Evensong

Today was good but a bit forgettable so I won't go into too much detail.

First, I tried to get up at around 7:30 and, of course, ended up sleeping in until around 9. Once I was finally up I went for a short run which felt good. I'm actually not too out of shape after my week and a half off.

I ate breakfast in my room ran an errand and then worked on my supervision in the Cambridge Union Socictey Bar. It's basically the headquarters coffee shop place for the PKP programme.

FINALLY went to my first class which was called "War and (In)Security." The words "hipster McGonagall" come to mind when I try to think how to describe my professor. She is fairly young, very pretty and was wearing a simple gray tank top and just jeans or something. She seems really strict. Like we aren't really supposed to ask questions during lectures and we are not to ask her for references after the program is over and we are not to use laptops in class. Her accent is a bit hard to understand and I'm not entirely sure that she is English. She might be from somewhere else in Europe. The guy sitting next to me was Greek but he goes to school at Science Po in Paris. His name is Stratos which he explained to me is the Greek word for "War" and hence the root of our English word "strategy."

Go figure that a guy named "War" would be in my securities class.

He seems cool. His Dad is the mayor of one of the towns on the island of Lesbos. I'm dead serious.

After class I saw in my course reader that I am an entire book behind in reading so I hurried over to the library to check out some reading. After that I went to Evensong at the Kings Collage chapel.

This was a heavenly experience and I am told that I looked quite reverent during the service but that may have just been due to the fact that I was sitting next to the chaplain. That's right. As King's College University members we get special seating in nice chairs right near the choir. The choir is absolutely beautiful and it's so amazing to just close your eyes or look at the stained glass windows while they sing. Here is a google image of Kings College chapel from the outside:





It's the big tall building in the center.

Here is what it looks like on the inside:

View as you exit the chapel. The building you see contains my cafeteria

Outside the chapel doors after Evensong

Anyway the Evensong was great and I'm glad I went two nights in a row because the choir is going on tour soon so it was my last chance to see them for the summer.

Tonight we had our orientation meeting for our trip to Scotland TOMORROW! After that we had our first BYU Family Home Evening which was fun. It's nice to have the support group of people from my home university. Then I met up with some friends to chat in the college pub. That's about it. Really I should be packing right now because my bus for Edinburgh leaves at 8 am. Wish me luck! I will write more when I get back on Sunday!

Celebrating Independence Day in the Land of the Opressors

So I got on the plane from Paris to London and was sooo tired that I slept pretty much the whole time. It was a bit disconcerting how deeply I conked out. The plane landed on time and I got off all ready to catch my bus in about an hour to Cambridge when...Horror! I saw the UK immigration line. I kid you not it was literally about a mile long. So I had to stand in that for an hour maybe an hour in a half, bored out of my mind, incredibly tired and hauling a HUGE backpack and purse. There was a couple from the Congo in front of me (I spoke a few words to her in french) and then another Afircan family behind me. The little four year old son was soooo adorable. He reminded me why I want to go to Africa eventually.

Anyway, I FINALLY got through customs but by this time had missed my bus. Not to mention that my luggage had long since come onto the carousels. Apparently it is common practice at Heathrow to just remove old luggage from the carousel and put if wherever they want it on the floor with no indication because this has happened to me I think three times now. After finally locating my bag, I headed over to the information desk. As a side note, AirFrance broke the lever used to slide my suitcase on its wheels when my bag was lost in the system. In the airport, right before checking in Bene "a fait du bricolage." This was extremely exciting since I have never in my life had a legitimate reason to use the verb bricolage which is translated as "to putter" in English but I don't think its a very good translation because I don't really know what puttering is. Any Bene used the word herself to describe the rope of string she tied around the handle into a leash for me to lead my bag along with. It wasn't extremely practical but it was so much better than if she hadn't done anything.

I found the couch station that was supposed to take me, caught a public bus to a different terminal, changed my ticket to 11:45 and sat around eating lunch until the coach came. On the bus I slept some more and generally just felt confused and displaced. When I got off the bus in Cambridge I had no idea where to go. I saw one of my fellow passangers greeting someone at the busstop and overheard that they were going to Kings College so I approached them and they led me. It was super awkward though because they were obviously friends who hadn't seen each other in awhile and I was just tagging along with my ridiculous bag, backpack and purse. It was exhausting pulling the bag with the string.

