This is how I feel about Walt Whitman.

I don't like Twitter, but I agree with Rat on this one:

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English-majoring Christianity

In his essay "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies," Stuart Hall wrote,

"On the one hand, we had to be at the very forefront of intellectual theoretical work because, as Gramsci says, it is the job of the organic intellectual to know more than the traditional intellectuals do: really know, not just pretend to know, not just to have the facility of knowledge, but to know deeply and profoundly."

Can I apply this to Christianity? I think I should. Tonight at Worship Jam (man, God touched my heart SO much!), Eric said that followers of Christ should not pretend to have it all figured out, but we must be real, be genuine.

Now, I've heard that pretty often, but sometimes it takes a quote from homework to really open my eyes. In this quote, Hall is talking about people who study cultural studies, but let's pretend he was talking about Christians. "On the one hand, we have to be at the very forefront of Christianity because it is the job of Christians to know more than the unsaved people do: really know, not just pretend to know, not just to have the facility of knowledge, but to know deeply and profoundly."

In applying this quote to Christians, I totally agree with the second half: we who follow Christ shouldn't pretend to know Him or know the answer to the hard questions of life; we shouldn't assume our ability to know Him absolves us of work; we need to know Him deeply and profoundly. What we also need to know and acknowledge, though, is that the first half of this statement is not true. We do not have to be at the very forefront of Christianity; we don't have to know more than everyone else. We can learn from the widows and orphans, from the least of these. All we need to know deeply and profoundly is Christ.

-----

Can I take a quick tangent and then make a slight complaint now? First, I think being an English major deepens my knowledge of Christ. The skills I've learned in the past three years have deepened my quiet times, challenged my ways of thinking, opened my eyes to new sides of God. That may sound totally intellectual, but God has used intellectual discussions in my spiritual walk. I really like it when my English homework makes me think of Jesus. I really like being challenged spiritually when I do my homework. I really like how God truly permeates everything I do. That's the tangent. Here's the complaint: though Jewell calls itself a Christian college, I wouldn't feel comfortable bringing up this kind of thing in a class. Class is not the place for such discussions, or applying this Stuart Hall quote to the Bible isn't appropriate or useful here. Jewell tries to be open to all religions, faiths, opinions, but that doesn't really extend to the classroom. I don't expect my classes to be Bible studies or Sunday Schools, but I do with the college was open to the different kinds of and uses for academia.

Regardless, God is in my classrooms and I hope I allow Him to be in my discussions. It's like Dr. Pratt said in chapel last week: "Just as we can go nowhere and not find God, we can go to no intellectual place and not find God already there, waiting for us."

Worship Jam and my future

You make everything glorious

And I am Yours

What does that make me?

-David Crowder, "Everything Glorious"

Jesus, Savior, pilot me

over life's tempestuous sea;

unknown waves before me roll,

hiding rock and treacherous shoal.

Chart and compass come from thee;

Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

Man, God spoke to my heart at Worship Jam tonight. So I graduate in May, right? And people ask me, "Joy, what are you going to do after you graduate?" And I ask myself, "My gosh, what am I going to do after I graduate?" And I ask God, "God, what am I going to do after I graduate?" And so far, God tells me: nothing. And I tell myself: ask again. And I tell other people: "Oh, I have a lot of options, right now I'm considering publishing or local government, but I haven't ruled out grad school and I'm eventually going to get my teaching certificate."

Earlier this week, I had "coffee" (we actually both got free cups of water) with my friend Eric. Eric is a fantastic guy and a fantastic man of God. One of the things Eric and I talked about was "arriving." How as Christians, we often feel like we're waiting for the Lord to fulfill one of our Jesus-goals. Once He makes us (choose at least one)
a) more patient
b) more trusting
c) less gossip-y
d) without addictions or vices
e) a better person
then we will have Arrived. We will be A Christian. Or we wait for the Father to answer one of our prayers. When He gives us a job, a spouse, a child, a better grade, happiness, a better hair day, then we will be Complete and we will have Arrived.

