Cindy's Party

Cindy's party was a huge success! I know she had a great time! Here is a vimeo slideshow of her pics. If you click the 4 arrow white thing on the right bottom you can see the video in full screen. I did a setting wrong or something because some heads are almost chopped off!! I have gotten feedback from a couple of people that they could not get the slide show to run so I put it on Smugmug also. You should have no problem with smugmug.

Light a candle for my sister

Cindy is at MD Anderson for chemo now. If you don't know about her candle page check it out and light a candle for her. She will be back for her birthday bash on Sunday.

The "we're not going to kayak" kayak

Last night I went to the lake to kayak with my friends Jack and Camilla. Actually we went to the lake to NOT kayak. We had all loaded our yaks and then decided it was way to windy to yak but decided to just go sit at the lake and visit. The OKC kayak group was there for their social kayak, they had 65 people out! Anyway, when we got there the wind had died way down and we decided to go ahead and go out. Good thing we did, it turned out to be a great night!! Jack took some super pics and we saw one of the best sunsets I have ever seen. Check out Jack's video of the night. If you watch the whole video you will see the awesome sunset pics.
Au revoir for now!

Au revoir France!

It doesn't seem possible that my trip is over and I leave for the States tomorrow. I am totally in love with this part of France and love my wonderful hosts Randy and JM who took me all over the place, cooked my meals, gave me all kinds of historical info and were both the nicest people you can meet. I will surely miss them, France and Shmoo! I am getting teary eyed just writing this post. I hope everyone enjoyed my pics as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Get together for English speaking guests

Yesterday JM and Randy had a get together for me and invited several English speaking guests! We had a great time visiting, but I did not take any pics! This post should be below the Carcassone post as the get together was Sunday night.

Carcassone

Well today we are off to Carcasssone, I found a nice website even with a little video here. You can see the rest of my pics here. Basically old Carcassone is a walled city with the castle overlooking the new Carcassone. People actually live in the walled city, there are lots of restaurants, shops, hotels, et. Wikipedia says this about Carcassone "

First signs of settlement in this region have been dated to about 3500 BC, but the hill site of Carsac – a Celtic place-name that has been retained at other sites in the south – became an important trading place in the 6th century BC. The Volcae Tectosages fortified the oppidum.

Carcassonne became strategically identified when Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC and eventually made it the colonia of Julia Carsaco, later Carcasum (the process of swapping consonant is a metathesis). The main part of the lower courses of the northern ramparts dates from Gallo-Roman times. In 462 the Romans officially ceded Septimania to the Visigothic king Theodoric II who had held Carcassonne since 453; he built more fortifications at Carcassonne, which was a frontier post on the northern marches: traces of them still stand. Theodoric is thought to have begun the predecessor of the basilica that is now dedicated to Saint Nazaire. In 508 the Visigoths successfully foiled attacks by the Frankish king Clovis. Saracens from Barcelona took Carcassonne in 725, but King Pippin the Younger drove them away in 759-60; though he took most of the south of France, he was unable to penetrate the impregnable fortress of Carcassonne."

Randy can do anything and a walk

I had a major computer problem regarding my LAN connection. Some setting had magically changed on its own, but Randy quickly went into places I did not know existed on the computer and it works again!!! We are staying in the village today, the market is here and also the fete is still going on all over France. I just returned from a long walk along the trail where the old railroad once was. The rest of the pics from the walk are here. Amazing that you can see all of this in just a few kilometres!