A Series of Long Overdue Posts: Reims & Chartres

I know it has been unbelievably long since my last post, so here comes about 3 or 4 posts back-to-back to talk about my amazing trips over the last month. I apologize for the delay and promise to be better for these last 6 weeks! (I also can't believe that's all there is left!)

The weekend of February 25-26 I made two day trips to other French cities, Reims and Chartres. Friday morning was our early depart to Reims, on the TGV or Train à Grande Vitesse, France's version of the high-speed train. It can reach speeds of over 300 mph! Thanks to this lovely piece of engineering we made it to Reims which is about 80 miles away from Paris in under an hour. Here's a map to give you an idea of where we were:

La France!

Reims is a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France... yes, that kind of Champagne! Reims is one of the centers of Champagne production in the region. Technically, real "Champagne" can only be produced in this region of France, no where else in the world! So if someone ever tries to tell you they're giving you Californian Champagne... sorry, it's not the real thing. Anything else is considered sparkling wine. The French are very protective over their wine!

Our visit of Reims began with one of the biggest sites, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims. This is one of the most important cathedrals in France because it was the site of the coronation of many of France's kings (think of it like Westminster Abbey for France). It is also the site of the baptism of France's very first king, Clovis in the year 496. Needless to say, it's pretty old and important! It's also very beautiful.

La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims

Place of the Baptism of Clovis, first King of France

Inside the cathedral

There are a ton more pictures of the cathedral on my picture site if you'd like to see them! After seeing the cathedral we visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims and then walked around the city a little before having lunch. The town is so different from Paris - much much smaller - but very cute! It was interested to get a taste of French cities outside of Paris. After lunch we headed to the Taittinger Champagne Cellars. Taittinger is a family-owned Champagne house located in Reims. Here we took a tour of their cellars, some of which are centuries old! Part of the caves were built by monks, as the caves are located under the site of an abbey. Other parts of the caves were actually built during the Roman times and stem from the 4th century! It was really interested to see all of the work that goes into making a bottle of Champagne, they must sit and be turned daily small increments so that the sentiments in the wine come out and the carbonation forms. Some bottles take up to 8 years to be finished! After the tour we got a taste of the Champagne and it was of course delicious!

70,000+ bottles of Champagne!

one of the caves

sipping champagne :)

After the tour we visited the Basilica of St. Remi, the Saint that baptized Clovis. We also visited another museum that showed some military history of France. Pictures of these are also on the site. We ended our day with dinner at an adorable crêperie and then headed back to Paris on the TGV, exhausted but excited for the next day!

Saturday morning (a little later this time, thankfully) we took the train again (not the high-speed one though) to Chartres, a small city located 60 miles southwest of Paris. The town is pretty small but really cute, and mostly on a hill. At the top of the hill sits the town's main attraction, la Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chatres. This Notre Dame is one of the largest and most important gothic cathedrals in France, with huge stained glass windows, most of which are part of the original, and enormous flying buttresses. The cathedral was absolutely gorgeous, and definitely larger than those in Reims and Paris. Another excited part of our visit to this one was that we climbed to the top! Up many many tiny spiral steps we made our way to the top of the cathedral and had the most amazing view of the entire town. It is definitely worth a visit if you ever go to France!

Sadly they were doing construction on the front :(

stained glass inside

At the top!

The rest of the day in Chartres was a lot of fun, we did a lot of walking around the town which was so quaint and quiet - so different from Paris! We were lucky that it didn't rain as it was supposed to even though it was a little cloudy. Overall the weekend was a ton of fun, it was great to get out of Paris for a little while and explore different French cities. Both Reims and Chartres were beautiful places that I would recommend for anyone to visit!

More entries coming soon, à très bientôt!

Weekend in Brussels

I know this post is very long overdue, and I'm sorry for that! Everytime I tried to sit down and finally blog about my trip to Brussels I was either distracted or just not quite in the writing mood. Anyway, here it is!

