I'm in FRANCE

Gwen's family are doing a house swap, just outside Chicago for just outside Paris, and I am the lucky duck who gets to horn in on the vacation. I took the Eurostar this morning (less exciting than I had expected. It's a train. There's a long tunnel. Whatever.) and arrived to smiling faces at Gare du Nord. Today we wandered around a bit and took a bus tour! I loved the bus tour!

The audio guide on the tour suggested that it was possible to purchase video cassettes on the Champs-Élysées. I would like to suggest that perhaps the audio guide has not been updated recently. The narrator was delightfully emphatic and alternated between chatting about things to our left or right (you may notice the Eifel tower in front of you...no, seriously, she said that.) and playing a piece of music that both Gwen and I were certain we'd played but completely failed to identify.

I took some pictures.

I'll share them with you in a moment, but first let me tell you that I declined the offer from a nun to take Gwen's and my picture. In some ways I regret declining that offer from a nun, but on the other hand I was having way too much fun attempting and then failing to take self portraits in front of famous Paris landmarks.

Here, let me show you:

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
What, you can't see it? Oh, right. Sorry! The zoom was still too far in...

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Um, okay, so the angle is a little bit off. 

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe
Eh. It's alright. Not the most amazing photograph ever, but all of the principal players are represented.

Some thoughts on the Eifel Tower: 

1. It's brown. Did you know it was brown? 

2. Somehow, in person, it is significantly more industrial looking than I expected. 

3. And less pointy. 

I had gained some skill by the time we actually stopped by the Eifel Tower, and am almost pleased with these ones: 

The zoom! Don't keep it all zoomed in! Also, change the angle, this is never going to be a good picture. Your head is in the way. 

Ze Tower! (Is it rude to write in a fake French accent while sitting in a gorgeous house in Fontainebleu? Probably.)

It worked! A self portrait that worked! With an important landmark!

Some notes about my clothes: I'm wearing a coat. I'm clearly in Paris.  It is mid-July. Pssht. 

And it was a bit windy. 

ps. The spell check on blogger is currently set to French. Currently 98% of this entry is highlighted due to misspellings.

New Years in the North

Nik and I went to Newcastle for New Years: I met a cavalcade of his friends, all of whom are full of inside jokes, laughter, enthusiasm, and possibly too much energy. Over two days we were at three different families' homes, played numerous board games (most of which were either collaborative in design or possible to steer towards collaboration, much to my delight), played an epic 2010 quiz, ate heaps of delicious food, and had a wonderful walk right after mid-night through an old, icy train track (sounds dangerous; wasn't).

I thought they were wonderful.

Definitely looking forward to seeing them again and hanging out more, but for now, let's move on to the nostalgia part of things.

In 1994 my family took a trip to England. This was our first big international trip and it was a Big. Deal. We still talk about it regularly and it certainly looms large in my memory. (Can't speak for the rest of us, but I'm pretty sure that sentiment is shared.) One of my very favourite parts of the trip was going to Durham.

Laine and I had just finished 4th grade where we had learned about Castles. (Fantasy novel obsessed 9 year old Casey was very into this topic.) I still have vivid memories of what was probably my favourite project of all of fourth grade: designing and stocking a castle keep. (Combining two of my then favourite activities: drawing and designing things that were theoretically worth money and grocery shopping.)

The train into Durham has a magnificent view of the castle and the cathedral. As the story goes we stood on the platform looking at the castle and my dad told me that is was our hotel. Being sharper than your average rolling pin, I didn't believe him. Once he convinced me that, yes, we really were staying at the castle I'm pretty sure it is safe to assume I started bouncing up and down.

The castle is now part of Durham university and parts of it are used for university housing. Since we were there during the summer, they rented out the rooms to tourists. I remember worn stone staircases, bathrooms down the corridor, a wide hallway with places for me to perch (a windowsill?), creaky wooden stairs on the way down to the cafeteria with banisters topped by "pineapples" carved without having seen the fruit but only having heard a description, and telling my dad all about the arrow loops.

"Cakes, you know those are real arrow loops, right?"

".... !!"

Mind blowing stuff.

Oh, right. Nik. Here's how Nik works into this story- he spent sixth form living in Durham, it's where he met all the wonderful people from the beginning of this post. His mother was working at the Cathedral and so while the family lived in Durham Nik and his brother worked as vergers there. This was excellent for me because it meant that I had an extremely knowledgeable tour guide to lead me around. I was also pleased to meet some of the people from stories I've been hearing about his time working there.

It was a wonderful, wonderful day and because they were the cheapest tickets, when we took the train back to London, it was in First Class. Nice.

L to R: Castle, Cathedral, Me

Still Awake!