I got myself checked in and finally had the opportunity to see my new room. It is GORGEOUS!!! Here are some stats:
-it is located within the gates of the collage (which means that I have to show my ID to the Porters-security men- every time I come in.
-I live in Bodely's Court right next to the river. It is an old four story tall stone building divided not by hallways but by staircases. I live in V staircase which is at the corner so we have a spiral stone staircase. I live at the top and feel kind of like Rapunzel.
-I have two rooms each of them much bigger than my space at BYU. My six person apartment in Provo is probably only twice the size of my rooms here
-I have two fireplaces (one in each room), two great views of the river, a sink and lots of storage space.

Here are some pictures:

View from the door of the sitting room

Window from the sitting room. The view I see from my desk.

My bedroom

View from my bedroom window. There are always tourists punting on the river.

View of the spiral staircase from the landing beneath mine.

Another view of my sitting room from the other corner

Mostly I've just been meeting people, acting obnoxiously perky and exploring the city. Most people have already started classes, but my first isn't until tomorrow. Here are some examples of the beautiful things around me:

All white cows not 3 minutes away from my room.

Back gate of Kings Collage where I live. The front gate is much more grand.

Is that Dr. Who?

Believe it or not this really was a restaurant right on the street of Cambridge

New friends at Queens Collage before the formal hall

On the 4th of July we had our first Formal Hall which is when the students of the programme meet for "drinks on the lawn" (which is a big deal because its usually forbidden to walk on the grass) and then a fancy four or five course meal.

I sat next to one of the Programme Assistants (so actualy Cambridge students) and we had a really interesting conversation. The girl across from us was from UPenn and she was a bit overthetop. She had the Ivy League accent (which is exactly like a vally girl's but replace the words "ugh, this lotion is like sooooo bad for my complextion" with "I really think the Weimar republic was like THE perfect democracy.") Honestly that's what we talked about. The Weimar Republic. The death sentance, romantic languages, travel. It was quite intellectual and really organic and just really interesting. That was last night.

Today I woke up and walked to class only to find out that I had read my schedule wrong- my first class wasn't till tomorrow. So I went back to my room to take a nap and was awakened by housekeeping coming in to ask if they could "take out the rubbish?" Tonight I went with some people I've met to buy midnight tickets to the Harry Potter film. After that we walked around the city to see each other's rooms. It was really fun.

Basically I'm really loving my life right now. :)

Paris, Je t'aime!

Here I am sitting in my dorm room at King's College in Cambridge listening to the Stroke's new album and just bumming around on the internet, so I thought that I should actually finish writing up about Paris so that I can get on to the present. To be honest, its all a bit of a blur even by now so I will just share some highlights and of course some pictures.

1. Bene has an amazing apartment in the 16th district of Paris. I got my own room with a fantastic view of the cool apartment next to us which had these awesome outdoor staircases.

2.  The first day I was totally exhausted just sitting in the living room checking my email while Bene cooked dinner when a young man unexpectedly entered the apartment. He looked at me in shock.
"Umm...bonjour," I said. "Je suis Jenny..."
He continued to look at me confused until Bene came in and explained who I was. Turns out that it was Gabriel, her son. He apologized profusely for the confusion, but it was pretty funny all the same seeing as I had no idea what was going on. He lives in his own apartment but he came over a couple times and we had some really good conversations about NGO's (he works for PLAN) and American politics (he is much more passionate about that subject than I am).

3. Bene's husband was really cool and we had some awesome conversations about international affairs, especially when waiting in line for the Catacombes

4. I had a different babysitter every day. Thursday Bene's oldest sister Guenolee took me to Saint Chapelle, Notre Dame and some other places around Paris. After that her daughter Flore-Aline (who spent a few weeks in St. Louis about ten years ago) took me out to dinner and then to a choir concert.

5. Friday, my mom's other cousin Laurence had me over for lunch and took me for a ride on the Bateau Mouche. This is a boat tour on the Seine. Both she and Guenolee were super nice and we had good conversations (In FRENCH!)

The Old Fahioned Elevator in Guenolee's apartment (the apartment used to belong to my great grandmother)

A Cafe near Guenolee's apartment. The buildings here were designed by the same architect that did the metro signs

I think this was the most famous building by that metro architect

Same goofy metro-like design. This was the door to an apartment building

Bible scene carvings outside the door of Saint Chapelle

Saint Chapelle (I think)

Palais de Justice - we walked in and saw lawyers in fancy formal robes! Oh, also I'm wearing that scarf because Bene wanted to help my cough to get better. She was very motherly.

