photos schmotos.

So I finally have all of my pictures from this semester up on my Kodak gallery site...the slideshow I created includes all the albums from this year, just to make sure that I didn't forget to email out the link to some of them...so I would advise against going the slideshow route because you'll probably be looking at pictures for hours. The albums with new pictures are Bordeaux/Arcachon, What Happened During the Strike, Parks and Gardens, and Life at the University.

click!

the strawberry pie mystery.

So, a certain phenomenon that has already been documented on Stephanie's blog is that of the amazing 5 euro strawberry pie. I'm pretty sure the pie in and of itself is nothing that one would classify as a culinary marvel, but for some reason, being able to buy a 9 inch diameter circle of goodness and sweetness at the usually ghetto fabulous Super U for only 5 euros is special. So special that during one week, I'm pretty sure I participated in the buying of not only one of these pies, but in fact...three of them.

But now, tragedy has struck. Now when perusing the pie selection in the back of the store, there's multiple types of apple pies, raspberry pies, blackberry pies, lemon pies, apricot pies, caramel pies, and some other strawberry pies that they're trying to pass off as the original, but I'm too smart for that. To those at Super U headquarters, located at 1 rue Thomas Edison in Creteil, France (pardon me for not memorizing the postal code yet), you can't trick me into buying a smaller and less delicious pie, all the while paying upwards of 7 euros for this inferior tarte. I won't fall for it. So bring back the original strawberry pie. If you do, I might even stop asking for free plastic sacks in the check out line and buy one of the pencil bags. (that's a bag with pencils on it, not a bag to put pencils in)

the piehl who dropped the pile

So, one of my most shameful moments of my time in France occurred last weekend while I was with Menno, Sarah, and Amanda in Bordeaux. We had just left the cathedral and were standing in the square in front of the city hall, and Menno needed to change the batteries in his camera (the word for battery in French is "pile", pronounced exactly the same as my last name). He handed me the new batteries so he could take the old ones out, and during the transfer, something went terribly wrong and one of the batteries was sent tumbling to the ground. Our eyes followed its descent all the way into...a gutter with a grate over it. We stared at the turn of events in awe, of all the places I could have been standing in this huge square, I chose to place myself over a gutter that measured barely a foot wide. Menno wasn't too thrilled, and we tried being MacGuyvers to rescue our fallen soldier, but in the end, not even some skinny French boys little hands could reach down to get the battery. And I'm pretty sure Menno will forever hold a grudge against me, the Piehl who can't hold onto piles to save her life.

cinco de mayo!

That's right, it sure is Cinco de Mayo today. I wish I could think of some reason that's important to me, but I've got nothing. Oh, I used to be a Spanish minor...does that give me an excuse to celebrate?

The "let me tell you all about myself in three paragraphs" emails from the camp staff this summer have started rolling in, which is exciting! More action for my inbox! It's strange because camp still feels so far off in the future, but in reality I'll be back before I know it! Woot woot!

I guess this is as good a time as any to give you all the rundown on what I'll be doing for the next three-ish weeks. Ready?

until May 12- Wrapping up the show in Angers, taking finals, packing
May 13- Picking up my parents at the airport
May 13-15- Paris
May 15-18- Berlin, Hamburg, and Schwerin, Germany
May 18-20- Salzburg, Austria (the hills will be alive...with the sound of music)
May 20-22- London
May 22-23- Angers
May 23- Paris and CHICAGO (that's in the US folks!)
May 25/26- Warrensburg/Kansas City
May 28- Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca

Whew, should be one whirlwind adventure. And I'm going to enjoy every minute of it, as long as I can stay awake!

A story by Mallory and Menno.

So one night last week when Menno and I were really bored, we decided to write a story. It's pretty lame, but holds some good memories of my time in Angers...raccoons, strawberry cookies, Narnia, Estonia, hallucinations, you get the picture :).

Once, once, far away in a country where they wrote in bad English there was a raccoon that was called Ruth. This raccoon took great pleasure in stalking foreign exchange students in his land. For instance, there was an incident with a foreign exchange student from Estonia.

One day, while scurrying along a path, Ruth had the misfortune of being struck in the head by a gross strawberry jelly cookie. The cookie, which was a bit stale, hit her in the head and caused a concussion which caused her to lose her memory. Along with losing her memory, Ruth lost her mind, and believed that she was indeed a LION!The lion is the king of the animal kingdom, but Ruth instead thought that she was the queen of the human world. She proceeded to storm up to the room from which the airborne cookie flew, and attempted to growl and get the unfortunate student to open up his door...unfortunately, all that came out was a little whimper. Ruth stormed into the room and found an Estonian exchange student who was at the moment in the middle of an Estonian ritual dance. This ritual Estonian dance of course involved the use of the Estonian ritual beating stick. The fact that Ruth came in to the room of the Estonian exchange student during the ritual made the student fiercely mad and therefore the Estonian hit her on the head with the Estonian ritual beating stick which caused her to land in a magical kingdom....the kingdom of NARNIA!