :P Here they want, as she tells me, a soft "call-in sentence" which doesn't really talk about your specific subject, then you begin to approach it, then you have a "problematique" which is 99% of the time a question, then you specifically and clearly outline your plan by saying what you're going to discuss first, second and third. And you usually say "first...., then......., lastly....." and then you can start writing your paper :P Then the conclusion almost always has to end with some sort of suggestion that this is only one way to think about the subject, at which point you suggest another way to leave the reader intrigued and thinking, haha.

On another note, what is it about Cheerios that is supposed to help kids grow so much?! My box of Cheerios "3 Céréales et Miel" has pictures of little children all over it and repeats like 5 times "Ce produit convient particulièrement aux enfants et adolescents en période de croissance." (This product is particularly fitting for children and growing teens.) Must be all that good "sirop de glucose" -- so the kid has energy at school and then crashes when they get home. Good plan.
I've become completely under the impression that the French have no clue whatsoever when it comes to health. Not that America is oh-so-great, but I think we're becoming more and more health conscious and knowledgeable about it while the french try to trick themselves into believing that chocolatey breakfast cereals(which is all they sell here) and white processed baguettes are health staples. Seriously, one of their chocked with chocolate cereals is called "Fitness."
On the other hand, I had a teary-eyed moment today when I realized how much I'm gonna miss all my food being in french in a couple months. All of the descriptions are just funnier in french!

Élevée

I had a partially tough weekend -- a situation that I wasn't happy with, something I havent dealt with before, but can't really explain. It's taken me a few days to get over it and its something I've prayed about a lot. It's funny the things you learn about yourself when you least expect it, and the changes that happen when you least expect them. I didn't realize how close and how far from God I could feel within such a short period of time, but through my screw-ups and my realisations I'm finding I have a whole new relationship with Him. Thank you Paris. This isn't what I expected at all coming here, but certain moments make me realize what a blessing this developping change in my life is.

My young adult group here is a huge blessing. We had a pizza and discussion night tonight. Another thing I've been praying about is my desire to speak up/participate in the conversations we have. I rarely feel very comfortable talking about my beliefs/thoughts/etc on the Bible, Christ, God, etc. I think I'm often afraid of what people will think/being 'wrong'/etc which when I say that aloud it makes me realize how silly that is. Anyways, today I felt a new confidence in speaking my thoughts and it was very relieving and cool for me to hear people respond and affirm them and to really be a part of the discussion. I guess I just need that reassurance to know that they're valid. Now that I have that, hopefully I'll be more talkative in future discussions.

Our discussion tonight was on truth and what we consider "lies." It stemmed from the passage from John where Jesus says "I am the..truth" and the passage a couple chapters later where Pontius Pilate asks "What is truth?" and Jesus doesn't respond.

Our pizza nights (every other tuesday is pizza, every other is bible study) always consist of a few questions regarding contemporary Christian life, and what it means to be and live as a Christian now. So we split into smaller groups and discuss the questions, of which tonights were something like:
-Do you ever lie? Are these small or big lies or both?
-Is it wrong to tell lies, even when it's to protect someone, save a life, etc?
-Can you lie with your actions?
-(there was another really good question here, can't remember it) What did Jesus mean when he said "I am the Truth"?

