My latest

First things first, I am now in Marseille. Agenda for my first day: go to apartment and get settled. Agenda for second day: go to center for a half-hour informational session. That is it. Saturday and Sunday I have off, so. . . bon weekend! I am living with a guy I know from BYU who served in Geneva mission. We live in a hotel (jealous, Jared?). We have two twin beds, but share a bed frame. . . and housekeeping gives us new towels and makes our bed everyday. Did I mention that I am a 5 minute walk away from the Mediteranean Sea? Overall, the city is dirty. The view is great though. Marseille is virtually the 100 percent opposite of Paris. The people have no style, there isn't very much shopping, and there are more Algerian bakeries than French ones. I will probably pick up a little southern drawl while I am here.


For the moment I want to recap what I have done for the last month. First of all, I made a quick stop in Baltimore to see the Desmarais and the new little one. What a champ. I did manage one day in DC to see some of the major sites. The Korean war memorial was definetly my favorite. Breathtaking.

After a crazy mess trying to get to the airport (thanks Liz), I was off to iceland. Voila some photos of my two-day adventure.


1. This is a canyon that literally seperates the eurasian and the american tectonic plates. The vikings in 930 AD met here to form some parliament of some kind, as well as converting to Christianity to gain advantages in trade and government.

2. This is the biggest waterfall in iceland.



3. This is across the street from my hostel. It is very pretty, but there are always about 1,000 mile/hour winds. For being on the pacific ocean, I never really smelled anything oceany.

4. This is the prettier part of town. It is a little lake in the old district.

As for iceland, it was a treat. I got to see some amazing things, and I just got to experience a place that is small and remote, and yet the people live their lives like everybody else. The language is cool and fun to listen to. The people are very nice, though their evenings almost always consist of getting drunk with their friends. They drink more coke than anyone in the world. They have about 2 cars per Icelander (there are only around 300,000 people in Iceland). I ate whale. Reykjavik is very small, I did most things on foot. Once out of the capital, there are thousands of miles of volcanic rocks. It is strange, like an alien planet.

I will post again about my time in Paris before I start sharing with you day to day what is going on. A bientot!