Friday morning I had quite an early start as my alarm went off around 6:15 AM. After triple-checking that I had packed everything I needed, I left my host family's house around 7:15 and made my way via-metro to the Eurolines bus station at Gallieni across Paris. I met up with my friends Alex and Melissa at 8 and we checked in and waiting for our bus to leave around 9:00 AM. The bus ride was a quick 3.5 hours and strangely enough they didn't even need to check our passports to get in to Belgium... I guess the border between France and Belgium isn't very strict. My first experience in Brussels was with the lovely Brussels metro/tramway/subway system, which, unlike Paris, is not very easy to figure out. The other bizzare thing is that you don't actually have to swipe a ticket or a pass to get on, it's all done on an "honor system". If a metro worker catches you without one, you can get big fines, but most people didn't seem too worried about this as we saw very few actually validating a ticket. We got 3-day passes anyway, just to be safe.

Finally we made it to our hotel, Hôtel Saint-Nicolas right in the center of town. It was such a cute place and the room was very clean, very nice for a pretty inexpensive price! We walked over to the Grand Place in the center of town, which is known for being one of the most beautiful places in Europe.

And it was! The square is so big that I had to take a lot of pictures to try and get everything, you can see the rest on my webshots page (link to the left). We walked around this area for a little while and then stopped for lunch where I had Belgian sausage and fries, yum! After we could not resist but to stop for a traditional Belgian waffle covered in melted chocolate: absolutely delicious! You can get them with all different toppings as we saw walking past many waffle stands:

mmmmmmmm... :)

Since we just couldn't get enough chocolate, we made a visit to the Musée du Cacao et du Chocolat. Here they showed how they make chocolate pralines and where chocolate comes from all across the world. We also got a couple tastings of their chocolate which was, as expected, also delicious. After the museum we headed over to see one of Brussels' most famous monuments, the Mannekin Pis. It's a statue/fountain of a little boy peeing... I know, kind of weird. There are a lot of different legends about the origin of the Mannekin Pis who supposedly saved the city from enemies. It's a lot smaller than I would have imagined, but cute nonetheless. They also dress it up for holidays and celebrations!

Mannekin Pis

Next we stopped into a small pub to try out some of Belgian's famous beers, which were delicious! More on Belgian beer later in the post. For dinner that night we had another of Brussels' most famous foods, Moules-Frites or Mussels and Fries. As a huge lover of mussels, I was really excited about this and they did not disappoint. My tummy was very happy in Brussels!

Since we were wall pretty tired from the early start, we headed back to the hotel after dinner to get some rest for the next day. Saturday after breakfast we visited another of Brussels' famous monuments, the Atomium. Built for the 1958 World Expo, the Atomium is a giant replica of an atom that you can go inside and see different sciency-related things. Lots of fun! From the top you get a great view of the city and the inside has a lot of cool little exhibits.

Next to the Atomium is Mini-Europe, which sadly was closed for renovations. We could see it from the top of the Atomium though and it looks pretty cool! It has all of the famous monuments of Europe in miniature size. Pretty cool!

Can you spot the Tour Eiffel?

After the Atomium we went to the Cantillon Brewery, which is a traditional family-owned brewery in Brussels. At this brewery they make a natural beer called Lambic. It is natural because instead of adding cultivated yeast to the beer to encourage fermentation, the beer ferments naturally due to the exposed yeast and bacteria that occurs naturally in the air in the region. Because of this, it can take up to six years to make the beer! They also have to do it during "brewing season" which occurs from October to May due to the lower temperatures. The beer itself is almost more similar in taste and appearance to wine than to beer, because it is not carbonated. It has almost a sour taste, but good! I also tried a framboise beer, or raspberry flavored! It wasn't very sweet but still really good. Overall I loved the visit at the brewery and had a ton of fun! I recommend it to anyone visiting Brussels!

