Geo: 49.2764, -0.705529Am actually posting these last few days after being home for almost a week. Today is July 11th. Reading back over my blog I noticed a consistency that I will try to rectify, my use of exclamation points! (sorry...) I guess I'm trying to get across my excitement... will try to tame my enthusiasm for that particular punctuation mark. Onwards to finish this blog... Copied from my journal, Friday, July 1 The alarm went off at ~7:15, borrowed an alarm clock from the desk of the hotel, was giving Sarah and Carlie a break from being my alarm clock, as I had ridiculously forgotten mine at home. Jim is usually the one that takes care of that or my dad if I'm traveling with him, so really not my job right?! (again with the ... read more

Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097O.K. just finished yesterday's blog so will try to keep this short and sweet. Hopefully, the rest of the gang will chime in and tell you from their perspective how their day was. Got up at about 8 ish this morning and left the apartment at around 10 ish, the girls walked and Joseph and I took the metro to the Cluny Museum, it was an Abbey and Roman Baths, now it is a medieval history museum along with housing the "Lady and the Unicorn" Tapestries. We saw Charlemagne's sword, lots of other swords, household implements of the middle ages, (many other things ;-) ) but the very beautiful tapestries mentioned above, we sat and enjoyed them for several minutes then made our way through most of the rest of the museum. When we ... read more

Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097I'm just going to put a word in here before the others get started. It has been extremely hot and humid here! Don't know if they are breaking any records or not but I'm not used to the humidity... I also wanted to say that this group has been amazing to travel with, everyone has gotten along and cooperated so nicely. No problems at all! These are a great bunch of kids to get to know, their parents should be very proud of them, as they have been so responsible and respectful to everyone and everything around them. The other adult in our group has been a joy to get to know also, and it is so nice to know that my son would be in good hands if he goes touring the city ... read more

Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097Since I was so sick yesterday I had gone to bed at 9, didn't wake up till 10 this morning! Felt much better though I still have a cold. Everyone else was still in bed so that is when I grabbed the netbook and started yesterday's blog that I just finished ;-) I guess everyone else except for Joseph stayed up till 11:30 and the gay pride parade went down our street and Carlie got a video of it. They didn't know what it was at the time but I had heard they were having one before we left and I assumed we would be avoiding it since the plan was for us to be gone till 12 or 1 am but the plans changed.... what I didn't know was that the parade was ... read more

Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097Carlie: Bonjour mes amis! It is 6;30 A.M. here on our third (!) day en France. Today we are headed to the Louvre, d'Orsay, and Orangerie museums, but I'm sure you would like to know what I've already done here. :) This was my first flight out of the country, and everything went well, if a little long. I sat next to a very nice girl about my age and got to talk to her for much of the flight over. We left Pasco airport on June 21 and arrived in Paris on the 22. Amazingly, we all felt fine with the time change and didn't have a problem staying up until our new bedtime, but maybe that's because we were so excited! Wow, I don't know where to start! I'm pretty sure I ... read more