It was interesting because I thought we kept getting so caught up in this idea of telling lies whereas I felt there is so much more in lying as an action. Do I ever lie? Of course. Everyone lies. Despite the commandment not to lie (or bear false witness), we all lie. But what is the real importance of this kind of lying? Is it really those little "oh that dress looks great on you" when you think it should be ripped to shreds or the "yeah! i'd love to meet up sometime" when you'd rather just not see the person again? I feel like it has to be something more than these little lies, rather lying with the knowledge or intent of hurting, doing wrong, etc. When I think about it, it all seems like a little connect-the-dots logic puzzle in my head. Lying is the opposite of truth. Since Jesus is the Truth, anything that goes against Him is a lie. Jesus embodied the truth, it was through his actions and his words and his life that he was and is the truth. And so we must strive to live truly, as we strive to live like Jesus. But of course, we fall short of the truth, and thus through our actions we lie. I think these lies are more relevant to the changes I want to make in learning to live like Jesus, rather than worrying about the "little white lies" as we call them.
I'm curious to know what the actual connotation of the commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is...pre-translation (or if there is one). It seems to be ambiguous as to whether it refers to words or actions.
And it also seems to me that we can lie with our words but be truthful with our actions or our intentions. This seems like the difference between Rahab who lies about keeping the spies in her house to spare their lives and thus is spared in return, and Ananias and Sapphira who lie and are killed because of it.
Anyways, just a stream of consciousness of my thoughts which I thought was more relevant to my life now in Paris than any recount of the classwork that I'm avoiding or the dinners out with friends, though those are fun too. Especially with Holy Week and Easter approaching, these are more the thoughts on my mind than those of exploring the city. Though I will say, for my Dad's reassurance (and he does ask me bi-weekly) that I noticed today a marked improvement in my comprehension of the language since when I first arrived here. And I do get asked at least once a day for directions and can usually help about half the time :-P

A couple pictures to balance all of the words:

Paris and its macaron-wonderness


Out for falafel:

Des Trucs Que Les Blancs Aiment.

A bit of study abroad blog humor
So ironic yet so true 80% of the time. Fortunately, I'm hoping for a little more than that out of this. Maybe I'm setting my expectations too high, haha.

Most of that blog is quite humorous and poignant at times...then some of it is pushing it a little, but I'll forgive them~
I also quite enjoy #75: Threatening to move to Canada and of course, #45 Kitchen gadgets, because yes, that fully describes me in 10 years, minus the part about not using the kitchenaid, because i will use it daily.

Once again one load of laundry cost me $8 today. That's my load for the month. =_=

Rugby et Gastronomie

I've been avoiding posting on here for fear that it would become a gripe fest. Or more likely, a "grippe" fest. Grippe = the flu in french. Though, I'm not even sure if that's either. Either way, I'm sick somehow and it ain't fun. Headaches, backaches and whatnot. But I'll spare you all that. Needless to say I've been fairly lazy this weekend. But I will share a couple highlights:

Le Salon de l'agriculture


Some of our program signed up and went to the "Salon de l'agriculture" in Paris on Friday. It's basically a huge state fair with tons of farm animals and people trying to sell their food products(wine, cheese, produce, etc) while giving free samples :D Yes, that was the best part, free samples. By the time we left, we were incredibly stuffed from all the cheese, apples, chocolate truffles, and ice cream. Oh, and free beer.



But the best part, as you can see in the above pictures(rotate head to see, i was too lazy to fix it), was the book I won! :D Okay, its mostly thanks to that man sitting next to me in the picture. Kate and I were tasting some wine nearby this area at the Salon andwe started talking to that guy, he told us all about bordeaux wines. Then those two women on the stage with us in the pic started asking for volunteers for a "game show." He volunteered himself, but they told him he needed a partner. And as you can see, that turned out to be me, despite my hesitations. He told them I was American, and everyone got all excited that an american was playing the french agriculture quiz game, haha. So, they asked us 9 questions total, in sections of 3, and after each 3 you got right, you won a prize. We made it through the first 3, I only knew the one about 'how many departments are there in france?' But he knew everything(he's a fisherman), and he would tell me and then let me answer, lol. So then we won little cans of gourmet duck...something....dunno. Then we got the next three right...and the next three, yay! we won! I only knew one question that he didn't which was the year in which the Salon de l'agriculture had started (1962), and I only knew it because I had asked Valérie, one of our program's staff, earlier. :-P But yay! So we each won of these huge books, 44 euro a piece (66 dollars!) on rugby and gastronomy, heh. It's an interesting collection of pictures, facts, and recipes~

And the other little tidbit is that, despite my knowledge prior to yesterday, this week was Paris Fashion Week. Snazziness. So my friend and I went down to the Tour Eiffel where one of the runway was set-up closeby. We stood outside the Lanvin fashion show for like 45 minutes before it started...oh yeah, and we saw Kanye West. haha. Good times.