Getting High

by Camille Posted on July 28, 2011

Guess what?

Banff, Alberta is beautiful (and a BAMF city, apparently).

And so is Kalispell, Montana.

One is Canadian. One American.

One is a bit more expensive than the other.

One has nicer locals than the other.

One has true hot springs, and the other only has mythical ones.

But both cities are mountainous (of the Rocky Mountains, specifically).

So of course you know what that means: both have ample opportunities for getting high…

20110728-101051.jpg…and you know us; we never miss any opportunity to get high.

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20110728-101104.jpgAs high as humanly possible.

20110728-101123.jpgBut lucky for us, we live in a place that’s worth coming back down to Earth for.

Have I mentioned that I love summer?

Posted in awesome., Canada, family, on the road again, Travel | 5 Comments

Sip With Care

by Camille Posted on July 28, 2011

20110728-091027.jpg

I am in Kalispell Montana with my parents and PK.

We are having fun.

Fun includes:

HP 7.2 (still haven’t seen it yet)

Riding more gondolas

Eating lots of delicious meals

Lounging around our hotel room (free wifi, God bless the USA)

Hot tubbin’

Making fun of PK, who washes his truck before we go anywhere just to have it get immediately filthy again (he just loves a clean truck is all) (Poor Kyle)

Reading local newspapers and just laughing and laughing

Cold Stone mint mint chocolate chocolate chip ice cream in kiddie size with my dad (the others were boycotting), and

Smiling about the courteous warnings on the lids at continental breakfast.

Someday I will look back on this with fondness.

Someday like today.

Posted in awesome., family, on the road again, Travel | 3 Comments

Paris the Fourth (Petit Palais, Jardins du Luxembourg, and Rue Cler)

by Camille Posted on July 20, 2011

This is an update of the amazing trip I took to Europe last summer. Slowly but surely I’m posting about every day I spent on that excellent continent. To read earlier updates, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here and here and here and here and here and here.

•••••••

On my fourth day in Paris I was faced with my biggest challenge in any upper level university course: GROUP WORK.

I have long considered group work the very bane of my earthly existence, and sadly even Paris couldn’t gloss over the truly miserable aspects of group projects.

What I hate about group work is this: the groups. I hate combining four or five completely different perspectives and trying to come up with something that meets my standards. That sounds snobbish, but I take my education seriously (especially since I-slash-my-sugar-daddy started paying for it our own selves). Nothing annoys me more than the stress of my grade being dependent on a bunch of foolhardies.

In Paris it was especially difficult because none of my group members had ever visited the city before so we had a lot of compromising to do in order for everyone to see what they wanted to see. In the end it worked out all right, but I felt no shortage of anxiety while it was all going down.

In theory the group projects were pretty sweet (walk through high-end shops and ask the salespeople how to tie scarves like the French, go on a walking chocolate tour, find ten different depictions of Venus [the goddess not the planet] from three different wings of the Louvre); they just would have been way sweeter if I’d been allowed to be a Group of One (GOO).

But oh well. C’est la vie.

Anyway, Day Four:

Pont Alexandre III:Arc de Triomphe:

Arc de Triomphe + my mug:Somehow on my previous two trips to Paris I missed the memo that crepes are a necessity. Don’t worry, I made up for lost time this trip: I had four. Pictured is me eating my first one filled with Nutella™:

 Jardins du Luxembourg:

Phat sculpture at the Jardins du Luxembourg:

Interior courtyard of the Petit Palais. I shall always remember this place as the first to grant me free Wifi (aside from McDonald’s). Can’t remember a single piece of artwork I saw there, but the Wifi I will never forget:

Adorable flowers at a little shop on Rue Cler:Ditto (p.s. Don’t you love how the prices are written on little chalkboards? So chic.):A view of the majority of Rue Cler, which in the end was a bit more touristy than I’d been expecting, but still it had some cute photo ops:

Photo ops like this.

Posted in French, my edjumacation and me, on the road again, Travel | 6 Comments

Prenniversary (Some people just say I Love You.)

by Camille Posted on July 19, 2011

I will get back to regularly scheduled posting soon.

Actually, I can’t promise that. I don’t know when the last time was that I was on a regular posting schedule. And I don’t foresee a time that I will be, either.

What I can promise is that I’ll do my best.

But until then, I will interrupt my already-interrupted European updates for this more current event announcement.

*******************************

(Don’t we look happy here?)

I will remember our prenniversary (three months pre– to be exact) weekend getaway in Whitefish Montana for the following momentous reasons:

• It was the first time I purchased a pair of Birkenstocks™ for myself

• It fostered one of the most heated arguments I have ever had with PK

• Followed by one of the calmest and smoothest reconciliations we’ve ever had

• It was our marriage’s first weekend getaway that was non work-related and completely laid back and spontaneous (we only packed for one night but stayed for two)

• We spent too much money on completely silly—but excellent—experiences (like this)

• It marked the first time I wore a baseball cap for an extended period of time completely un-self-consciously (though maybe I should’ve been, but screw you, doubts and insecurities)

• It was wonderful in almost every way

We are nearly four years into our marriage and although we quarrel probably more than other couples, we also make up quicker and (if I do say so myself) more maturely. I’ve almost completely stopped slamming doors and I only threw lettuce once. (Did I ever tell you about the time I threw lettuce at Poor Kyle’s head? He deserved it but I was the one to clean it up, so really it didn’t do any good at all. But lettuce carries, I tell you what.)

