homecoming

I went home this weekend..

...because as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros taught me, home is wherever I'm with people I love! Last weekend that happened to be Perpignan: a quaint town in France near the border of Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. I'll describe this journey in detail a bit later. As the indomitable Quincy Newkirk once said, the best place to start after all is the beginning. 

Last Wednesday night (not yesterday. I know, this post is terribly overdue), Shelby and I arrived in Paris. I could see the Eiffel Tower from my seat in the plane! Thus, for obvious reasons, I was quite literally about to bounce out of my seat from excitement. However, after a two hour long search for our hostel, we were admittedly a bit more subdued. We searched for dinner at one of the innumerable adorable cafes  near our hostel but our complete ineptness in the French language scared us off from a couple potential dinner locations. Shelby and I realized how fortunate (or spoiled?) we've been in Copenhagen to assume that everyone around us speaks English and will graciously offer to help us find our way if we're lost.  

fun fact: When I needed help from a French person, I eventually started to ask them in Spanish instead of English. They were so much more helpful when they thought I was a turista de España as opposed to a silly American knowing nothing more than "bonjour" and "je t'aime."

Bright and early the next morning, we hopped out of bed ready to explore our new Parisian surroundings. Our hostel in Montmartre happened to be just half a kilometer from the Moulin Rouge, so naturally I persuaded my friend to journey there first thing in the morning. 

I'll admit, I didn't think it was quite as spectacular spectacular as it was in the movie. 

(jumping 12 hours ahead) Here, however, is what the Moulin Rouge looked like at night:

As beautiful as this scene was, I was despondent that I wasn't able to burst into a certain Elephant Love Medley on the spot because the Nicole Kidman to my Ewan McGregor (or vice versa?) wasn't there to sing with me. 

back to the Parisian Thursday morning:

After we visited the Moulin Rouge (for the first time), we happened to find a small, narrow street that I thought I recognized from a scene in Amélie. This happened to me quite frequently; while traversing through the streets, I kept thinking I recognized places I had seen in various movies. It was all very exciting. As a curious explorer, I persuaded my friend to embark up this to see if it really was the same one that Audrey Tautou herself bicycled down. Thanks to a crazy random happenstance, we found ourselves staring at the Sacré-Cœur Basilica! 

kindly direct your attention to my feet in the above picture. That's right... FLIP FLOPS! This was the first time since January that I've allowed my feet to see the light of day.. I still haven't had the courage to stop wearing boots in Denmark. It was a glorious occasion. I was so excited about the prospect of wearing flip flops again after months of nothing but heavy boots that it didn't even occur to me that they might not be ideal footwear for a day filled with over 12 hours of walking. Needless to say.. I ended up with about 5 blisters. The funny thing is I don't regret this choice at all. The weather was just too beautiful to NOT wear flip flops (73 degrees?! I forgot weather like this existed!)

more pictures:

The Champs de Élysée! Where I found..

...a Parisian Disney store! Here's a shoutout to my sister Rachel, the biggest Disney fan in the whole world. 

aaannddd here's a picture of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. It was TINY! and there were SO many people! I enjoyed people-watching here more than contemplating the timeless work itself. It was so funny to see people staring at the backs of their cameras more than the art surrounding them. I didn't even attempt to get closer. I figured I could ruminate about the enigmatic woman later. Google Images exists for a reason.

Shelby!

The Louvre from inside the Louvre!

the Parisian opera house.. the phantom of the opera lived here! The musical theater nerd in me was beyond excited to be here. 

While in Paris, I realized that I'm immensely grateful that I decided to study abroad in a city like Copenhagen. Not only was the transportation system unbearably baffling (whereas Copenhagen has TWO metro lines- one going back and one going forth. Danes like to keep it simple), but the sheer enormity of the city was overwhelming. Maybe this is just the small-town girl in me, but I like being able to feel like I've conquered a city. I love getting to know the personality of a city the same way as you would get to know a person. I love that Copenhagen isn't filled to the brim with tourist attraction after tourist attraction; it feels much more like a home this way!

Speaking of home..

On Friday morning, I was filled to the brim with pure lykkelig (loo-guh-lee: my favorite word in Danish.. it means happy/happiness!) because it was FINALLY time to reunite with some of my favorite people in the world! 

digression warning: You may not have known this about me, but I was a girl scout for two whole years! I never made it past being a good ole brownie scout, but some of the songs we learned were filled with timeless wisdom.. example: "make new friends, but keep the old. one is silver and the other is gold!"

Weirdly enough, this song (along with "Home," the song listed at the top of this post) kept flashing in my mind last weekend. Even though I was lucky enough to reunite with my wonderfully fantastic Davidson friends, I got to make some new friends on top of it all! 

NOTE: Almost all of these pictures came from Quincy and Keith's facebook albums, although I believe Blake and Paisley deserve some of this photo cred too.

(Ashley, Blake (new friend!), me, Quincy, and Keith! note: sadly, this picture isn't all-encompassing- it doesn't include two of my other two new friends, Sara and Paisley. I'll introduce y'all later!) 

We spent Friday afternoon in Perpignan! I felt so fortunate to see a part of France that many tourists don't get to see. If you're reading this and you happen to be planning a vacation over to this side of the world, remember that there's so much more to France than just Paris! 

On Saturday morning, we made the journey into the mountains to hike somewhere between 10-15 kilometers. It was so refreshing to be with a group who truly appreciated every morsel of beauty we came across. We soaked in the brilliance of our surroundings and never for a second took it for granted.

my soulmate- Quincy! She's the one who convinced me to come to France in the first place. She was also my roommate last semester and will [probably be] my fellow hall counselor next year! We sang, we laughed, we loved. It was just like old times.. except we were in France. boom.

The French crew had a game where they came up with superlatives for every member of the group. I decided that Keith is not only the best hugger in the group, but he's also the best hugger I know!

lovin' the teamwork!

The beautiful Ashley Parker! Believe it or not, this girl may end up journeying to Denmark later this semester.. stay tuned.

This is Sara, one of my new friends! I'm super sad that I didn't get a picture with her last weekend, but instead, here's a picture of her being beautiful with an equally gorgeous background! 

This is my last new friend, Paisley! It was always super easy to be happy around her because she's one of the most enthusiastic, naturally happy people I know. Basically, it was a great group and a ridiculously wonderful weekend filled with freedom, beauty, truth, and love.

This was a little town. It's a quiet village.

Every day like the one before.

It was a little town, full of little people.

Waking up to saaaayyyyyy...

....bonjour.

If any of y'all are nice enough to have read any of my other blogposts, you will know that pastries have a special place in my heart. Believe it or not, this pain au chocolat was the ONLY pastry I had in France.. and it was photo-bombed. I heard that France is supposed to have the best pastries in the world and I was ready to challenge that absurdity and test some for myself. Sadly, this dream did not come to pass. I guess I have a reason to go back!

“Little Gidding”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

–T.S. Eliot (courtesy of Jessie Blount)