It’s 2 o’clock in the morning… in 6 hours Gretchen and I will be reunited for the first time since May 18. Unfortunately, our counterpart Alpha the fish will not be joining us on the upcoming adventure, as he went belly up a few days ago. He was with Gretchen at the time of his passing, and according the text messages she sent me, his body was ‘donated to science’ (aka, she dissected him… because she is a future vet and that’s apparently what future vets do.)
In other news, I am not finished packing for our trip, and I am leaving in 3 hours. (This should come as a surprise to no one.) However, I am SO PUMPED to go help Gretch move into her new home for the next few years while she is vet school, and I’m even more excited to see many, many friends in the process. I’m sure the next 10 days will be filled with many blog worthy moments so we will do our best to keep you informed.
Alright… time for bed. The packing will get finished in the morning. Or it won’t. Either way I get to see my best friend in 6 hours, and I can’t wait!
The smell of campfire smoke has once again permeated West 392a. However, it is mixed with spring air, so I am definitely not complaining. Though I know the weather is bound to get cold again before spring actually arrives, this weekend tease was enough to raise my spirits quite a bit. (side note… I wrote this on Monday… now that I am posting in on Wednesday, it is snowing again. I’m hanging on to the blissful memories of warm weather now, and repeating over and over again that it WILL come back eventually.) Anyway, our friends decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather as much as we could, and Saturday was spent hiking at McConnell’s Mill. I failed to think about the fact that the sun would not be shining in the caves and they would therefore still be icy, but it just added an extra challenge… and some extra bruises. Soon after we got there I thought it would be hilarious to break two icicles off the side of a cave and refer to them as my ‘ice daggers.’ (In case there was any question as to my age… I’m thinking 5 is a good answer.) As I charged into the caves with a ‘dagger’ in each hand, what I assumed to be a puddle was actually a sheet of pure ice. I pretty much face planted and my ice daggers shattered into a zillion pieces. This may be the reason for the discrepancy in bruise number between Gretch and myself, ha.
After hiking around and climbing in caves I was near certain I would not fit through, we headed up to a field and laid on rocks in the sun. I had to laugh at the fact that I went from wearing a coat in an ice coated cave to wearing a t-shirt in the sun within 10 minutes. I am so thankful for warm weather and friends to enjoy it with.
Adventuring near the field led to the discovery of a dead deer skeleton, and a large drain pipe jutting out of the side of a hill. Since we are easily amused, these both provided great entertainment.
The guys ripped the antlers off, and then Jesse used one of them to ‘hook the rib’ and throw the skeleton into a large puddle nearby. Because, why wouldn’t you do that? (Don’t answer that.)
After determining that, even if we all linked up, we would not be able to fit all the way through the drain pipe, we settled for simply throwing rocks toward the opening from 60 feet away. (If you know me, you know I cannot throw rocks, or anything else for that matter, 60 feet. So I did not exactly participate in this activity, beyond praying that someone would just finally make it so we could do something else, ha.)
Note the pipe they were aiming for circled in red in the upper right area. After more than 20 minutes of trying, everyone finally gave up, and we moved on.
Thanks to Tim for taking and sending me the pictures from McConnell’s!
Sunday’s enjoyment of the weather came in the form of bible study outside and then a walk to dairy queen. Later on in the evening we took the first waterfall trip of 2013 and enjoyed a bonfire.
Shannon found a giant marshmallow in the foods while looking for firewood… Plugge was not about to try it.
Yes, those are the antlers from the deer carcass. “I just want to be a full deer!”
The fire started as a small teepee, which eventually collapsed and turned into a log cabin. Which eventually became a teepee again once more wood was put on. Which form of fire building is better seems to be a much debated issue.
Someone roasted the marshmallow and then Peach tried some of it…
Overall, it was a wonderful weekend, and makes me so excited for when spring decides to show up for real. Hopefully that will be sooner than later, because I am soooo over the cold.
A common misconception is that Gretchen and I have been roommates all 4 years of college. In actuality we weren’t roommates until sophomore year, and in fact weren’t even really friends during freshman year. We refer to this as the year of missed opportunities. Actually, that is a complete lie… I just made that phrase up 30 seconds ago. But anyway… here is what I believe to be the first picture of Gretchen and I in existence:
What a gem. This was taken at the chem show freshman year, just moments after our group’s experiment (which was flawless during rehearsal) majorly failed and we were left awkwardly standing on the stage unsure of what to do. The goggles, beakers, and looks of complete confusion actually seem quite fitting to our college experience. I would also like to point out the fact that we are matching… another uncanny representation of our shared experience here. Although, this particular day the matching was not an accident, as it is every other time.
So, now we’re ‘Back and Better Than Ever’ and based on this picture, I’d say that’s a really good thing.
Things have been relatively normal around here for the past month or so (can you believe that?) so we haven’t had much to blog about. After several nights of willing ourselves to stay up past 8pm, and doing this around 7: we overcame the jetlag and moved on with life. The most exciting thing that’s happened has probably been the time I accidentally knocked the shower curtain down and it took everyone in our suite to get the darn thing up again.
The semester is flying by and the 100 days until graduation mark has come and gone. We’re dealing with the impending separation like true adults- pretending it’s not happening and attempting to never talk about it. Denial is working for us for the time being.
