Adventure within an Adventure within an Adventure

That's right, this was adventure inception!

Though we had an absolutely fantasmagorical time in Ireland, it was a bit of a hassle actually getting there.  I have some pre-departure drama that I would like to share with you all to start:

Originally, there were going to be four of us making this trip: Marc, Tom, Tiffany, and myself.  Tiffany had been the one to post in our internationals group on Facebook about a St. Paddy's day trip, so it makes sense that she would be there, then Tom and I actually got everything going and did a lot of the detail planning, then Marc joined us a couple weeks before we left and was the one who found the best flight option for us. So we all had something to contribute, right? Yeah, well, not all of the contributions were positive.  We were all together when I found and booked the hostel and everyone was pretty excited, so naturally we assumed we were all in it to win it, right? About a week later, when the guys were looking at flights, both of us girls were busy so we didn't join them.  When they found flights for €300 round trip instead of the €500 one way that a lot of the airlines were charging, they jumped on the good deal, of course, not wanting the flights to be gone the next day when we could all get together, so Marc bought all 4 tickets on his credit card, expecting us all to be mature adults and pay him back.  They messaged us about the tickets they bought, the costs and times, but they worded it a little awkwardly and Tiffany thought that it was €300 one way instead of round trip. Needless to say, she got a little freaked out.  We straightened things out and she was excited again even saying (verbatim) "Oh, I'm totally in if it's only €300!" Then, the Monday before we were supposed to leave (4 days after telling me she was definitely in), Marc gets a message from Tiff saying she never planned on actually going with us and that she refused to pay for the tickets that he had bought in her name.  When he calls her to see what's going on, she curses him out, calling him immature along with a whole host of bad names, then hangs up before letting him speak at all.  Now, none of us had known Tiff very well before this, but she had always put on a happy face and seemed nice enough so this was a pretty big shock to all of us.  Both of the boys tried to get in contact with her, but neither were smart enough to meet her face-to-face and all they succeeded in was putting her on the defensive.. I went over to her room and talked to her calmly a few nights before we left and asked what had happened.  She said that she assumed because she had gone a few days between the booking of the hotel and the booking of the flights without any information (while we were all supposed to be doing our own flight research, btw...) that the trip had been canceled via telepathy (that last bit is my own, but really? Who cancels a trip without letting the other people involved know??).  She had gone ahead and made other plans and financial obligations for that same weekend without telling any of us and then had the balls to say she was taken aback when Marc bought the flights without asking her first! (Just so you know, a facebook message was, in fact, sent while they were buying the flights..) She absolutely refused to pay for any of the ticket, meaning that Marc - who, by the way, is one of the better guys that I have met in a long time; he's very level-headed, honest, and kind - was out €300 because the airline (Ryanair) wouldn't refund him for the ticket that close to departure time.  Our only chance was to find someone to take over the ticket and Tiff wasn't too eager to help us with that either... We did manage to find someone who wanted to go, but the fees for changing the name on the tickets turned out to be too expensive (not a whole lot of options when you fly with the cheapest airline around), so it ended up being just the three of us. 

In all honesty, I was actually pretty ok with it being just me and the guys.  I haven't had a whole lot of chances to hang out with just guys lately and I miss it.  Our traveling was a little bit ridiculous - we had to take a train to Paris, then a the metro to meet a shuttle that would take us almost 2 hours outside of Paris to Beauvais airport, where we took a plane to Manchester, then a different plane (not a connecting flight - a whole new flight) to Dublin, then a taxi about 20 minutes outside of Dublin to this itsy bitsy village of about 300 families called Donore where we were staying.  On the way there, it was nice because we didn't really have to rush at all between our connections.  We had a nice lunch in Paris after walking down the Champs-Elysée and we played cards for an hour or two in the Manchester airport while we waited for our flight =] Every chance I got, while we were traveling, I took the middle seat between the boys.  It was cozy there ;] 

