The Day we met Emma Thompson....

In order to reach the Emma Thompson part, I'm gonna have to start with yesterday...

I don't know if you readers have ever heard of it, but there's this little monument the French/rest-of-the-world like to call the "Eiffel Tower". Courtney, Christine, Jamie, Moni and I hopped on the RER after a 20 minute debate with the ticket booth man and headed towards la Tour Eiffel. Walking up the steps from train station was like walking up towards the light, for as we hit the top step, right in front of us was the magical Tower of Eiffel. It was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. and it completely solidified the concept that I, Torey Erin Badass Schanks, am actually in Franceland for the best 4 months of my life. After taking pictures of every angle I could conceive, we wandered a bit towards a giant gold dome off in the distance.

                     

Once we exhausted our cameras, we headed towards the gold dome and ended up at this UNBELIEVABLE museum that Napoleon used for training the army and developing artillery...

We killed some time so we could see the Eiffel Tower light up...This is what we came across:

Instructions: hinge your neck to 90 degrees to the left. Then you will get the full effect. Sorry :-)

Moral of the story, HOW COOL IS THAT?! It truly was mind blowing and I never wanted that sparkle to end. Post Eiffel Tower, we headed back to get some dinner and get ready for a wine night...however we only made it out of the building to get crepes and little did we know, afghan crepe man closed at 2 am and we got there at 3. How hard is it to get a crepe?

Moving onto the actual title of this blog post...

We woke up a bit early and got dressed in our Sunday's best to head over to the Sunday mass at Notre Dame. Obviously I didn't understand a single word during the mass, but it was quite an experience. Notre Dame is beautiful and it continues to baffle me how anyone could possibly build such an enormous masterpiece without the technology we have today. The brain power required is way over my head. After Notre Dame, we crossed the Seine again to get to another little island in search of a famous ice cream parlor. Words do not do its justice, but that ice cream was the bomb. After the ice cream, we decided to head back. While we were walking back, we spotted an adorable candy shop so being my bottomless stomach self, we stopped in. Within a few minutes, Monster whispered to me and pointed at some woman saying, "That woman looks just like the mom in 'Love Actually'". Inside my polluted brain I laughed thinking "Moni must be on something." The woman was speaking french, and Emma Thompson (AKA actress in Love Actually, Harry Potter, Nanny McPhee and several others) was from England. I chose to ignore the concept until said woman was leaving with her family, said something whimsical to us in french, but spoke to her children in a beautiful ENGLISH accent. That was it. IT WAS HER! Creepily, we followed her to another store to decide, once and for all, if it was her. Christine, being her ballsy self, asked her softy, "Excuse me, but were you in Love Actually?" I have to give Monster some credit, because it was Emma Thompson herself, and that woman is as cute in person as she is on screen. I wanted to hug the English out of her. 

We moved on to a much needed nap and some dinner. Now I'm sitting here pondering how bored I'm going to be at orientation tomorrow.