After the brewery we walked around Brussels a little, seeing some sights such as the Palais du Justice and the World Wars monuments. We had a late lunch/early dinner and headed back to the hotel to wash up and then headed out to a bar/club where we tried some more flavored beers (all of which were great!) and overall just had a really great time. The club played a lot of American songs so we had a lot of fun!

Sunday morning Alex and I went to an English mass at the church near our hotel where the priest was from Dublin! Afterwards we decided to visit the René Magritte museum, who is known for his surrealist art. Unfortunately we went 30 minutes out of our way because the website told us the wrong location! There were even signs on the street pointing to a museum that didn't exist. This made me very frustrated with Brussels. Finally, though, we found the museum and it was very cool . Surrealist art can sometimes be a little confusing to me but overall I liked it. Afterwards we visited the Museum of Musical Instruments, which was awesome! You are given a pair of headphones that play the music of the musical instrument shown as you walk past. The music keeps changing as you walk through the museum which makes for a really cool experience! Definitely a different kind of museum that I really really enjoyed.

This basically concluded our trip, as we had to go back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the train station to wait for our bus back to Paris. Finding the bus stop was pretty frustrating as the sign for it was a tiny piece of paper on a telephone poll, but luckily we found it in time! The bus was also about 20 minutes late but the ride home was quick and overall a good experience. We were pretty excited to get back home to Paris after the long and tiring weekend! Brussels as a whole was a lot of fun and a really cool place to visit. We heard a lot of French spoken there, but the accent is much different than in France. It's also a much smaller city than Paris, so it was pretty easy to get to know. All in all I had a great time and suggest making a trip there if you ever get the chance!

That's all for now, in a few days I'll make another post about my past week and weekend talking about my visits to other cities in France!

À bientôt!

Paris has a little bit of Everything

Bon Dimanche!

Yet another week has passed in Paris and I have come to realize how quickly time is passing. This weekend my friends and I planned trips to outside of France, and we realized how little time we really have here! It's alreay making me sad. I'm trying not to think about leaving though and instead just enjoying the time I have here.

This week was an exciting one, and although I didn't think it possible I believe I fell even more in love with Paris. Last Saturday as I mentioned at the end of my last post, a few friends and I visited the St. Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris, which is known for having hosted many artists, publishers, and writers at one time. It was such an adorable little section of Paris that was a lot of fun to walk around and enjoy lunch outside at a café. Later in the afternoon we saw "The King's Speech" (or as it's called here, Le Discours d'un Roi) which was amazing! Thankfully the movie was in English, just with French subtitles. It was funny to see how they translated some things, which makes me realize that movies really should be watched in their native language. Some things just don't translate very well.

Sunday afternoon I was invited over to my friend Melissa's host family's house for midday lunch. It was so nice of her host mother to have us over! We had such a great, long, French lunch, complete with galettes (savory crêpes), salads, lots and lots of cheese and bread, and wine. I will never, ever get tired of mealtimes in France! I have a feeling I'm going to be buying lots of cheese and bread to eat when I get home.

Monday was class again, but the most exciting part of the day was when my friends and I went to a Venezuelan restaurant for dinner. A few of my friends are from Venezuela and Guatemala, so they were really excited to go, as was I! The meal was absolutely incredible; my first experience with Venezuelan cuisine was a real success. First we had Arepas, which are small cakes made out of corn flour, served with beans, cheese, and guacamole. Next I had Venezuela's most popular dish, Pabellón, which is shredded beef, rice, black beans, and plantains. For dessert we had Arroz con Leche, or rice pudding. Everything was so delicious and I was so incredibly full I could barely walk back to the metro! I think we will be revisiting this restaurant sometime later in the semester. Yum!