When we finally got to Dublin (after 14 hours of traveling, I might add) the driver of the taxi we took to Donore had the boys freaking out because he had never heard of the village before.  The boys thought I had booked a bogus hotel and that we wouldn't have a place to stay.. But after a few calls to friends, he found out where to go and we were on our way! The driver's name was Jason and he was absolutely fantastic!! He told us stories and asked us questions and gave us advice on what to do the next day in and around Dublin.  He drew us a little map of where to find a good place to eat and told us when the best time to check out the big bars would be.  He told us about Irish customs and personalities, saying that if you ask an Irish person directions, they're more likely to take you there than just point you on your way, and if they don't know the place, they'll call friends until they figure it out for you! When we finally got to the hotel in Donore (much to the relief of the boys ;P ) Jason told us that he had a taxi driver friend who lived nearby and he would give him a call to see if he was working the next day.  If he was, Jason promised us a ride back into town for €80 (the ride out had been €70) and he also promised that if his friend couldn't do it, he would get us back to Dublin if it meant coming back out himself, even though he wasn't working the next day! So, we got his information and said thank you and good night.  

When we went inside and checked in, we got another surprise... I had booked two rooms with two beds each (I thought..), but when Tiff backed out I had emailed the hotel and asked if we could just put a roll-away bed into one of the rooms.  They emailed back saying that they didn't have roll-away beds but that they would give it to me half-price! It seemed like a great deal!  When we got there, however, they only gave us one room...with one bed...for two guys and a girl... haha you should have seen our faces when we opened that door! There was a bar attached to the hotel, however, and we decided to figure it out after we had a couple drinks in us haha! So, we dropped our stuff off and went down.  

When we got there, we settled in at the bar (after Marc, who is quite attractive, got hit on a bit by an older man haha It weirded him out a little but it was hilarious for me and Tom ;P) and immediately started talking to the man sitting next to us.  His name is Peter and he is amazing!! Actually, everyone there is amazing!! They all made us feel completely and utterly at home there in that little village.  The guys were kind of shocked when we ordered pints and they were only 4€! We had a long discussion with the locals about how a pint in O'Donnell's is €10 and the beer isn't nearly as good there as it is in Ireland. They asked us all about where we were from and what we were doing in Europe/Ireland and when we said we were only staying in that village for the evening, Peter tried for about an hour to convince us to completely cancel our Dublin trip and do the tour of that area because there is a huge tomb about ten minutes away in a town called Newgrange that is apparently a sort of pilgrimage for hundreds of people.  He told us he would personally give us a tour of everything around there, but we already had financial obligations so we couldn't. He made a damn convincing case, though, and even invited us back, saying we could stay with him and he would cook us a real Irish meal (the boys were disappointed about missing breakfast in the morning at the hotel, but we were leaving just before it opened...) and he would take us on the grand tour of the area for free, where it would normally cost us about €5! Here's a picture of him and the guys (left to right: Peter, Marc, and Tom):

I am definitely going to try to get back there at the end of the semester and I think Tom, at least, will too.  The rest of the night was spent talking with everyone in the bar.  The women took a real liking to me and I talked with them for probably 45 minutes while all of the guys talked.  Then, we found out that the Irish really like to sing when they're drunk haha! Song after song after beautiful song filled the little bar for I don't even know how long! They even got me to sing a couple of songs! We finally started back to our room at about 1:30am but they convinced us to stay for one last song.  We all sang The Voyage, which was very fitting, if you ask me.  The video's a bit dark but here's a little snippet:

When we got back to the room, Tom graciously slept on the floor when we found some spare blankets in the closet.  We had been considering all sleeping on the bed the short way but that seemed like it could get dangerous if anyone rolled or kicked in their sleep.  Marc and I ended up sharing the bed.  In the morning, Jason was back to pick us up.  We told him about our amazing night and asked him what plans he had for St. Paddy's day.  He had advised us to try Guinness that night instead of in the morning and we had taken him up on the advise.  He was really surprised when I said it went down smoothly and that I really liked it haha - he thought I wouldn't have handled it as well as I did. It made me laugh ;P When we told him that we hadn't had a chance to have breakfast, he drove us around in Dublin until we found a store where we could pick up some food and he didn't charge us any extra! Then he drove us into the heart of Dublin and dropped us off right in front of the Guinness factory, where we were going to tour.  When we were saying goodbye and thank you, he told us that if we needed any help over the weekend, we could call him and he would do his best to help us out and if we were ever back in Dublin to give him a call and he would take us wherever we needed to go! I'm excited to see him again, too! After all that, it was barely St. Paddy's day and I was already in love with the country and the people!!

