"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Walt Disney

When I was 13 years old, I started learning French. I was living in Scotland at the time, and everyone in my class had already been taking French since primary school. So I was a little behind to say the least. I don't know when my love of French began, but I can honestly say that from that moment on, I dreamed of someday going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.  Being able to finally climb it - even if I did it in an elevator - was one of the greatest moments of my life. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of. It was magical.

Just before we got on the elevator to go to the top! I was literally scared for my life, but it's fine.

The way they have translated this sign kind of implies that they know there really will be pickpockets on the Eiffel Tower. So beware of them - beware of THE pickpockets.

This is what the ground looks like from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. What you don't see is the racing heart inside my chest for being so high off the ground. If anyone knows me, I'm petrified of heights, but there was no way I was going to let a fear of heights get in the way of living my dream!

Up at the top, the view was spectacular. And what's more, I had tried many times to connect to the Wi-Fi, but hadn't gotten it to work. I desperately wanted to call my family and show them the view and how I had finally accomplished my dream. So I tried one last time, and for three marvelous minutes IT WORKED!!!!!!!

I was even talking to them while the Eiffel Tower started to sparkle. It does that every night, the last five minutes of the hour. What a wonderful little miracle it was!

My grandpa Murdoch has always taught me to never be discouraged, and I feel that sometimes we surely can be discouraged when we realize that our dreams and hopes and desires are so far out of our reach. But that night when I climbed the Eiffel Tower, I felt the most overwhelming feeling of happiness.

I had made it.

I had fulfilled my dream. I reached the top.

I was actually there, standing on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. That night, the Eiffel Tower became so much more than a monument that makes my knees shake. That night, the Eiffel Tower became a symbol of hope, whether it be overcoming obstacles or fulfilling my dreams. It took me many years to finally get to France, but the fact is that I made it. I overcame so many obstacles to finally get there. It truly was a dream come true. Pursue your hopes and dreams and wishes. They are real. Well, they can be real if you are determined and don't let discouragement wear you down. It's possible, I promise.

And now, it's time to go find a new dream. :)

The city of many canals and houses that tilt. Oh, and bikes.

I did it. I can't believe I did it. I traveled to another country where I really, truly, felt like a foreigner.

We were very tired - I woke up at 4:30am and we left at 5:20 to walk to the train station. Our train left at 6:25am!

Amsterdam Central Station

Me waiting for Miranda and Megan as they went to the "WC" (water closet aka bathroom, haha. You  have to pay 0.70 euros to go)

I definitely do not understand dutch. I should have been a good girl and at least looked up how to say, "Please," "thank you," and "have a nice day," But alas, I did not, and so I feel like I really learned what it's like to feel completely lost and without any direction. It's called embracing a new culture on the spot.

Rule number one. NEVER CROSS THE STREET.

Rule number two: If you absolutely have to cross the street, only cross at crosswalks, only cross when the traffic light shows green and you can hear the strange ticking noise, and above all, watch out for trolleys, cars, trucks, people, and BIKES.

Crossing the street is an adventure because you have to look both ways to first cross the bike lane, then left to cross the one half of the street, then right to cross the other half, then look both ways to cross the bike path on the other side of the street. There are literally four cross walks you have to cross to make it to the other side of the street :

I am quite in love with this city though, particularly because of all the bike lanes. I wish I could show you how many times I saw a dad or a mom with a child strapped into a front or a back bike seat. This is just normal morning routine to them. If they're going to the store, if they're going somewhere, the child comes with them in the bike seat. The coolest bikes were those that were equipped with both a front and a back baby seat. I want this to become a normal thing in the USA. The only problem is this works in Amsterdam because the streets are so small, and there's no way any bus could make it down the street without killing someone or breaking something. There are too many bridges and canals without fences to take the risk of large vehicles plowing their way down the street. Parking a car seems like a nightmare since they risk to fall into the canal.

