Another lovely morning in Paris.

HA! I bet you thought that since I left Toulon, that was going to be my last blog post about France. Wrong-o! I left the south to head up north to Paris, where I spent my final week in France for the summer. It was fun because it just happened to be Jacqueline's last day before flying home (after she went galavanting around Switzerland and Austria for a week), so we got to hang out for a few hours that morning.

We hiked the stairs up to Sacré Coeur:

 And found out how approachable our taking jumping pictures makes us seem, since about 3 other people asked us to take pictures for them (not jumping, unfortunately). 

 We loved this sign, but even more so in French because it's literally, "...someone is praying the Lord." It just lacks a certain something in English.

 Check out those outfits! Classic.

 These oldie-time signs are my favorite. I want to have a whole roomful of them when I grow up.

Jacqueline on our little walking tour.

 In front of a building where Van Gogh once lived.

 Because we can can-can. Or is it because we can-can can?

 One of the original metro signs.

 Book-lovers' paradise.

 Since it was such a nice, sunny day, we went back to Notre Dame and actually took a tour around the inside. The stained glass was incredible. I'll spare you the horrible pictures that my camera tried (and failed) to take of the inside.

 One day I will come back to Paris with mon amoureux (one day. whoever it may be.), and we will bring our lock to add to the collection. 

 Last glace. Not. But this was a particularly good one. And eating it while walking along the Seine? Nickel!

Coming to an end.

As life teaches us, all good things must come to an end. My time in Toulon seemed to race by (while at the same time I felt like I was there forever), and I finally had to say goodbye to a lot of wonderful people and places.

The day before I left was a jour férié--holiday! So I packed my bags a bit, and then Guillaume and I went with his sister and bro-in-law, in his bro-in-law's décapotable (convertible) (my new second-favorite French word, right after se balader--to go for a walk/ride [random that it's my favorite, I know, but you just have to say it with the right tone and you'd understand]). I guess you could say that we s'est baladé in the décapotable. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures. Too bad. We had a nice swim in this pristine little lake and the boys tried to see who could do the best dives. Here they are not at the lake, but in front of that lovely fountain. 

We met up with Kevin (friend who we worked with) for a bit to say goodbye.

 As I said, the town decided to celebrate my leaving (good thing? bad thing? haha), so the festivities continued that night with fireworks! The cool part was that they had the fireworks going set to music. It was the first time I've seen that, and I thought it was pretty cool.

They had these cool fireworks going off all around the fort.

 Near the end of the show, I met up with an old friend. It was sure good to see this guy again!!

Eddye was a recent convert in New Caledonia when I was there, and before I left, he had a huge dinner for the three of us who left at the same time. It was good to see, as did Alma with the sons of Mosiah, that he was still my brother in the Lord (Alma 17 in the Book of Mormon). Heart of gold, that one. We had fun reminiscing and catching up.

And then the last day finally came. 

Said goodbye to Daniele, our resident cook and swear-word teacher :)

Last time at the office!

After I left the office, I met up with Eddye and we made our way over to the beach.
There could have been no better way to spend my last afternoon in the south of France than soaking up that sun!

 Thanks to Eddye, who came with me to the beach and watched my stuff while I had one last swim in that glorious Mediterranean! (Side note: Eddye plays rugby for the team in Toulouse, and he sure got some dirty looks from the die-hard Toulon fans while walking around wearing his Toulouse jersey!)

Ca va me manquer! -- I'm going to miss this!

Afterward we met up with Guillaume for some pizza and orangina on the harbor. I don't think I've ever drunk so many oranginas in one sitting!!

 I finally splurged and got the whipped cream on top. It wasn't as climactic as I was expecting.

Guillaume, me, and Eddye. 

As the three of us were all sitting around at my apartment after we got ice cream, and Eddye asked me to share a little pensée spirituelle (spiritual thought). I felt like I was back on the mish! He was saying how he likes to ask returned missionaries what life is like afterward, or how things are different. I just said that the blessings never stop flowing, and it's amazing. All I can say is that I know that Heavenly Father takes care of each of His children, and He blesses us so much more than we deserve. 