Now, we were at the Guinness factory for a self guided tour that cost us only €10 and included a pint of fresh brewed Guinness! The factory itself was HUGE and really cool!! They had a ton of interactive things for us and a lot of cool things to look at. It took us a long time to get through the whole thing.  I put lots of photos up on facebook if you'd like to take a look! (Ma Grande Aventure album, scroll all the way down and you may have to click the "view more" button.) At the very top of the factory, they had a gravity bar where we could get our free pints.  It was really cool because you could see the entire city from there! It was beautiful! While I was looking out the windows, a woman came up to me and asked - in a heavy Minnesota accent - if I was wearing an ND tee-shirt.  I was, but I was kind of amazed that she had seen it because the UND logo was the size of my pinky nail on my shoulder... She said that her son was going to UND next fall! Such a small world! We didn't talk for very long but it was still pretty cool haha.  

After we had finished our pints, we left the factory and went to find good places for the parade! We inadvertently picked a place that was closer to the end of the route, so we had to wait for almost two hours for it to reach us.  It was worth the wait, though.  It was kind of a weird parade. There were a lot of steam-punk themed floats...If you don't know what that is, Google-image it. I thought there would be more green in the parade, but the crowd definitely made up for it! haha It lasted for a little over an hour and by then all three of us were stiff, hungry, and needed a bathroom - BADLY haha. 

We found a restraunt off the beaten path and and had a very yummy lunch.  The guys had some traditional Irish food, but it was a little harder for me because all the traditional Irish food had meat in it.  (Peter had laughed at me the night before when we were talking about food and I asked if there were any traditional Irish dishes that were vegetarian....) Afterwards, we just kind of wandered around and looked for good bars to check out.  It turns out that Ireland is NOT a good bar hopping country.  All the people there find a bar early on and sit there all night... We did a lot of standing haha which kind of sucked for me, because I had worn my rain boots (it was supposed to rain all Saturday, but of course it didn't) and they were rubbing the skin clean off my calves, even through my jeans.  Even now, I have perfect rings around my calves.. We did eventually find a good bar though and sat there for a while.  Closer to the end of the night, when we were all crashing, we started playing card games to keep ourselves awake and one of the waiters got in on the action, teaching us a new drinking game haha.  Even though we were in Dublin over St. Paddy's day, the biggest drinking day of the year in the biggest drinking country in the world, none of us drank a whole ton. We pretty much kept a buzz the whole day, but nothing more.  For one, it was pretty difficult to make it to the bar through the crowd haha and for two, we didn't really relish the idea of traveling another 14 hours the next day with wicked hangovers.  Especially since our first flight left at 6am!  We did check out "drunk street" though to see how crazy it was. It was insane! At one point, none of us were actually walking, we were just being moved by the crowd haha.  We decided not to stay there for very long...

Around midnight, we started making our way to the airport.  We had planned on staying in the hotel for two nights but it was so expensive getting there and back that we didn't really see the point in it if we were just going to turn around and come back.  We started walking north so that we could catch a taxi from a cheaper area.  While we were walking, Tom pulled out the map just to make sure we were still on the right track and immediately we hear a voice saying "Hey, hey man! Hey, wait up!" A very, VERY drunk Irishman was attached to that voice and he had stopped us to make sure we weren't lost!! Jason really didn't lie haha! We talked with him for a little while and he was surprised that we were going to spend €20 on a taxi when we could spend that in the pubs haha.  He also gave us directions to a good place to get a taxi, which, conveniently had been exactly where we were already going haha.  We all wished each other a good night and a happy St. Paddy's and were on our merry ways. When we had gone as far north as we could walk (it turned into highway after that) we caught a taxi, and this driver was just as nice as everyone else.  Both the boys were pretty exhausted so I did a lot of the talking with him and told him we were only there for the weekend to which he commented "Really? You've already got the Dublin accent!" That made me smile haha. 

When we walked into the airport, we saw that we were definitely not the only ones who had thought to sleep there.  We found a table and promptly fell asleep after shoving our things under the table to be protected by our legs.  When we woke up to catch our flight, there were even more drunk people sleeping at all the tables and even spread out all over the floor! It was an interesting sight haha. 

