Friday, November 23, 2007

This Update is Long Overdue

Happy belated Thanksgiving!!!!!

Last weekend was fun, because my parents and brother came up and I got to go to Normandy with them!

Granted, things started off relatively stressful. The public transportation strike was still happening, which meant that our original plan of me taking a train and meeting them in Caen wasn't going to happen because my train was cancelled. I told my host family that I was looking for a taxi online to take me to Charles de Gaulle airport (plan B was to meet my family there), and they said that they would call up their neighbor who is a taxi driver. He told them he wouldn't drive there because the traffic was so awful. They also told me that the RER would be running, so I could take line B to the airport.

I wake up early the next morning (6:00 AM for the second day in a row after being up way too late packing/organizing) and walked to the RER station. Surprise, Surprise-it was closed! I spent about five minutes sitting there figuring out what to do. I then saw a giant street map, which said there was a taxi station right around the corner. I went over there and saw another woman waiting for a taxi to charles de gaulle, too. After about 15 minutes of waiting, I had realized that the amount of time I had been outside caused me to lose feeling in my toes. I also realized that I hadn't programmed my family's phone number into my cell phone, and I didn't know it off the top of my head. I went to a nearby cafe to warm up and get the phone number. I returned to the taxi station ten minutes later, and the woman was gone. Assuming she got a taxi, I began to feel a twinge of hope. However, after ten more minutes had passed, I had not seen a single taxi. I was prepared to make my parents drive into the city to meet me, when I suddenly saw an available taxi! My parents called just as I got inside to tell me that they had landed.

One very expensive taxi ride later, I met up with my family, picked up the rental car, and set off for Normandy! Learning our lesson from Italy, we made sure to get a car with an automatic transmission and a GPS. We stopped in Caen on our way to the hotel to see the Caen memorial. The museum was interesting, as were the films. I decided to take a look at the book shop there in case they had something I could use for my politics paper comparing the french resistance to the german resistance, and they had the book of my dreams for the paper! However, it also cost 20 euros. I decided not to get it.

The hotel we stayed in was beautiful! Since I was not coming along originally, they had to make accomodations for an extra person, which meant I got my own room! After we arrived there, we relaxed for a bit before going into town for dinner. We were the only people in the restaurant! We heard them lock the doors behind us when we left.

We had a tour the next day. We went to Omaha Beach, which is one of the beaches where the American troops landed on D-Day. Our tour guide took us inside bunkers and showed us different military vehicles and such. He also took us to a military graveyard where the families of American soldiers who died during WWII while in France had the option of burying the soldiers. There are 9,000 soldiers buried there.

Even though the weather was beautiful those two days, it was awful the next day! However, we ended up going to Mont-St-Michel. This was my third time there, so I wasn't very into it, but I didnt mind, either. My brother had his first crepe, and the wind destroyed my umbrella.

I was happy to see my family, even though we weren't together for Thanksgiving. The group went to the Hard Rock Cafe for Thanksgiving dinner. We had caesar salad, corn soup, turkey/veggie burgers, mashed potatoes, broccoli, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. It was a lot of food, but it was delicious!

We were supposed to see the Nutcracker afterwards, but it was cancelled because the scenery people went on strike. Instead, we saw the Magic Flute! I enjoyed the play a lot, because it was frickin hilarious!

Possible trip to Madrid next weekend. Keep y'all updated on that!
~Sarah, who is thinking about going on that trip

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