End of winter school and beginning of London

Greetings family and friends! I'm sorry, it has been too long! As I have said in many previous posts, a lot has happened since I last wrote! =)

Since there is so much going on in my life right now, I thought it might be easiest to try and walk through some of the highlights in pictures.

Winter school at Capernwray finished last Thursday. Unfortunately, for the last 4 days of school, I was out sick! But praise the Lord, I got better enough to get out of bed for the last day.

The last Saturday before school ended, we went on a trip to a mansion named Chatsworth. You may recognize pictures of this house because it was used in the movies "The Dutchess" and "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightley. In Pride and Prejudice the house is used as Mr. Darcy's home, Pemberley! So it was very exciting to be able to visit this famous home! I have many more pictures on facebook if you'd like to see more...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=98929&id=720019947&l=62565ce3eb

you may recognize this shot of the front of the house...
...or this statue gallery...

.....or this man maybe? =)
(statue of Mr. Darcy)

The day before term ended, we had one last formal dinner together and all got our certificates of completion from the school. We all enjoyed this last excuse to dress up together. =)
Here is a picture of my Interactive group. The interactive groups served as discussion groups which met once a week and were arranged by region. Everyone in my group was from California and Arizona.

My room also took pictures all together before term ended. Even though we had lots of different girls in our room, we (praise the Lord!) all got along and were able to have fun together. We even made room shirts together! We bought plain white shirts and decorated them with sharpy pens. Each has a number 3 on the back (our room number), each of our signatures, and the wearers name in large print on top like a sports jersey.

We also took more roommate pictures on another day. We took them in lots of poses (this is why we're a girls' room, at least I know my Dad would never have lasted!) =) This first one is my favorite. =)

There are many of these gorgeous little crocuses around campus. It was amazing! I've never seen such wildflowers just spring up everywhere!

top row: Martina from Slovakia, Lisa from Canada, Erin from Wisconsin
bottom row: Kassi -born in Florida, grown up in Ecuador as a missionary kid, me =), Kaylene from Canada, Stephanie from Oregon/missionary kid from Mexico.

Well there's my room!
Now I am traveling with 2 of my roommates, Kassi and Stephanie, in London. We have seen many landmarks, museums, etc. during our stay!

Our first day of travel, we visited Oxford with an additional friend from school who just stayed with us for that one day.Kassi, me, and Kate in front of one of the most famous Oxford colleges: Christ's Church Collegethe dining hall inside Christ's church. it was the inspiration for the dining hall in the Harry Potter movies.

Here's our friend Ben with daffodils. Daffodils are ALL over England at the moment! We had them in many places around Capernwray, the just pop up! It's amazing!
Stephanie and me in front of Buckingham palace! I found it was actually disappointingly not too impressive, I preferred Kensington Palace which had a neat exhibit about the old English tradition of presenting debutantes to the Queen each year.
Then Kassi and I went to see the musical "Wicked" on the West End (the London equivalent of Broadway). We were able to get amazing seats that would normally sell for 60 pounds but we got for 25 with our student ID cards! =) I loved the musical, it was definitely worth the money!

We went up the London Eye which provides a spectacular view of the city, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone just because of the price. However, now I can say I've done it at least!

me, Steph, Kassi in front of Big Ben

in front of the London bridge! =)

Then today, the 3 of us went to Dover to see the famous white cliffs and the remarkable castle, but that will have to wait until the next post!

my traveling forecast: I leave Friday morning for Barcelona then to Stockholm a few days later! =)

All my love,
Sarah

~Outreach to Morley!~

We’re back at Capernwray and the count-down to the end of school! School ends in 9 days, March 19^th, and it feels like the end very quickly approaching!

We just got from outreach late Sunday night. I was on a team of 12 students that went to a small town of 60,000 called Morley which is a suburb of Leeds (the 3^rd largest city in England?). I had a great experience with our team, with our hosts and with the town.

Capernwray divided our 170 students into 26 teams and sent us all over the UK (most were in England). My team was composed of 9 girls and 3 boys (a good representation of our ratio here at school). One of the main events (and my favorite) which we participated in over outreach was a “Bible Exhibition”. We did this when we were split into our 2 sub-teams so we had 6 of us dress up as Bible characters. We worked with an evangelist who works with Open Air Missions. He worked as the narrator, weaving our stories together. We would each share a story with the school children from our characters life as an interactive monologue. We performed for school groups 8 (I think) times for a combined total of about 600 kids!