Our flights went through Manchester again, but this time, we had about a 6 hour layover so we decided to explore a little bit.  We had an English breakfast and looked around Piccadilly. It was really cool and very beautiful =] Sadly, it was a Sunday, which meant that absolutely nothing was open...We had a pretty hard time just finding that one café... After a couple hours, we made our way back to the airport and finished up our full day of traveling to arrive home at about 9pm. 

It was a long and exhausting trip, but I loved spending it with the guys, seeing all the new sights and meeting tons of new people.  It's definitely an experience that I will never forget!!
What about you guys?? Tell me your St. Paddy's day stories?? Or any stories in general? I feel like I'm losing touch with some of you! =[

Gros bisous à tout le monde! 

À bientôt!

Morgan

P.S. Don't forget to read the next post, since it's technically before this one and they're kind of a pair! <3

Preoccupation

Oh my goodness.. Hi everyone!!
I am SO sorry it's been so long since I last posted!! It's been absolutely crazy over here! So, in an attempt to make up for it, I am going to post twice today! I'm going to break my rule about chronology just this once because I have three weekends to write about and the one in the middle has enough material to make a book out of haha.
So, in my last post I mentioned that I was giving a solo presentation the next day and that I was a little bit nervous about it, if you remember.  Well, as time went by and the presentation got closer, I got more and more nervous until I could barely talk through my heartbeat and stutters... It was awful!! Especially since I've been doing better with public speaking and not really having trouble with it.. I think the main reason was that I didn't give myself enough time before hand to prepare and rehearse.. I wish I could say lesson learned but if you've known me for any length of time you'll know that procrastination is hardwired into me haha.
The presentation was on Thursday and Friday's are our days off so I watched movies, ate chocolate, and drank a bottle of wine on Thursday night haha. It was definitely what I needed.  Then, Friday practically made me forget my horrible Thursday! In the evening, Mira, Brittany and I decided to go out to a fancier restraunt so that we could dress up a little bit and just spend some time out.  We went to a Thai restraunt called Tai Pan where we had had coffee a couple weeks before and the food was absolutely delicious!!! Mira's friend Karima and her friend Duk joined us as well, which meant that we had to speak French all night because neither of them speak very much English.  It was incredible!! About halfway through the night, we were listening to Karima tell a story and I actually forgot that we were speaking a foreign language for a moment, because it had just gotten so comfortable and fluid =D We also had a very French meal - we started with a couple of appetizers (which are called entrees here..) then moved on to the main dishes (plats principals).  I had a salad because there weren't many veggie options; I was a little bit disappointed that I would just be eating a salad but this was the most delicious salad I have ever eaten in my life!! It had grilled eggplant and another veggie that I can't remember right now and it was all drizzled in this tangy-sweet sauce that I could have eaten alone... Then we had a break and chatted until dessert time, when I tried my very first creme brulé! I can't believe I've never had it before... it was a lot different than I thought it would be and it was very tasty =] After that came the petits cafés! All in all, our dinner lasted almost 4 and a half hours!! VERY French ;P It was amazing and I'm so glad I've finally had a chance to hang out with some real French students!
Saturday was very eventful as well. I had planned on going to Rennes - the capitol of Brittany, which is the province directly below Normandy, where I am - with a group of about 4 people but two bailed at the last minute so it ended up being just me and my Norwegian friend Sofie.  Sofie lives in Bayeux, which is about 15 minutes away from Caen by train, so we were going to meet on the train towards Rennes, but I overslept a little bit and missed the train by literally 2 minutes... When I got on to the platform and asked where my train was, the man pointed to the one that was pulling away... Of course, I also didn't have Sofie's phone number so I had to run home (the next train wasn't for an hour) and ask people on facebook if anyone had her number.  Thankfully, someone got it to me quickly and I was able to let her know that I was on the next train instead of the one we had planned.  When I got to the station for the second time to buy my tickets, I asked what time the latest train would return that same day and the ticket man said 6pm....My train there would arrive at 4pm... That wouldn't have been worth it at all since it took 3 hours on the train one way! Sofie had already planned on staying the night in Rennes, though, so I texted her and asked her to get a double room at the hostel instead of a single.  All of this meant that I spent a whole lot more money than I had originally planned on, but I think it was worth it, in the end. 
Once I actually got to Rennes, the challenge of finding Sofie began! It took us about 45 minutes to finally meet up at one of the bigger bus stops and then we went back to the hostel to check in.  Do you guys remember me mentioning a guy named Richard closer to the beginning of my trip that I said I really liked? Well, I met him at the same time that I met Sofie, and I found out while we were there, through her, that he really liked me too! I know this doesn't do me any good because I will probably never see him again, but it made me happy to know that =D This was also the first time since I met her that I had actually had a chance to hang out with Sofie - we get along really well! After we asked the woman at the front desk to point out some things we needed to see on a map, we headed off on our adventure and didn't really stop laughing for the rest of the night! We saw a lot of cool buildings and walked through this GIANT and gorgeous public garden, then we went out to the Rue de Soif ("street of thirst" aka the street with all the bars haha) in the evening and had a couple of drinks before turning in early.  My stomach and face were definitely sore by the end of the night haha.  I put a few pictures up on facebook of this adventure if you'd like to go check it out!

