Normandy

Our second day of the trip was incredibly busy and was spent in Normandy. This day was spent exploring the areas of Normandy that were involved in the D-Day invasion.

We started by going to Caen to visit the Mémorial de Caen - the Peace Memorial. This  museum was created to look at the the time leading up to World War II, World War II and the time afterwards including the Cold War. You start your visit here looking at the time leading up to the second world war. In order to understand why WWII happened, you must understand what was happening before it. From here you journey through attempting to understand genocide, the D-Day Battles and the recreation of a world post war. It was an incredibly moving museum to visit albeit it hard to walk through due to such heavy topics. 

Then we stopped and had lunch in a small town called Arromanches. Our tour guides described it as the Wisconsin Dells of Normandy - full of tourist shops. This town is a historic place of the Normandy landings because an artificial port was built here so that allied troops could unload heavy materials without waiting for the conquest of deeper, permanent ports. 

From here, we headed to the Normandy American cemetery. This is an American cemetery on American soil in France overlooking Omaha Beach. The people of France gifted the Americans this land to bury our soldiers who gave their lives at the D-Day battles. There are thousands of grave stones marking the tombs of these soldiers, over 1,500 who were never identified. Next of kin were given the option to permanently bury their dead at home, but those men would still have a grave marker here.  This is the cemetery that is seen at the start of the movie, Saving Private Ryan, and two of the brothers that movie is based on are buried here. 

Our last stop of the day was at Pointe-du-Hoc. This is where the US Army Rangers scaled the cliff walls in order to attack the Germans. Unfortunately, they were running late and lost the element of surprise. The Germans had fortified this area with casements and gun pits. Despite this, the Rangers did capture this point. Pointe-du-Hoc has been left as it was during the D-day invasions. Visitors can see holes in the ground from dropped bombs, casements still standing and barbed wire from World War II still in its original location. 

Paris is always a good idea

Audrey Hepburn is famously quotes as saying: Paris is always a good idea.

I have always loved this quote but could never truly understand her saying that until I visited Paris myself. I had always felt the pull of Paris and it was a city that rested near the top of my bucket list. The allure of Paris is one that cannot be described but one that is distinctively felt.

Last night I got home from spending a little over a week in France. It was a trip to remember and one that I did not want to come home from. The next several blog posts will chronicle my time spend in France and the adventures that were had.

Our first day in France was busy. We were all incredibly exhausted from flying through the night and sleeping very little on the plane. We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport (a CRAZY airport) around 6:30 in the morning and off we went. This was not to be a day of rest. A chartered bus picked us up at the airport and we started to drive towards Normandy.

Our first stop was in Giverny at Monet's Gardens. Here we got to see the famed gardens of Monet's many gorgeous paintings. These are the gardens that he built in order to paint during the impressionist movement. Even though his art was then technically not impressionistic ... they were
beautiful. The impressionist movement was when artists started to paint the things that they saw in everyday life and paint it many times in different lights. Because Monet build his gardens to suit his paintings ... they weren't technically impressionistic. But they were gorgeous!

The gardens were ones that every horticulturist dreams of. Gorgeous ponds full of blooming lily pads, flowers of every color in full bloom and quaint bridges ... full of tourists! It was a busy place but definitely worth the stop to see the fabulous gardens. Visitors can also tour the house of Monet and see many of his paintings on display.

From here our bus driver took us to our hotel. We were all incredibly ready to check into our hotel room, grab some dinner at hit the hay! Of course dinner was so delicious and it ended with the best piece of apple tart that I have every had ... Tomorrow we head to the beaches of Normandy! 

He's a Stand Up Guy

I recently had a blind date set up to meet with a boy (yes, I'm going to call him a boy) that I was conversing with sporadically for the past month on one of those oh-so-lovely online dating sites. This particular guy was out of state for work for the duration of our conversations and so our conversations were not lengthy or consistent in nature. I didn't know much about him but when he asked if I wanted to meet, I jumped at the chance.