Arepas, Pabellón, Arroz con Leche

Tuesday morning, still full from the night before, I finally had my first class at the Institut Catholique de Paris (ICP). It was a Philosophy class on Nietzsche, and the professor seems really really nice. I could understand all of her French because she spoke very clearly, loudly, and not too quickly. This was a great relief for me! The concepts are a little confusing, but it is a Philosophy class, so that's to be expected. I may do some outside reading in English by myself to make sure I really understand the course material. My next class won't be for another two weeks, however, because French universities have their winter break from February 11-27! This is because they only have about a week between when their finals for first semester end and their second semester classes begin. Very different from in the US!

Another very exciting experience for me this week was my trip to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, or the Paris museum of Art and Industry. It's basically a museum filled with thousands of engineering/industry-related objects that show the progression of technology through time. Being the nerd that I am, I had an amazing time here! There were sections on measurement instruments, energy, materials, construction, mechanical systems, and transportation. My favorite part was the last section of the museum, which is in a small church. It held old-style planes, hanging from the ceiling, as well as old cars, and even a replica of the Statue of Liberty (which if you've forgotten, was given as a gift to the United States from the people of France). Nonetheless I had a fabulous nerdy-engineering-filled afternoon, which was really great since I have had no engineering, science, or math related classes since December.

Plane! In a church!

Friday was an absolutely gorgeous day in Paris, with temperatures in the 50s and tons of sunshine. It was such a great break from the gray, cold, rainy days we have been getting! After having lunch my friends and I visited Angelina's, restaurant famous for their decadent desserts and hot chocolate. And let me tell you: you have not lived until you try Angelina's hot chocolate. I'm not really sure any other type of hot chocolate deserves that name. This hot chocolate is basically like you took a really really great chocolate bar, melted it, and poured it into a cup. No water, no fake brown powder, just thick, pure, fabulous, chocolate. Not at all for the feint of heart (or you, Mom, you would have one sip and say "it's way too rich!"). I made the mistake of also ordering a dessert, which I will admit was absolutely incredible, but with the hot chocolate too (and they give you a ton!) was WAY too much. Still, a fabulous experience that I am still drooling over.

chocolate and raspberry ganache tart with whipped-cream topped hot chocolate

Since we were now all on probably the biggest sugar-high of all time, we took advantage of the beautiful day and walked through the Tuileries Gardens again, walked up along the Seine to the Love Locks bridge in Paris, where lovers from all over come to the bridge, write their names on a padlock, and lock it on the bridge to symbolize locking in their love. Ah Paris, la ville de l'amour!

We then journeyed over to the Champ de Mars to take some great pictures with the Tour Eiffel. Touristsy, I know, but lots of fun!

La Tour Eiffel et nous!

The rest of this weekend was spent planning trips for the semester. I am excited to say that next weekend I will be traveling to Brussels, Belgium! Expect a post next Sunday or Monday with those details. We also planned a trip to Madrid, Spain for March! I am unbelievably excited to travel to both cities and will be sure to take tons of pictures for you all to see!

Sorry this post was rather long, and now that I look back, mostly food related. You know what they say about la gastronomie française, after all!

Bisous!

The French Educational System

Bonjour à tous!

I apologize that this post is coming nearly two weeks after the last! I had hoped to post here weekly and will try to get back on that track now. Needless to say I have been very busy here! I'll attempt to summarize it all now.

Classes have officially begun and I'm enjoying them so far. At IES (my program), I am taking a French Language & Culture course, where we work on our grammar and writing as well as speaking by discussing current events and reading different articles or stories in French. I really like the conversation aspect of the course and it's great to be able to actually discuss things going on in the world instead of just reviewing verb tenses for an hour and a half (like many of my previous French classes have been). I am also taking a class entitled "Francophone Paris", which focuses on immigration in France. It's really interesting to see the differences in how the French view immigration, diversity, and culture in comparison to how we see it in the US. More on that in later posts. My last IES course is a class on French Cinema and Society, where we watch, analyze, and discuss French films. As I've never really seen any French films outside of Amélie, I'm really excited to see them! I just hope that I understand what's going on...