But see, that's just not true. One of the amazing and amazingly hard things about following Christ is that you never Arrive. You may become more patient, but you're still waiting on that job. You got an A but your treasures are material possessions. Even if you check all the boxes of waiting and accomplishing and gaining...well, you can never check all the boxes. We cannot be Jesus. We can strive to be like Jesus, but we cannot Arrive at Being Jesus. And God loves us for it. Eric spoke at Worship Jam tonight, and as he said, God never withholds His love from us to teach us a lesson; He never punishes us for not being Jesus. He rewards us for being His children. He loves us because He loves us.

So, back to Arriving. I realized two things about my future tonight: first, I realized that I had been waiting to Arrive at my future. My attitude toward "what am I going to do after graduation" was as if that was the last question I was ever going to have to ask God. Once God sent down a lightning bolt or a carrier pigeon with a note saying "Apply to this company" or "Go to this grad program," then I would have Arrived at my future.

Well, that's just dumb, isn't it? It's like the saying, "Tomorrow never comes." I'm not going to Arrive at my future. The Lord will answer this particular question, and then He will answer all the questions that come after it. He's always going to be the pilot. And the wonderful thing is, He's so good at it! The answers to my questions are going to be glorious.

He makes everything glorious. Whatever the plans He has for me to prosper and not to harm me (Jeremiah 29:11), they are glorious! He will make them glorious! God's direction can never lead me to an inglorious end. Whatever I do in May, it will bring glory to my Father. It won't be a mediocre job that is fine for now: it will be glorious! It won't be a good-enough grad school that's, you know, better than doing nothing: it will be glorious! It won't be waiting to fulfill my potential: it will be glorious!

I mean, gee, it just doesn't get better than that!

The French eat French bread, but they also eat burritos.

On June 21, I had lunch with the JWS, hugged all my friends, got on a bus, and left Oxford. I passed Magdalen College, and I remembered my first view of it on October 2. Though the bus had been within Oxford city limits for quite a while, my view of Magdalen was my first real clue that I was really, truly going to one of the oldest universities in the world. On that fall day (seriously, how cliché is this memory going to get?), I was so impressed by the grandeur of the city and by my total displacement from home. In June, my last view of Magdalen brought instead a sense that this grand place had become a sort of home. At this thought, I promptly burst into tears which did not subside until we neared London. It was only my “Get Fuzzy” comic book that finally cheered me up. Darby Conley, you are my hero.


Anyway, off the nostalgia and onto the next story: I wasn’t going into London to fly to Kansas City. I was going into London to fly to Antibes, a city in the south of France.


Let me take this opportunity to plug the Hall Family Foundation. The lovely and kind and undoubtedly beautiful members of the giving-money committee (dear giving-money committee: I am sorry that I don’t know your real name) were lovely and kind (and beautiful?) enough to give me a grant that enabled me to attend a French-language school in Antibes. To the Hall Family Foundation: you rock.


I flew to France and was met by my French host father, Pierre Pravettoni. He drove me to his home (we listened to Jason Mraz, Elvis, and some random French person in the car), where I met his wife, Isabelle, and his twin sons, Alexandre and Anthony (affectionately called Alex and Antho). This is the Pravettoni family:

They were pretty much amazing. Isabelle is a fantastic cook, even when she’s cooking boudin noir (blood sausage, which consists of, you guessed it, congealed blood in a sausage skin. I hope you weren’t eating when you read this). Pierre loves music of all kinds. He kept showing me YouTube videos of American artists that I had to had heard of (I hadn’t), or of awesome songs. Check this one out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM. It’s worth five and a half minutes of your life.

Alexandre and Anthony look enough alike that I initially was afraid I was never going to be able to tell them apart. We became good friends though, and I figured out which one was which. In this picture, Anthony is on the left and Alexandre is on the right:

Alex and Antho and I watched a lot of television, especially this terrible French Real-World-Big-Brother-type show called “Secret Story.” I am ashamed to admit I got pretty into it. I also watched Jaws, which is called Les Dents de la Mer (The Teeth of the Sea) in French, which is hilarious, and Castaway, which is Seule dans le Monde (Alone in the World). Also a lot of “CSI: New York” which they call “The Experts: Manhattan.” The twins and I also played a lot of Wii golf. I can now beat any of you, and probably Tiger Woods, hands down.

The last two of my three weeks, a 16-year-old Spanish girl named Edurne came to live with us. She is super sweet and has spent every summer since she was 11 in either England or France:

I didn’t spend my days just watching TV and playing Wii with French people, though. I also went to school in the mornings. There’s not much to say about school: my teachers were nice, my French really improved, and I advanced a class a week. My classmates came from a bunch of different countries: Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, England, Brazil, Italy, Greece, Turkey. It was awesome because we got to tell each other, in French, about our countries and cultures and traditions. I didn’t just learn about France and the French, I learned about all sorts of peoples and nations! It was phenomenal. I loved it.

In the afternoons, I hung out with my friends. We spent a lot of time on the beach:

Enjoying the view:

Antibes is a very, very beautiful city. It was founded by Romans and perfected by the French, and it’s one of the richest and largest ports on the Mediterranean. The water is this gorgeous blue, the old city are these gorgeous sun tones, and the land is this gorgeous green. Want more proof?

This is in the old city.

This is me with the port and the old city behind me, taken from the top of Fort Carras.

This is Antibes and Juan les Pins, from the top of the hill on the peninsula.

This is one of my favorite pictures.

My friends and I also visited neighboring cities. We visited Cannes, where there were no movie stars but there were yachts that probably cost more than my entire college education, including the Oxford part:

We visited Grasse, which was hilly and wonderful and had a great perfume factory:

And we visited Nice, which was just as great as it was in April. Plus, I got a supercute new dress there, bonus.

On Sundays, I went to the Evangelical Church of Antibes, which played Michael W. Smith and Matt and Beth Redman songs in French. One Sunday, after church, I visited Marineland, where I got to see these guys:

I love aquariums, I love animal shows, I loved Marineland.

I was in Antibes from June 21 to July 11. The goodbyes in Antibes were sweet:

On July 11, I flew back to London. I went to The Globe again (it’s such a magical place), and then I visited Oxford to see some JWS friends for the last time and to pick up some luggage that I hadn’t dragged to France.

Finally, on July 14, I got on the United Airlines flight that would return me to my country. When I landed in Washington, DC, I didn’t start crying from happiness because my mouth hurt too much from smiling. I kept jumping every time I heard an American accent, wanting to run up to them and cry, “We speak the same language!!” I ate a Wendy’s hamburger for the first time in nine months, and I called my mommy. Coming back in the country was a very good experience.

And finally, finally, I got back to KCI. This time, I did cry on the plane as we landed. It was so overwhelmingly wonderful to recognize an airport! I haven’t tried to count how many airports, train stations, and bus stations I’d been in since October, but it was a lot. Most importantly, my family was waiting for me in the airport. I’m tearing up right now, over a month later, thinking about how much I wanted to run from the airplane to the gate, how I couldn’t hold in my tears of joy even before I saw them, how good it was to be hugged and held by my parents and brother, how glad I was to not have to miss them again for a long time. You don’t learn how true the clichés are until you leave home for a long time: home is where the heart is, there’s no place like home, I wish I was homeward bound (okay, that’s a song lyric). Oxford had become a kind of home for me, and I’ll miss it. But my real home, the one I’ll always want to come back to, is 5421 N. Tracy.

And now, friends, you have travelled with me from October to July, from England to France, through fun, boredom, travels, hominess, loves, hates, homesickness and joy. I feel like I should say something pithy or clever to end this blog, but I’m not going to because I’m not done with this blog. I’ve found that I like telling stories, I like sharing YouTube links, and I like filling the blogosphere with parentheses. So, please check back here every so often, and you may find something I thought was funny, a story I thought was interesting, links to YouTube videos or news stories, or just pictures of my senior year.