*Skip ahead one week*

~See my next post to read about Ireland!~

This past week has been insane! It's midterm time around here (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm halfway through this??? Whaatt??!?!?!) so I had 3 tests last week, two of which weren't too bad, but the third one was in our Structures class (grammar) and every single person in that class is absolutely convinced they failed it! She put too much information on and a lot of it was from the beginning of the semester or things that we had only barely covered in class.. It was very difficult and if I get an 8 out of 20 it will be a miracle!! (In France, though, a 13/20 is an A so an 8 is more like a D than an F and since I'm doing this semester as a pass/fail, that's what I'm shooting for in this specific class because I'm not sure I will be able to get any higher...) 

After class, on both Wednesday and Thursday, it was warm enough and sunny enough, that Mira and I lie out on the grass and sunbathed in tank-tops and jeans for about an hour both days! It was so fantastic! I've found that I appreciate a blue sky, sunny day much more since coming to France... 

On Thursday, Mira and I went swimming again at SUAPS, though I was a little nervous because I got pretty sick last time.. I did almost 30 laps though and am still healthy! Hooray! haha After that, we went out with Tom to the bars and bounced around a couple of times. At the second little bar, however, we started talking with the two French girls at the table next to us who were very drunk but very nice and amusing haha.  We talked about a few different things (they kept saying that they were not a good representation of the French, but I thought they were awesome haha) and when they made jokes, I understood them and they said they were really impressed that I understood everything they were saying and that Mira and I both spoke very clearly! (Tom doesn't speak French, so he kind of just chilled while the girls talked.. ) That made me feel really good and like my French is actually making progress! Wohoo! Later, Mira taught me a little more Finnish so that when I go visit her in Finland, I can (kind of) make my way around the country =] Now I can also say "how are you?" and "I'm good!" =D After we had some drinks in us, we went over to O'Donnell's to meet up with some other people we had seen out and to do a little dancing! It was a very good, very fun night =] 

On Friday, Mira and I made dinner together - just some stirfry and pasta (original, right? When I get back to the States, I'm not going to want to eat pasta for 6 months!! Haha) and hung out and talked, which was nice =] Since then, I have been enjoying probably the laziest weekend ever. I didn't get out of my bed yesterday, except to go to the bathroom and grab some food from the fridge, and today hasn't been much better...At least I took a shower today, though and I'm writing this, so that's me being productive haha