In addition to my IES courses I will also be taking two classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris (ICP). I wish that I could tell you how those courses were this week, except that I haven't actually attended one yet! Monday morning I went to the campus to attend my first course, which was supposed to be a Philosophy course on Linguistics. After much searching around and asking the secretary, I found out that the course was no longer being offered. The French educational system is quite different from that of the US; universities don't post all of their classes, syllbuses, and professors months before the semester. They post them a week or two before and change them up to the very first day (or after) of the semester. This also happened with the Theology course that I had planned to take. I was forced to find new classes to take that still fit within my schedule: stress nightmare!! If you know me you know that I stress very easily when it comes to classes, life-planning, etc. so this was really not my favorite day so far. Thankfully I was able to find two new classes to take.

So Tuesday I headed back to ICP with the hopes of attending my first class, History of the Church in the 20th century, where I wait for around 20 minutes only to find out that the professor is sick. They also don't really inform you of that here either. So in summary: I have yet to attend any of my ICP classes! Hopefully next week I will actually be able to write about how they went, but we'll see.

The highlight of last week for me was our visit of the Opéra Garnier, which houses hundreds of ballets, operas, and plays each year. The building is beyond incredible, with grand staircases and golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. I am really hoping to be able to find tickets that are not too expensive to see a ballet here later this year. I can't really explain the shear beauty of this building adequately enough but I recommend that you take a look at my pictures from it! You can find them on the link to the left at my webshots page.

Opéra Garnier

The weather the past two weeks has been pretty cold, with an average temperature around 0 degrees Celsius. Luckily it warmed up slightly yesterday so a few friends and I headed to Le Marais, which is home to many Jewish restaurants, synagogues, and Parisians. Here I had my first falafel! It was absolutely delicious! If I ever had to be a vegetarian, I am pretty sure I would eat falafel every day. If you're not familiar with this Jewish/Egyptian/Middle Eastern cuisine, falafel is a fried ball of chickpeas, usually placed in a pita pocket with vegetables and sauces. It's absolutely amazing and I really recommend that you try it if you never have! The restaurant we ordered it from, L'as du Falafel, is considered one of the best and most famous places to order it in Paris (consider it the "Pat's Steaks" of falafel in Paris). Glad I got to try it!

After walking around all day we settled into a café for some chocolat chaud and later had dinner at a great pizzeria. One of the things I love about Paris is that most non-French restaurants are very authentic; for example, the pizzeria we went to had Italians working there and all of the Jewish bakeries had Jewish people working there. Not only is Paris a great place to get a croissant, quiche lorraine, or boeuf bourguignon, but it's also home to many other cultures and styles of food. As someone who especially loves food, this makes me very happy. :)

Today I am heading over to visit the St. Germain-des-Près district of Paris, where in the 1920's many artists, writers, publishers, and the like settled. Later many famous French writers are known to have frequented the area, such as Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Pretty excited to check it out!

That's all for now, I'll try to post again in a week!
À bientôt!

Les musées, les crêpes, et les chiens

Bonjour!

A week has now passed since my last post and it seems like much longer. The past 7 days have been filled with so many things, it took me a while to think back on them all while writing this post! Hopefully it's not too boring for you, so try and hang in there...

Monday was the beginning of our Propédeutique, a 7-day intensive French-language course to ease us back into the language before the rest of our classes begin. It's been rather tedious, with grammar exercises aplenty that never really become fun no matter how advanced you are. We also read some interesting articles and stories about Paris and how it compares to the US, which made the class slightly more agreeable. Writing papers, however, is still just as tedious and annoying as it was at home, much to my dismay. Unfortunately I think my semester will be filled with them so I guess I should form some sort of liking, or at least intolerance, toward them. We'll see how that turns out, but I have a slight feeling that the engineer in me will always rather be doing something more math-based.

My French class was only in the morning for two hours, so the afternoons this week were filled with exploring Paris. Monday afternoon we met with small groups within IES to get a small tour around the IES center. This probably would have been better for me if I had a better memory or sense of direction, which I have neither. So far the only part of the area I am familiar with is the street that I walk down each day from the metro station, but hopefully that will change with time. Maybe getting lost a little will allow me to find the most interesting places? Wishful thinking, I know.

