Finally an update!!!

Here I am baking the cookies.

They are so cute.
AND here they are decorating and eating!!

Well Christams stuff is going well. We had a church service last night and we had a party in Sunday school with the kids. My friend Laina and I made.....well attempted to make christmas cookies for the kids to decorate that night. I don't have an electric mixer so the cookies were a little different than usual but fortunately kids don't care what cookies look like as long as they know they have sugar. All the cookies ended up looking like blobs but it was fun to decorate anyways. We had a good night with them .

More news is that Ian is arriving tomorrow!!!!!!! Yeah I can't wait! Then Precious is going to come for Christmas too and then on the first my friends Abbie and Monica will be here to visit too!!!! Man this is going to be a great vacation. I still miss all our home cooking at Grandma's and our tree at home but oh well.....you have to start your own traditions sometime. I'll be sure to put more pictures on soon and let everyone know what is going on. Let me know if anyone wants anything special from France for Christmas. How often is someone going to offer that to you hu? You had better take advantage of it while you can!!! Let me know.
All my love

Christmas!!!!

These are some pictures of us in the Cathedral that we sang at for the english Christmas carol service. The entire Cathedral was filled with people. I'm sorry I didn't get better pictures.

Christmas is here!!!!!

My little city is decorating for Christmas. It is so pretty. They put lights EVERYWHERE!! On the main street called the Cours Mirabeau, they built these temporary wooden houses so the vendors can keep there stuff in it all season and just use it as their store on the side walk. There are about 30 houses up so you can imagine how much stuff there is to look and and buy. On the weekends there are even more things like mary go-arounds and real animals like raindeer and donkeys. It is crazy how much stuff they can put out on that street. Everything is so pretty. I love it. I'll have to get some pictures of the animals and decorations during the day too. I'll put pictures up soon

More pictures of my weekend

This is me sitting in the fireplace room with everyone and we were singing and I always play the drum becasue I love it. It is a goofy picture but oh well.






This is where we had dinner both nights. It was a huge room with paintings all over.







I don't know if you can see...but I am on the roof!

Chateaux

The guy making the goofy face is my pastor Darren. Everyone was playing a game called Nerts. It is a really fun game.
I took this picture on the property when we were exploring.
This is the castle from the road.
This was the view from my bedroom window!!!!


This weekend I went to a castle with my church. Twice a year they are able to bring a group of people to stay in the castle for the weekend. The area in which the castle is found is called Cevannes. It is near a city called Anduze. I had so much fun. The man who owns the castle is not able, by law, to make people pay him to stay there. My church has been friends with him for a few years now and he lets them bring group and stay in his huge castle for nothing. We brought our own food and all that but the beds all have sheets and blankets and things like that already. The castle is placed on so much lad so we were able to walk around and explore things. I dont know how many rooms were in it but there are alot. Were were running around looking at all the rooms and climbing in the towers and it was amazing.
I shared a room and bed with my friend Melissa and we shared the room with another girl. It was so cold at night I loved it. We all had dinner in a huge dinning room and we set up tables for everyone. There were around 30 people who came with us so we had alot of people to feed and fit around the tables. After diner everyone would sit in this big room with a fireplace to warm up. We all played cards and read until we were all tired. (which wasn't until really late)
I just loved it. Saturday we went to a museum about the protestant reformation that was huge in that area of France. After that we went out for lunch at this family sized restaurant and ate sooo much food.

More pictures to come soon!!!

Just more pictures

It started to rain on me
This is in Avignon
I thought this was a good picture from across the river seine in Paris.
This is in Paris at the park and the is a huge fountain. People can rent little boats for the kids to push around the water.
The girl sitting on the other side of the piano player had to turn all the pages of music because the pianist was playing o fast.
The stage
This is the inside of the thaeter. We were not supposed to take pictures but I wanted to anyways.

vacation in Paris

This is Laurence and Juliette and me at the park.
This is the small museum I went into to warm up and look what I found. Such a pretty place
This is Juliette She is not that short she ust was bending down for the picture. But now I look really tall so I like it.

