Girl's Night

A tradition is forming here in Metz among a few of us girls that are somehow associated with Georgia Tech Lorraine. Girl's Night. To date we have had two Girl's Nights. The first one involved pedicures and dinner, and the most recent was a waffle night and a movie. There are a few essential things for girls night:

#1 GIRLS.

#2 Someone other than the Girls to cook food.

(David has filled this roll twice already - THANKS DAVID!)

#3 Something yummy. This usually involves chocolate in some form or fashion.

It's nice, for girls who are around guys all the time, to be able to do something together like this.

Next, there will be a Girl's Night involving pizza, pedicures, and a pageant. The letter similarity is just a coincidence...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Buying Harry Potter

Start with ice cream...

...then add friends...
...and make sure you have a watch for the countdown...

...find a participating bookstore...

...await 1:01 am...

...and Harry Potter can be yours!

Admire the cover...try to figure out parts of the story from it...

...then start reading, and don't stop until you are finished!

David and I really enjoyed the book. There were even a few times where David would be reading in the back half and I would be reading the front half, just so that we could read at the same time. It's a little sad that the stories are finished, but they were very good and remain to be read again and again. If you haven't read them, we highly recommend it. They are easy to read and full of adventure. Even if you find out how it ends there is still so much you're missing out on! Read read read!

A Bunch O' Stuff.

I've been a tad behind...so here is a bunch of stuff that has been happening lately.

The 14th of July is a big national holiday here in France. Non-French people call it Bastille Day, but the French just call it the 14th of July. They had a military parade going down the road right outside our apartment - here are some pictures from that.

They had tanks and guns and all kind of stuff that they use in the military. For us, seeing this helped us envision what it must have been like during war times when tanks would be going down the streets randomly. It was very interesting but also kinda scary when you think of it that way.

Next - we now have a vacuum cleaner! Isn't it beautiful? I've never been so happy about a vacuum cleaner.

The main reason for the purchase is cleaning that rug that you see in the picture. A broom can only do so much! It is truly a time saver when it comes to cleaning.

Then we had some visitors! Cori and Frank came to visit us from Germany. Cori is American and Frank is German (her boyfriend). Cori and I (and our families) have known each other for a really long time and now that we are both living in Europe we think it's pretty cool. They stayed for a couple days, it was fun.

And, I am pet sitting. For the Grandidiers! In 8 days they will be in Atlanta for their summer vacation. So, while they are gone I have volunteered to pet sit. It's been great. Although these birds aren't the same kind of "interactive" pet I've really been craving, it is really nice to have them around. They make very pleasant noises and are fun to watch when they take a bath...and they do it all the time.










I just hope it doesn't get too hot while they are here. They are used to the nice temperature inside the Grandidiers house because they have such high ceilings. But, with all the baths they take, they should be ok.


Here is a closer picture of the three of them. Two are the same colors, and the other one (the one in the front) is a little bigger and colored differently. Aren't they cute?



My pet sitting adventures will continue after these guys leave too!! Our friend Alex has a cat at her parents house, and when they go on vacation someone needs to watch it. Alex can't have it in her dorm room so she asked me. Before she could even finish asking I said yes :o)

I'm really excited about the cat :o)


On a less happy note, our neighbor cat, it moved. :o( No more random visits or watching her from the window. They moved out last week. Maybe the next people who move in will have something.


Chopsticks! Random, I know...but this blog is about a bunch o' stuff! Pictured here are four sets of chopsticks. Two from Japan and two from China. Can you tell which are which?

Ok, I'll tell you. The blue and green ones are from Japan (you may have recognized them from a previous "Joy." post) They can from our friend Eileen while she was in Japan (now she is at home planning her wedding!!) And the red ones are from China! They came in a fancy box. The box says "A handmade Chinese gift." Our friend Wui, another PhD student, gave them to us. He prefers using a fork and knife so gave us his extra chop sticks. I think we should start a collection now. Next we need some from Korea... anybody going to Korea soon?

Aside from that bunch o' stuff, David stayed home today to study for his Qualifying exams because he woke up with w really sore neck. We have no idea what he did to it to make it hurt, but it's been giving him some problems - maybe all the studying and note taking? Hopefully it will heal so that his studying isn't hindered. The end of October will be here before he knows it!

The last Harry Potter book comes out TOMORROW. The excitement is killing me. I hope we get a copy of the book in a decent amount of time. Nobody talk to me about it until you are sure I've finished reading it.

