while most of my friends were in Bruges/Brussels/Amsterdam...I got to spend more quality time with the wife.

Saint-Sulpice and Pierre Hèrmes macarons. I usually trust that when expensive food items have interesting combinations, it will be good. Unfortunately, my vocabulary wasn't good enough to realize that "hazelnut, and umm...something else...must be good" actually ended up tasting like hazelnut and some weird after-taste of roquefort. I do not recommend it.



light show at Trocadero:

Ericka was so happy/scared when the light show started. Our faces are all rosy from walking an hour from the Louvre along the Seine to watch the show. Ericka is like me in that we somehow think that stopping to have to wait for a bus or a metro will take more time than just walking forever. It was beautiful.

The Waterlilies at L'Orangerie by Monet

And I learned a few things from Stanford people as well:

-Stanford is actually really small, so everything gets back around to people, and everyone knows everyone.
-Saying someone is "smart" at Stanford, is like saying "she's a sweet spirit" at BYU.
-I think the word "pretentious" was used about thirty-seven times. People at Stanford are really scared of being pretentious if they care about being both smart and being a sweet spirit.
-at bars between drinks, Stanford people sometimes pull out school notebooks and read prompts for essay assignments and discuss the possible ways to elaborate on existentialism and the significance of titles. I am not joking. This is actually what was going on in this picture.

We're supposed to copy these photographers (copyright people...using the pics only to explain school things...so...it's for educational purposes...):

Doisneau (ps these are models. kind of sad, right? but not that sad.)

Cartier-Bresson

they both did "street photography," and Cartier-Bresson's method was to go somewhere with a perfect set-up, and then just wait for something to happen. I tried that. Didn't work out too well, and I ended up just following people around.

So, en fait, this could be called Creeper Album:

I think the last one is the one I'm going to post for my class, unless there is a HUGE UPROAR, and then I will reconsider. We're not allowed to write ANYTHING about our photos this week, and we can only post one.

meet my wife.

Ericka and I have been married by proxy ever since freshman year of BYU when Ericka was afraid that I would get married like those stories I would tell her about eighteen-year-olds getting married at BYU, (like there was anything to be scared of.) but we fell in love way before that.

senior prom

We decided to spend our honeymoon in Paris (she's on study abroad through Stanford), and here we are. Today we went on our first date in a long time. I hope you aren't getting creeped out by this extended metaphor...I'll change. Ericka and I are actually the same person. Emicka Erily. (It's weird that I have to explain to you that Ericka was my best friend in high school, and just hope that you know everything that goes along with that. You can just project all of your wonderful feelings about your friends from high school on to our relationship, and you know, it's something like that.)

Today I met her at the Louvre, and she came to my art history class and listened to the lecture, and we actually did a good job of listening to the lecture, and inserting conversation into appropriate walking times, or appropriately boring intervals. It was a very strange but of course wonderful collision of worlds...




After class we went here:




thick and rich hot chocolate, lingering for a pleasant amount of time, talking of high school, and roommates, and old friends, and parents, and sisters, and Paris, and the flat we will buy here, and determining possible ways of becoming incredibly rich. In one of my old journals, and I read a passage I had written about Ericka during my sophomore year of high school, when I began to be friends with Ericka. I said something about how her determination and drive for life matches the intense color of her hair. I have since decided that her motivation and focus far surpass the dramatic color of her hair. Just look at the way she pours and drinks her hot chocolate:




this people, is why she will go far. and why I blog. don't think about it. just look at that interior...yum.

We like drinking things together:



But mostly it was so nice to see my wife again, as our lives have just seemed to expand until the parts where we overlap are shoved to the outsides. But we live in Paris now, and we live closer to each other than we ever have in our entire lives. And even though it can't really not go back to more than living a few states away, and occasional phone calls and seeing each other at christmas and summer, today we walked around in the Louvre, and I told her about going to Place des Vosges and almost crying because it was so beautiful, and she just said, "oh Emma" in such an understanding-of-me way, and we talked about our forthcoming run in the Jardin des Plantes on Friday.

I'm copying Whitney.

She decided that this month, she is going to write about things that she is thankful for. I decided that I wanted to do that too. Unfortunately, when I was thinking of ideas, it was basically the same as how all of my blog posts are, except for everything turns into "I'm thankful that this happened/that I could do this..." instead of "I did this, and this happened...bluhbluhbluh" so yeah.

Thankful for Corrine. And Tati. And that I can stay out when it gets dark because it gets dark so early. And Sephora.

But mostly Corrine right now. Because she offered to cut my hair. And then she did.

Corrine is one of those people who manages to do most of her talking with her eyes closed.
I am always so impressed when I'm walking with her and she is talking and doesn't fall over.

