Chartres last thursday.

adam doing what he does best...

liz and angela doing what they do best.

marc doing what he does best...

and cami doing what she does best.

the three week rule.

have you ever noticed that the best time of any blocked, extended period of time is the last three weeks? i mean, there are good things the whole way through, and maybe it is just me because i am some psycho pessimistic, ungrateful, not fun person, but seriously, it is always the last three weeks of anything where life all of the sudden becomes absolutely wonderful, and you feel nostalgic for everything you have done. i think it's because the end is finally in sight. at a month, it's still far away. you can't see the last day in your mind's eye calendar. but, at three weeks, you can see the weeks panning out, you can see that last monday, those three tuesdays, and you remember how quickly the last three fridays have passed by. it is when your brain finally is able to see clearly exactly how much you love everything, how much you are loving your life, and while you enjoyed it before, and maybe at the beginning you couldn't fully appreciate it because the end was out of sight, but when there is three weeks, you are fully aware. and social barriers come down, and everyone talks to everyone, and all is forgotten of earlier drama, and for some reason it doesn't really matter what you say when you're talking to people, because everyone is just really happy and they all can see that the end is in sight as well.

the last three weeks of anything is the best part of life. something happens somewhere between the beginning of something, and the last three weeks, and it is really great. and at the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, it's just really beautiful. I'm trying to figure out how to make that beautiful time come earlier. any suggestions?

examples from my own life.

high school:

when awkwardness and worrying about who your friends are, the people you want to be friends with and the best approach to being their friend, how to avoid the people you want to avoid, and every other stress just melts into this:

freshman year beginning (pretty cute, whatever, but...for my limited vocabulary...stiff):

and end:



at liberty square beginning:



and end:

in england:

where we were all trying so hard to have the time of our lives, and we knew that we should be best friends, or at least we would be, so we took pictures like this:

and jumped into freaking freezing lakes together to prove how epic we were, how we were having the time of our lives. and we did it when I couldn't yet distinguish some of these people in the dark. (which i think i could do by the end.)

and then with less than three weeks left, these kind of pictures were real and fun and great:

and Paris.

beginning:
where we sort of knew each other. at least enough to take dumb pictures.

and now, when it is not a decision as to whether or not we make faces like this.

i am almost crying because three weeks is here. it is always the happiest/most depressing/most fun/most pre-nostalgic/the part you remember the most because it was so wonderful.

i know some of you have superb social skills, so this probably doesn't even apply to you, so i hope you don't think i am a horrible person. i am trying to work on it. we'll see.

happy last three weeks of fall semester!

A really really good day at versailles.

I hate it when you ask people how a trip was, and all they say is, "oh, it was amazing!" and they look at you and wait for you to be jealous, and then you have to sit there and dig dig dig to get any details and really, you find out that "amazing" is well, a perfectly adequate trip most of the time, and you start to suspect that they are using that word way too much, like in the way that my young women's leaders used to say don't go around kissing a lot of boys because then it cheapens each kiss, and then people like me don't kiss anyone...but that's a different topic...ANYWAY. Unless you use "amazing" sparingly, and not like the way they use it on the Bachelor, then I will believe you and be very pleasantly surprised. And also, a lot of times amazing has somehow become synonymous with boring in my head. Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that today was an absolutely beautiful day. It was a really really good day. And I was by myself. And I didn't freak out. It was as it should have been. Very relaxing and pleasant and wonderful.

Cami went with Haidy (pronounced Heidi) to Normandy today, so I decided to go to Versailles. My art history student card gets me into the chateau for free, so it was especially good in the way that I felt no obligation to soak in as much as possible in the short time I had, because I didn't feel like I had to be getting my money's worth. Instead I looked at what I was interested in, and continued when I wanted to continue. And it was actually a very warm day; I hardly needed my coat. And then I went and sat next to the canal that is not the grand canal, so there are not as many people there. It was really so beautiful, and I really enjoyed myself so much. It was a great day. I love those types of days.

PS. This=Paris getting ready for Christmas:

no dumb barriers like Thanksgiving (jk...) defining decorum for initiating Christmas decorations.

Pam, I am so happy that you and Kent get to see Paris as it dresses up for Christmas.

Secret to traveling in Europe:

Actually, he's not much of a secret anymore. I have met a surprising amount of people who are Rick Steves fans.

Rick's in my left hand. Thanks Pam! (and i know what you're thinking...i usually try to put flattering pictures of myself on this, since it is all in my control. but. i have made an exception. and anyway, it's just the shape of the gelato making my face look completely round...oh yeah, and bourbon creams, and digestives, and cadbury, and trifle, and john bennion, and gelato.)

we looked for a restaurant in Rome that looked good, and this one looked cute, and then we saw in the window that it was Rick Steves recommended, and then we looked in our Rick Steves book and found out that the owner's daughter is learning English, and then we looked around the restaurant and every table had a very familiar blue book.

