Paris

Well, we have been in Europe for one week now! We have not had the opportunity to write anything and so I (Erin) will update you on our travels so far...

When we arrived to the airport last Monday, we quickly realized that our flight to Memphis hd been delayed for an hour, and then another hour... so Jade went and talked to the lady behind the NWairlines desk. Our first blessing was that she gave us another flight going through Minneapolis (only 1 1/2 hours later than planned!) But also, Jade asked her for some vouchers and so we received $40 for airport food (enough for our whole trip and some left over for our trip home!), 4,000 frequent flyer miles to add to our account, and also $100 towards our next flight! But this is the best part....when we boarded our "over the ocean" flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, we were shocked to find out that we had been changed to "business class," which meant nothing to us until we boarded the plane and were in one of the first few rows...with reclining, HUGE seats, even our feet raised up! : ) personal t.v.s with all the free movies we wanted (and we could each choose and watch our own! a full salmon dinner with appetizers and desert. also, hot towels sporatically throughout the night. i basically got to lay down on this flight and sleep for at least 5 hours straight. THIS WAS WONDERFUL! too bad we have to go back to coach class from now on! : )

The first thing we saw when we arrived at the airport in Geneva, Switzerland was a huge poster of George Clooney's face advertising something...maybe a Swiss watch. this was funny to us...as we expected to see something very "swiss" but instead saw this American icon. {now i'm rolling my eyes}

it didn';t take long to figure out that we were in another country when we tried to figure out, for the first time, how to get to the train, which one to take, and what time it left. these things are much more difficult than we anticipated, and we have already had to use teamwork in MANY situations to get where we want to go. thank goodness many people know at least some english...otherwise we would be...oh, what's the word? we would be screwed. : )

french is not an easy language to understand. those people use nearly no syllables in their words and leave all kinds of letters out. the whole time in paris we had to ask "how do you spell that?" if someone was giving us a street name or something important to remember.

when we arrived in geneva, we were late beacuse of our delays, and so we had to take the late train to paris. this meant that we left at almost dark and had to ride 3 1/2 hours by train, and reached paris close to midnight. from there we had to navigate our first streets in order to find our hostel! it makes me laught just thinking about what a sight we must have been! two americans, with huge backpacks and bloodhot eyes walking around in the dark with very large maps. turning down one street, then turning around to discover we were going the worng way (at least 3 times) before finally discovering our way. and then getting to our hostel room to realize that we were right across the street (and the streets are MUCH narrower than U.S. streets...almost as narrow as the Papio trail in some places with tall buildings on either side to make it feel like a tunnel) we were right across the street from a Bar with an "All Night Dancing and Drinking" sign out front. yay!!! we learned to adapt that week to sleeping with much noise.

The next two days were great. We walked about 20 miless and saw many of the famous sights.... the louvre museum (mona lisa is so small and isn't very impressive!). eiffel tower (at night it lights up and is blinking like a circus toy for awhile and is not what i expected!) and then we went to the top in the daytime which was beautiful we saw notre dame, museum d'orsay with monet and minet and van gogh paintings, including my favorite monet ever: "regatta at argentiel"! the second day we took advanteage of Paris's underground Metro system and were very pround of ourselves when we began navigating all by ourselves after many tries at it. there were even a few "indiana jonesesque" moments when we realized we were at the wrong train and we sprinted to the next one to hop on just as it was taking off. very exciting and got my adrenaline pumping!! we just took in the sights and sounds and had a wonderful time.

On Friday we arrived at L'Abri late in the afternoon and are finally settling into our rhythm here after taking a visit to Amsterdam and a famous tulip garden on Sunday. the people here are WONDERFUL (much friendlier overall in Holland than in France) and the workers and other guests at L'Abri are already becoming a special part of our lives.

it's "coffee time" now at 8:00 pm...so i'd better go! more in a few days about what we've been doing since our arrival at L'abri!

Jade and I send our love to you all.....leave a comment if you like!