Panic

As I was doing some light reading today on my bed I had a moment of panic. "There must be thousands of War and Peace's sitting, in various languages and translations, on hundreds of library, bookstore, and living room shelves all over paris, NEGLECTED."

Think of the lives that could be changed!


-- Post From My iPhone

Versailles

I took a little trip today with my work--to Versailles. J'ai décidé que je veux m'y installer - direct translation: I've decided I want to install myself there. The gardens are incredible. To begin-



The first thing to see upon entrance, besides hundreds and hundreds of people. I've yet to decide whether I will keep these up once I move in-- I think it might be a better place for some advertising. I could use the money.


People must be herded out of my new home-this will not do.




Fun fact: this is the room where the Treaty of Versailles was signed. My Germanic roots tell me this room is bad luck and must be demolished. But maybe not; I like the chandeliers.




This will become the royal golf course.




It's no Walden pond, but it will do.




Marie Antoinette built this little village for a place to play peasant. Sounds fun. I'll keep it.




And finally, the vineyard. From now on these grapes will make sparkling grape juice.

-- Post From My iPhone

in paris!

hi everyone,

there has been a very unfortunate problem: my laptop broke and i have not had access to the internet. this can make updating my blog very difficult. fortunately, there is a blogger application on my iphone and free internet at a nearby mcdonalds, so i can make quick updates there. ive started my internship and i am at work right now. my supervisor let me use the computer while he is at a staff meeting. i will try as soon as possible to put up some pictures, ive taken a lot of great ones on my iphone.
i am pretty good about responding to emails when i find wifi so all of you are welcome to email me: ingridLnilsson@gmail.com.

hopefully an update soon!


ingrid.

Museum/Food

I have most of the days to myself, because Leilani works from 9 - 5 at her business internship and Lauren is gone too ... she is interning for "Human Rights Without Frontiers" or something like that, and she has been at a seminar all day yesterday and all day today, at an old castle, where they allegedly "sit around, eat pastries and play get-to-know you games." Not fair.
So, with my time today I took a trip to the Musée Royale des Beaux-Arts in hopes of seeing some Hieronymous Bosch ... no such luck. They only had one and it was a copy, very disappointing.
Though I did see:

"Scènes de la vie de la vierge" by unknown. This is the birth of Mary. I learned that the solemn expression of her mother gives the painting intimacy.

A winter landscape by Bruegel. I learned that this painting represents the uncertainty of existence. Sorry about the bad picture; it was covered with glass.


This one is by Breughel ... that would be son of Breugel, though he kept the original 'h.' I forgot to write down the name of this one. And again, sorry about the bad picture. There were lots of little people and details, I liked this part particularly. Looks like that boy on the right is in pretty big trouble ...


In other news, Leilani made a lovely dinner Sunday night of tortellini with pesto sauce:


It was delicious. Besides this I haven't eaten anything but waffles, pastries, cheese, and fries. Really. This morning I went to a little cafe and ordered a croissant and hot chocolate (4.80 Euro). The woman gave it to me to go, then kicked me out when I tried to sit down at a table to eat.
On my way back from the museum today I stopped by the bakery and the corner store, where I bought myself some lunch (baguette for my Port Salut and a little pie,) and some mushrooms and couscous for dinner. Trying to branch out.

Et voilà.

Ce weekend

Finally starting to get over the jetlag ... I slept a total of 18 out of my first 24 hours here. The first couple pictures of me are very revealing of this fact. By Saturday though I was doing pretty well, and we walked around the city for most of the day.






This is at the top of a garden look down toward Grand Place. To the left, outside of the picture is the Royal Library of Belgium, which we went inside for a few moments for some water. It looked mostly like other libraries and wasn't extremely interesting.


Walking back from church--a French and English ward. Half of the talks are in English and half in French, they give everyone headphones with translations.

We received flowers for mothers day, i.e. because we are over 18 and have ovaries. It was a good meeting though, some really great speakers and lots of cute little French kids. The kid that handed us our flowers kind of threw them at us and ran away. As we were walking through the crowd toward the door, another little kid was driving his toy car up and down Leilani's leg.

Anyway, things have been great. We came home from church, took naps, cleaned the apartment (I slept through that luckily,) and then I walked to the corner store and bought baguette, a big bottle of Orangina, and chocolate ice cream.

We have the big window open and we're sitting around and reading, and doing who knows what on our laptops (this seems to take up most free time in a college student's life.) I ate some of the baguette and was scolded for getting crumbs on the floor. Lani is going to make us dinner. Then we may go on a stroll to buy more chocolate.

Arrival

I have arrived in Brussels, and I'm at my friends Leilani & Lauren's apartment hanging out etc while they work. I've been told to take a nap but I thought I'd give you all your long awaited update.

I didn't get much sleep the night before I flew away from Utah, because I was packing and organizing and cleaning stuff and sitting around.

I left pretty early for the airport, then flew to Newark and from Newark from Belgium. It wasn't that bad of a flight at all. I didn't go to sleep, but I got a nice amount of reading done and and a nice amount of thinking about various things. At around 6:00am Brussels time:




After this, as we were starting to descend into the fantasy fairy kingdom that is Belgium, I started to severely regret not having finished Walden. I had really counted on that and now it's messing up all my plans. Also, I don't want to read about America while I'm in Europe.

In any event, I found the appropriate trains and buses and sidewalks from the airport to Leilani's apartment, where she had hid her key in a big planter next to the front entrance, meaning I had to jump up and walk around the plants on the cement bricks, and literally walk around in the dirt to find them which I finally did.

We went downtown to buy some waffles for dinner (see above.) They put too much slippery whipped cream on top of those things.



Yes, directly on my shoe ... chocolate side down.
Anyway it's been fun so far. More later


Ingrid

P.S. Lauren & Lani's blog: http://lauren-lani.blogspot.com/