French Toast: Bienvenue à Paris

Salut de Paris!

Despite a rough start to this whole adventure, I have finally made it the 4,147 miles from Chicago to Paris and am currently nestled in the 14th arrondissement.

This whirlwind of a four months started with me almost missing this adventure to begin with. Thinking my flight was sunday night left me packing saturday night instead of being on a direct flight from ORD to CDG with everyone else. Realizing this over breakfast on sunday made everything even more difficult. After a few tears and a lot of help from my dad, things were resolved and I was in the air by 5:15pm.

After surviving the 8 hour flight, where no sleep was had, we landed in what looked like the countryside, but it was in fact Charles de Gaulle Aeroport. I found a taxi that wound its way the 38 kilometers into the city. Not knowing that the northern parts of Paris are considered rather dubious, it was eye opening to drive past things the resembled the south side of Chicago, or perhaps Urbana. Most of monday we had orientation meetings, followed by large group visits to cell phone stores and grocery stores, which only made us look like complete americans. The perk of these trips though was finding out wifi, and therefore iMessage, does indeed work at Starbucks (sorry Mom and Dad for the lack of communication - our dorm is lacking when it comes to technology).

Despite the complete exhaustion and confusion of all of the french, we have all made it through the first few days with only a few fumbles - one of the largest, we have found, is that we can understand what the French are saying to us, but they can only understand about 50% of everything that is coming out of our mouths. Nevertheless, so far we have strolled the champs élysées, l'arc de triomphe, le petit palais, le palais royale, les invalides, and la jardin du luxembourg, while also admiring several others from afar.

It has been great in between meetings to have the time to wander the city and get lost in the nooks and crannies behind every curve. Today we found a great place for les croques monsieurs et mesdames, and of course, un peu du vin. Other highlights include finding Paris's most famous macaroons, and a charming boulangerie with great pain au chocolate (which they also call chocolatine).

Today we finally are starting to fit in a little; finally getting a hang of the metro, knowing how to pay, and dividing into small groups, thus harder to pick out as americans right away. We took a boat tour down la Seine, being able to see "La Grande Axe" (the line of monuments from l'arc de triomphe to le Louvre). From that perspective you can see how massive the Louvre is, as well as gorgeous. It also offered great views of la tour eiffel, place de la concorde, and adorabel house boats. As passing under all of les ponts (the bridges) we were intrigued by all of the locks that hung from them, leading to an afternoon excursion admiring all of the locks that lovers have signed their initials onto and left as a symbol of their love for each other.