Accepted!

The good news from here. I just got an email from my dear friend Melissa who is managing things on the home front for us saying I have been accepted to Linfield School of nursing for the term starting June 23! I am still waiting to hear from OHSU to see if I have a choice between the two schools, but either way, I´ll be starting school in June. It´s such a relief to not be wondering any more.

Our Favorite Airport

And yet more from Fritz, with some interlocutions and amendations by Shannon:

Did you know that Portland, Oregon, has the best airport in the world? That’s our official opinion. Here’s why:

- It’s pretty, for the most part. The new award-winning (and, incidentally, copyrighted) design lets in lots of natural light, and feels roomy. (Seattle has a nice food court that’s light and roomy, and has good art. But that’s all we can say for it.)

- It’s easy to get around. Admittedly, as airports go, it’s not terribly large. But still.

- There’s no smoking indoors.

- Getting into the city is cheap and fast. For around $2, you can buy a MAX ticket that takes you directly from the airport into the city in about 20 minutes. I don’t think you can beat that anywhere else in the civilized, non-Socialist world. (Shannon says I should simply say: We haven’t seen anybody beat that anywhere that we’ve been.)

- Free WiFi! Is that brilliant, or what?

- Best of all, in our opinion, is that the vendors are required to sell their goods at street prices. Most airport vendors charge you whatever they want, since, once you’re locked safely in the prison of the airport, you have no other options. But not Portland. Your burger or coffee or book costs the same there as it would at the same shop elsewhere in Portland. Travel to San Fran or Madrid or London, and even if the exchange rate didn’t double the price of anything, you’d have a hard time enjoying your lousy meal with the taste of gall in your mouth.

- And you don’t pay tax in Oregon.

- Last but not least, Oregon is the most beautiful place in the world. Or would be, if it didn’t rain all the time. And wasn’t cold and dark in the winter and make you want to go to Mexico or Spain every January.

Dreams in Europe with Rick Steves

Fritz here.

Our last night in Paris, Shannon and I both dreamt of meeting Rick Steves on our travels. We have not seen, spoken of, read, or in any other way been exposed to Rick Steves the past several weeks, so why we should both dream of meeting him on our travels on the same night seems rather odd. An omen? Stay posted.

Nantes

We're back in Paris for a quick night before we fly out to Spain for a week and a half of relaxation. We've been staying in Nantes with our good family friends, Monique and Patrick Drouet.

Before I talk about Nantes, though, I want to show you this:

Remember in the movie Ratatouille? It's a real shop in Paris. They sell rat traps and poison.

And now back to Nantes. We know the Drouet family from way back, when my sister Andrea went on an excursion to France that included a family homestay and a bicycle trip around the french countryside. This is that family! There have been visits back and forth for many years now, and when we wrote to say that we would be in france, they welcomed us with open arms. We had a fantastic visit of 6 days, and we saw all kinds of amazing sights and ate fantastic french food. (Beaucoup de fromage et vin.) We have a lot of fun together, and even though they speak almost no english, we communicated fairly well. I dredged up my rusty french from high school and got up to speed fairly quickly.

Here we are having fun with our after dinner tea. They have a lot of tea. (More than me even!) Sorry that it's blurry.

Here are Monique and Patrick, in front of Mont St. Michel, one of the 7 wonders of the world, so I am told.

Here's Mont St. Michel by itself. We were lucky enough to have sun that day. It's amazing, and if you get a chance to visit it, I recommend it. The tiny village at the base is really touristy, but the whole setup is so beautiful. I walked around gobsmacked the entire day.

Monique and Patrick have two grown kids, both with partners and kids of their own. It was fantastic to see them all again after all these years and to meet the new generation. I am exhausted from speaking french and translating everything for Fritz, but it was worth it!

Tomorrow we leave for Spain, and I'm not sure whether or not we'll have internet access, but I'm looking forward to lying low for a while.

Toodling in Versailles

Here's a photo of Shannon in Versailles, as we toodled around on rented bikes. That was fun.

Thanks to those of you who were praying for our travel needs. After about 6 hours of research, I (Fritz) was able to find some better prices on flights, which was encouraging.

We've also been encouraged by little ways we've seen God move here in France while we've been here. A conversation here, a book given there. Our Christian friends here in Paris were just telling us about their Bible study this past weekend, and how God was doing some unexpected and beautiful things in a couple people's lives--people we met and chatted with last week, and for whom we've been praying a lot this past week. Pretty cool. Thanks for joining us in prayer for France and for our time here.

Typing with a French Accent

Hey, it's Fritz. Did you know that the British have a different keyboard than the Americans? Some punctuation here and there different or missing, the Enter key pushed further to the right so you hit a punctuation mark rather than Enter. But then you go to France...and it's really different. Whole letters are moved around. They have twice as much punctuation. The @ symbol is hard to find and requires a special key to get to. The place where a letter should be under one finger is a bunch of punctuation. Whew!

If we talk we have an accent. If we type we have an accent. We just can't win!

This is zhqt q sentence zould look like if I typed nor,qlly on this keyboqrdm pretty funny; huh§ Sounds like I hqve q funny qccent even zhen typing: You should try reqding this out loudm I bet it zould be auite hilqrious1

paris so far

The eiffel tower at 7:30 in the morning.
I was walking past Notre Dame at 8:00, and heard the bells chiming the hour.
Creepy and beautiful, in the Jardins des Tuileries.