Here's our entire team (my sub-team is dressed up in our Bible costumes) along with some of our friends from our host church. The man on the farthest right was our narrator. The woman with the little girl in front of her is the pastor's wife and her husband, the pastor, is standing right behind her with the grayish hair. I stayed at their house for the duration of outreach. They were very sweet and I enjoyed being at a house with a little girl. =)

Anyway, back to the exhibition.

I was the prophet Elijah and told the story of God’s miracle on Mt. Carmel. In short, God proved that He is a contemporary God and active in our lives by supernaturally setting a drenched sacrifice (a dead bull) on fire from heaven! I loved telling that story and felt the kids really enjoyed the dramatic fire aspect of the story. I certainly enjoyed telling it and acting it out! =) I would ask the kids certain questions that would make them think about the story, i.e. I asked them “what effect does water have on fire?” the obvious answer is that it puts it out! Then I proceeded to tell how I (Elijah) poured buckets of water on the sacrifice (what I was about to have God burn) in order to show the unlimited and extremity of God’s power! (if you want to read the story, see 1 Kings 18)

The Bible Exhibition took up approximately 2 days of our time.

Here I am performing as Elijah.

God actually sent an unexpected gift through working in the exhibition. Our narrator, John, brought an assistant/apprentice with him named Daniel. We knew Daniel would be coming, but were pleasantly surprised when he turned out to be 19 like most of us (no one on my team is older than 20). It was great to have another male on our team, much less a kind, godly young man. He ended up being quite a blessing to our team.

Other outreach activities included leading the church service for our host church twice, leading the Sunday service for another church in the area, hosting kids’ club after school, having tea with elderly people in an effort to have meaningful conversations with them, passing out free gifts from the church to the public (such as calendars and diaries with Scripture on them) and performing assemblies.

We performed/ lead school assemblies for British public schools. In England, it is actually the law that children receive some sort of Christian education daily. Most schools do this in the form of assemblies. They assemble multiple classes and have a large “religious education” class. (they abbreviate it “RE”). So we went into several schools and performed a skit telling the parable that Jesus tells about the lost sheep and the loving shepherd that goes out of his way to search for this small, single sheep. (symbolic of God, our Loving Shepherd who loves all of us so much that He finds us and shows us the way when we are lost) We also made this skit interactive to keep the kids attention and they loved it! One of my team members took a video of us performing it (I played the part of the lost sheep) so you will get to see it when I get home. =)
Here we are introducing ourselves to the children during the after school children's club.

There is much more to tell, but since the internet is about to turn off here, I'll stop here for now.
I wish you all the best!
Praying for you all in England,
Sarah =)

Last Saturday we went to York. Besides getting car sick and throwing up on the bus, it was a good trip! =) England has so many windy, narrow roads that it's quite easy to get at least a headache (or worse) from driving. Even though we were technically on highways, there are like little abandoned back roads compared to US highways.

One of the attractions that York is known for is its Roman wall and ruins. I really enjoyed walking around in the ruin areas.
And in case you're wondering what the red mark on my cheek is, it was Valentine's Day so I drew a heart on my cheek in order to be festive. =)

Kate and me
Kate plays the piano and we often enjoy playing and singing together.

a bunch of us poking out from behind pillars in the ruin area.
this particular room used to be a hospital!

While in York, my roommate Kassi and I went to a museum which Kassi's tour guide book had highly recommended. It was a neat museum. My favorite part of it were all the historical costumes. They had wedding dresses representing the various styles from the past 150ish years as well as bathing suits! =)

Last week, some of my friends decided to dress up on an ordinary school day just for fun. We chose the theme of "Rock star". Here's our group photo.
You can't see my outfit too well, but I made my make-up really heavy and borrowed other girls' clothes to fit the style. We all had a lot of fun with it. I had several people tell me throughout the day that if they didn't know what i normally dressed like, they would have bought the rocker look as my style. So I guess that means I succeeded in pulling it off! =)

On Tuesday night, one of the school staff had his birthday and some of the students threw a birthday party for him with the theme of "ugly/awkward prom". We all used the clothes we had to try and dress up and look ugly. One of the great advantages of living with a bunch of girls is that you always have someone you can borrow clothes from! I wore one of my own dresses then added belts from a friend, wore bright pink tights from another friend, borrowed bright orange earrings from yet another friend and used blue eye make-up from someone else too! So my outfit was a total conglomeration of borrowed items! I don't have a better picture of my costume from evening (the other pictures are on another girl's camera). But here's a picture of me from that evening with my friend Hannah:
They played music and we had a competition for the most awkward dance and we played an awkward group game. A lot of people got into character and were dancing and acting awkwardly the entire party.