Thank goodness for bike garages, though! Take a look at this one:

And here is a picture of one of the hundreds of street bike racks:

One very fun part of this culture, aside from the bikes and canals, are the waffles and the pancakes. Oh man. Oh. Man. Doesn't this picture of a traditional waffle just make your mouth water? They are so good and so heavy that my stomach freaked out after I ate it, but all in all, I'd say the whipped cream, strawberries, and ice cream atop a delicious sugary waffle made everything worth it.

These are traditional pancakes - they are tiny, round, and very delicious. We think they are cooked in a special pan that resembles a cupcake tin, but this one is for little pancakes. Not too sweet, and 11 was the perfect number to eat :)

Here's my waffle topped with cherries, whipped cream, and ice cream:

We got to visit the Anne Frank house and Corrie ten Boom house while we were there. I got to actually walk up inside the Secret Annex where Anne and her family and several family friends lived for over two years. Then, I also was able to see the Corrie ten Boom house, and the secret hiding place that her family asked someone to build so they could help hide Jews. This spot once held six people for a straight forty seven hours during which time Corrie ten Boom and her father and sister were arrested and taken to a concentration camp for hiding Jews. It hurts my heart so much to think that these people had to go through that, and that today there are similar sufferings in the world. I had an interesting perspective on their suffering because unfortunately, I was sick with a fever and a cold while we were there for two days. I was tired after standing and walking for three hours, so it made me appreciate so much more the suffering the Jewish people had to experience.

This is the original clock shop her dad was the owner of. Above it is their home. You can see the front windows are the living room.

During WWII, Corrie ten Boom, her father, and her sister were a part of the Dutch resistance, and helped about 800 people escape Germany through a network of homes and underground organizations. When the Germans found this out, they raided the ten Boom home, and Corrie, Betsie, and their 84 year old father were imprisoned. One of the many miracles of her story is that she was able to sneak her bible into the camp and read it at night to the other people. One night, her sister said that they needed to remember to thank God for everything - including the lice and the fleas. Corrie refused to do this until she realized that the fleas and lice kept the guards away from their barracks, which allowed them time to read the bible together. She is the only one of her family who survived. This is the sliding door that covers the little entrance in the bookcase. The house was equipped with an alarm system that someone from the family could set off if they saw any German patrol in the area, or if they sensed danger. It would give the refugees in the house about one minute to get inside the secret hiding place built behind a wall of bricks. Many times, the Germans who searched the house would knock on walls to see if they could her a hollow space behind it, indicating a secret room or hiding place. But because this false wall was made of bricks, they never discovered it. There were at one point 6 people in here for 47 hours before they were able to come out. It was after Corrie and her family had been arrested, and these 6 people waited in there until the Dutch Resistance came to retrieve them.

We got to walk around the streets quite a bit, and our adventures lead us to many a cheese shop :

The architecture is incredible. Shop owners would often place stone pictures on the outside of their shops to indicate what they specialized in. For instance, a shoe maker may have an image of a shoe, and a baker would have the image of kitchenware on the outside. 

This was a wonderful trip to a new culture and a new language.  While there, I realized that while I may be more comfortable now with traveling and meeting new cultures and feeling out of my comfort zone, there truly is no place like home.

I miss my family dearly, but I'm grateful that modern technology allows us to communicate still. And Happy Birthday, Grandmother!!!!

Love, Sunshine :)

Delightful pastries and Invisible Cathedrals

It's not very hard to detect symbols in the French culture. For example.

This:

A raspberry-pistachio eclair :)

and this:

A lemon tart with a chocolate treble clef on top!

are symbols of how much French people value food (especially dessert). La cuisine is practically an art.

Yesterday, Miranda, Megan and I went to a very quaint cafe called Angelina. Apparently it's world famous (although I'd never heard  about it, haha). We could have payed upwards of 25 euros a plate if we had wanted to eat a meal there, but there was only one thing on our personal menus that night:

Hot chocolate.

". . . In the middle of July?" you ask.

Well, you see, this isn't just any hot chocolate. It's Angelina hot chocolate. That's where the world famous part comes in.