The Metro. See how the designs are similarly whimsical?  They call the style "noodle"ly

Notre Dame (duh). There was this huge long line and Guenolee's tried to jump it by claiming that she wanted to go in to pray. The man said no, so we went to the other line and just added ourselves in at the front. It was quite audacious.

Back view of Notre Dame. There is a cool little park right there

Typically awesome building

Me on the Bateau Mouche (remember I was roughing it without a suitcase so I had no suitcase or hair straightener and Bene made me wear the scarf again so I didn't catch a cold. hopefully this explains a little bit why I look so silly)

On the side of the river

N for Napoleon of course! This was on one of the bridges crossing the river

Laurence and I. Pretty sure that day was the first time I met her and it was just the two of us all day. Luckily she was super nice and spoke English really well so by the end of the day when I was really tired we switched back to that.

I thought this was a really cool angle off the "Tour Eiffel"

an add for Harry Potter on the metro!

6.I actually spoke French pretty well! I went for long periods of time speaking pretty much nothing but french. I know I made lots of mistakes but people were generally very complementary of me and said that I didn't have an accent! I'm sure that they were being nice but enough people said it enough times that I must be pretty decent. Also I could understand pretty well. This is very exciting as I have been studying French very hard over the last few years. I definitely think that I could survive if I moved there.

7. On saturday Bene's husband and I went to the Parisian catacombes! They were made during about the French revolution as a place to store unsanitary bones from cemeteries. It is estimated that about 6 million people are buried down there.  All the bones in this picture are REAL. It would have been so easy to just reach over and take one. ...But why would I have? 

There were a few little carvings that one of the catacomb workers did in his spare time about a few hundred years ago. Pretty cool/random hobby huh? This was on our way down the tunnel into the actual catacombs.

This was the entrance into the catacomb part after going down the tunnels. The sign reads "Stop! Here it is the empire of the dead"

Bene made me wear her coat so I didn't catch a cold :)

That's right. These are real human bones. They were all just piled up like this on either side of us as we walked down the tunnels which were way far down below the streets of the city.

Later Bene and I had lunch with her cleaning lady who was from Portugal and we had a nice conversation. After that Bene and I "made of the shopping" (a literal translation) and then went to mass. Her nephew (the oldest child of the family I stayed with last time I was in French) just became a priest and I went to one of his first mass's. To be honest it was a little boring because I didn't really know what was going on and I was super tired but it was nice to be an ambassador for the crazy Mormon branch of the family.

On the top of the Grand Magasin. Pretty sure that's the Paris Opera House behind me

You could see everything from up there!

After that we went out to dinner at this chic little restaurant at the Bastille square (where the Bastille used to be!) They played really cool music and it was full of beautiful young people. Bene was so funny- she kept dancing around and being silly.

The next morning we all had to get up at about 4 in the morning to get me to the airport. Bene is NOT a morning person but she was SO CUTE as we headed out. She was just being really goofy and while we were in the elevator she kept pretending to fall over from fatigue and she was quoting the scene from Romeo and Juliet when they wake up to the sound of the lark. "Hark what light from yonder window breaks!" she exclaimed melodramatically with her adorable french accent.

We then took a taxi to the airport, they got me all checked in, we got some drinks at a cafe and talked a little bit and then I was off! The trip to Cambridge was a bit of a hassle but I will save that for tomorrow.

I See London, I See France

Greetings from Cambridge! I just barely got myself settled in and finally have some time to talk about Paris.  Here I go:

If you guessed that the workers of AirFrance went on strike then you know your Europe very well- Bravo! After that exhausting exhausting day getting to London and then waking up so early to get to the airport, I found myself waiting in the terminal for a couple hours, unable to sign in for my flight. My plane was supposed to leave at 10:10 but when I tried to sign in, they told me that the 7 o'clock plane hadn't even left yet and that there was a "system failure." I was supposed to come back in an hour or so to see what was going on. This was apparently at the beginning of the problem because before long they were making announcements over the intercom. Totally exhausted, I just collapsed with my 50 pound bag and huge backpack next to a wall near the line.

Not five minutes later a guy who I recognized from the flight line sat down unexpectedly close to me.He started up a conversation and I found out that he was from Mexico. He is 20 and his dearest wish is to go to University in America to play baseball. His english wasn't too great and he had a heavy accent.