This past weekend Gretchen and I each had separate adventures- me in Pittsburgh and Gretch at home. Keeping with the “being adults” theme, I got my ears pierced (I may have panicked slightly before it actually happened…) and she risked her life ice climbing. I think it’s clear who the more adventurous roomie is. (ME.) 😉
We’ll part ways again in a few hours for ‘spring break’ so who knows what shenanigans will go down. Hopefully we’ll have much more to post when we get back.
Tim has graciously agreed to guest post and share another perspective on our trip to France… enjoy!
I am honored to be able to guest post on this blog. As you may or may not already know, I have also had the wonderful opportunity to go on the trip to France as a fulfillment of the Modern Civilization intercession course. The past two weeks have been a series of laughs, riddles, inside jokes, and adventure. After Mary Grace told me that I could guest post, I have been contemplating how to write it, so here it goes.
To start off, I am glad that I was able to go on the France trip with Gretchen and MG. It was an amazing time to be able to see all of the places we traveled to as well as explore some of France on our own time. Even in the 12 days we had, I feel like we made hundreds of memories and took even more pictures. From card games at the study center to snowball fights at the Louvre, the trip kept getting better and better.
But along with all of the fun memories came some embarrassing and crazy ones also. As MG alluded to in a previous post one of the embarrassing moments happened at the cathedral in Angers when MG and Gretchen tried to mimic a statue- unsuccessfully, as the video below shows.
Another time earlier, while we were eating at a fine creperie with the whole group we discovered that the dessert candy wrappers were slightly transparent. This caused us to use them like monocles, which probably looked pretty crazy to the other French people.
Then in Guerande when we were touring the wall around the city there was some controversy over the color of MG’s eyes. This resulted in some serious picture taking, which looked pretty funny, although I’m not sure if it even resolved the debate.
Then when I tried to take a picture of Brendon, MG decided to randomly put her face in front of my camera which turned into a blurred close-up of her.
While we were waiting for food at a restaurant, Gretchen decided to test out her skills with a knife by using one to solve a word search on the place mat at the table.
This next picture is a good representation of an accumulation of habits we had in France. First off, it is the cartoon setting on my phone camera which I was testing out, which is why it looks the way it does. Yet it still captures how we always took pictures of any food/drink we ordered, and how we always took forever to get the exact change to effectively split the bill, since French restaurants didn’t do it for us.
Then there’s the time when we were just bored on an escalator and decided to pose for the mirror on the side.
There were also some nice and relaxing times, like when we acted out the royal history between the region of Brittany and France.
And when we marveled at the Eiffel Tower as it glowed in the snowfall at night.
Or when we were just drawing some pictures on the bus in between cities. The first is a portrayal of a small town at night, and the other is a sunset. Which picture is better? Guess who drew the better picture?
So, I hope I was able to partially capture some of our fun, crazy, and embarrassing pictures and videos on the journey. Gretchen and MG have already done a fantastic job in showing a majority of the highlights, but I hope this helps to add a different side to things. So, as the French would say, “Au revoir” or “Adieu.”
After a looooong day of travel we safely made it back to the USA. Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days of our trip. We wrote them, but had no internet to post them. They are all posted now though, so check them out below! Paris was definitely the best part of our time aboard, so you don’t want to miss them!
Well, as Gretchen said, yesterday was pretty much the most awesome day ever. I knew we wouldn’t be able to top it, but today was pretty darn great.
We did lots of sight seeing around Paris, including the Panthéon, Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, the Grand Army Museum, the Arch of Triumph, St. Chapelle’s chapel, and a few other things. We also did some shopping.
Pillars on the outside of the Panthéon
So pretty inside!
Foucault’s pendulum
Rousseau’s tomb in the crypts at the Panthéon
Napoleon’s tomb
Part of the Grand Army museum
Les Invalides
Arch of Triumph
Eternal Flame
St. Chapelle chapel
Stunningly beautiful
All of that was great, but to be honest… the best parts of the day were meal times. At lunch we went to a small café near the Grand Army Museum where both Gretchen and I had delicious chicken, mozzarella and tomato sandwiches. Dave chose to eat the 26 Euro menu meal, which was 4 courses consisting of escargot, lamb, tiramisu and coffee. Everyone else was done and he was still working on his first course, ha. It looked delicious though, so I’m sure it was worth it. Brendon and Luke ate nearly raw steak, but so far so good on the Salmonella front.
We ate dinner at Ratatouille, and it was hands down the best meal I’ve eaten while in France.
For an appetizer I had a tart with tomato, caramelized onions, and slices of eggplant with a small salad… SO delicious:
And my main course was salmon with pesto and rice… also completely delicious:
Gretchen enjoyed a large steak with seasoned potatoes as an entrée, and baked apple with vanilla gelato for dessert. According to her, it was also delicious.
The nine of us spent 2.5 hours in the restaurant and I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard as I did in a really long time. Dave gave a great toast that was something along the lines of “Paris… the city of light. May we add to the ever increasing brightness of it’s glow” which was hilarious and awesome all at the same time.
Couldn’t have asked for a better group to explore France with than these people.
I can’t believe we fly home tomorrow… on the one hand I am sad that our trip is coming to an end because it has been so much fun, and I’ve really enjoyed experiencing another country with some extremely awesome people. On the other hand I am definitely ready to be back in the United States, where I know the language and culture (though I’m not exactly thrilled for the loooooong flight that lies ahead.)
I must add a thank you shout out to Tim and Alex for being Paris tram champs. That subway system is ridiculously confusing, and we never would have found our way if not for them.
To close, here is a Haiku about Paris written by Brendon:
The City of Light, Paris
Walking, seeking, foreign tongues
Twas most amazing
BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER 