Back in the USA!

So more people read this blog than I thought, I've been fussed at twice this week for not writing. Even called LAZY once! Well to prove to you that I have been doing things....

I was greeted at the airport by two of my friends, Mary & Lauren V. and my parents.

(Gotta be honest, more German was the last thing I wanted to see, but thanks!)

We all went out to dinner in Charlotte at The Cheesecake Factory!

It was overwhelming to be in a restaurant so huge, with ice in my drinks, and waitresses that are attentive and call me "hun". (I'm used to french restaurants, where you have to search and beg for someone just so you can pay your check.)

I think the next thing I did was go on a retreat with my church. Every year we have to put on some sort of "talent" show. Here is an example of my friend Katie and what her group did. (I'm always lucky enough that no one ever videos my group. I believe I rolled on the ground as a human speed bump this year.)

Then I got my Honda!

Had to personalize her. Go Gamecocks!

My roommate and all our friends started making these cute little fuzzy owls out of felt, just for fun. We had quite a sweatshop going for awhile. I made the one with the glasses, and the one that is pink and purple mixed.

Oh, here they are, I think of them as best buddies.

Then I got to go camping with a few of my bestest friends. Unfortunately, camping turned into "Car Camping" after a long night of trying to find our campsite in the rain. We never found it, we ended up pulling our cars together with a tarp attached to the roofs so we could hang out together. Until it started raining so hard, we were getting wet no matter what. Then we spent a long night sleeping in our cars and not being able to hike the next day.

The night before camping we went to the famous "Beacon" restaurant in Spartanburg.

The following is not my food... but is a perfect example of "a plenty", which means you get plenty of fries and onion rings, to the point that you can't actually see your hamburger.

(Note to Europe friends, I know you think we eat hamburgers all the time. I ordered chicken, and this grease feast is not a typical American meal. My American friends are going to yell at me for acting like I'm not proud.)

We followed up that healthy dinner with an even healthier breakfast from IHOP.

I believe Halloween came next. I went to two parties, the first one I went as an ensemble, with two of my friends as CareBears! I think we were Bedtime Bear, TenderHeart and Lots of Love Bear. We made our friend April, an honorary CareBear, Western Bear.

2nd round, I got to pull out the German dirndl dress. I once got yelled at in Germany, because when I bought the dress, I said "now I have a good halloween costume forever!" I was told "No, now you have a traditional German dress, not a costume." ummm, well....anyway.

Oh and this is my friend Paul, sad, he has now moved to Ohio to get marrrrried!

(Don't ask me what he is, I never know.)

Oh oh yay! It actually snowed in South Carolina this year! Twice! That never happens!

Ok and now for my favorite part! My babies!!! I babysit for this little guy before I left for Germany. Now I just babysit occasionally. I started when he was 3 months, now he's over a year old. I was shocked to see how much he'd changed.

And this is how I spend my mornings, with this little girl....

(We are picking out clothes to wear.)

This is the face I see 99% of the time.

I did some pictures for her family when she turned 6 months!
I did these with a backdrop in their own living room. 

(More of those pictures later...)
And I spend my afternoons with these two!

I actually let them do this when it rains. I even bought rainboots so I could join them!

We got to go strawberry picking the other day!

Lots of fun and lots of red stained fingers.

During evenings and weekends I still work as a photographer, more on that coming soon.
I'm planning a new blog, logo, website updates, facebook fanpage, new frames, albums and more!
I even have a launch party in the works to show everything off.

Also a little out of order but I'd like to show you my Christmas present from my brother. It's a holiday message from all my friends in France (and one in Spain), also just a tour of the holiday lights in Limoges. I was so surprised and it was so good to hear from all my friends again! You have to watch at least to the point where they trick Ghennadi into wishing me a Happy Chanukah.
 Great Christmas present Eric!!!

Oradour-sur-Glane & My last day in Limoges

We took a mini-road trip to Oadour-sur-Glane, which is where our friend Robin did his internship. Oradour-sur-Glane was/is a village in France destroyed by the Germans in WWII. There is confusion over why this even happened. Some say it was to quench german resistance in France, some say it was because of rumors of a german hostage, others say they just got the wrong village. But either way over 600 innocent men, women and children where shot here and then the village set ablaze and the following pictures are the aftermath still standing as a reminder. 

These signs point out the 6 different locations where the men were separated out to stand and wait to be shot at. All the guns were supposed to fire at the same time. When one went off early some of the men were alerted to what was going to happen and a few were able to fight back and escape.

The women were gathered in this church. Many could have survived by escaping out this back door, except for the fact that panic had set in. Everyone was pressing against the door and the door needed to swing open into the church, this wasn't possible with all the people pressing up against it.