Last night we had our school's 2nd talent show. I did a comedic song routine to the song from Disney's Mulan movie "Be a man". The song is about training the young woman Mulan, who is disguised as a man, to be a Chinese warrior. So we made up a routine to the song and performed it for the talent show! It was SO much fun! (I'm the fat warrior, 2nd from the left, I drew facial hair, a black eye and everything! we even had one of the guys from China draw Chinese characters on our faces!) =)
We had all sorts of acts, many musical numbers, etc. We even had people perform songs or poems that they'd written. I really enjoyed the entire evening and taped it all so if you're lucky, you'll get to see it if you'd like when I get home. =)

One of my roommates left this morning to go to London for the weekend to visit her sister who is there and won't be back until Monday. But then another of my roommates is leaving Sunday afternoon for the beginning of her "10 day outreach" (except for hers is longer than 10 days because her group leaves before the rest of us). So I realized that last night was our last night as a room together until AFTER 10 day outreach! We return on March 8 from our outreach and then school ends the 19!!!! So we are really at the beginning of the end now. =(
Although I look forward to seeing all of you again, I now I am going to miss this place and my new friends here all so much!

So those are just a few of things we've been up to lately! I hope you are all doing well.
Infinite x's and o's!
~Sarah

February update (and xmas break cont.)

Sorry everybody that I haven’t written in so long! Life here is busy and getting busier as we approach the end of school (even though we still have 6 weeks left, we’re all aware they will go really quickly).

Before I continue my travel log from over Christmas break, here’s a brief update of what I’ve been up to lately:


~on Friday night, we had a "British night". It was an evening hosted by our 6 British students here at school full of quizzes about British history, geography, pop culture, etc. Since I didn't have any clothing with a British flag on it, I dressed in British colors (red and white) and painted a flag on my face =)In this picture I'm with my roommate Kaylene from Canada (in the middle) and our good friend Faye from Britain, who lives just 15 min. from school.

~All the students have been split into teams for our “10 day outreach”. We have teams of 4-12 students going all over the UK, some to Wales, some to Scotland, most to various places in England. Each team is partnered with the local church and helps them in whatever way the church chooses.

~I am on a 12 person team (the biggest team) to a town named Morley about 2 hours east of school. Our team will be doing a lot of school work (conducting assemblies and Bible classes in schools), distributing leaflets, inviting people on the street to free coffee and tea where we’ll have the opportunity to talk to them about Jesus, among other activities.

This is our team with the mayor of Morley. We went went to Morley for the pre-trip a week ago (January 31-Feb.1) to meet with the church and discuss what we'll be doing during the outreach itself. During the church's nightly prayer meeting, the mayor came by to have her picture taken with us for the local newspaper. =)

~This week, we have no “normal” lectures. This week is dedicated to preparing for this outreach (which we leave for on Feb. 27th). We have classes on all the many aspects of our outreaches, on everything from playing games with kids, to preaching.

On my birthday, Friday December 26th, Karena and I went to the train station only to find we were one of the many privileged travelers to be stuck in place by one of the many famous French strikes! Eventually we were able to get on a very slow train and finally arrive at our destination, our friend Anne-Sophie’s house. Anne-Sophie wanted to show us the place where she rides horses, so we biked to the field about 30 min. from her house. I brushed a horse for the 1st time in my life and discovered something that you don’t get a good feel for in movies, horses are very dirty! In fact, they get their hair and mud all over you too! haha Since we didn’t have enough horses available for all 3 of us girls plus Anne-Sophie’s friend to ride at the same time, we took turns. So I road a horse bare-backed with Anne-Sophie, holding on to her for dear life (falling off the horse didn’t sound too appealing)! But I survived and enjoyed my 1st real horse-back riding experience. Then the 3 of us biked back to Anne-Sophie’s place (even overcoming the obstacle of a flat bike tire) and had a small dinner at her house before getting back on the train to go back to the Lippoldts where we were staying on the other side of Paris. We arrived back at midnight, very exhausted due to all the train delays!