Unsolicited Jet Lag Update:

It's 2am! And I'm awake! Awake awake awake awake! Really perky!



crap.


On the other hand, here is a great photo that Sarah's mom just posted from the wedding.

Kansas Wedding: The first facebook pictures

Blatantly stealing some pictures here...

Dave always writes arrangements of Happy Birthday for people on their birthdays and their wedding day happened to be the birthday of the organist who played for the wedding AND Sarah's christening. So Dave wrote a very cool barbershop quartet with beat boxing that we proceeded to horribly butcher to much acclaim at the reception. L to R we've got Nik, Me, Martin, Dave, and Joe.

Also: the entrance of the newlyweds! Just look at those smiles!

Meredith's Birthday

For Meredith's birthday she rented a cottage in a little town just off of the English Channel and we stayed there as a group and made delicious food and chatted and laughed and bumped our heads on the ridiculously low ceiling beams and went on a six hour long hike over many, many, many hills. It was beautiful and we were drenched in sweat and grime by the end of it. Meredith said it would be okay if I posted some of her pictures so that you all can be jealous...

Hair. Also, weirdness.

I got my hair cut, did I tell you that? I freaking love it and have been wanting bangs/fringe for ages so I dig having it now. In yellow nursery one of the assistants had the tykes tell me that they liked my hair yesterday and OH. I blushed so bad. Thanks, tykes.

On Sarah and Desh's last day in London we were down by St. Pauls and found these furry people. None of us have been able to figure out what on earth they were doing. There were about 30 of them on the steps of St. Pauls and they all refused to tell us when asked point blank on the day. Sarah described this guy as a "skunk who fell in some windex." Which I think is so. great. In any case, I don't have a good explanation for this photo- but look: Bangs! (Fringe!)

The faces pictures is just because.

Scotland: All Done

Scotland: Eye Candy Continued

Scotland: Eye Candy

I have no clue where most of these pictures were taken beyond "The Highlands" but aren't they nice? Most of these were taken by Desh, so thanks very much for sharing them with me, buddy!

Scotland: Number 2

Scotland is full of Lochs. (This is one of those "No duh" realizations I had on our quick trip. Other ones include "Scotch Broom is native to...Scotland") A less obvious realization is that Haggis is actually delicious. Okay, I don't eat mammals and I didn't have proper haggis, but we had Scottish breakfasts every morning we were there and to my delight I found that vegetarian haggis was a regular part of that. Desh even found a vegetarian haggis samosa- taking fusion food to its outer limits.

But back to the lochs- I have many, many photographs of beautiful Scottish lakes. I have no EARTHLY idea of which ones are which. I do know that we saw Loch Ness, and it was much bigger than I expected it to be. I've always had this mental picture that I created when reading a book called The Banshee in elementary school (which isn't even about Loch Ness, but hey) of a crumbling castle next to a dark lake- a lake that, while large enough to reasonably row a boat in, was still small enough to see all sides of from one point. Loch Ness IS dark, and there IS a crumbling castle, but it is most certainly not small.

Desh spent most of the trip taking pictures with his fancy schmancy camera. Mac would give us instructions like "don't go on the rocks, they'll be very slippy in this weather" and out Desh would head, to go set up his tripod on those rocks. Anyhow- the light on the above picture is not ideal- but it *is* of me on Loch Ness. So there ya go.

Scotland: Number 1

My friends Wylder and Desh are visiting from DC on their way to India. Since it is half-term for me we decided to spend a couple of days up in Scotland. We decided to take a two day, small bus tour into the Highlands with a tour company called Rabbies which is maybe not the nicest name ever, but they did a great job.

We had a 16 seater bus/van thing with 12 of us on the tour. With people from Spain, US, UK, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand, we were a very international group. Our tour guide was Mac Scott. I haven't decided yet if that could possibly be his real name- but we'll roll with it for now. He showed up all kilted out and proceeded to spend the next two days regaling us with dozens of stories of battles and heroes and the organization of various clans through his microphone. His accent would get thicker the deeper into a legend he got and then would abruptly drop back into a fairly normal Edinburgh accent whenever we needed to make a decision about where to go next or when we almost ran over a pheasant. He would also act out some parts of various stories using hand gestures and sound effects. The sound effects were fine (because life is better with sound effects) but the hand gestures were sometimes a little much- like when we would be careening through the snow and suddenly both hands are off. the. wheel. Yeah, that's lovely that you have to fold and fold and fold the Feileadh Mor but drive!

Not that I ever actually felt unsafe- we were in very good hands.

We didn't have the best of luck with weather while we were out there- heavy mist covered the city on our way out of Edinburgh and it snowed overnight when we were in Inverness- but had I not been told that we weren't following the original plan- I don't think I would have noticed.