Tuesday after class a group of students went to the RestoU, or student restaurant, at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris where students from all nationalities live. The student restaurant there is only 3 euros per person, and you can get an appetizer, main dish, and dessert! This is pretty exciting for us students who are trying to not spend our lives' fortunes this semester. The food was also very tasty too.

Wednesday was an exhausting, but very exciting day. After class, my friend Melissa and I went to visit the Jardin du Luxembourg, which was gorgeous even in the winter. I am exciting to return there in the spring when the flowers and trees are in full bloom! There were a ton of Parisians jogging through the park, sitting and enjoying their lunch, or just taking a stroll. It's also next to the Luxembourg Palace, which houses French Senate. After walking through the gardens we decided to walk down to Notre Dame, which was only a short ways away. This was my second visit to the cathedral and it was not any less thrilling. The architecture, stained glass, and shear size of the cathedral is jaw-dropping and never ceases to amaze me. We also were lucky to be there during a free English tour that was very informative. Unfortunately, our time at Notre Dame was cut short thanks to a lovely terrorist/bomb threat that caused the cathedral to be evacuated. Just my luck, to visit there for the first bomb threat at the cathedral in ages!

People, police, fire, oh my!

Not to worry though, we got out of there right after and nothing ended up happening anyway. Pretty exciting for my first week in Paris though!

Wednesday evening I visited the Louvre with IES where we received a guided tour of some of the museum. We only hit the most popular areas of the museum, so I'm sure I will return to see more of it later in the trip. The building itself is an old palace, and incredible to look at even without the art inside! After all the walking from earlier that day I was pretty exhausted by the time we left the Louvre and in desperate need of a good night's sleep.

Thursday followed with another museum visit, the Musée d'Orsay. It houses mostly impressionist artists, which happen to be my favorites. The tour was really great, but afterwards I was all museum-ed out for quite a while. I think I'll wait a bit to see any others now! 4 museums in one week is really a lot.

Friday after class two friends and I traveled to Montmartre, a section of Paris that is higher in elevation than the rest. Here we visited the Sacré Coeur, a gorgeous basilica outside which you can see the entire city. The inside is equally gorgeous, but sadly photos are forbidden so you'll have to visit it yourself to see! We walked around the city a little and had some crêpes, which are absolutely the best thing you've ever tasted. I had mine filled with Nutella and Speculoos, a spread that tastes almost like graham crackers. Think of the best s'more you've ever had and multiply that goodness by a thousand, and you may get close to how good this tastes. I will definitely be stocking up on Speculoos before my return home as it's not sold in the States. Such a shame, too! The Moulin Rouge is also housed in Montmartre, so here's a nice shot of that for all of you.

 

The weekend was a pretty relaxing one; Friday night I spent with some friends and the rest I spent at home catching up on some homework and some much needed rest. All of the sight-seeing and walking throughout the week really took a toll on my feet! IES Classes begin this Wednesday and I am actually pretty excited. Usually classes starting isn't a good thing, but everything is better in Paris. ;)

I'll end this again with some more random facts:

1. Parisians love dogs! I see so many dogs here, mostly small ones, but occasionally big ones as well. The worrisome thing, however, is that quite often they are running around without a leash. I am so afraid the poor little things are going to get run over by a crazy Parisian driver! Maybe they are used to it and are good at avoiding getting squished to a pancake, who knows.

2. Parisian women are almost always wearing heels. I don't know how they do it, because most walk a lot during the day, whether between metro stops or on a lunch break. I admire their strength and wish I could walk around in heels too! (as my 5'4" height is on the smaller side)

3. The weather changes pretty quickly here. It was sunny and so warm when I got here, but the past few days have been approaching freezing temperatures and brought a lot of rain. Hopefully it will clear up again soon though!