Here's me, Karena, and Anne-Sophie from the time we visited Anne-Sophie the 1st night we were in Paris.

Saturday the 27th was one of my favorite days. Karena and I went to Versailles, the famous French palace, (only about 20 min. from where we were staying). Even in winter, the grounds were so pretty and peaceful.
As we walked around the property, I had flashbacks of when I had been there when I was little with my family when we lived in Paris. I remembered one particular picture of my brother and I posing in front of what I thought was Versailles, but I looked for the spot and couldn’t find it. So who knows where we are in that picture!

That evening, Karena and I stayed in a small hotel and enjoyed watching a little bit of television for the 1st time in 4 months, even though it was in French. =) we had a good time making voice-overs for French shows which we couldn’t totally understand.

Sunday the 28th, we woke up bright and early to jump on an early morning train to Luxembourg! Since we purchased a rail pass to the Netherlands that included the small countries of Luxembourg and Belgium, we thought we’d make the most of our money and visit those 2 countries briefly as well! So we spent 1 day in Luxembourg and were really surprised how quickly we saw all the city’s sites (Luxembourg is both the name of the country and the capital city) while lugging our luggage around (since it was too early to check into our hostel). The city wasn’t quite as small to Karena who is a small town girl, coming from a town of 15,000. but believe me it was small for being the capital and only main city of a country! Then again, it is Luxembourg…
We enjoyed going to a museum which had information about this small country’s history and getting to see a wall from Babylonian times! Unfortunately the caves were closed. =(
These are part of Luxembourg's pretty ruins. =)

We left the next morning on another train to Brussels, Belgium. While in Brussels, we had some delicious Belgium waffles, walked around the town square, and saw the famous “peeing boy” statue.

We arrived in Rotterdam, The Netherlands late at night and were so happy to see our roommate Angelique and her dad ready to greet us on the train platform!

We stayed with Angelique and her family for a full week. Karena and I really enjoyed the comfort of staying in a home with a family where we would talk together and drink tea often, or watch a movie together, have a family dinner, etc. It was the most relaxing week I had had in months.
Constance, John, and Angelique Van de Heuvel, and Karena, and me in their living room.

While in the Netherlands, the Van de Heuvels took us to see their local windmill. It was unique in that it is one of the few mills that is still working and producing flour in the Netherlands. Fortunately, the day we visited, the mill was turned off so we got to have a tour of the entire insides of the mill.

We also visited 2 beaches on the Dutch coast. It was so cold that there was frost on the sand! (I didn’t even know that was possible!).

Karena and I were staying with Angelique over her birthday and celebrated it by going out to a tea shop with her and her best friend.
This was a true tea party: we had 5 courses of tea and 3 courses of mini sandwiches, snacks, and desserts. We were all so stuffed that we couldn’t fit our 6th course of tea in!

We were also in the Netherlands over New Year’s and celebrated this in the comfort of Angelique’s home. We watched the London fireworks display on TV, and Dutch concerts in celebration of the New Year on TV. But the unique element of the evening was watching neighbor’s fireworks from the comfort of Angelique’s living room window! In the Netherlands, large fireworks are legal for individuals to put off. i.e. the kind of fireworks that we would consider large and for professional use only is the kind that everyone is allowed to use in the Netherlands! So many people put off their own fireworks that we had more fireworks to watch than we do at professional shows!

There are so many more things to share about our time over vacation! Next post I summarize the last leg of the trip in Austria. Until then, you can check out my 2nd travel photo album on facebook which has more (a lot more) pictures of our time in Luxembourg, Brussels, and the Netherlands.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86304&l=f0822&id=720019947

A little bit more about activities since break:

This past Saturday I went on a walk with friends (below)to what we affectionately call "the ruins" (it's a stone house that's falling down and in reality it's probably not too old, but it's much more exciting to pretend it's an old abandoned castle or something).

The ruins are about a 20 minute walk from campus and you have to walk through a field of “highland cattle” to get there. (below) They remind me of bison from old west stories.


We decided to make the walk more exciting by creating a whole pretense for our adventure. So we made up a mission and each of us had a special power and character name. We also saw horses in the field and stopped to pet them and try to feed them grass.

