Coucou, les nouveaux AFSers!

So I've come to understand that AFS has been directing AFS hopefuls to my blog, so that I can take them under my wing and guide them. Or something. This surprised me at first, but it makes complete sense. Had I been told before, I might've written the blog more geared towards that audience, thus lacking authenticity. Basically, what I wanted to say to all you (resisting the urge to say n00bs) newcomers is, I hope that my blog has been helpful, or at least amusing. If you have any further questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to find me on facebook or drop a comment on a post, and yes, I'll even see the comments on those older posts. I just want to preface now though that AFS will you send you books (I'm serious, I have three of them on my desk right now) of information, there will also be meetings, letters, that group call, orientations, and all that. So, really, in the vein of orthodox advice, they've got you covered, so I guess ask me the weird stuff. Or specifically me stuff. (Whoo, feelin a little arrogant..."go ahead and ask me about me, I'm very interesting, you know...")

Sunburnt and Rainsoaked

Sigh. Facebook isn't wanting to upload my photos, so I actually have to write a real blog. Heavy sigh.
Well, let's start with the title: I'm sun burnt, and because my family has never heard of aloe vera, I'm getting dry and flaky... But I am in this such sizzled state due to a little something called the Puy du Fou. I guess it means Well of Crazy or something, but whenever I tried to ask Thomas asked "why is the world round?" and then told me it was just a name and didn't matter. It is a theme park, but instead of rides there are "spectacles!" And not the one's that help you see better, my friend. We went for the weekend, this is about what the plan was:
Saturday: 2:45 - 3:15, Le Bal des Oiseaux Fantomes (The Ball of the Phantom Birds), a demonstration of falconry.
3:45 - 4:00, Le Magicien Ménestrel (The Minstrel Magician), magic tricks and the like.
4:00 - 4:10, Les Grandes Eaux (The Grand Waters), fountains synchronized to classical music.
4:45 - 5:20, La Bataille du Donjon (The Battle of the Dungeon), an equestrian demonstration with sword fighting....and moving, flamethrowing castles...
5:30 - 5:37, Les Automates Musiciens (The Automated Musicians), robots with instruments popping out windows, playing recorded music, while a guy runs around and asks them to stop.
10:30 - 12:30, I don't know what it was called, but it was the epic telling of the story of the Puy du Fou, starting in the Middle Ages and ending sometime after World War Two. It was indescribably epic, words fail me, thus you must wait for pictures (sorry).
Sunday: 11:30 - 12:00, Le Bal des Oiseaux Fantomes, because it was really the only thing going on at the time and we all liked it. A hawk jumped on Thomas' head!
1:00 - 1:15, Le Legende de Martin (The Legend of Martin. See? French is easy), a musical puppet show. Sufficiently silly.
1:45 - 1:55, Les Grandes Eaux, there was a whole lot less to do Sunday...
2:30 - 3:00, Les Vikings (I'll give you a hint, it's exactly the same), kind of a rip-off of Pirates of the Caribbean. As in for a good chunk of it, they played the music of Pirates and the choreography was the same.. And there was a boat that rose from the water..with a guy standing on it. And then shot giant flames. And then Jesus rose from the water, walked on water, carrying the baby a viking had thrown in the water, then turned into a dove. I am not making this up.
3:15 - 4:00, Gladiateurs, a Roman general turned Christian and fights 40 minutes of gory gladiator battles and does a chariot race, gets locked in a cage and the Christian slave he loves gets tied to a pole to get eaten by a lions, then a tiger, but because she prays, God turns them into lolcats as they roll on their backs and look adorable. Then they kill the Emperor.
4:15 - 4:25, L'Odysee du Puy du Fou, it was like a haunted house, with shields and tapestry and ceilings turning into screens. And statues not actually being statues but real people, and walls that expand, and cool fountain-work. Pretty cool stuff.
4:30 - 4:30something, Le Chemin de la Memoire (Memory Lane, kind of), you walk along a path and look at statues kind of following the story of the Saturday night spectacle.
5:00 - 5:35, Mousquetaire de Richelieu, a guy falls in love with a girl who's a flamenco dancer who wants to be a comedian, but she leaves and he gets in trouble with the law and disguises himself as a hunchback, but fights with the real musketeers and they forgave him because he fought so well. Then he finds the girl in the Orient, and then they flood the stage and they dance flamenco, the guy on his horse the whole time. And Thomas fought the guy when he was a hunchback (he was walking around before it started). Okay, so he didn't actually fight him, but it was funny, they did the cartoony "put up your fists" thing.
And now, the rain soaked: This was Tuesday, a day in which I did many a great thing. Kind of. I tried to visit the Opera of Paris and the Bourse, but I think I got the wrong building each time (it'd help if I looked at pictures of these things before I went, so I knew what I was looking for). Then I went to Cimitiere de Pere Lachaise. A huge cemetery with a lot of famous people in it, like Oscar Wilde (no, I didn't kiss the grave). Oh, the best part about the cemetery, though, was when I was literally walking through the grand door, the wind picked up and it started raining. Then it was the Grande Arche de la Defense, which was indeed a very large arch. And there was a gigantic, mainly underground mall there, with a dome-shaped movie theater. I want to talk about these malls really quick, they always catch me off guard. I'll be walking through the metro station, trying to catch the next one or just looking for the exit, then I find this vast expansive area that bleeds seamlessly into he grimy tunnels I know to be the station. I think nothing of it at first, often one tends to see the occasional vendor trapped beneath the earth's surface, to cater to the needs of all those rushing by who might've forgotten something. Though I continue, and see larger stores, and stores that I recognize, escalators going up and down, multiple stages all existing below the streets and pedestrians above, and these malls are huge. Okay, maybe that wasn't real quick...Oh, I bought Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, and new music makes me happy. Then I went to go visit les Invalides, then I was like, "Hey, I've been here before." So I left. I ran into Darmy though, sorry I couldn't make it to the picnic, I ended up hanging out with Thomas most the day because it was his last day in France before he leaves for two months.
Is that everything? I think so.

