On Looking Back and Not Turning to Salt...

I was doing the dishes the other day and it struck me that a year ago this month I would have just been returning home from my crazy, incredible trip to France.

It all started when I heard about the trip in my French class at UVSC. I brought the fliers home and jokingly asked Jeff if I could go. He said, "Well, tell me how you're going to afford it and who will watch the kids while you're gone, and I don't see why not." I think I looked at him and blinked a few times. "Really?"

Needless to say, I applied for and won a scholarship and scrimped and saved, then my sister Elise volunteered to come stay with the kids. So, I got my passport, packed my bags, had numerous emotional breakdowns, kissed my family good-bye and got on a plane for France.

Nice, France: Here is where I went to school every week day for three weeks at Actilangue. I lived with an elderly lady who would reprimand my roommate Sheri and I any time we spoke English.

We were in Monaco during the Monte Carlo Grand Prix...

And in Cannes during the film festival. (Sheri and I got to see a film!!) We also saw Eze; Antibes; Ventimiglia, Italy; all of Nice's Vieille Ville and so much more.

For the last week, we took the TGV to Paris. We blitzed the city, trying to see as much as we could in the short couple of days we had there. I saw Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Versailles, The Palais de Louvre, L'Arc de Triumph, Napoleon's Tomb, Musee D'Orsay, and more and more and more. To say I missed my family would be a gross understatement (just ask Sheri, who had to listen to me sob as I fell asleep listening to my MP3 player at night...) but am I glad I went? Oui, oui! It was the opportunity of a lifetime.