<3

Pretty Buildings

Hi everyone!!
I'm sorry I'm so late in posting!! It's been hectic around here! Who am I kidding, it's still hectic around here haha. I gave a presentation yesterday, took a test today, and have another presentation to give tomorrow!! Oy! But, I'm a stickler for that whole "chronological order" thing, so we'll get there soon haha
Well, last week was pretty decent.  Nothing really exciting happened in my classes, but on Tuesday Mira invited me to go to the SUAPS with her for an excise class.  The SUAPS is like our university Wellness Center - It's free for all students, you can use it whenever you want, and there are awesome classes that you can jump into without paying anything or having to sign up.  We went to an aerobics dance-type class, which I'm not normally very into but, I'm not gonna lie, Mira lured me in with promises that the instructor was ridiculously attractive.  She didn't exaggerate either! He was, however, very very gay haha. I don't care who you are, no straight man can move his hips and shoulders at the same time like that, while singing along to Lady Gaga with a huge grin on his face haha! It was a decent workout, though, and I left feeling amazing!! I'd forgotten how much I love working out! We went back again on Wednesday, but I can't remember what we did... but when I got back that night, I had a package waiting for me from Mum!! It was so exciting!!  Haha Thank you Mama and Grammy!! I love you guys!! I also love getting mail. You guys should send me more ;P I'm working on sending a couple of postcards out, too! I have them all written up, they just need stamps! On Thursday we did laps during the free swim time in the pool! Oh man, did that show me how out of shape I've gotten haha, but we did about 25-30 laps in 45 minutes (I was pretty proud of that ;P ) and when we left, it was so nice outside, even at night, that I didn't have to put my jacket on to walk back! Maybe I should have, though, because I woke up the next morning with a wicked head cold that I'm still on the tail end of...
Now, I don't know if you guys really care about this, but I figure you can skip ahead a paragraph if you don't ;P I have had a rotating playlist of 3 songs stuck in my head for this past week and a half... They're gorgeous songs and I thought you guys might like to listen to them as well because....well just because. They are all kind of sad songs but they are all absolutely beautiful... The first is part of the reason for the title of this post - it's called "Pretty Buildings" by People in Planes (the English major in me comes out when I read that -- such beautiful alliteration!! ;D ) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7LVtJ3U_TU
The lyrics are in the info just below the video, if you're curious.
The second is Self Conclusion by Spill Canvas and this one has the lyrics right in the video for you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyQI7tmkG4
The last song that I've been singing day in and day out is called Isabelle by Gregory and the Hawk.  It has the lyrics in the video as well, for your convenience. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQKCdIQtzy4
Our generation has a tendency to say that life needs background music like in the movies -- this has been my background music for a while and I'm sure I won't get them out of my head any time soon haha <3
Back to the chronological story-telling!! On Friday, a group of about 10 of us went out to eat at an Italian restraunt for dinner.  We pass this restraunt every weekend on our way out to the bars and I've been wanting to stop in and check it out but it looked a lot more expensive than it really was.   It was about 10€ for a huge plate of good food and about 4€ for a good glass of wine.  The staff there was absolutely fantastic, too!! There are two kinds of servers in France -- the ones who turn incredibly rude as soon as they realize you aren't native French, and the ones who speak Franglish with you when they realize the same thing. You can guess which kind these were.  They were all very friendly and VERY funny! When we asked them to take a picture for us, they stole the camera for about 10 minutes and took pictures of themselves doing weird poses around the restraunt haha!! They chatted with us, too and helped us pick which wine would go best with our food. It was great! Plus, we all had fun out with each other! After dinner and dessert (I felt very French taking a petit café after dinner ;P) our group split in two, part off towards the bars and the other part - the part I was in - back towards home.  We were hoping to do a relaxed movie and wine night with a few of us but most of the people crapped out (did I mention that dinner time here is around 9 pm?) and it ended up being just me and Tom, one of the other UND students.  We ended up talking through most of the Rum Diary (which was a really good movie, from the little I saw...I'll have to go back and actually watch it sometime haha) and finishing off two bottles of wine and a lot of cheese and chocolate chip cookies between us haha.  We also watched a little bit of The Big Bang Theory, because he hadn't seen it before and I definitely got another person hooked on that show haha!! (If you haven't seen it either.....GO WATCH IT NOW. It's fantastically hilarious.) I didn't get home until about 430am haha but it was a lot of fun and it was nice to have a quite night, rather than go out to the bars like usual. 