Swarm of Pictures! Part Two!

This is another chunk of 131 pictures, but this time all of les catacombes de paris. I'll let you discover this wonder on your own:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83872&id=791249048&l=1194bb29d3

Swarm of Pictures! Part One!

The blog for this is technically the captions. So, I'll let you have at 'em.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83859&id=791249048&l=0bb3e3dc6e

Oh, yeah, there's over 150 pictures there, so it might take a while.

Everything You've Missed

I've done quite a bit, I suppose, since I last wrote, all of it without my camera. Let's start out a week ago (from when I originally wrote this I think a week ago): It was a Sunday. I woke up at 7, went to the hospital, got back and helped prepare for our area in the mass garage sale, went to Notre Dame, went the Hotel de Ville, went to la Bibliotheque de...quelqu'un...Then we went to Fontainebleu (Thomas and Quentin had left that morning, but I stayed to do the giant garage sale thing and the Paris stuff), where we played video games and hung out. L'Hotel de Ville (which is I'm pretty sure is a museum type thing) was closed, because it was Sunday, and the library (Bibliotheque. Since I didn't take pictures, Google is helping me out) was closed just because. This brings us to Our Lady, and I have one or two things to say about her. I should've written this sooner when it was more fresh in my mind.
So, I guess religion is a spectator sport now. There were two lines to get in (both were free), I went in the main one, which was going pretty fast. It essentially allows one to lap the sitting section (which the other line was for), to look at how wonderful the church is without getting involved in the religious part. I find this odd, a little, especially because there was actually service going on. So it makes me think that the sermon is just put on for all those passerbys looking for church-based bragging rights. However, even if all of those people in the pews are there because they feel closer to God in such an environment, what does that make us, the spectators? Imagine this situation in, say, a restaurant: You're eating dinner, and it's really quite good because it's a fancy joint. In fact, it's so fancy, there's a constant stream of people marching along the walls, watching you. They're there because they didn't want to bother to eat, but still wanted to see the place. Tolerable, yes; but odd.
I went to a museum I cannot for the life of me remember the name of. It's focus was Eastern and Southern Asian art, which is really cool because you don't often see art from anywhere but Europe in these museums (except in the main, temporary exhibits). I went with a class of premieres (equivalent of Juniors), who turned out to be really pretty cool, so I ate lunch with them and again a few more times. Then the Grand Palais Tuesday with the anglophone kids, we saw all the Andy Warhol stuff. Andy Warhol: He's got ideas, and he's not a bad artist, but after the 7th or so room of portraits of people that have been painted to look like Joker concept art and the novelty starts to wear off. When I got back to the school, the class I'm normally in had been dismissed early (an hour before I got back), and Thomas had already left. This was all explained to me by the third of the class who stayed. So I went and got ice cream with them and chilled in the park for a while. Then hung out with the premieres again. I also cut my hair last Saturday, it's about an inch long. (Is he serious? Is he kidding? No proof without pictures!) Wednesday was my last day of school, for some, possibly alarm-not-going-off, reason we didn't get up in time and weren't able to go. Actually we could've and I wanted to, it just would've been difficult and we'd be there for less than half the time of both-way transportation. So, yeah, sorry everybody in my French school, that was totally a jerk thing to do and I'm sorry. (Honestly though, it completely sucks and I really wanted to be able to say goodbye and all that).
That brings us to today - Thursday. I sit here waiting anxiously to leave to go pick Mariah up at the train station, for she will be staying here til Monday. The weekend has been more or less planned out. More on this later!
Sorry I haven't written in forever, but I'm here now, so...

Lazy Taylor Writes Not A Blog For You

Instead, he posts a link to pictures! I didn't actually take pictures of people, or really anything from the party except the giant dish. You'll see. Most of this is Le Musée d'Orsay, for the little time I was there (it closes much earlier than the Louvre...I did not know this before hand). However it is free for those under 18, so I didn't really lose anything. No! I'm not writing a blog! Pictures and that's it!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=78168&id=791249048&l=fedf6014b8

I hide in the shadows

Alternate title: "Il fait trop chaud d'etre vivant"

Yes, apparently it was over 30 yesterday, which is flirting with the triple digits in Fahrenheit. There was a party with family friends (pictures later), in which Phillippe made a giant [insert name of dish that I've forgotten here], and it was delicious. It was langoustine, shrimp, muscles, calamari, chicken, and various vegetables all over brown rice. Or, at least the rice was brown after the oily frying process. I ate too much of it. There was also fruit salad, which was good, but I'm proud to say my grandma makes it better (sorry, France). There was much video gaming chez les enfants, because there was five of us and plusiers de 4-player games for the wii. It's funny, because wii is said the same as oui. Franchement, Smash Bros Brawl is pretty nul with wiimotes; I have lost all my mad Kirby skillz.
Oh, Matty will like this: so, I'm watching Buffy now. I'm not sure what to think about it, but it's grown on me. I usually watch all three episodes after school (French TV compresses it's scheduling, shows don't fit into half an hour time slots, they fit as they please. Shows can start at 5:10 and go to 5:35 or something like that. It's funny, because the commercial breaks ten to be saved until after the episode, or happens only once in the middle, and when there's no commercial after the "dramatic fade to black after cliffhanger" and it just goes back into the show immediately after, it's kid of silly.) I'm keeping this short though, easier on the eyes.