Thanks for keeping up with me this past year!

Trinity term

I wrote something like 12 posts for my first term. My last term will be summed up in one. It's not because it was the least important: it's because a) it was the busiest and b) it's August now.



My last term started off with a totally exciting visit from my Aunt Debbie and cousin Sarah! They visited my aunt's niece in New York, and afterwards flew to London and spent a few days there. Lucky for me, they decided to spend one of their London days with me in Oxford!



I, sadly, have no pictures from that great day because Sarah manned (womanned?) her camera quite well, but this is what we did: saw Regent's; ate at The Eagle and Child (Sarah tried the green beer, which was deemed not-good); visited my house; visited Blenheim Palace (where we saw them preparing to shoot the 2010 movie Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black! and also a real-live Duke getting angry!!); and shopped at Primark (which was really created with Sarah in mind). It was so great to see them, especially because Aunt Debbie use her travel agent skills to help me plan my year abroad.



The next big event of Trinity Term was May Day. On April 30, most people (not me or my friends) pull all-nighters with lots of drinks, and then they all cram into a half-mile stretch of High Street at 6 am to hear the Magdalen College choir sing from the top of the bell tower. Here's what High Street looked like just before the choir sang:





And here are the Jewell people that woke up early to enjoy the beautiful music and beautiful morning: Brett, Robyn, me, Sabrina, Bill, and Erin:

May Day was the official beginning of spring, and let me tell you, spring in Oxford is gorgeous. One of my favorite parts of spring was the geese. I think I've mentioned the Christ Church geese before. Well, they had babies! We got to watch the baby geese grow up, and I think we all felt sort of parentally protective of the "geese puppies" (as Robyn called them). At least, we felt protective until the mommy geese attacked us after getting too close:

Cute, though, right?

Spring is a time of many Oxonian traditions, including the Tortoise Race. Now, many of you may not know that Regent's Park has its very own tortoise, Emmanuelle. She is about 80, and legendary in the number of wins she has had in the Corpus Christi Tortoise Race. Many Regent's students went to the races to support Emmanuelle, who, despite being the oldest tortoise there, pulled out yet another win:

The weekly formal halls continued during Trinity Term, and we were lucky to host some of our Cambridge friends at one of them! Amy, Nicole, and Carly visited one weekend, and they clearly enjoyed themselves:

So far it looks like I did nothing during the spring except have fun, right? Well, that's sort of true: even in my two tutorials, I enjoyed myself! I had an absolutely phenomenal (pulling out the big words here) tutor for both the tutorials: Lynn Robson. She didn't let me get away with half-baked work, she challenged my ideas and appreciated it when I was original, and she just generally made me work harder than I have ever worked for any other professor.

I studied Shakespeare, which was...amazing. Truly, the Bard was a genius. If you want, I can wax rhapsodic about The Great Man for hours and hours. (What kind of phrase is "wax rhapsodic" anyway? It brings to mind candles melting on a piano or something.) I also took a tutorial in Early Modern Drama, which means all of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Let me tell you, as amazing as Marlowe and Jonson and Middleton are, they can't hold a candle (melting all over a piano) to Shakespeare.

In addition to falling in love with Shakespeare's words (but not with Shakespeare--have you seen the painting of him? He has a fro-mullet), I hung out with my church group, the JWS. One of my favorite outings was when we went punting:

That's me rocking the punting pole and Rob rocking the relaxation. Punting is pretty fun. It's like rowboating, except there's the constant threat of falling in because you're a) standing up and b) sticking a pole that weighs more than I do into deep mud and thus risking forgetting to let go of the pole and letting the boat go on without you. Also, ducks get closer to punts than rowboats because there's less chance that they'll get smacked in the head with a paddle.