We had a great time using our creativity and going walking around in the fields and then we all went back to school, had hot chocolate, and wrapped ourselves in blankets and watched a movie! =)

Spring must be on its way (even in England) because over the past 2 weeks, we have signs of new life on campus! The “snowdrop” flowers are sprouting up in fields (delicate, little, white, bell-shaped flowers) and lambs are being born! Last week, I visited the barn where are dozens of expecting mothers (sheep) waiting to give birth. There were already a few, I even got to see one sheep with triplets that were born only 30 min. prior to my visit! (Sheep typically have 1-3 babies in each litter, 2 is most desirable) It was amazing to see baby sheep that were walking only minutes after they’d been born!

This is the farmer Ray (whose wife Rachel went to winter school with Steve in '92-93) who takes care of all the sheep on campus. It was wonderful to see God’s creativity and power displayed in His creation, even in something as small as a little lamb.

Two weeks ago we had a live game of “Clue”. It was like the children’s board game clue using real people that we had to question in different rooms all over campus. It was a very inventive evening. The staff staged a little skit to introduce the Manor’s lord and his family and staff. Then suddenly the lights went off and we heard a gun shot! The lights were turned by on and a man lay “dead” on the floor! We then split into teams and had to question staff members in various locations: there was the cook in the school cafeteria, the groundskeeper in the library, the maid in the lounge, the gardener in the tower, the doctor and the crazy old lady, the lord’s daughters, etc. My friends Kaylene and Faye and I dressed up as detectives to celebrate the evening. We each wore a trench coat, slacks, heals, and sunglasses. I even borrowed one of the guy’s fedora hats. =) Then we saw that 2 of the other girls had had the same idea and dressed up so the 5 of us took some detective pictures together! =) (below)
Well that's it for now! I hope you are all well and look forward to sharing the next part of my experience with you on here soon. =)
Love to all,
Sarah

I'm home honey!!!!

Well I'm not really home (as in California) but after 3 weeks of traveling, being back in familiar territory at school feels like home! It's so nice to be back and see friends again. The school changes our room assignments and roommates for the 2nd term so i'm now in a new room in the building next to the castle (called the Conference Hall) and have a new group of 6 roommates! But before I get too much into current activities, let me catch you up with the last MONTH!! SO much has happened!



So I left Capernwray on Thursday Dec. 18th and traveled with Karena (my Oregonian roommate from last term) and Anne-Sophie, the single French student here at school whose house we were staying the first night with. So the 3 of us flew to Paris together where Anne-Sophie's parents picked us up. The next day, we spent with Anne-Sophie as she showed us around her town which is 45 minutes outside of Paris. She is a very active girl and had us roller-blade everywhere! That was an experience since I hadn't roller-bladed since I was probably 10 and my short legs don't go nearly as fast as Karena's and Anne-Sophie's (they're both a lot taller than me).


Karena, me, a statue of our father Ben Franklin, and a baguette!

~oh! Steve, I remembered what you said about getting to see the girls' dorms at Christmas break when they were all gone, so I did the same thing! I was on the last bus out of school and everyone had emptied out of their dorm rooms so 2 of the guys gave some of us girls a tour of all the guys' dorms and then we gave them a tour of ours. (because girls are not allowed in guys' dorm areas and vice versa during school) It was fun to see their rooms and made me thankful even for the crummy girls rooms because the boys' rooms all have bunkbeds and feel really claustrophobic compared to the girls', only 2 of which have bunkbeds and all the girls' rooms have a lot more storage! I'm wondering what some of the guys did with all their stuff because at the beginning of school i saw many of them that had as much luggage or more than me!

So, back to my travels:
After 1 day with Anne-Sophie, we traveled to another town on the opposite side of Paris where Karena and I stayed for a week with old family friends, the Lippoldts, from when we lived in Paris. It was fun to see friends from when I was 9. I remembered there house and immediately recognized the spot we used to have sleep-overs in when we were little! During our time in Paris, Karena and I tried to make the most of our time by balancing wanting to see everything and not killing ourselves in the process!

I know there will always be items you miss and there were several things I wish we could have done in Paris, but all in all I'm really happy we managed to see the top "to see" tourist spots. We did tons!

Our first day with the Lippoldts, we went into the city to have a lunch of crepes and after a long wait to eat in a very cute, crowded old crepery, we went to the Petit Palais, a beautiful old Parisian building that had an interesting photography exhibit. Afterwards, Karena and I enjoyed walking down the infamous Champs Elysees. At Christmas, they light up all the trees along the street(one of the main reasons I wanted to come to the city during Christmas time). It's beautiful.