During this last week , like I said, we had a week off of school so I went to Avignon with Lu and then I left for Paris on the 31st to stay with a family that I know there. I really had a good time. The familly has two daughters. One is my age but she lives with her boyfriend and the other was gone on vacation in Belgium so it was just me and the parents. The mom is really nice she always cooks really well. We maded all kinds of stuff for dinner. I stayed in Paris from Tuesday the 31st to saturday the 4th. One wednesday the mom, Laurence, and the daughter who is my age, Juliette, went to a beautiful park called the Luxembourg park. There was also an art museum there so we went to that too. The art was by a painter named Titien and all of his art was prtraits of rich people and such so they were good but I like more colorful stuff of nature and things like that. Juliette thought so too. But we had fun anyways. It was freezing in Paris that entire week. I love the cold though. Then on thursday Laurence had to work so I was on my own in Paris the entire day. She gave me a key to the house so I could return whenever I wanted and she helped me buy a card for the metro so I could use it as many times as I want the entire week. That worked great cause I took the metre everywhere around Paris that day. I went to the Eiffel Tower, of course, and walked by the Seine river and then I went to a small , free, museum to warm up because I was soooo cold and it started to rain a little. Then that night one of my friends, her name is Precious who is also studying abroad but it Paris , was done with her classes for the day so around 7 that night we went out to dinner to an Italien place. We talked in French and had a great time. It was so good to see her. On Friday Precious, Juliette, and I went to another museum which was art also but it was all the impressionist painters like Monet and Degas and some others. I love that stuff. So we had a good time and then we went out to lunch. Then I left on saturday. SO I had a grat visit but I was glad to get home to my little town of Aix and my apartment. I took the TGV which stands for Train de Grand Vitesse, which means the fast train. So it took three and a half hours to get from Paris to Aix. I like the train, they have really good yogurt... oh and the view is really pretty.

Avignon concert

Well I am a little behind on my blog so I appologize. We had a week vacation from school for a holliday called the All Saints holliday. So all the students went traveling.
On saturday the 28th my friend Lu and I went to Avignon for a classical music concert at the old theater there. It was so much fun. We went to the town early so we could walk around and have dinner and then the concert was at 8pm. So we walked around the town and took pictures and just hung out. I had already been to Avignon with my program but it was still nice to see everything and take my time. Of course we had ice cream, except this ice cream was huge. We sat in a cafe and ordered these huge sunday things. They were great, but I still like the italian ice cream better. The theater was so nice. It was really old and all the seats were red velvet. The concert was a pianist and a violinist who where playing classical songs together. I loved it.
Then we had a problem finding a way to get home after the concert. It ended at 10:30pm and we had a bus schedule that said there where still two busses that we could take to get home. We finally found one of them and the bus driver told us he was the lst bus but her was not going as far as we needed him to, which was to the train station, so we were out of luck. We ended up having to get a hotle room for 50 E because we had no other place to go. Some luck hu? We had fun though. We had an adventure.

Cuisine diploma

I went to my last coocking class last thursday. I was given my "cooking diploma" wich says that now I can cook french cuisine. I really just ate everything every time I went to the class so I think it is more like an eating diploma but whatever. Danielle, the woman who teaches it, said I can come back for Christmas or come once a month if I want. I think I will. I really enjoyed the class. We had so much fun. I have some good ideas for meals too. So I will cook for everyone when I get back.

St. Victoire at last!!!!!!

Left is Yiupo and the right is Cricket

This is how far up we were!!!

This weekend I didn't have any organised excursions so Melissa, Cricket, Yiupo, and I went on our own. We went to hike the well known mountain in Aix called St. Victoire. I loved it. We were so high above everything and the view was awsome. I think it was one of my favorite days since I have been here. At the top is a monistary were people can sleep and have a fire if they want. There is also a huge cross that was put there some time in the 1800's. AHHHHH it was so much fun. We took about an hour to get to the top and then we ate lunch and hung out for about two hours at the top. You can see everything from the top of this mountain. People climb it all the time. Although today my legs hurt today, I loved it!!!!!

Paintings!! This is for Aunt Martha

Of cours we had to get ice cream in Avignon. I had passion fruit ice cream.
I talked to this painter for a little while cause he had some really great ones.


This post is for Aunt Martha!!

All over Avignon people had their painting out for sale. They were al so good I loved them. I think before I leave I am going to get a bunch of paintings from different people of all my favorite places and things. Do you have any favorite French painters?

Avignon

This view is looking through the top part of the bridge where the water would flow downward.
All throughout the city they have these fake windows with paintings of different people in them.
You can walk oh the bottom half of the bridge.
This is Le Rhone river and the bridge

That gridge is the Pont D'Avignon. It was broken some time before and the King never repared it so the bridge doesn't go all the way across the Rhone river. On the other side if the road is the wall that goes all the way around the center of the city.


Saturday we went on another excursion to a town called Avignon. It is such a beautiful town I loved it. They have a really nice theater there so I got the dates of all the concerts and ballets, I don;t think I would like opera. The center of the city, which is huge, is surrounded by a giant stone wall because everyone ised to run inside for protection during times of war or battle. Avignon is also known for its bridge across the Rhone river, and there is this other bridge called " Le pont de Gard" This was used to transport water to cities from a long distance. The bridge is so tall becasue it has to be at the right angle for the water to fall downward towards the cities it was supplying. The water was transported through the top of the bridge. It is so cool and I can't believe it is still standing, with some help of cours, but still that is crazy!