We frequently left the bus to go look at and take pictures of stunning scenery and lochs. I fell massively in love with the "hairy ginger cows" (Highland Cattle) and would frequently squeal when they were visible outside the windows. They're just so cuddly and ginger and they can't see very well through all their hair! Cute.

I should probably point out that Scottish people do not, to my knowledge, refer to the Highland cattle as "wee 'airy ginge' coos" but MAN Sarah, Desh, I do.

Everything was stunningly gorgeous, and if we ended up in a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow trying to take pictures, well, at least I had 4 extra pairs of wool socks to change into.

Tom Kha Gai

Do you know when Chinese New Year is this year? On Sunday. Once I figured this out it explained to me why all of the Asian food stores that I passed (or went through trying to find galangal without asking anyone if they had it) were PACKED with people. Also dragon fruit. Anyhow. I was brave and finally picked my way through the largest shop I could find finding all of the ingredients for Tom Kha Gai. Gwen came over for dinner and we made elaborate food with fancy, fun, exotic ingredients. I have pictures. We also used her brand new mixer to make cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. Because we are just that cool.

Woo Hoo! (Update)

I'm no longer sick! Which is *fabulous* I have a bit of a cough still (it's a weird one, originating in my chest rather than the throat tickly coughs that I am more used to) but other than that I am good to go! Which is good, because I am going.

This weekend I was the project manager for Guildhall's Continuing Professional Development (CPD) weekend which means that I was running around getting equipment, preparing the tea stuff, collecting feedback forms, and (my favorite) purchasing lunch.

Here's the thing- I really like food shopping. Aisles of produce make me happy (particularly when the fruits and vegetables are piled up all abundant and colorful like) and this was shopping with other people's money! Brilliant! So I had a lot of fun with that.

Mical signed me up for an Artist's Journal class to take with her (online!) just before she left to go back to Seattle, so I've been working on that as well. I have a little set of watercolors that I bought way back last September during my "I don't have to be a musician to be creative" defensive phase after I found out I failed my first year assessment. It's a super cute little set of watercolors and I've been carrying it around in my backpack for ages. The difference now is that I am *also* carrying around watercolor paper in the form of my new Artist's Journal that I made.

So during the CPD weekend I started sketching and painting and it was really lovely. I'm particularly proud of the watercolor I did today of Adam who was recording the weekend. He wasn't paying attention to the group and was instead reading things on the Internet which useful for me since that meant that mostly he stayed in one place. Yay! Adam thinks his arm muscles should be bigger and his legs longer, but whatever.

On Friday the Leadership department was having a scratch session which is an evening where people show work that is in progress. Nell invited the alumni to present something as well so I was *Brave* and I asked if I could show the video of the last night of the Aerial/Marimba gig. We had a little bit of technical difficulties with the projector but in the end we got it all hooked up so that the video was projected on the wall and the sound came through the speakers in the room (the better to hear all the crowd noise!) What I showed was very different from what everyone else was doing, but it went over well and I had a great time explaining how we had made it and what the goals on the piece were and what we were going to start exploring next. So that was really nice. It was also great to meet the new first years and see the current second years again and hear what they've been working on. There is a really comfortable and energetic vibe to the department these days and I'm really happy for them.

Graduand.

The Furniture

More Bass Ballet

Theoretical Album

Audrey plays the sackbut, so we decided that for our first early music album these will be the photos for our liner notes. (Audrey, Andrew, and Me) Did I mention that it was really nice to see my friends again?

The preparation

Ronni's makeup was applied with an airbrush. Also, Lily, Audrey and I were *super* helpful.

The resort for the wedding was fancy

And in New Jersey. Also, there was a water slide in a "bio sphere." Mara, Drew and I spent far more time than we should have trying to get good pictures of ourselves shooting out the end of it. This is my favorite one, it is of Mara's feet.

Charltons

I spent the first few days on the East Coast staying at Daniel's house in Germantown and taking the Metro/Train/Walking combo in to Peabody every other day. Daniel was nice enough to come pick me up from Baltimore the first time (an hour drive there and an hour drive back) because I had wanted to both stay in Baltimore long enough to take my favorite yoga class (SO totally worth it) AND do viol consort (see above) AND get back in time for Man Night. Which is what Daniel, his brother Jonny, and their assorted Man friends have each Monday. I was honored to be a part of it. On my second day in the country Jonny and Daniel were teaching lessons late, so I finally got to meet Jonny's new wife Lindsey. She's super neat and we made complicated dinner. When I left for the wedding I tried to take some pictures; I may need to work on my self portrait technique...