Thursday, November 15, 2007

Happy Birthday Lisa!


Today is my good friend Lisa's birthday. Yahoo for her. This picture is of us when I was on my way back to Paris from the wedding and had a lay-over in Dallas and Lisa was in Texas for a work conference. Just sat and chatted for an hour but that is what we do best.

Lisa, I love you! Happy Birthday!

Strikes again


This is what it looks like here when the trains run about a fifth of the time.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

The elephant rock



One thing that we had heard was a cool thing to see in Barbizon was the elephant rock. So we went on a search for it and even when it got dark we still kept looking. When we finally found it we decided we didn't go as far as we did to just look at it so we got on. It really was awesome to look at.

Barbizon, that I love



On the last day of school holiday Yvonne, Dasha and I went to Barbizon. It is a very well know and renound village near Fontainbleau. We went and walked and just took in the tranquil city that it is. We all decided to move there when we are old. The houses are only 1,490,000 euro. Not too bad right. It is easy to see how the impressionists felt inspired there. It is peaceful and screne and unaltered. There are no regular busses or trains that go there.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Busses and trains...

I had the most incredible bus ride of my life last week. As usual, the bus was late and I had already missed my first bus because I was late. When it finally arrived it was about 12h09 and the train that I really needed to catch was at 12h16. I had resigned myself to the idea that I was going to be late to training that started at 14h because the next train was at 13h37 and it takes about an hour to get there. Oh well, right? But low and behold my luck changed. The mysterious looking, bald headed man in the long black tench coat, who got on after I did, must have whispered something magical to the driver because he began to drive faster and more erratically than any other bus driver I've encountered. I don't think I took a single breath while on our way to the train station but I do remember closing my eyes a lot and hearing him tell the passengers not to push the "stop requested" button. "You can catch the stop on the return," he said. He pulled into the station while the train was at the quai, having just driven down a one way road in the opposite direction, and those of us that needed to catch the train sprinted to the train and made it with just seconds to spare. It was truly more exhilarating than a roller coaster.