I did that once, by the way: smacked a duck in the head with a paddle. Except the paddle was a rowing blade, and we were going 26 mph rather than 2.6, and I didn't know I smacked the duck because it was behind me. I hear the duck lived, though. Good news.

Speaking of rowing, the day that the above punting picture was taken was also the last day of the Trinty Term rowing races: Summer VIIIs. I rowed again during Trinity, which was intense but so much fun:

I am far right, in the shirt that could say "BOY" but actually says "BOW. My housemate Erin is number 5, and my housemate Sabrina isn't in the picture, but she was the cox. Regent's Park Women rowed so well, but we unfortunately didn't result well. Regardless, I had a blast!

Here is the legendary 2009 Summer VIIIs Regent's Park College Women's Boat Club:

Lottie, Clare, Ailsa, Kathryn, Joy, Becky, Charlotte, Erin, and Sabrina is kneeling.

After Summer VIIIs, I met Jacque and Madison in London to celebrate our birthdays. I saw The Lion King (best. musical. ever.), and then the three of us spent Saturday exploring and take great pictures like this one in Trafalgar Square:

Jacque's on the left, Madison is in the middle, and I am on the right.

Our birthday dinner was at Pizza Express, a fantastic restaurant that should start franchises in Kansas City:

I went to London several times during Trinity Term. I just really like London. Already, I miss it. On one of my trips, I made my mecca trip: I went to The Globe Theatre.

For those of you out of touch with English-major-meccas, The Globe is the primary theatre for which Shakespeare wrote. It is round (like...a globe), open-air, and simple. The first time I went, I saw my all-time favorite Shakespearean play, As You Like It. I stood on the ground in front of the stage, got up-close-and-personal with a few actors, and generally experienced one of the top-five highlights of my trip to England:

Not long after my trip to The Globe, it was time to begin the endings. At our last formal hall at Regent's, we all dressed up and put on facepaint (it was a "rave"). We were all sad to leave, as evidenced by these posed sad faces:

As another ending and good-bye, our house got together for a barbeque in our backyard. Here are our wonderful neighbors:

Front row: Sabrina, Jennie Mills, Maggie Mills; Middle row: Bobbie Mills, Robyn, me, Hannah Goodliff; Back row: Martin Mills, Erin, Andy Goodliff.

And from top to bottom: Maggie, Jennie, Robyn, Erin, Andy, Hannah, Bobbie, Sabrina, Martin, and me. We were so blessed to live with such amazing people!

During my last week at Regent's, my friend Brett and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company do The Winter's Tale. It was amazing. Also, we found this place:

Get it?

Three days later was Regent's Park's valediction ceremony. Everyone who was leaving Regent's that year never to return got to sign their name in this huge book. The book has names in it dating from 1816. In British years, that is brand-new, but in Joy/American years, that is really, really old.

After the valediction ceremony there was a reception. Here I am with the legendarily amazing Lynn Robson:

And here is the last group picture Beta Rho took together:

Sadly, my time at Oxford was at an end. I dreaded leaving my JWS and Regent's friends, I had already begun to miss living with Robyn, Sabrina, and Erin, and I cried on the bus to the airport on Sunday. However, my adventures weren't over yet.

Coming up next: France!

Expedition to Europe: Brussels and Amsterdam

Belgium: home of waffles, chocolate, and Hercule Poirot. Erin and I flew from Palma Mallorca to Brussels on Saturday, April 18. The next day, we went to church:


I almost didn't want to go to church, but Erin thought it'd be a good idea (which is ironic, as I am a Christian and Erin is an atheist). She was right. The church was beautiful, but more importantly, God was more present to me in that Belgian cathedral than He had been in a long time.

The cathedral also had a great view of Brussels:

Brussels is a pretty business-oriented city, so it was pretty unbusy (what is the word for the opposite of busy?) on a Sunday. That was great, though; it was nice to get away from crowds and to not have to wait in line for our waffles-with-chocolate-and-strawberry lunch. (Yum, I know.)

