♪ Forget where you're from... ♫

Today I woke up to Madame Devarenne singing and sunlight peeking out from behind the curtain across my window, and I thought, "Today is going to be a good day."

And it was! How can a day spent at one of the most famous cathedrals in the world NOT be a good day?

This morning after a quick breakfast and grabbing our packaged cakes and crepes to go, Paris and I headed to Mr. Erickson's apartment to meet the group for an outing to Chartres.

So, I almost became a victim of pickpocketing on the way to the train. Luckily I didn't have anything of too much value in my pocket. (Just the cell phone BYU gave us in case of emergencies, which isn't mine anyway.) We were on the escalator heading for the train, and this older guy was standing in front of me. He had his hand hanging loose by his side, and he kept looking down at it. Then he took a step down on the escalator so he was uncomfortably close to me and he leaned back a little bit. I was watching his hand the whole time, and saw him looking at my pocket. I stepped down one step too to get away from him and glared at him with my, "Get away from me, stupid!" look. He instantly stepped back up to the step he was on and when we neared the top, he walked away very quickly.

The train was so cool! It was a double-decker! And very nice. Much nicer than the Metro. :P Except that we were with the entire class, and there are some people in the group who don't really know the meaning of the word "quiet". Actually, it's more like half the group. lol. I felt bad for the people on the train with us. The French are so much quieter in public than Americans.

So far, I think Chartres is my favorite place I've visited in France. It is gorgeous! It's hard to imagine a bunch of peasants building something so massive! We had an old British tour guide show us around the building, and it was awesome to hear all the stories he knew about the cathedral. It was also cool to hear him talk about the imagery in the stained glass windows. One of my favorite parts was the stone work around the altar. It was so intricate, with many sculptures telling the life of Christ.

Another cool thing about the cathedral was that they were in the process of cleaning every inch of it. And once it has been cleaned, the stone is actually off-white, not gray! It's like that for all of the Gothic cathedrals. The tour guide said that it was funny, because everyone today tries to copy Gothic cathedrals and make them a gray color, but they were originally much lighter and the walls were all painted. (If you go to my album Paris with Paris on Facebook and look at my Chartres pictures, you can see what I'm talking about.) They've only finished a couple of the side chapels and above the altar, and a bit of the outside. They're also cleaning the windows, and the difference between the cleaned and uncleaned is amazing! A cathedral full of cleaned windows wouldn't be that dark and gloomy at all, because the cleaned windows let in so much light!

After the tour of the cathedral, we went exploring in the town of Chartres. It was a cute, little French town. :) Tons of tiny shops and little streets. Last time I went to Europe, I got annoyed every time my dad stopped to take a picture of a cool street or door. But at Chartres, I found myself taking pictures of every cool street we passed! Oh, la la! :) While we were exploring, I bought a little music box that plays "Champs Elysees". :) I love music boxes.

The train ride home was really cool. I loved passing through the French countryside, staring out the window at the fields of bobbing yellow flowers and the wind rippling through seas of green grass. The colors of the French countryside are so vibrant, it takes your breath away.

I decided I want to have a French house when I grow up. It doesn't have to be huge, but with nice pale-yellow walls and a tiled roof. Vines crawling up the sides, lilacs and those other yummy smelling flowers that are all over the place but that I don't know what they are...those would be around the gate and around an arch over the gate that leads to the little path that goes to the house. *sigh* anyway...

Dinner was kind of awkward... I'm not sure why. It was tough. Maybe we just talked about weird stuff that I don't know what to talk about, but... I was struggling and getting very frustrated with the language and trying to not eat offensively and everything else. It's hard eating with them sometimes and having to listen to all of them at once. Maybe they were talking over each other a lot, and that stressed me out or something. I dunno....

It's been so windy here! And I do not like it. The French translation of "Jingle Bells" is "Vivre le vent, vivre le vent, vivre le vent d'hiver" which is basically saying "long live the wind of winter". And I say NON! Le vent doit mourir! :P lol.
fields, houses, cathedral- old guy, stories, cleaning, stone work, passageways, music box, dinner, stories, wind