There was one female survivor who managed to escape by some extreme gymnastics by flipping off a table through a window and landing injured 10 feet below. She dragged herself into bushes and remained there until she was rescued the next day.

The village remains in ruins and a duplicate village was built nearby which is still inhabited. In the fields next to the original village there are several memorials and graves. These two glass cases contain some of the remains found in the burned homes and businesses. 

Well I guess just to continue on this sad note. I'm posting the pictures of my last days in Limgoes. I still have a few more blogs to put up but these are some pictures of me saying goodbye to my awesome friends and brother. 

(We expect to see you all here in the States for next Thanksgiving.)

This is Ghennadi's sad face.

C'est normal.

This is true brochette love.

I just love these next two pictures of William. This one because he looks like a hobbit.

And this one because this is how I will always remember him. Beer in hand, tongue out, sitting in the window smoking.

I do have good news though! I'm posting this blog today because today we are picking up my brother from the airport!!! I can't believe it's already time! 

Saying goodbye at the train station! Next stop, Paris!

By the way, Christelle is moving to America!!!!!!!!! Even better just one state over, Georgia!!!!

And Eric comes home today!!!!

Bisous! Bisous! Bisous!

Next blog....Paris!

International Murder Mystery

I have been waiting to write this blog for a very long time! I'm so excited. This all started when I showed our friend Tobias some pictures of the Murder Mystery party we had with my church in the US. He fell in love with the idea and we had to put it together for him.

Eric and I did some internet sleuthing and came up with an idea for what our Murder Mystery should be about. We decided on a "reading of the will". Most Murder Mysteries are hosted by purchasing a kit that has all the clues and story line written out for you. We had 3 problems with purchasing one: We are cheap, No one ships to France and Our party needed to be BILINGUAL. Many of our friends only spoke french. So Eric decided to write the script himself. I tried to help, at a certain point, Eric didn't want me to know who the murderer was, and he had to be the one to write it in french and english. 

Since all of our friends come from different countries, we wanted to find a way for people to dress up in traditional clothes from their countries or to dress in character. So we wrote the script like we were all one big international family that was spread across the world. I think the break down was something like this:

Eric was the American

I was Austrian (we already had a German & an American in the group)

Robin is from Germany.

Jorge is from Columbia.

Tobias is from Spain.

Ghennadi is from Russia.

William is from Scotland.

David is from France.

Coraline is from France, so Eric decided she would come from Japan. (???)

And there were a few other people invited that I didn't know as well. 

This was my "character" Beatrice CaschMoné. 

Since I couldn't do any script writing, I did what I could. I made fake euros for the participants to use when bribing each other for information...

I turned Eric into an old man using "www.yearbookyourself.com" We used the picture to create a memorial for poor murdered "Artiche Q. CaschMoné". Tobias and I found one candle and the saddest flower we could find in Limoges.

And Tobias and I prepared the food for the party. After everything was finished, I took a look around at the food and I was like "When did I start throwing parties that included red wine, baguette, paté, and french cheese? I guess I'm in France now." Tobias and I were a little nervous about our selections, being that neither one of us is actually french. We were afraid the true french would snub our selections. But it went over really well. 

Allow me now to introduce you to a few of our characters and explain the various costumes:

Let's see, this is Coraline on the left and me on the right. She was the 1st wife and I am the 2nd wife. Eric wrote into her script that she should hate me and I should keep trying to apologize to her and tell her I didn't know he was married when I married him. Nice, thanks. Coraline got a special award for how "in character" she was during the game.

William was our undercover detective. 

We tried to make him a kilt from a blanket but that picture is just too embarrassing to post.

There really weren't that many pictures of me taken until the very end because I'm usually the one taking them, but Eric got the following series of me without me noticing. I love them because the guy in the black shirt is Ghennadi (pronounced like Kennedy with a G at the beginning) and he's the murderer, Eric named him "Bob Builder". Ghennadi is Russian, speaks french, and knows just enough english to confuse me. I was trying to decide if the murderer was Robin or Ghennadi. Watch as Ghennadi talks me out of my decision, notice I start out pointing at the correct murderer. 

Now Ghennadi is talking me out of it, and I'm thinking... 

Robin's hoping I don't accuse him.

Now I'm officially confused, and Ghennadi changed my vote from him to Robin. Actually I still wanted to vote for Ghennadi as the murderer, but Eric talked me out of it when I was voting because he said 3 people guessing the murderer correctly was too many. 

Allow me to introduce you to our winners! Robin & Jorge!

Eric really enjoyed revealing who the murderer was.

And our murderer is... Ghennadi! I think he loved being the murderer, non?

I just want to thank everyone for participating, speaking english with me and for making it such a great and memorable event!

I have a few more pictures to post for my friends. Most wanted to have their picture taken with the German dress, and me of course! (Please email me if you want your own copy.)