FRANCE.

I'll be honest and say I had no idea why I thought that I would be able to post on this blog all that often in France. As an excuse though, our last hotel didn't have wifi, and the first few days I was trying to get used to things like jet lag and speaking French again.

France is amazing. Beautiful, the people aren't that bad, and the actual French food is delicious. So far we've visited Orléans, Tours, and we're currently headed to Nantes. Paris is after that.

Funny thing: on the first day in Orléans, we found a book in a library near our hotel room called Wisconsin, about an immigrant family living in northern Wisconsin. The book was a dramatic novel about family activity and stuff like that, including clairvoyance from the Ojibwe Indians! If only I could fluently read French. :-)

My favorite thing so far has been singing in the grand, beautiful cathedrals of France. When you sing something sacred, something that was made for a big space like that with lots of reverb and echo, it's awe-inspiring. Our conductor described it as an accompaniment. You have the four voice parts and the building, because it takes so long for the voices to stop echoing. It makes the songs much more beautiful, like angels are singing with you! We actually get to sing in Notre Dame as well near the end of the tour. The whole trip is worth it to sing in these cathedrals, they're amazing.

We just saw this château, called the Castle of Usse. This castle was the home of many different famous people, including Voltaire and Perrault, the author of "Sleeping Beauty." He actually based his setting in Sleeping Beauty on this castle. It was a very beautiful castle, and very old.

We sang in the chapel of this castle as well, and it was almost as beautiful as the other cathedrals.

Thank God, today is actually sunny! There has been a lot of rain, which is apparently usual in Europe. But we've had some wonderful days. I'll try to keep up posting on here, and I'll put up pictures when I get home.

Salut!

~Sam