The next day, Karena and I attended church at the American Church in Paris (the church that my family attended when we lived in Paris). Although I didn't recognize anyone there (since almost everyone we knew at that church has moved), I enjoyed even just seeing the building. It flooded my mind with memories. I realized it was exactly 10 years, to the DAY(!) since my family had lived there. We moved from Paris on Dec. 20, 1998, right before my 9th birthday. And here I was back in Paris, almost celebrating my 19th birthday! This Sunday was the last Sunday of advent. We watched a young family with children light the last candle and read the designated passage ---The same exact thing my family had done 10 years earlier before we moved. I could remember so many things as we sat in that church. It was almost overwhelming.

After church, we took a walking tour of the city. It was run by the same company that did the tour we took in Edinburgh. It was a really nice free(the best kind!) 3hr tour. Karena especially enjoyed the tour since she didn't know any Parisian history before the tour. We ended the day by walking to the eiffel tower and enjoying some warm nutella crepes for dinner.

The next day, Monday the 22nd, we went to see Notre Dame, and walked past the ice rink at the Hotel de Ville, a place I remembering ice skating when we lived in Paris! We also walked past the Pompidou Center building (a building famous for having all of its plumbing on the outside of the building!), and the Musee D'Orsay. We visited the Louvre, seeing the famous Mona Lisa, as well as the 2 other most famous attractions of the museum: the Venus di Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (apparently you have to be broken in order to be a famous statue).


Me & Mrs. Mona Lisa

The museum is so incredibly huge and it was closing soon, so Karena and I decided to walk through the statue galleries trying to imitate statue poses. It may sound a bit silly, but now we totally remember what we saw way better than if we had just passively walked through galleries!

Then, the next day, Tuesday the 23rd, we went to Sacre Coeur and caught it at a perfect time! The sun was setting as we came out of the beautiful cathedral and it was sooo pretty. and even prettier in person!



However, the low point of the day was when I dropped my camera! I dropped it on the side walk of Sacre Coueur and broke it on our 5th day of traveling! I couldn't believe that I dropped my camera, usually I'm "miss careful". I was so mad at myself! But life goes on, and Karena had her camera so we were at least fine for our travels.

~by the steps of Sacre Coeur with its tower in the background

The day after that, Christmas Eve(!), we had brunch with one of my friends, Anna, from school in Paris. It was really nice to see her and her family and it was funny to see the place we used to play, have sleep-overs, etc. After brunch, Anna walked around my old neighborhood with Karena and me. We saw my old house, the bakery down the street where we'd buy our bread daily and the bookstore we I'd buy my school supplies, comic books, etc. We walked down the street I used to ride my bike on, down through the park we played in, and all over the neighborhood.


Anna and me outside our old school!

We then had a couple of hours before the Christmas Eve service at the American Church in Paris, so we walked down to the Trocadero again (by the Eiffel Tower), bought a dinner of crepes, and enjoyed the blue lights of the tower. Then we went to the Christmas Eve service at the church and went home to the Lippoldts singing Christmas carols on the metro (the train was empty)! Then a lady and her young son got on the train and came and sat down by us and listened to us singing. =)

Christmas morning we treated ourselves to sleeping in and then went to the Eiffel Tower thinking not many people would be climbing it on Christmas day, right? haha wrong. There were tons of people just like any other day. However I discovered that there was a separate, much shorter line that we could go in if we just climbed up the tower. And it was cheaper! How's that for a deal, you remember the experience more by climbing all those hundreds of stairs, skip a huge line, save money, and get exercise all at the same time! =)

La Tour Eiffel!

We did tons more not only in Paris but also in Luxembourg, Brussels, the Netherlands, and Austria!! So this post will have to be the 1st installment.
I've posted pictures on facebook that you can check out.
Love to all!
I'm glad to be in touch again. =)

p.s. Last night we had a "caveman" party and all dressed up as... you guessed it, cavemen! i didn't have any leopard print or something conducive to cave-woman wear, so I dressed up as a cave! =) Everyone was so creative with their costumes. It was a lot of fun.
Here's two of my dorm mates (in the room next to us, we often hang out together): Laura, Hannah, and me!

Most of the caveman group =)

And so that you can see more pictures from Paris, check out my facebook album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84495&l=dfefb&id=720019947