"Do you speak Spanish?" he asked me.
I shook my head and he looked dissapointed.
"Is too bad," he said. "Too bad for me. Too bad for you."

For some reason this struck me as really sweet. Like is it too bad for me that I don't speak Spanish because Spanish is such a beautiful language or is it too bad that I don't speak Spanish because I was missing out on the amazing opportunity of talking to him? Anyway, I'm finding that it's really cool to meet people at airports and learn their stories. When his cousin and brother came back for him (he was sitting out because he was sick as well) then it was hilarious to hear his cousin talking. The cousin was every single stereotype of an effeminate gay guy you can think of but MEXICAN! Maybe I was just really bored but hearing his high pitched Spanish really tickled me for some reason.

Anyway, eventually we were able to check out bags and enter the terminal. When I got past security, the departure board had a "keep waiting" message by my flight indicating that it didn't yet have a gate. This struck me as odd and after grabbing myself a panini from Starbucks (yeah Starbucks sells paninis here!) I saw a big crowd gathered around a desk. I gathered that the people were trying to get to Paris and more out of boredom then a real hope of getting anywhere, I joined the throng. Somehow I ended up being led to another desk to be checked in, then back to the first desk then voila!, I was passing by and getting on the plane. It was the same plane that was supposed to leave at 7 am and at this point it was like 11.

Yay I made it on the plane! Bene (my mom's cousin who I was staying with) wouldn't have to wait too much longer! I sat on the plane next to an older American couple who were going to Paris to do summer school at the Sorbonne. The man had been one of the people in charge of constructing EuroDisney. We sat on the tarmac for awhile and then finally set off and just a short 45ish minutes later were landing in Paris.

This whole time I had just been planning to wing it once I got to Paris. I mean, Bene knew my flight right? How bad could it be? Well, she knew what my flight was supposed to be. But the one I was supposed to be on was officially cancelled and it was kind of this backwards transaction that found me tripping onto a flight to Paris anyway. I doubted Bene knew that. To top it off my luggage didn't make it on to my flight. It had been checked with the cancelled flight. After getting through customs and emerging into the French world, every English speaker suddenly became my best friend.

"Oh shit," remarked a British dude when I explained my predicament. "I don't know, good luck."

I kept an eye on the American couple from my row but they didn't find their luggage either. In the end it was an Aussi who came to my rescue. She had been on my flight and held my place in the baggage information line while I tried to call my family and was just generally very helpful. Finally after lots of waiting (many people had lost their luggage) I found myself in some back office of AirFrance where a woman was doing important looking work on the computer and generally ignored me as tried over and over again to reach Bene or my mom, clutching the reclaim information which I couldn't finish until I was sure of Bene's apartment information. Also I just had no idea where she was. Oh yeah, and did I mention that everyone was speaking FRENCH which, being at the limit of my mental capacities was slightly terrifying?

Finally I caught my mom who gave me Bene's cell phone number (remember I didn't have a working cell phone with me) and I called Bene and it turned out that she had been waiting outside the terminal the whole time! Stupid me, I should have known that she would figure out my flight.

I found Bene (who I've met once in my life before--she was holding a sign with my name on it) and she gave me a big hug and proceeded to tell me her end of the story, which was quite long winded and included lots of problems for her getting to the airport and finding me, not least of which was a bomb threat right at my gate just half an hour or so before I arrived! I guess someone left some unattended luggage in the hall and the whole area was cleared for the bomb squad. This is apparently not uncommon in Paris but it just adds to the hellishness of the airport experience for both of us. Oh yeah, and it didn't really concern us but the Parisian taxis were on strike also.

Anyway Bene (which is pronounced Ben-eh by the way. There are accents on each e that I'm too lazy to write) was able to collect me and drive me to Paris. The only problem remaining was that I didn't have my bag.
Luckily I had extra shirts in my backpack with me but over the next few days I washed my underwear by hand and washed my hair once with straight up liquid soap instead of shampoo (I'm sure they could have provided something for me but I didn't want to be a bother). 

It's ok though. I like adventures and it could have been so much worse. I think everything, if looked at the right way, can reveal the blessings in our lives. So thank you. Thank you,  French proletariat for kidnapping my luggage and making me appreciate clean underwear so much more.

All's well that ends well and my bag arrived on Friday night. In the meantime, I got to explore Paris and test out my French!