We will be going to a concert tonight with some of our friends from Church. We are pretty sure it is supposed to be a Christian French band, and it's really close to our apartment, so it should be lots of fun!

More later.

Tuesday and Wednesday

They are having a series of concerts in Metz over the course of the next few weeks. This past Tuesday was the second one so far and I think it was supposed to be the most the one with the most popular band. SuperBus took the stage and the crowd went wild. They are a French group (female vocalist and guys on all the instruments) Most of their songs all sounded the same...drums, bass, electric guitar, club-mix sound. It was interesting though because many of their songs included English words...some were entirely in English. The only problem was that some of the people in the audience really had no clue what was being said. We heard them trying to mimic the words and that made it clear that they didn't know what the words were. Some people knew enough English to figure it out, but others were just enjoying the beat.

One of the things I found most interesting was that the stage was set up right next to the Cathedral (as you can see in the picture). It's strange to me to see a huge cathedral with several hundred years of history right next to a concert stage and tons of people. I think that if this had been a situation in the US that they would have never let a concert take place right next to such a piece of history...maybe it's because there isn't as much history in the US in the first place...?

Wednesday morning we headed to Luxembourg to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. :o) Although probably one of the hardest Harry Potter books to make into a movie, I think they did a pretty good job. Enough said...you need to see it for yourself.

Wednesday evening we went to a PhD dinner hosted by the Asian PhD students: Zheshen and Wui. It was incredible. To see all of the pictures from it click on the More Swafford Pictures and Videos link.

This is a picture of the Chef, Zheshen (on the right). He began cooking at 4pm and made 3 appetizers, and 13 entrees! It was incredible. We ate things like, seaweed, mushrooms, squid, pork, beef, shrimp, cabbage, scallops, peas, chicken, tofu, potatoes, eggs, and rice of course, all in different Chinese dishes. Did I mention it was incredible?

Below is a picture of just six of the main dishes that he made. The ones I liked the best were the bottom right one (pork, tofu, and mushrooms with a yummy sauce), the top middle one (marinated mushrooms), and the bottom left (very spicy pork and cabbage). Very good very good. The only problem was that David and I forgot to bring our chop sticks! We went to dinner with Wui last Friday, to a Chinese restaurant and he gave us a lesson on the proper way to use chop sticks, so we wanted to practice some more... Oh well, we will just have to eat with them again. :o)

After the meal we had dessert, although it was not Chinese. I was volunteered to make it - chocolate chip cookies. They were pretty good, but I'm still trying to perfect my recipe. There were 80 cookies. Yummmmm.

All things new.

Today's story begins on Saturday morning...

David and I woke up to happy thoughts about heading to Belgium to go kayaking. On our way out the door we stop down in our cave to get an old t-shirt for David to wear that has previously been packed away with all our winter clothes. At our cave door David asks, "Susan, why did you leave the cave unlocked...and why did you throw our winter clothes all over the place?" "Huh?" I replied. After walking into the cave I noticed that our winter clothes were thrown all over the place...definitely not how I left them. I had packed them all away in some of our suit cases to store them for the summer and now they were out everywhere. This is the point where David and I realized that someone had gotten into our cave. They had pried to door open and gone through all of our stuff.

In our cave we have, out of season clothes, our 2-second tents, 4 pieces of luggage, a jar of apple sauce, a can of green beans, and lots of boxes. After repacking everything we have found that nothing was taken. It's strange - what were they looking for? Not clothes, not food, not shoes...something more valuable? Like an old TV maybe? So, the conclusion is that they wanted something different than what we have, or our stuff wasn't good enough...both are fine with me. We also looked around in the cave area a little more and discovered that another cave had been broken into, and a third had been attempted. We can't really tell if any one's stuff was taken though. We also saw the door that leads to the outside of the building to the street...it was open...broken open. So that is how they got in. We're going to tell the agency tomorrow morning and post a note in our building to inform everyone. I don't know how often people go down to their caves. BUT, if someone left the door from the caves to the main building open someone could get into our apartments and that is really scary. I won't be going into the cave by myself anymore!

