So I Went to France Today...

I couldn't remember whether we had to be at AJY by 7:30 or 8:30 this morning for our trip to France, so I got there at 7:30 just to be safe. I woke up at 7 and quickly got ready and packed some snacks. I had a feeling that the meeting time was 8:30 and of course, that was right. So I went and bought a little something to have for lunch since I decided to throw away the lunch meet and cheese I had bought last week. We have two fridges, but have only cleaned one of them out. I put my meat/cheese in the other one and when I got them out a few days later, they tasted like the fridge. Not so yummy! So this morning I bought this cheese and red pepper pizza-like thing to take with me.

I waited inside AJY for about 45 minutes and even took a little nap! We got our passports back this morning and now I have a student visa in mine! Its so cool! What a great keepsake! I am so thankful that I'm studying here with AJY because they really take care of everything for us. Keith has to do so much on his own (insurance and other student things to name a few). We took a big charter bus for our trip today and I got my own seat near the front. Sweet little Charis sat down next to me, but I wanted to do some homework/take a little nap so she moved to another seat. After we had been on the bus for about 10 minutes I decided to eat my breakfast. When I opened my backpack, I saw that my yogurt had opened a little and got on some of my books. UGH!! Luckily Katie had a napkin (that she was relectant to share, may I add) and I got it all cleaned up. I talked/slept most of the way to France. Herr Doerr was the only teacher on the trip and every now and then he'd come on the loud speaker and tell us things about what we were driving by. We learned that logging is a very large industry in the Alsace region. It is also wine country, but logging is even bigger.

Our first stop was the Struthoff Concentration Camp. It is the only concentration camp in France and the one that the majority of the Jews from Heidelberg went to. This was a working camp and it was built by the deportees. They also worked tough jobs in the quarry. The first to be sent there were common German criminals whose religion had nothing to do with them being there. The camp was built on a steep slope that used to be used for skiing. There were a lot of steps and walking around required a bit of climbing. I did not feel as much of a connection with this camp as I did with Dachau a few years ago. Maybe it was because it was in such a beautiful location and had an amazing view. You could only think that for so long though, before remembering what actually went on there. Everything was very powerful, but a lot had been torn down/burned by the NeoNazis in the '60s (I think!). I just couldn't bring myself to take pictures of the gas chambers or ovens that we saw. Experimentation was also done at this camp and there were still rooms set up for such procedures. How horrific. Even though this was a sad place, it is applied history (which I thoroughly enjoy). I was able to do a lot of thinking on this tour and the silence was nice. As I walked out the gate and stared at the briars on the fences, my heart filled with sadness knowing that those who came in never had the option of walking back out that gate, only in.

Understandably, we were all somewhat depressed after visiting Struthoff. Our next stop was a monastary that is still being used today. It brought up our spirits because the views we saw were GORGEOUS. We ate our lunches and walked around for about an hour. The pictures I took don't even do the view justice! Thankfully the region we were visiting speaks German and French. Some girls in our group bought something at one of the shops and said "Merci!" The woman working thought they spoke French and continued to talk to them! Too bad they didn't actually know French! We decided we could stay there forever, but then remembered that it would likely result in us becoming nuns. No thanks!

We had a bit of a ride until we got to Strasbourg. Pretty much everyone fell asleep on the ride and the bus was silent. Herr Doerr woke us up by saying "Wakey-Wakey!" on the loud speaker. Oh that Herr Doerr. He said that after we walked around a bit we could "chill out" in the city. As soon as we walked off the bus, men came up to us and were trying to sell these ridiculous umbrella hats, watches and belts. On the bus Herr Doerr had told us to not make eye contact and to completely igorne them. I thought it was funny to watch them approach people who actually responded. Just keep walking!!!

It was so cool to see everything in French, even though I hardly know four words! We walked around the main part of the town a little bit until we got to this insanely large church. We took a lot of pictures and went inside where there were tons of tourists. I thought it was weird that there were so many people there on a random Wednesday afternoon. As my mom would say, I like playing tourist!!

We saw some "cool" kids dancing outside the church. I'll try to post a video of it because it was just so funny to see!!

We all decided to hike up to the top of the church so we could take pictures of the city. Oh. My. Gosh. I have never walked up so many stairs in my life. At least not in a tiny little staircase that is spiraly! My asthma started to kick in and it was hard for me to breathe. That really sucked, but the people I was walking with waited for me and kept telling me that I could stop when I needed to. Thankfully I brought water and made it to the top!! I think there were between 300 and 400 stairs, but we didn't count (or ask). It was totally worth it though because the view was amazing. Absolutely gorgeous. Strasbourg is situated with the Vosges Mountains to the east and the Black Forest to the west. The city is also one of three capitals of the European Union (legislative and democratic). We had fun taking pictures and such (Maressa and Charis even danced) at the top of the church and then decided to walk back down. Davor, one guy in our group, thinks an elevator would be a good investment for the city/church. I would have to agree, but taking the stairs was totally part of the whole experience. I thought going down the stairs was even more difficult that going up because walking down a spiral staircase that was completely enclosed got a little tricky after awhile! If you focused too much on the steps, you would fall, if you looked out the window, you would feel sick, if you looked straight ahead, you risked missing a step! My left leg was shaking a lot after we got to the bottom and continued to do so for about 15 minutes! Despite that, I'm still so happy that we went to the top!

Maressa, Heidi, Charis, Katie Wolfe, John Love and I all went in search of crepes. There was a place right outside the church that was selling them, but we figured they'd be really expensive so we kept walking. We saw this man on the street who was asking for money to buy vaccines for his puppy. The puppy was so cute we all put a little spare change in (Trinkgeld). We asked him to guide us in the direction of a crepe shop, but we never ended up finding it. To get back to the place by the church, we had to walk past this man again and he pointed us back in the direction of the other crepe place. We looked again, but to no avail. So this time when we walked back, we went on the other side of the street. I think he saw us because I glanced over and he was looking in our direction and laughing. Ohhh well! It was really hectic at the crepe place we went to. We wanted ours to go so we had to go inside, but it was really small. I got a chocolate crepe. I was expecting it to be a little better, but I'd say it was pretty good. I'm no crepe expert, but Katha's mom made some last time I was here and they were DELICIOUS! We ate these pretty quickly and then walked back to where we were meeting our bus. We had to be there when he arrived because he couldn't park at the bus place for very long.

Our bus ride back was pretty long and I took another little nap, read some Sisterhood of the Traveling pants and wrote some postcards. When I got back home it was homework time. Lots to do for tomorrow and Friday. I made grilled cheese (again) for dinner and cut up an apple. Pretty tasty if I say so myself!