The thought that I shared with them was Ether 12:3-4.

(this is talking about the prophet Ether here) "For he did cry from the morning, even until the going down of the sun, exhorting the people to believe in God unto repentance lest they should be destroyed, saying unto them that by faith all things are fulfilled--

Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."

I think that if we believe and trust in Heavenly Father, we can hope for a better world in this world. I know that my life is infinitely better because of the Lord's guidance and blessings than it would be without. 

I sure had a wonderful summer in Toulon, made all the better by the great friends I was able to make while I was there. I seriously just thank Heavenly Father that I had the opportunity to come here. It's funny because originally, Jacqueline and I were set on going to Paris. It was all planned that we would do this internship in Paris, and we had our study topics all picked out to revolve around stuff in Paris. Then a few weeks before we were set to leave, it suddenly got changed. I, for one, was mad! Who ever heard of Toulon and why on earth would I rather go there than Paris? I fumed. But, as usual, Heavenly Father knew EXACTLY what He was doing, and I just could not be more grateful that I was able to spend so much time in the south of France rather than in Paris. I definitely don't think that it would have been as fulfilling to be anywhere else besides Toulon for the summer. And I know that I met people that I needed and that needed me, and it was amazing to feel that and realize, for the umpteenth time, that the Lord's hand is over ALL. 

Another scripture comes to mind when I think about this:

"The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." -John 10:10-11.

I can't help but think how abundant my life is. It is just full of wonderful people and blessings and opportunities. But I know that because of the life and sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ, we can all have life, in abundance. If we have faith ("unto repentance") in Him, He will grant us every good blessing in our lives. Those blessings might come at odd times, but they will come.

Thank goodness God is good.

La Patrouille

I really did look up this word to see what it means. The translation didn't make any sense--"routine," "patrol"? No idea. So we'll just call it a way cool airplane show. I dragged Guillaume along with me to check it out on my second-to-last day in Toulon.

We actually got to the beach about a half an hour late, so we were happy that it was still going on! We'd seen them practicing the day before, but the real show was awesome. The first thing was just solo planes doing crazy things like flying upside down and backwards, spiraling, and just general dare-devil stuff.

Second thing. Yes, there were people standing on top of those planes! It was just like on Anastasia, I was obsessed. Always happy to see when stereotypical things are actually true. 

 

Then they had all the planes together...

And then they added color. Pretty sure the camera on Guillaume's phone is better than my real camera. Lame. Luckily my camera died and we had to revert to his phone!

 There was applause after this one... <3

 Enjoying the show!

 Why don't they do shows like this more often in America? Especially on the beach?

It was so nice of them to plan all of these cool town activities for my last week!

Last stop on my tour of southern France: Nimes

I woke up early one morning, set out to spend a day all by myself. That plan came to a crashing halt when I got off the train and on the bus and the nice man from Congo struck up a conversation with me. At least I know a fair amount about Africa, and can name at least two cities in the Congo, so I had something to say, at least. I did, however, start off with my creeper-repellent: pass-along cards. Haha. Even that didn't work, as he'd already heard of the church and some of the teachings... I told him he ought to go to our church sometime. In any case, we ended up spending the entire morning together checking out the Pont du Gard. 

This bridge is seriously amazing. Well, aquaduct, I guess. Either way, it's enormous and just incredible. It's been around for like... 2000 years. Yeah. Crazy. I took my new friend Job and I on not only one but two wild-goose-chase-of-a-hike for absolutely no reason. I thought there would be a view eventually, but no. And I realized that I should probably have been smarter than to wander off in the woods with a stranger like that, but no. Luckily he didn't try to kill me or anything! He even bought me a can of pop when we were done. Nice guy. His picture-taking skills left something to be desired, however...

I had to explain that I wanted the bridge in the picture... This one was better.

Kayaking under the bridge? I'll save that for the next time!

This store name made me die laughing. You'd understand if you read French poetry.