C'est la fin pour maintenant, à bientôt!

Le début

Bonjour à tous!

I have officially been in Paris now for 5 days! To say that I love it would be an understatement; it's already been more than I could have imagined. I don't think that it has fully sunk in yet that I will be here for another 4 months. It almost feels as though I'm just here on des petites vacances and will be leaving in a week or so. Nevertheless, I've been trying to live each day to the fullest because I am sure May 6th will come sooner than expected!

IES orientation was a lot of fun, though rather tiring. Sitting in lectures all day long about things like safety, culture shock, etc. can get boring pretty quickly, especially when you are still jet-lagged. Meeting everyone was a lot of fun and I can already tell that I'll have many great new friends after this semester. It also helped ease me into listening to French all the time, and I was pleased to find that my comprehension of spoken french is much better than I thought it to be. My speaking on the other hand, is still pretty weak, but I hope that it will improve while being here.

Friday night we had dinner on a boat along the Seine and it was fabulous! The boat couldn't go along the part of the river right next to la Tour Eiffel and such because Paris has gotten so much rain/snow in the past month that the water level is raised. Despite this we still had a great view of the city and the Eiffel tower so it was still a great night.

Saturday afternoon I went with a group of IES students to Les Tuileries, where we had a chance to take a ton of great pictures of the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde, and the gardens itself. Afterward we went to the Musée de l'Orangerie, which is known for its wall-sized paintings of Monet's water lilies. Less known than the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, this museum is a must-see if you visit Paris as it is also filled with other fabulous works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and many others.

One of the Monet paintings at l'Orangerie

Another great museum that I went to see today is the Musée du quai Branly, which features art and artifacts from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The building itself is so modern and beautiful, and the collections inside are just as incredible. Another less-known museum in Paris that is not quite as busy as the others that you must see! It is also conveniently located right next to la Tour Eiffel which allowed me to take many great pictures. The sky was perfectly blue today and the temperature pretty warm, so it was a perfect day to stroll along the Champ de Mars and sight-see.

très jolie, n'est-ce pas?

All-in-all it's been a very touristy but fun few days here. This week we start our mini language classes to prepare us before our actual classes begin. It should also be filled with a few more museum visits, but I'll spare you all the details because I'm sure that will get boring pretty quickly! To close this entry I'll leave you all with a few random facts I have learned the past few days:

1. Paris and my hair do not get along. The humidity is pretty high here, and despite my efforts with the straightening iron to keep it smooth, the second I enter the metro all of my work is ruined. Et alors.

2. Meal times in France are a big deal. No one here eats while walking, driving, attending class, or anything else. They take their time and enjoy the meal as well as the company of those they are with. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the French are (in general) thinner than Americans...? Je ne sais pas.

3. It is true that les Français smoke a lot. Which is funny because their cigarretts boxes look like this:

"SMOKING KILLS"

4. French food is fabulous, as expected. Especially their cheese. Oh mon dieu I could eat cheese forever. Also had a pain au chocolat this week and almost died and went to heaven. I won't even try to describe its goodness because I wouldn't do it justice. You'll just have to come have one yourself. Also very good is Carlsberg beer which is actually Danish, not French, but you get the idea.

C'est tout for now! À bientôt!

Bienvenue!

Welcome!

I've started this blog to share my thoughts, experiences, and rambles as I spend this spring semester studying abroad in Paris, France. Hopefully I'll update every week or two, so come back soon for those entries!

I also have a Flickr page where I will be uploading pictures that I take on my trip. There is a Photo box to the left of this post (which is currently empty, but will be filled soon enough!) that will take you to the site, or you can access it directly here.

Also, if you'd like to chat while I'm abroad and you have Skype you can call me using the button to the left of this post, or add me to your contacts list.

For now, I plan to spend my last few days at home snuggling with this booboo (and his sister) who is currently sitting on my lap:

 

sleeeeepy harry :)

À bientôt!