Erin and I stopped in the Grande Place, which is big and grand and impressive:

We also visited that famous statue, the Mannekin. It was not big or grand or impressive, but there you go:

The highlight of our day in Brussels was the Atomium. This is the Atomium:

Seriously cool, right? It was built for the 1958 World Expo, and it has been in Brussels ever since. Here's what was even cooler, though: there were two random days when people could zipline from the top of the Atomium (335 feet tall), and Erin and I just happened to visit on one of those two days! I did not zipline (not because I was afraid, but because I was broke), but she did! Seriously cooler, right?

And here is the Belgian Arc de Triomphe:

It has a really nice park, where Erin and I ended our day in Brussels.

The next day, we went to Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Amsterdam is now one of my favorite cities. The 'coffeeshops' (where you get pot, versus cafes where you actually get coffee) are sort of whatever, and the sex trade is pretty gross (the Red Light District is honestly one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen), but minus that five-block area of whateverness and grossness, Amsterdam rocks.

The buildings are awesome, there are canals running through the whole city, and there are bikes everywhere:

And Anne Frank used to live there. Erin and I visited the Anne Frank Museum, which is just amazing. Here's another book shout-out: The Diary of Anne Frank. I feel like everyone has to read this in eighth grade, but if you, like Erin, somehow missed out on that part of education, go read this book. And then maybe visit Amsterdam to drive the whole thing home. Here's where Otto Frank's business and the Frank family's hiding place were:

Okay, like I said earlier, there were bikes everywhere in Amsterdam. There are also lots of pretty colors (of which I am a huge fan) and people who like happy things. This is how bikes like this come into existence:

Please look closely at the kickstand: it has wooden clogs on. Amazing.

Our second day in Amsterdam, Erin and I went on a windmill hunt. We rented bikes, which was so fantastic, and we rode all around and outside the city. We found things other than windmills, too:

The first windmill we found was the most impressive. It was also someone's house:

The second windmill was actually impossible to get to and kind of run-down, but...hey, it was a windmill:

And the last windmill had a restaurant in the bottom of it, which, in this picture, is covered up by Erin and me.

The bike rental place was by Amsterdam's library (the largest library in Europe and one of the newest-built), so Erin and I stopped in to use the Internet after our bike-riding adventure. And, lucky day, we saw royalty! The Swedish king and queen were in The Netherlands to promote peace and goodwill throughout the earth (or something like that), and the Queen was in the library to help open a show of children's books illustrated by Swedish artists. So, of course, Erin and I stayed in the library until the Queen left, because, seriously, royalty from a socialist country (how does that work, exactly?) is still royalty!

The Queen is in pink. I never got a picture of her face, but if you want to see it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Silvia_of_Sweden

Like a lot of European cities, Amsterdam is beautiful. I think it seemed more beautiful to me, though, because these buildings aren't as iconic (read: I've seen pictures of them so much that they're almost common) as the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or something:

I don't even know what this is, but it's just there, functioning in Amsterdam as if it's not totally big and awesome.

Our final day travelling, Erin and I visited the Van Gogh museum. It was fine, if you like Van Gogh. On the way, we completed our Dutch trip by finding a giant wooden clog:

We took a free and fantastic tour later that day, where we found another icon of the Dutch:

The next day, we went back to Oxford.

Dear Readers, we've finished with my spring break travels!! (Hey, it only took three months...) I loved nearly every minute of my trip, and don't regret a bit of it. I saw God in so many places and so many people, and I learned so much about His amazing world and my role in it. I discovered that tours are nearly always good ideas, most museums are not really my thing, ice cream always makes the end of a long day perfect, Italian men are the funniest flirters, it does no good to worry about money unless you're actually going to make a budget, you should always carry chocolate and apples, hikes to views are always rewarding, the beach at night is so lovely, overnight trains make you feel like a little kid because they're so cool, books are necessary to a good travel experience, there is rarely a need to wash clothes (unless it's underwear) between wears, you should always give a city at least a day before judging it, and it's better to travel with people, especially those people you love.