We went to a new country...well, it was new to me, David had been there before. With some other students from GTL we car pooled through Luxembourg and up to Belgium. What we saw of it was very beautiful. The river that we went down had a lot along it to see as well. We saw this really cool castle on a hill (more pictures on my PicasaWeb site) and there was another really large rock that some people were climbing. Then we saw some cows. They were mooing like crazy. It sounded like they all had a stomach ache. There were also a few places where the water was a little rougher and that was fun too. We stopped a few times at various places. At one of them we got out, some people bought drinks, and I headed to a bathroom. Right next to the bathroom there was an ostrich. It was enormous and kind of out of place. It was a "camping" area with a random ostrich. At the same stop, when we were getting ready to leave David and I realized that our boat was missing... Eventually we found it about 30 feet from where we had tied it, and a paddle was missing. Some friends found our missing paddle a ways down the river...

We deep cleaned our apartment today. While doing so, we decided to do a little rearranging. It was fun and we really like the result. We just moved things around in our living room but it now feels much more spacious. A new arrangement of things is always refreshing.

What else is new? David has discovered that with PicasaWeb you can post locations with your pictures. So he has been sitting here placing each picture that he has on a map exactly where the pictures were taken. It is pretty cool, but I think he's obsessed.

I made blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning in one of those silicone bake ware things. It's the first time I've used one but it worked really well! Too bad we don't have anymore blueberry muffin mixes! I guess I'll have to look up some recipes and make them from scratch. Oh well.

Harry Potter this Wednesday! Hope you are as excited as we are!

Young At Heart

I am very excited to tell you about one of the common activities that we do when I baby sit the Barry children. They don’t watch any TV so that leaves them lots of room to be creative. Very often I will come into the house to start a night of babysitting and they will have pieces of paper and markers scattered all over the kitchen table while they diligently work on drawings. They don’t color in pictures that are already drawn for them, but they create their own…and very often they aren’t just creating a picture.

For example, below is a picture of something we created together. It was inspired by previous castles that they had been working on. From the pictures they had already drawn they began to cut out the drawings of the knights and bad guys and the weapons that the people had…these became game pieces. Then we took the pictures of the castles and made a road to connect them. It ended up being like a game board. There was even a princess to be rescued (thanks to me…it would have just been fighting for fighting’s sake if I hadn’t recommended the princess.) The castle ‘stage’ continued for a while…and they still love castles. Luckily they are living in France, so they can see a lot of real ones in person.

Most recently, at night, the older boys have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with their parents before bed (and when I baby sit I get to read to them instead). The book has got them into a chocolate factory mind-set, so everything they talk about can some how be incorporated into the Barry Chocolate Factory. I think I have enjoyed it a little too much. Last night we each designed a candy making machine that would make something really cool for the chocolate factory. Reid’s made chocolate balls…sports balls. A soccer ball with white and dark chocolate…a basketball with orange and dark chocolate, other more colorful balls…that, I suppose, was supposed to be used for some kind of sport. Neil’s also made balls – an original idea of course - but just colorful ones. But my machine…it made fruits. Well, not just fruits, but it made fruit seeds. And the seeds are meant to be planted so that the fruits can grow. But they don’t grow real fruits of course! That would be absurd for a chocolate factory! It makes fruit seeds that grow into fruits that are chocolate! Confused? Use your imagination! The “fruits” grow from the seeds, but they aren’t fruits at all…the are chocolate shaped fruits. The purpose is to trick parents into thinking that their children are really eating healthy, but instead they are really just eating chocolate :o) As you can see from the machine, the ingredients are added at the top, into the funnel. You will notice that there are cocoa beans as well as other ingredients that are necessary. Then, the machine does all the other work to create the magical seeds. If you pay attention to each bean’s path you should be able to figure out what kind of fruit seed is being produced. (there are also picture hints in the upper right-hand corner) Honestly, I think I had more fun than the boys did.

I think the moral of this story is that when you use your imagination things are way more fun…the best way to accomplish this is to not have a TV.

It is time that you meet the boys I baby sit for. Starting with the oldest, pictured with his Chocolate machine is Reid, he is 7 years old.

Then we have Neil, he is playing with Pokèmon cards…and don’t worry, he doesn’t always have the shirt on his head. Neil is 5 years old.

And last, there is Dean. Dean is almost 2 years old and this is one of the only pictures I have of him not sucking his thumb. I usually baby sit for him the most because his brothers are either in school or their mom wants to take the older boys out to do something without having to worry about the little one. I guess we shouldn’t tell him this or he might feel left out.

There is another little insight into my life here in Metz.