One solid vegetable hucking out of 45 months of marriage seems like pretty good odds to me.

I composted the lettuce after.

Posted in awesome., change, It's All Good, Married Life, on the road again, Recreation, Travel | 7 Comments

What I Learned in My Art History in Paris Class

by Camille Posted on July 16, 2011

This is an update of the amazing trip I took to Europe last summer. Slowly but surely I’m posting about every day I spent on that excellent continent. To read earlier updates, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here and here and here and here and here and here.

•••••••

I have always been taught that experiences in the real world far surpass lessons in the classroom, educationally speaking. Not that school isn’t important (heaven forbid it’s not important! it took me seven years to finish my first dadgum degree—it’d better be important). Indeed, school is very important. But for a truly well-rounded education life experience is key.

And part of life experience, of course, is travel.

Luckily my art history study trip in Paris taught me just as much about life and my own self as it did about rococo architectural tropes. The main lesson I learned? That changing my major from art history to English was a great idea.

I like art history a lot, but I have discovered it is not my true passion. I used to think it was, but this trip taught me that I was quite wrong. In actuality, I only liked my art history classes more than all the other ones I’d taken to that point. And relative preference is a fine basis for hobbies, but for life paths? I shudder to think.

When I was a senior in high school (grade 12, Canadians) I thought maybe I might could make a good lawyer or politician when I grew up. But in April of 2004 I took an extracurricular trip with a group of fellow seniors to Washington, D.C. to learn more about government and politics, and guess what? I loved the architecture and statues and historical sites, but all the actual political aspects of the course were excruciating for me. It took me less than 24 hours in the place to realize how very fortunate I was to learn it then and not in my last year of law school.

This time around I already decided against getting my degree in art history, but truthfully  a part of me has regretted that decision ever since I made it back in 2009. Since then, I have taken art history classes for every elective possible. When I wasn’t writing papers for English, I was writing them for art history. And when it came right down to it I liked the art classes better.

But in the real world, I prefer the literature aspects of my English degree (reading, writing, editing, and such) far over the real-world aspects of an art history or museum studies degree.

As I learned during my real-world trip to Paris this past week and a half.

Will I always love to travel and see cathedrals and learn places’ histories and soak my pores with culture?

Of course.

Do I want to spend the greater part of my life standing on my feet in crowded museums in front of sculptures trying to make sense of it all?

No freaking way.

And I am eternally grateful for figuring it out before it was too late. Now I can proceed along my journey to become a writer unencumbered with the heavy baggage of What If.

I think it’s going to be an excellent trip.

Posted in change, in all seriousness, introspection, It's All Good, looking back | 5 Comments

Striped Like a Knife

by Camille Posted on July 14, 2011

This is an update of the amazing trip I took to Europe last summer. Slowly but surely I’m posting about every day I spent on that excellent continent. To read earlier updates, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here and here and here and here and here and here.

•••••••

After spending only three days in Paris I decided it was time to visit the Bureau of Official Title Allocations (BOTA) and applied for a Permit to Claim Knowledge of French Fashion (PECK-OFF).

It was a nerve-wracking experience because those French officials are pretty strict about who they permit to talk Like They Know about fashion.

Luckily I had done my homework ahead of time, so armed with photographic evidence I marched right in to that office and told the PECK-OFF people exactly what they wanted to hear:

STRIPES ARE IN.

Every clothing store, whether Louis Vuitton or H&M, had just an inordinate number of striped numbers ripe for the purchasing.

So many stripes.

And not only for adults, but for children too:

I can’t tell you how many times I came THIS CLOSE to buying tiny little stripey French outfits for my unborn (and unconceived) (and as of yet still completely not planning on having them any time soon at all) babies. Only the knowledge that I had chocolate croissants to consume and pay for kept my spendthriftiness at bay.

I did, however, allow myself to get a bit carried away and actually try on a striped French shirt for myself:

Too bad it was the largest size the store carried and it was still three sizes too small to properly fit around that pesky spare tire of mine. But it was for the best because like I said, there were chocolate croissants to think of.

Anyway, lest the PECK-OFF authorities challenge my natural right to carry a PECK-OFF of my own, I took a few extra credit photos of (one of) Daniel Buren’s Stripes installments in the courtyard of some centrally important government building whose name I can’t recall (nevermind, I just googled it: the courtyard of the Palais Royale):

Stripes everywhere. I could have lived in this courtyard in a cardboard box and been completely content with my life. I dig stripes.

Can you spot the sneaky striped awnings? The idea of arranging the stripes in this courtyard just so is to mirror the stripes occurring in architecture throughout the city (occurring in pillars and banisters and columns and every good stripy thing).

(This lesson alone was worth the course fee to me.)

Stripes by stripes. Glad I thought ahead and took two striped sweaters with me to Paris so I could really blend in with the locals.

(Though I suspect that taking awkward photos of myself by stripes for ten days straight may have given me away in the end.)

But anyway, I applied to the Bureau and received my permit to Talk Like I Know, so now it can be official:

Stripes are in.

Posted in awesome., fashion people, French, Travel | 6 Comments