Though my continental adventures have come to a close, my European adventures aren't over yet! Check back soon for an update on my last term in Oxford and my time in Antibes!

Expedition to Europe: Paris and Palma

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the adventures of our intrepid adventurer: me. Sorry for the delay in between episodes. There was a writer's strike.

Anyway, we last left me in Nice with Madison and Ashton. I enjoyed my time with them immensely (this is an incredibly popular word in Britain, by the way, and incredibly misused), but alas, I had to leave them on the south coast and train all the way to Paris alone. I also spent my first night in Paris alone because my next travel partner, Bill, missed his plane. That is typical of Bill.

Bill arrived in Paris on Sunday, April 12, which was Easter Sunday! Bill and I spent Easter morning here:


That's Notre Dame. I love Notre Dame.



And that's Bill. He's a goofball that has a penchant for Dungeons and Dragons, philosophy, and being late.

We spent the Easter service inside Notre Dame, which looks like this:



The service was in French, so I understood a bit of it (words like "Jesus," "Christ," "God," and "Amen"), and it was mostly beautiful, beautiful music. There were also a bunch of guys in white doing mysterious sacred-mediating-between-the-people-and-God-type things:

So here's a little-known fact about Notre Dame: the back of the church is way cooler and prettier than the front:

I know, right? Why do they keep showing pictures of those two really-kind-of-boring towers (seriously, most of their interest value comes from imagining Quasimodo saving Esmerelda from the flames of death and shouting "SANCTUARY" as he hoisted her above his head whilst standing between the towers. Anyway.) when the back of the church looks like this?

After church, we went to the Eiffel Tower:

There is not much to say about the Eiffel Tower that you don't already know or can't look up on wikipedia. I mean, it's huge, and there are some really impressive views:

Like this view of the French Parliament. Sorry the photo is crooked, I took it myself.

That night, we went back to the Eiffel Tower:

Those white lights flickered on and off, which may sound seizure-inducing but was, in actuality, magical. Like Harry Potter was having Christmas in Paris or something.

Bill and I spent the next day at The Louvre:

The Louvre is a gigantic, gigantic museum that is vaguely overwhelming. And by vaguely I mean completely. There are four wings with about eight billion rooms each (for those of you who like math, that's 32 billion rooms). I visited some rooms that were new to me, and some old favorites, like my second-favorite statue ever:

The Winged Victory. So cool.

Bill and I also stopped by the Sacre Coeur, the Church of the Sacred Heart. After visiting this church, I have absolutely no insight into what it is or why it was built. I'm not sure if it's Christian, or inter-religious, or what, but one thing it was: busy.

After this, Bill and I left Paris and headed to a small island off the coast of Spain to join up with our friends. Our journey there was...awful. The night of Monday, July 13, and the whole day of Tuesday, July 14, were the worst 36 hours of my whole trip. It's way too complicated and awful to talk about the gritty, tear-inducing details, but let's just say that what we thought was going to be a train ride from Paris to Barcelona and then a plane from Barcelona to Mallorca (all in one day) turned into an overnight train from Paris to Irun, a train to San Sebastian, a bus to Madrid, a frantic call to my dad who bought us new plane tickets, a surprise overnight stay in Madrid, and finally, a day late, a plane from Madrid to Mallorca. However, I have to remember to praise God for all the incredibly nice and helpful people we met on our no-good, truly awful day.

But once we finally got to Mallorca, it was great! We met up with Jacque (you may remember her from Italy and Greece), Erin (from Prague), Sabrina (an Oxford housemate), and Nicole. The first order of business was to bury Erin and me in the sand and then draw a yin-yang around us:

There are pretty much only two things to say about Mallorca: it was beautiful, and we did nothing but relax.

This was a sunrise:

This was our daily view from the beach:

And this was the last sunrise:

And thus concludes April 12-April 18. Coming up next: the final stages of my trip. Join us next post as we gape at more big buildings, admire more statues, and visit more museums.