Saturday was the day that I finally got out of Caen!!!! I took a day trip to Cherbourg (see map --> http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl ) with Mira and Cat.  We left around 10am and took an hour and a half long train ride to get there.  At the station in Caen, it looked like the day would be really rainy and gross, but when we arrived in Cherbourg, the sun was shining, the skies were blue, and there was barely a cloud in the sky!! We left the train station and we started walking in the direction that we thought the tourist office was but we ended up at the port instead! That was the first time I'd seen the sea since arriving in France!! It was absolutely gorgeous! (Pictures are already up on facebook, although my camera died halfway through the day. Mira and Cat had theirs too, though and their pictures will be up soon.)  It was very very very windy, but it was that fresh wind straight off the ocean that was somehow refreshing as it was tangling our hair into dreadlocks haha.  Right by the port, they had a nautical museum with quite a few submarines and we spent probably an hour in there because it was so interesting! Did you guys know that the Titanic was supposed to dock in Cherbourg??? After that, we finally found the tourism office and the nice lady there gave us a map of the city with all the interesting places marked and told us that there was a really cool museum that we should check out on the other side of town.  We decided to go that way, but first we found a cathedral a couple blocks away called Basilique Saint-Trinité and ducked in for a look.  I'm so glad we did because that was THE most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen in my life.  The stained glass windows were perfect and threw rainbows everywhere, the floors and archways were painted with beautiful patterns, the smaller chapels within had amazing statues and the alter at the front was..... awe-inspiring.  The carvings were perfect, they were all gilted and the architect had put in a tiny skylight that brought rays of light perfectly across it all, along with the rainbows from the stained glass.  I was floored.  My camera died just as we got inside so I don't have any pictures yet, but the girls got some really beautiful ones that I will steal soon so you can all see it.  After that, we walked across town on our way to the museum.  First, we passed through an absolutely beautiful public garden and sat for a while watching the water and the birds and the people.  Then, we headed up the mountain - yes, the freaking Mountain - that the museum was on top of.  That was probably a better work out than all three days in the gym combined seeing as I was wearing high heels haha! We made it to the top after much complaining and much picture taking (you could see the entire city from that vantage point) and went into the Musée de la Libération.  The museum was all about the second world war and the people involved in it.  It was all very intense and very cool - I'm very glad we made the long trek to see it.  After the museum, we were out of time so we made our way back to the train station, which was, thankfully, very close to the base of the mountain and headed home. 
After that, I got pretty lazy.  Sunday, I did homework for most of the day and watched some tv in the evening.  Monday, my least favorite class was canceled and there was sun again (two days in one week with sun?? This is unheard of in Normandy!!!!) and so I had a pretty great day even if I didn't do a whole lot haha.  Yesterday, I gave a group presentation on the regional languages of France and it went really well! The professor seemed impressed, so that's good haha.  Today, I almost missed a test in Oral because I took a nap before class and unthinkingly shut off my alarm when it went off... Thankfully, one of my friends in class texted me and told me to get my butt down there so I only showed up about 20 minutes late and didn't miss the test! *relieved sigh*
Tomorrow, I have to give a solo presentation and be in front of the class for about 15-20 minutes!! Thankfully, some of that time is class discussion time, but I'm still a little nervous.  I really want to tell you guys about the subject I'm presenting though, because it's really interesting and extremely important.  I will be talking about an organization called Invisible Children (you may have heard of this before) and a man named Joseph Kony.  Kony has led a rebel army in central Africa for 26 years - Twenty-Six Years- with no goal other than to gain and keep power for himself.  His soldiers are children that he abducts from their families in the middle of the night and brainwashes into fighting for him. Well, the boys fight. The young girls become sex slaves. This has gone on for FAR too long, because none of the big powers in the world are willing to get involved internationally unless it is somehow tied to our national security or financial gain.  This organization, however, took matters into their own hands and have been working for nearly 9 years to raise awareness and support against Kony and his crimes. Now, Invisible Children is launching an attack.  They are raising awareness in a huge way, pulling in celebrities and policy-makers alike to urge the government into action.  If we all band together, this will be the last year that Kony is free to use children and destroy families.  I know I'm starting to sound like propaganda but this is a really important subject. Please, just watch this video and then tell me this war doesn't need every single one of us, even if it's just to sign the petition.  --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
The website, if you want to get a little more involved after that is kony2012.com
Please, help us save the world.
So, that's all for this week! I'll try to be more timely with my next post so you'll hopefully hear from me again very soon! I love you all and hope you're all doing well!!
Gros bisous!! <3
À bientôt mes amis,
Morgan