From Paris with Love

Bonjour à tous! I am writing this post from the desk of Nelly’s apartment in Paris. Well techinally a suburb called Le Pecq. Looking out the window, I see the Seine, a small island, and the beginings of autumnal colors. I’ve been here almost a week and it has been very fun so far. I’ve even been a little bit productive with the most mid case of jet lag I have ever experienced.

Jumping back in time, I must tell you about the interesting experience Juju and I had at the shooting range. We spent a solid 3 or 4 hours listing to a very well informed man tell us more than we could absorb about guns, but also firing shots at liberals trying to take them away. Gripes aside we had a informative and actually fun time shooting. The next morning I returned by train to Daniel and Alissa’s house.

Spending time in Ogden with Daniel, Alissa, and Alec (her bother) was refreshing and great to catch up. While I was there for a bit more than 2 weeks (I think) it didn’t feel like it was very long because we quickly settled into a nice routine. Many nights we stayed up way too late playing the polish game Tysiąc. From the very first game we decided it was fun to graph our scores because some went up constantly and slowly while others went up more quickly but then crashed just as fast. Below the scores are shown for 10 games as to be essentially incomprehensible.

In addition to spending so much time in Ogden with Daniel and Alissa, we collectively visited Daniel and Amanda creating the amazing group Daniel, Daniel, Alissa, Amanda, and Sheyne. I also drove to the San Rafael swell in Southern Utah and Canyoneered with Andrew (who biked out from SB), Brody, Kiana (Brody’s wife), Juju, Jared, and Dave.

While in Ogden, Daniel, Alissa, and I went to visit Sue, Eden, and the new baby, Sailor. We had a lovely dinner at the country club. It was so fun to see Eden who has truely become an adult. She is a wonderful mother and Sue seems very happy to be a grandma.

To go to France I had to get special dispensation from the French LA consulate, a “dérogation”. In addition to that I had to also take a COVID-19 PCR test. Fortunately for me these are relatively easy to get in Ogden. Its a drive through process and I only had to spit in a tube. I didn’t have to have a q-tip shoved up my nose.

Once in Paris, I got picked up at the airport by an incredibly excited Nelly. We took the train back to her place in Le Pecq.

Worried about a stricter curfew being put into place, we took our chance to go out for a nice dinner in Paris.

After settling in and working for a few days, we went to have dinner and drinks at Nelly’s friend Lydia’s place. Lydia is an amazing cook and made us great food. The whole evening was lovely and we ended up staying up talking until 5 in the morning. Of course I could mostly only understand the coversation when it was in English but my French is improving slowly.