FINALLY, SHE HAS RETURNED!!!

ALRIGHT! Since, it's only been a million days since I've updates, I guess now is better than ever :).

So much has happened in the last couple months, I don't know where to begin!

Well, I think I left off around Thanksgiving...so we'll start there...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was hosted at our house, because it's the most accommodating for many people. There were around 30 people at our house, who represented 11 nationalities! It was awesome to spread the tradition of Thanksgiving to people who've never even heard of it. It was a really good time. We had a HUGE Turkey and soooo much food. Everyone brought at least one thing, some people two or three, so we had a lot to eat. But it was delicious and we all had a great time.


Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, nothing much happened. I was just trying to get through my days till Nick came :). Though, we did go ice skating in Rochefort (a near by town). It was really fun, because it was a really nice day and I haven't done it for so long that it was great to get back up and going.

Nick arrived on the 24th (Christmas Eve) in Paris. I went to pick him up at the airport around noon. It was so awesome to see him. We had to hang out in the train station for a few hours till our train left at 3:30. We finally arrived in La Rochelle around 8:30. Poor guy was so tired. He slept most of the train ride and I don't blame him! Traveling for almost a whole day is tiring. When we got back to my house, Melissa, Andrea, Laura, Ben and Salah were there and they had made dinner, which was perfect, because we were starving. We ended the night early, because we were both soooo tired. I woke up on Christmas day with the other assistants and let Nick rest from his travels. We (the other assistants and I) made breakfast. It was SOOOO good! We made eggs, pancakes (with REAL maple syrup, which the French don't really use), and sausages. It was so American and I loved it! Nick slept in till the early afternoon, because he was so exhausted. Then, we started cooking for our Christmas meal. It was all very yummy.

After we ate and cleaned up, we opened presents. We did a man/women exchange, so everyone had a gift to open. Then we lite off the fireworks that Ben received as a gift and after the excitement of that was over, we just hung out and played some Wii and enjoyed some drinks. Nick and I called it an early night, because we had to wake up (semi) early to catch a train to Paris.

The days before Christmas, Nick and I toured La Rochelle. We went to the beaches, two of the three towers and walked around La Rochelle. It was fun, but La Rochelle isn't THAT big that you can tour around it for days and days. So we were ready to get out.

We woke up around 10:00 and left on the train at 11:37. We arrived in Paris at 4:30ish and then had to wait around about an hour then caught a train to Beauvais, which is about 45 minutes out of Paris. It is where we had to fly out of. We arrived in Beauvais around 6:00 and there was suppose to be a bus to take us to our hotel, but since it was New Years day, everything was messed up and no taxi were running or no one was really working at the train station. We almost decided to walk to our hotel, but decided against it, because it ended up being a really long ways away. After almost two hours and me almost breaking down in frustration, the bus FINALLY came. We arrived at our hotel, which could have been classified as a very small dorm room, complete with bunk beds! Haha, thankfully the lower bed was a double, so we didn't have to "bunk up." It was a very small room, but we managed for the night. After getting checked in, we made it over to the "Buffalo Grill" to have a bite to eat. It was so American, and sort of like Applebee's, that it made me giggle. The meal was okay, but we didn't mind, we were hungry. We got back to the hotel and called it a night in order to get up at 7:30.

We got up and arrived at the airport by bus at around 9:30. Our plane didn't leave until 12:00, so we had breakfast and sat around for a bit. We checked in, did the security thing and then waited for our plane. When I was booking our tickets, I accidentally asked for "priority boarding," which we had no idea what it was. Well, it turned out to be that we got to board the plane first, because with RyanAir (the airline), you don't have assigned seats, you just, literally, get on and sit down, so with priority booking, we got to choose our seat first. It was kind of crazy, but we got on an got into our seats. The airline has cheap seats, but aren't very customer oriented. They don't serve drinks, well they do, but you must buy them. It's kind of sketch, but what do you do? It's cheap.

So we get to Dublin and find a bus to take us to our hotel. We get off, check in and get up to our room and, after one unsuccessful attempt at our key not working and going back down to the desk to get another, we finally made it into our room, which was AMAZING! Big bed, big closet, big desk. A very nice room to say the least...and cheap!

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, then made our way downtown Dublin. We had to walk, but the walk wasn't bad and it was really beautiful. It took us about 25 minutes to walk down. We arrived in the downtown area and walked around for a bit and then made our way to Trinity College and walked around the campus. Trinity College was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. It was a really beautiful. It was only around 4:30 in the afternoon, but it was already dark, because Dublin is so far north.

We ended up getting a bite to eat at a really expensive pizza place, where we only got one small pizza and garlic bread and then ended up hitting up a Burger King on the way home, haha :) and then heading back to the hotel to get a goodnight rest for the next day. We woke up late, surprise, but it was because I set my alarm wrong. We ended up getting going around 10:00ish and started to pound the pavement. We first went to Christ Church and Dublinia, then headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral and saw where St. Patrick was baptized. We then we walked to the Guinness Storehouse, took a tour of that, then walked to Dublin Castle and toured that also, THEN walked to the tourism office to book our tour for the next day. We got a bite to eat again, which was most likely Burger King cause it was really cheap and I haven't had the goodness that is Burger King in many months, then we went to our Literary Pub Crawl. It was really interesting and fun. It was two actors who took us around to four different pubs and around Trinity College, while telling stories of writers that came form Dublin. It was really fun. It lasted around 2 hours and 45 minutes and after, we headed back to the hotel. The next day we got up and took a tour of the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough and surrounding areas, where many movies were filmed, such as "Brave Heart" and "P.S. I Love You." The tour lasted the whole day and we got back to the hotel around 6:30ish. We rested for a while then went to get a pizza and called it a night, because we had to get up at 2:45 to catch a bus to the airport to fly out at 6:00! Ei ei ei!

We got up at 2:30 and were outside waiting for a bus with another lady when a taxi driver pulled up and said he'd take us to the airport for the same price as the bus and it would take 1/2 the time. So we did it and arrived around 4:00. We checked in and found some breakfast then waited for out plane. We flew out and arrived in Beauvais at 9:00 (with the time change). We got a bus to the train station and got on a train bound for Paris. One stop in to our train ride, the train ended up stopping, because some kids were messing around. We sat there for over an hour and FINALLY got on our way. We arrived in Paris, got the metro to our hotel, dropped off our bags and started hitting Paris by foot. In 5 hours, we saw (by foot mind you): Notre Dame (inside and outside and around), Le Louvre (just the outside), Tuileries Gardens, Champs-Elysees, Arc-du-Triumph and the Eiffel Tower! We headed back to our hotel and spent the night watching French game shows. We went to sleep and woke up to take Nick to the airport. We got there and waited in line for two hours just for him to check in. It was so busy because they canceled the flights the day before, so there were double the number of people who had to fly that day. After saying our sad goodbyes, he left and I went to catch my train.

And that was our trip! Obviously there was much more to it, but you can see all the details in the pictures. I don't have all the pictures up quite yet, but you can randomly check out: http://bonjouramanda.myphotoalbum.com/ for updates. I have a few up, but our internet is really slow, so it takes awhile to get them up.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year! I will be updating this more often, so keep a look out!

Remember, check for updates on my photo album!!!

Talk to you soon :)