Paris so far:
We’ve been in Paris for 5 days, and have 4 more to go.
We are living in a tiny apartment in the Marais neighborhood of the Rive Droit (the north side of the Seine river). The apartment is about 12 ft square, but it’s tall and they’ve added in a loft with a desk, a closet and a sleeping platform. Downstairs is a microscopic kitchen, bathroom, and sitting area. It’s small, but perfectly adequate. (Although I have no idea how our two small suitcases have managed to produce all of our junk spread out through this place!) This neighborhood, the Marais, is the old jewish quarter, but has of late become a hot spot for nightlife and fancy little boutiques. Interesting mix. We’ve been shopping at all the local little food shops. there are great bakeries, cheese shops, kosher butcher shops, fruit stands, wine shops, and everything, all quite close. And we found a chocolate shop the other day. Oooh yeah. There’s a fantastic Falafel restaurant a block away, and lots of the pastry/bread shops sell fantastic quiches and sandwiches that are great to take on a picnic in the parks.
We’ve had some great times here. We’ve done a lot of wandering around, poking our noses into shops and watching people. We also got a delightful surprise the other day when we got a call from Rob Plaster. We didn’t know Rob, but he and his wife Nichole live and work here in Paris, and are friends of dear friends of ours, Rich and Joyce Swingle. Apparently Rich told Rob and Nichole that we were in town and they called us up and invited us out to lunch. We spent a fantastic time eating together and then went back to their place for coffee and great conversation. We left, but they invited us to a movie with a cinema discussion group that they oversee, so we joined them again that evening for “Penelope”, which I loved.
Yesterday we went to Versailles. After getting on the wrong train and figuring out how to get onto the right one, we had an uneventful trip out there. The chateau itself is, well, … it’s huge. We didn’t go inside, because I think it is sort of menacing, or even obscene. The grounds, however, are a different story. When I came to Versailles in 1996 with my family, we rented bicycles and cruised the grounds and had a great time. Fritz and I decided to do the same thing. It was sunny (though chilly) and dinking around Versailles on cruiser bikes yesterday was dreamy. We dawdled and poked along, taking our time and going down every alleyway that looked interesting. We stopped for sandwiches and later got strawberry ice cream. After we turned in the bikes, I spent some time journaling and Fritz went out and took pictures of the tourists. All in all, a satisfying day.
Today Fritz is shopping at the open air food market, and I’m home catching up on laundry and blog responsibilities. Plus some reading and eating of chocolate. Later, we’re going to the base of the Eiffel tower to join a group for a bicycle tour of the highlights of Paris. Yay, more biking! The rain is supposed to roll in tomorrow, so we’ll probably focus more on indoor pursuits from now on, like the Musee D’Orsay and the Louvre, along with some browsing at the big department stores. I have also found a museum on the history of textiles and fashion, which I’m going to try to see before we leave here.
I have found that my French is unbelievably rusty. I thought I’d do alright, but I find I am struggling to understand people. I can make myself understood OK, and I can understand most of what I read if I go slowly. Oh well, after Paris, we’ll have at least three more weeks in France. Next week we’ll be staying with our dear old family friends, the Drouet Family, in Nantes. Andrea first stayed with them on a short exchange trip back in High School, and we’ve been visiting back and forth for many years. We’ll be staying with Monique and Patrick Drouet, the parents, who don’t speak much English. Their kids, Jerome and Geraldine, both speak English pretty well, but are grown up and out of the house. Last time I stayed with the Drouets, it was with my family, and Andrea was there to translate. This time, I’m on my own. Thankfully, the family is generous, kind, and loving, so if there are misunderstandings or language frustrations, they will likely be forgiven. They are so much fun, so whether or not we can understand one another, I know we’ll have a good time.

London

Well, I'm having some technical difficulties with the pictures, and Fritz is never around when I need him, so I'm going to do a picture-less post.

We've been in the London area now for just over two weeks. We've been staying at the fabulous Manna House in one of the suburbs of London, Bromley. Manna House is a hospitality house run by Operation Mobilisation, a christian Missions and Aidwork organization. Their world headquarters are here in England, and Manna house is a place where the workers can stay for a minimal fee while they are here for conferences, business, or vacation. Fritz and I ran the place while David and Judy Stump, who are the regular hosts, went on vacation to visit some friends in South Africa. We've met interesting, wonderful people from all over the world. Our main responsibilities were to cook, clean, and wash sheets and towels after people leave.

Those responsibilities didn't take up all our time, so we've also had many excursions into London by train, and looked at a whole host of museums and botanical gardens and walked around a ton. I went up to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, which was great, and I'm told has as good a view of London as the London Eye, which I didn't do because it is freaking ridiculously expensive. When I get the picture thing figured out, I've got a couple good pictures, but when I'm in town I mostly walk around gawking and forget to pull out my Camera.

I went to Harrods yesterday. Wow. It was fun to wander through. The food halls in the basement put New Seasons SERIOUSLY to shame. They even have bulk liqueurs and whiskey, along with high end nut oils and fancy vinegars that you can put in elaborate glass bottles to take home.

Today I was tired of the city, so I rented a bike and went for a ride. It was my first venture out on Britain's roads, and it was quite a lively, and sometimes harrowing, experience. I did 25 miles, but it took forever because I had to stop every mile (or less) to check my map. Not only do they drive on the left side of the road here, but these towns are all from the middle ages and no one had thought of town planning back then. Roads can change names 2 or three times in the space of a mile, and not all streets have signs saying what they are. It was pretty frustrating at times. I was never actually lost, but I THOUGHT I was lost several times. I've got the bike for the weekend ( a really nice LeMonde) so I'll probably go out again tomorrow- armed with better maps- and try to get more out in the countryside. I'm not sure if there is any around here, but I'll do my best.

It's time for me to cook dinner for tonight's crowd, so I'm off to boil up some Pasta.