And okay, confession time. I don't even know how many years it's been since I've had hot chocolate. The last time I drank some, I experienced so much pain that I haven't had any since. So we'll just say that the hot chocolate was on Megan and Miranda's menus, and I came along for the ride. But usually when that happens, I end up hopping on the ride, too. Needless to say, this was our dinner:

Just imagine melting your favorite chocolate bar, or melting a bunch of chocolate chips, and that's the consistency the hot chocolate was. It was super thick and super rich. I got two spoonfuls down and my stomach started to say, "Do you want to kill me??" I barely managed to eat half a teacup full of the stuff, and I can't quite say that it was worth it . . . I also ate my first millefeuille ever. It was probably the most expensive pastry I'll ever try! I think it was about 7 euros at Angelina's, where normally they're about 4 euros everywhere else I've seen them. But we shared it between the three of us, and then I gave Megan the rest of my hot chocolate to drink because dying that night once was sufficient. :)

Then last week on Thursday, I was walking around the streets of Paris, hoping to find some dinner. I decided to walk some back streets and look at the shops and cafes. When I finally found something that looked pretty good - a quiche loraine and an eclair (because lets be honest, I think eclairs are my most favorite pastry), the next thing I wanted to do was find somewhere to eat my dinner. So I kept walking and soon happened upon a little park. The above picture is of the cathedral that seemed to share the grounds of this park.

So I sat down and lo and behold there was a sign on my bench that said, "Paris, free wifi". So I whipped out my phone and connected to the internet, in hopes that I could call my family :) As I was sitting on the bench, these army guys walked past me. The amount of security here in Paris is crazy, but I sure am grateful for these men who are walking around ready to protect anyone from danger.

I was able to talk to my family for a wonderful ten minutes, and I showed them the cathedral and the park. When I had to hang up with them, I decided to leave to go home. I just had to figure out where I was and how to get back to my apartment. So I started walking around this cathedral and all of a sudden, it began to look familiar . . .

You'll notice if you look closely that these windows don't belong to just any French Gothic cathedral . . . It was the other side of Notre Dame! I've never been all the way around it before, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came around to the front and realized I knew exactly where I was. It's so funny how sometimes things work out for our benefit when we least expect them to :) All in all, it was a very pleasant evening. This little adventure helped me to realize that although in our lives, we may sometimes feel lost and confused because we may not have all the answers to our questions. But if we will just start walking, if we keep going, that's when the Lord can steer us in the direction we need to go. But we are the ones that have to take the steps. Someone once told me that God can't steer a parked car. So I say take courage and keep walking :)


The following pictures are from my adventure on Sunday. I went on a walk around a park called Parc Montsouris. It's a relatively small park filled with pigeons and ducks and black swans (I know, right??), and you'll never guess what else . . .

it was also filled with people playing PokemonGo.

???

For those of you who don't know what PokemonGo is, don't ask me because I don't really know either. Basically, the App uses your surroundings to tell you that there are little Pokemon characters hiding around nearby, and you walk around trying to "find" them, though they are only "found" on your screen. It's kinda like a virtual reality app if I understand correctly. So if you look closely at the picture below, you'll see in the background that I secretly snapped a picture of someone in the process of catching a Pokemon.

 I was disappointed though because there seemed to be so many people using the Wifi to play this game that I wasn't able to connect to it and call my family. But that's ok. I made friends with these black swans.

Another symbol of French culture is a park, or better yet, a park bench. At any given time, you can find lots of people in a park, reading the newspaper, reading a book, talking to their friends, people watching, or playing PokemonGo (as it were). I love this part of their culture because it shows how they really value their time. I don't know what the statistics are in terms of TV watching versus spending time in the park, but I'd say that going to the park is a pretty popular activity. I'm definitely adopting this symbol into my own life :)

Here I am doing a mini piano concert for some elderly people. It was wonderful, and they are so kind to us! One woman we visit always asks if I've found a Frenchman yet, and I have to break her heart every time by saying, "Not yet, but maybe someday!"