The First Week

Bonjour!
I finally got around to creating this so that I could inform people about what my trip has been like so far. It has been an interesting couple of days-I can't believe that I've only been gone for 5 days-It feels like a lifetime! The title is silly (copying Sex and the City), but I think it works.

Anyway, we arrived on Saturday morning, extremely tired, and then immediately set off for registration, which involves standing in lines with people you don't know for hours. While already annoying, throw in the hours of flying and passport control and you have a group of incredibly angry people. That was pretty much the first day. Thanks to jet lag and homesickness, I didn't get much sleep that night.

Sunday we moved into our host families. I live with an elderly woman named Madame Barbe, along with a girl from UC San Diego, in an apartment that is in the St. Germain du Pres area, near the Eiffel Tower (-ish). The room I have is just so beautiful, big and full of light and what seems to be antique furniture. My stuff looks so out of place here. The apartment is located on what is Embassy Row-all the other buildings are either embassies or French Government buildings. From my window, I look directly at the Russian Embassy. I got to walk around Paris for the 1st time on Sunday, and it is just beautiful! It reminded me of why I came. The buildings everywhere are just amazingly beautiful. My neighborhood is so cute, with cafes and grocery stores and pharmacies and boutiques, and best of all, bakeries(with both bread and pastries!)

The past couple of days have been spent at AUP orientation/UC orientation programs, along with taking in some of the sites of the city. I have been spending a lot of time with Rachel and her friend Gina, and people they know, which has been interesting to say the least. It's the kind of awkward freshman year experience where people clump in large groups and do things they don't want to do because you want to do something. ugh-can't wait for it to be over, and realizing (along with Erin and Rachel) just how great 5th floor Ehrman was, and how rare that is.

So far, I've been to the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame just walking around. They are just beautiful, and so much bigger and impressive than even I remember.

Yesterday, I met up with Erin and we went to Montmartre, which although it is ridiculously hilly (even more than up to Pimental) was just absolutely beautiful. We walked by the Moulin Rouge and Les Deux Moulins, the cafe in Amelie. The whole area is just so cool. It was so nice talking to someone that I knew and that felt the same way that I did about the whole making friends process, which is that it is feeling so high school.

Today, Rachel and I went to Le Centre Pompidou, a modern art museum. The design of the museum is special because it shows all its working parts, with pipes on the outside and escalators on the outside of the building. The art was cool, but I'm so art illiterate that I didn't really understand it. The stuff I did I liked. I'm scared for my Paris through its architecture class now, because I didn't understand half the explanations of the work, so Megan is really going to have to help me!

Today, I got to get my first Parisian eclair, which was just absolutely amazing, with so much chocolate cream inside. It was as good as an eclair in Paris should have been. What was entertaining was that as I bought my eclair, I heard a car drive by with Californication playing on the radio. Made me think of home. Also , I was on the metro, and I heard some girl saying that she was from Saratoga, an hour outside of San Francisco. Very small world.

Anyway, I hope to have pictures sometime soon (although right now, very few have people-I apologize Jenny). I miss everyone a lot and surprisingly miss Berkeley quite a bit (mmm...ghetto). I hope that everyone's classes are going well and that all is well. Sorry that this was so long-I promise to keep them shorter in the futures.

Much love.