Because of Rick Steves, we have spent countless hours listening to my mother read his useful condensed history, laughing at his corny metaphors and descriptions and telling my mother to read more while we drive in the car through Swiss valleys, or drive on the top of the Slovenian Alps, or while we walk in the middle of Polish cities, or whisper in Gothic cathedrals. Rick has been with us since our family lived in Germany in 1995, and he has helped us plan all of our trips around Europe since then. This is the man I'm talking about:

And now, I seriously see Rick Steves everywhere in Paris. At the Saint Chappelle, at Notre Dame, at Versailles, at Restaraunts, at Hotel de Ville, at the Louvre. He is everywhere. And I hid him in my purse when I was in Southern France by myself, secretly reading it, dog-earring pages, and smiling at the couple across from me on the train to the market village; the woman holding the hand of her husband in one hand, and Rick Steves in the other.

He says things like:

-Be forewarned, Ireland is seductive.
-In one fell swoop, Shakespeare made the language of everyday people as important as Latin. In the process, he gave us phrases like "one fell swoop" that we quote without knowing it's Shakespeare.
- While Bruges is one of Europe's most delightful medieval towns, to me it means sugar buzz.

Anyway, this man is infamous in my family. We all laugh and joke about him, and my uncles and aunts and grandparents are in on it as well. He has a show where he memorizes lots of lines and talks while he is walking around in beautiful European villages and he looks like a hilarious American man with glasses, a goofy haircut, and a bit of a gut. One particular show is legendary in my family. I had never seen it, only heard it quoted, until dear Leslie told me you can download Rick Steves podcasts! So I did, and I watched the video my family has been talking about for the past fifteen years. This is that show:

(about one minute and fourteen seconds in, you will be so glad you are watching this.)

Even how dorky Rick is in his videos, and all of the ridiculous things he says in his books, when we come home from trips, or when we scrounge for a room late at night because some disaster happened, and we find Rick Steves hotels that talk about friendly owners, or when we get off a bus and have no idea where we're supposed to go and we're in a foreign country and we have no idea what's going on and Rick says "you can find the TI just behind the bus station," or "walk to your right to find _____ hotel," we can't help but say in the words of my dad, "Rick Steves, you've done it again."

I fell in love with a new artist at the Musée d'Orsay today.

This was painted for the library of the Princess of Bassiano. I have no idea who she is, and google doesn't really either. But she was a princess. And this painting is enormous.

Isn't it beautiful? I'm going to be a nerd and say that I like the whole thing about Adam and Eve, about gaining knowledge, about the fact that they are in a library. The colors and texture of the paint are just really gorgeous.

And all of the figures that are so colorful in the background, those women with furs and expensive fabrics, and the man and his daughter talking, and the woman who has just finished her tea, and the little cute dog at the bottom and the newspapers that have spilled on to the floor. All of the things are so colorful, and then you realize that what your eye has been aching to go to after looking at the color and the shapes and the almost naked painting, is that one girl in the front, the girl that is black and somber and beautiful.



And you realize that that is you, that is you when you're watching, when you're learning, when you're reading, when you're thinking.

and you wish you had that beautiful profile of hers, and you know how she feels, and you know that really, you are actually her. And you feel like you need to sit down next to her, or you wish she had written a book so you could read what she was thinking, but you can't do any of these things, so you stand there for a while with your mouth open and just look at the flat canvas, and people walk behind you and to the side of you and look at the painting for a few seconds, and then look at you, and then back at the painting, and then of their maps and they keep walking. And then you pull out your camera and take pictures and fake swear in your head about the fact that the colors are totally off.

That painting that I'm going to have copied for my library when I grow up was painted by Edouard Vuillard, and so are these little beauties that I went rabidly searching for after falling in love with that first painting and needing more of Vuillard. I was pleasantly surprised:

The second one was painted after the chapel at Versailles. Isn't it lovely? If you get a chance if you visit the Musée D'Orsay, please see these. Or try to plan some time to spend looking at paintings and painters you have never heard of. I realize that not everyone has time to do that with limited visiting time in Paris. So, I am thankful for that. Very much so.

And that I didn't die when I almost got hit by a bus because I was an idiot. I am very grateful for that.

just to be clear, no one is getting dumped.

i am completely serious when i say that i will bring back a bueno for anyone who is in the US right now (sorry corrine) can tell me exactly where at least seven of the eight photos i was standing? (and i don't mean "in front of the Seine...etc.) megan?