Okay. Okay. I'll tell the truth. I didn't so much jump at the chance ... it was more like dipping the tiniest portion of skin into the water to make sure it was at least tepid before jumping in. But I did touch the proverbial toe to the water and agreed to meet him for a drink at a local dive bar.

There were a few days between when the plan was made and the actual meeting so we exchanged numbers. We participated in some "flexting" (flirty texting for those of you who had to look it up like me) and shared last names. With the sharing of last names comes Facebook stalking (don't look so shocked, we all do it!).  It all pointed to being a good blind date especially after vetting the guy with a mutual-ish friend.

Then the day of the blind date arrived. I held strong throughout the morning but come afternoon I started to participate in the Getting Ready for a Blind Date ritual. You know ... showering, picking out an outfit, texting your friends to say you don't want to go, picking out a new outfit, convincing yourself you aren't going to vomit, picking out another new outfit, and, finally leaving. I already went into detail about the drive to the date in a previous post, so I won't go there.

Let's fast forward a bit ...

You arrive and grab a seat at the bar a few minutes prior to meeting time so you aren't playing the deer in headlights when you walk in. You order a drink and you start to wait, looking calm and collect and trying not to stare a hole in the center of your phone.

And you wait. The clock now says 5 minutes past when you are supposed to meet. You decide he must just be running late and you text your friend to confirm. They agree and tell you to wait a little longer, I'm sure he'll be there any second they say.

And you wait. Now it is 10 minutes past when you are supposed to wait. You nervously look around the bar to see if anybody else is sitting alone. You pray that the creepy guy across the bar is not the one waiting for you, but soon someone joins him. You make small talk with the buzzed lady next to you as you pretend you know anything about the Women's World Cup.

And you wait. After waiting for 20 minutes you decide to leave. After 20 minutes, your blind date is no longer late, they are just not coming. You have officially been stood up at the bar.

There could be a billion reasons why someone doesn't show up for a date. They get lost, get into an accident, come in and turn around when they see you. Or in my particular case, they take a nap and over sleep.

Turns out the boy (see why I say boy???) you were going to meet wasn't the kind of stand up guy you wanted him to be.

My final thoughts for the day - never underestimate the importance of an alarm clock!

Body Positve Or Not?

I have been thinking a lot about body image lately and how it has become such a buzz word and such a movement in the past year. Not a day goes by that I don't see #bodypositive hashtags populating the internet. And don't get me wrong, I am not saying that this is a bad thing. We should be promoting a body positive movement where we see beauty in every person ... however, when did it become the thing to do? What I mean by that is ... when did our body image problems become so detrimental that we need a body positive movement to make us think higher of ourselves?

Body image is something that I have struggled with my entire life. As the chubby child who didn't wear name brand clothes (I LOVED my home made jumpers thank you very much), and whose hair channeled Hermione Granger long before her inception I was often made fun of. Once I added on braces, loving school and glasses? Forget about it. I was every middle school bully's dream.

I grew up envying the "popular" kids around me who were thin, pretty and who could step out of the shower with hair straight out of a Pantene shampoo ad. But why? I was a happy child. I had friends and I got along with my family. So why did I envy the beauty of others rather than focusing on my own, albeit goofy, beautiful self?

The problem of course, or so I believe, stems from the media. When we look at movies, magazines, books, commercials and TV shows it has always been rare to see a "normal" bodied human being represented. Now, I put "normal" in quotation marks because what is normal? When I say normal, I mean that we are not representing a variety of people. Even when the goofy "duff" of a best friend is represented ... the purpose of the movie becomes to make her the belle of the ball. Take off her glasses and run a comb through her hair and voila! She is Cinderella in the flesh. But why can't the goofy, awkward, not put together best friend fall in love with the leading man just as she is? Why is it some major transformation that finally wins him over? Can't he love her for her brains and personality first and looks second?

When this is what we encounter as stimulus overload day after day after day how can we be expected to live a body positive life?