For some reason, my opinion has been this pretty much my whole life: if my hair were just longer=me pretty. And when I had short hair I wished so badly that I had long hair, and I spent years and years and years trying to grow my hair out. I don't know why, but at the end of August, I was done having long hair, and I would always tuck my hair into sweaters, scarves, etc. to see what it looked like. I have been threatening to cut my hair for about a month and a half, and Corrine offered to cut it for me. Her host mom is out of town right now, so obviously we slept over at her house last night. My hair was cut. A lot of it. Off. At first when she hadn't cut layers yet, I was very nervous because it was short, and I looked like a triangle head because it was all one length. Corrine, don't take this personally. Every time I get my hair cut, about 3/4 of the way into the whole ordeal, I want to stand up, take the scissors and say, "all right, I think you've cut it enough," and it takes so much self control for me to sit there and hear and feel all of my hair dropping on to my clothes or on to the floor. The snipping sound, and months and months of waiting, and taking care, and just bits of me coming off.

Tonight was also Tati's last night here. She had a stressful last day here, having to get all the way across the city dragging her suitcase, and her bank card not working, and Sophi

The cool half Moroccan half American fluent in French friend who LOVES fries

left earlier today. But there was less stress when we went to see the view of the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero,

and then I said goodbye at her friend's flat (who seriously lives two minutes walking distance away from L'Arc de Triomphe...what???) and then I walked down the Champs Élysées just as the lights began to turn on. I went into the huge Sephora, put on some Chanel lipstick and eyeshadow and perfume, and walked all the way down the boulevard wearing my new brown leather gloves. Somehow, I feel all of the sudden like I can wear this color of lipstick. And I felt pretty even though I didn't have long hair anymore. It was a great night.

last night. SO LONG, right?

tonight.

well, what do you think???

Tati

isn't she so pretty?

A good friend of mine sent me an essay of his where the opening image is of him and a friend sprinting across the intersection/roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe.

If you have been there, and if you have watched traffic from the top of the arc,

you know how ridiculous the traffic is, because basically cars just enter the intersection, and slowly every car inches out of the way of each other, and things clear up and meanwhile, motorcycles and mopeds weave in and out through all of the cars, inches from bumpers and tiny mistakes and death. And if you didn't know that, now you do.

There is a pedestrian tunnel, everyone. Please take the tunnel, for your own safety.

I really didn't think I could yell that across the intersection at Tati and her cool half Morrocan, half American, fluent in French friend Sophi. So, instead I pulled out my camera.

Tati is here for a week, and the last time I saw her was for my sister Cami's farewell in March in Eugene. It was so strange to see her in Paris, but so good. It's weird that it felt like a piece of Eugene in Paris, but really, she doesn't live in Eugene anymore, so really she is a piece of Munich visiting me, but really a part of my family visiting me too. We spent Christmas together last year, we have the same onesie my mom bought for all of us, we went to the holiday market together.

It's so weird because she was such a part of my family for a whole nine months, she knew all of the Eugene gossip, became part of our ward and our family, knew what was happening with all of my sisters, and now she is living in an apartment going to school in Munich, and we hear from her every once in a while. She is doing well, studying German history and English, and she just got a job at a men's chic clothing store. Sophi wanted to go shopping at H&M and Zara, so with the millions of places to choose from where the stores are located, of course I chose to go to the huge stores on the Grands Boulevard, which is right next to the Opera house, a famous street for shopping, and a really beautiful area, especially now that Christmas decorations are just beginning to appear. So obviously, I told them we had to get off at the stop, "Grands Boulevards." Woops! Big mistake. We were about four stops away from the area I was really trying to get to. Good thing I live here in Paris. How dumb. I was so embarrassed. And their feet were so tired from having visited the Musée D'Orsay in the morning. So I felt so stupid, but, we made it there, and hopefully I will be able to redeem myself tomorrow when we get to see each other again.

This week has been a bit difficult, because I bought tickets to go to GREECE (one of my life goals, see right side of my blog list at the bottom...) and remembered that I do not have limitless funds, even though it feels like that whenever I buy something. Especially something expensive. It is hard to remember to be careful with money, and sometimes for me it takes days to remember how to really entertain myself without having to spend money. It's ridiculous. But then, it only takes one large purchase to remember how exciting it is to buy something new.

So, thank you Tati for helping me remember how fun it is to roam the streets without having to spend money! Also, because of Greece, I told her I didn't think I would be able to take a trip to Munich to visit her, and she was so sad, and so was I. We both agreed that I should just petition Sir Troy and his immense generosity...

My roommate Cami took the most beautiful pictures of her favorite foods for her photo project (these pictures are so beautiful they make me want to die), and I was inspired to do my own little still life shoot. Here are my favorite beautiful old books of Madame's:

and just to give you some context, some furniture:

She was out of town this weekend, so we finally finished watching Anne of Avonlea in the front room.