And thus began my day of sight-seeing by myself, AKA a whole bunch of pictures with my big head in front of whatever I was looking at. I mostly was just cursing my dumb camera the whole day for being so crappy and having such a small lens. I am getting a new one ASAP, which might not be for a while, but still. Sorry for my big head, but I just hate pictures without anyone in them, and seeing as how I was the only person around, there you go. Reason number 2 to not travel by yourself. 

First stop was this Roman arena. I don't think it's quite as big as the one we saw in Arles, but it is the best-preserved Roman arena. Or one of the two best-preserved Roman arenas, I don't remember. Either way, it was cool. The audioguide was pretty good too!

Next stop was lunch. Which I ate at a restaurant, by myself. I remember when I was in Kenya, I went to see the movie Nancy Drew by myself and it was quite liberating. I won't say that I felt the same way in this situation, but it was still nice. I had a great view of this random alligator statue. 

Because I got a drink and a dessert, my lunch ended up costing more than all my travel for the whole day. Which is saying something about how cheap my three-hour each way, round trip tickets cost!

Rick suggested this little cookie/cake thing for dessert. It was so cute. And good.

A random pretty door that I liked:

Of course, they have to have a museum dedicated to a certain fabric that got its start in Nimes. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's of Nimes, which in French is de Nimes --> denim. Ring any bells? This museum was basically just one little room, full of really weird pictures and cardboard cutouts.

I think this is the patent for denim. Pretty cool, eh?

What does Abraham Lincoln have to do with denim, I ask you? Cotton, slaves, maybe? No idea.

-Jean jackets are out? How is that possible?

-I just opened the magazine and there it was.

-This is horrible. Who decides these things?

-Marie Claire, apparently.

From there, it was over to La Maison Carrée. The Square House. This was before they had a word for rectangle. 

It was so beautiful! 

Inside they had this pretty cheesy 3-D film that runs every half an hour. It was like going through history really fast, as this priest guy was inside praying to know who the bravest citizen of Nimes was. Every different time period had a different brave person. My personal favorite was Jean Cavalier, this protestant guy who like invaded some castle or something... obviously I didn't really hold onto the details here, but the funniest part was when he was sword-fighting this other guy and the guy asks, "Monsieur, qui etes vous?" (who are you?) and he responds, "Jean Cavalier, enfant de Dieu" (Jean Cavalier, child of God). I seriously just busted up laughing. It was so funny.

From here, I followed the canal route down the street, past this beautiful fountain (who ever heard of a canal having a fountain?!), and visited...

Les Jardins de la Fontaine. 

What's funny is that in New Caledonia, there's a neighborhood with this same name, where some really awesome members lived and where we went tracting ALL the time, so I feel like it's something near and dear to my heart already.

 When the city needed to set up their canal system, they went one step farther and turned it into this beautiful park with tons of fountains and statues. This is basically the center of the canal system. Smart thinking, right?

And right next to that is this temple of Diana.

You can see where stone carvers came to get inspiration from this temple in the 1800s, and then they carved their names in the stone. Pretty cool.

By the end of the day, I seriously felt like I was back in Roman times for how filthy my feet were. Not that Roman times is synonymous with dirty feet, but still...

As I was leaving the gardens, I spotted something from afar... the missionaries! And then I followed them, creeper-style, to my next destination. How could I help it that we were walking in the same direction? They weren't as excited to see me as the elders in Aix were. Lame.

This was the end of the line of the Pont du Gard aquaduct. Isn't that crazy?! That huge huge aquaduct, and this is where it all led to. You can see that little archway (now covered up) above that square is where the water would come out, and then it was divided up through those little arches at the bottom to be distributed throughout the city. 

On the way back to the train station...

I know there's a story behind the whole alligator/palm tree thing here, but I don't know it and I'm too lazy to look it up. Sorry. 

The arena again, this time with the statue of this famous bull-fighter guy.

And you bet there was another creeper on the train ride home who tried to tell me how Islam is superior to all other religions. I almost pulled out my pass-along cards, but I thought it might not be a good idea. Instead, I just countered all his arguments by saying, "Well, I believe that..." and basically it was always the opposite of what he said. I just did this until he got frustrated with me and got up and left. Victoire! 

Anyway, Nimes was great. I recommend it!