Nouveau Chien de la Famille

Hello everyone!

     Well it’s getting closer for me to go home for the summer, and my emails to my family have been getting

Napoleon Apartments in the Louvre 

fewer and fewer. Which is bad, but sometimes the stories just aren’t as interesting anymore. I guess that’s what happens when people move away. All the little stories disappear and it only becomes about the major events. Well that’s what I’m here to talk about; the major events of my life in Paris.

   
     A good chunk of what has been happening in Paris doesn’t really involve me. I’ve talked about before that’s it’s weird for me to be living in a major world city after growing up in the very protected world of Salt Lake City, Utah. It has become normal for me to see armed soldiers walking around the monuments, crowed areas, and even a few major metro stations. And the numbers increase whenever there’re rumors of protests. Though, I don’t feel scared or unsafe. Everything I have seen has been handled safely, and without extreme violence. That is, until the PSG trophy presentation last week. PSG is the Paris Soccer team, and they won a league title. So they were presenting the trophy at Trocadero (a 10 minute walk from where I live), and a riot broke out. 800 officers were deployed to contain the supporters and it took several hours to bring a situation under control. By the end the place was a mess including smashed store and car windows near the Champs Elysees and setting a few buses on fire.

     All this is basically around the corner from me. Scary hu? Well don’t worry. I was safe and I never saw anything. I only heard about it the next day.

     I hear more about the United States than anything, and it doesn’t sound good. Every couple of months we are getting news of ANOTHER major crisis that’s hitting my home country. Before, while still living in the U.S., I used to think that the only reason why I heard about the tragedies in the U.S. because I lived there. Now I’m in Paris and still a lot of the news is about the U.S. I can’t tell if it’s because the U.S. is getting hit harder with “bad luck” than other countries, or if my brain is just wired to tune into news about home. Either way, good luck. I’m praying I don’t hear about any more breaking news from the States.

Flower Shops are all over Paris. And I love it. 

     Aimée takes horseback riding lessons, and sometimes I am the one that stays with her and walks home with her after. When I went the first time I couldn’t help but laugh because what she was riding is a pony. I was told that all the “horses” are really ponies. Even the big ones. They are called double ponies. They just look like horses. Not sure what the difference is.

     It was funny, Alain came with Cecile, Aimée and Me and they stayed for a minute after dropping us off. After watching them for a while, he comes over and says "Cecile, I want a Horse." She's like "Nope, Sorry." Haha.

     For a while now Cecile and Alain have been thinking about getting a Dog, and recently they became more serious about it. Meaning they told Aimée about it. Basically from there it was nonstop doggy talk for about 4 days. "Can we get a dog? I really want one. What about this kind of dog? What is your favorite?" It was making me crazy! Finally they picked a breed and started looking for where they could get the dog. The contacted a few places and went to look at the puppies on Sunday. Today Cecile told me that they officially have a dog. They can’t take it until it’s a little older, so they are going to pick it up when I come back at the end of the summer. Wow! So looks like when I come back I will have another “kid” to look after.

Mosque of Paris

     The family has been really sweet to involve me in everything to do with the dog. The other night we were discussing dog names, and I’m concerned for this dog. The names the kids are coming up with are… strange. Examples: Binky, Zoggie, Zoro, and I believe the Scooby-Doo was thrown in there. Ok, I know, it’s a dog and not a famous person’s baby, but I still find the names a bit silly. Also since the dog is “Aimée's,” she gets to make the final decision on the name. I will let you all know how that goes down. Maybe this dog will be named Boo like she wants. In that case I’m calling him Bailey.

     A week ago, I went with the family for dinner to this new Muslim restaurant. It's connected to the Mosque of Paris, and it’s a really beautiful building. I loved the food. The environment of it reminded me so much of Egypt. So after telling some stories and hearing about stories about Sara's and Alain's trip to Morocco, I asked Aimée if she could go anywhere where would she like to go. She said London. Cecile asked me where I would like to go and I said “right now I am really interested in either Australia or Amsterdam.” To which Alain said "Oh that is only a train ride away from Paris. Easy to get to." and before I could say anything about how I was thinking of doing that after my second year, Cecile say's "Amsterdam would be nice. Alain lets go there next year."

"OK that sounds beautiful."

"Olivia would you like to come with us."

So I might be going to Amsterdam in the next year or so. Either way, they want me to come with them more on family vacations because as Aimée puts it "you’re part of the family."

     Following this whole conversation, Alain was asking all these things about Utah and the surrounding area, and from what it sounds like they want to come visit Utah some time. I didn’t realize until this moment how close I really was to this wonderful family.

   

The "Cookies"

     Here in Paris, at least in the private schools, each class gets to privilege of going on a class trip. When I was in elementary school we went on one trip. It was 6th grade, three days at Mill-Hollow. Daniel is 6 and Aimée is 9 and they are both taking week long trips in the south of France, and Aimée is even going to a castle. WOW! Daniel was gone last week, and Aimée is gone this week. It has been so nice to have one kid at a time! The house is so quiet and calm! Aimée was very sad to go. She cried, a lot. When we asked her why she said it was because she was afraid she was going to miss us too much. Sweet girl.

     While Daniel was on his trip, Aimée had a friend over one afternoon, and we attempted to make cookies. They didn’t really work… I was so disappointed! The whole time I was trying to help the girls put in the right mixtures, and it didn’t go according to the recipe. They ended up more like chocolate chip scones rather than cookies. I was modified! Lucky the family LOVED them. This is the second time I have made cookies with them and it has messed up in one way or another, yet they still turn out a hit! I don’t understand what it is…

     Yesterday Sara and I were trying to find something to do after church, and we found this beautiful park behind Bercy Village. It was nice to see families out and about again, and children running around in the sun. I do love this time of year. It is so exciting to be outside again.

     

     Well sorry this blog hasn’t been kept up as well recently. I will try to be a little better about that. Thanks for all those who are still reading. I am currently working on a different kind of website that would be more for all kinds of travel with all my kinds of stories and the stories others tell me. So if you have a story, I want to hear about it.

Have a wonderful week!