Until we're true Parisiennes... we're tourists.

Bon soir,

Today was our first day of classes, but before I get into that, let me fill you in on the rest of our weekend...

On Saturday we woke ourselves up and headed north to the 18th arrondissement to Sacre Coeur Basilica.  Although it was a very cold day, we really should have worn our walking shoes because as soon as we got out of the metro, it was a long hike, straight up-hill.  This should not have been a surprise to us, for we knew Sacre Coeur was at the summit of Montmartre, but we complained about it anyway.  By the time we finally made it to the top, we had to pause to catch our breath.  This was made more difficult by the beautiful view of the city that lay before us.  We took a few pictures before entering the church.  I decided it would be amusing to stand next to a metallic-painted man-statue and make a funny pose but was given a near heart attack when I realized, unlike one of London's royal guards, he was not inclined to stay entirely still.  Once I recovered from my scare, we entered the beautiful church.  It was absolutely enormous, and we managed to snap a few pictures (without flash, of course) before being chased out by security.

Before returning to our apartment, we made a stop into le musee de Montmartre.  It's a small place, but very interesting.  It's essentially a small home on the mountainside where some famous artists lived-- like the "maison de Rosimond" (one of Moliere's troup), van Gogh and Renoir (who also did some paintings there).  We left the museum for (surprise!) giant meat-filled-sandwich lunches and traveled back home.

The following day, Abbey and I decided to venture out and find a museum we had never heard of before but had located on our map.  When we got there, however, we were faced with two unexpected events: 1. the museum was closed for renovations, and 2. we were literally standing directly in front of le Tour Eiffel.  So, with the sun shining, we figured this was as a good a time as any to be tourists in our new-home city.  The rest of our day proceeded on cue (with several hours of walking)-- down under le Tour Eiffel, past le Mur pour la Paix, along les Invalides, up the avenue des Champs-Elysees, and through l'Arc de Triomphe.  This last place is where we saw a favorite of ours, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is a simple but beautiful and powerful tribute to those who fought and died for France in the first World War.

After all of that walking, we were pretty exhausted, but also feeling a bit lame about ourselves for being such tourists.  However, that all turned around for us when not one, but two, people stopped us in the street, thinking we were locals, to ask us questions.  The first one was a tourist herself-- an Asian woman who didn't seem to know the difference-- but the second was a french woman who wanted to know where the closest metro was!  It may seem insignificant to all of you, but these exchanges basically made our day.  (That, or the french onion soup I had a lunch... but that's a given by now.)

And finally... today!  This has been our first day of classes.  Exciting, but a bit unfortunate because we were reminded that we're here for school too.  The first class we had this morning was "Haute Couture in Paris", which is-- yes, exactly what you think-- a class about fashion.  This is certainly the ideal place to be taking such a course, and it sounds like it's going to be really fun and interesting.  Later in the day, we each attended our respective French courses.  Mine is Intermediate Level 1.  I haven't taken French for a few years now, so I was a bit nervous at first, but I was able to comprehend everything perfectly.  My biggest struggle was trying to recall many of the verbs and vocabulary words I used to know.  I'm confident that after a few weeks, most of it will come back to me.

Tomorrow we will attend our remaining three classes-- Communications and Global Competence, 20th Century Art: A History of Modernism, and Oenology: The History, Culture, and Business of Wine.  Those should be interesting, but it will definitely be a long day...

And now it's time to cook ourselves some dinner!  A tout a l'heure, everyone!

View of the side of Sacre Coeur from outside

Guy who was NOT supposed to move (and Jess's phenomenal photo timing)

Illegal photo inside Sacre Coeur

I'm assuming this requires no caption...

Impossible to fit the whole arch in one photo from underneath

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Everyone in Paris is so beautiful!

Bon soir, mes amis!

Now that a few days have passed, we're finally getting ourselves onto the proper schedule.  That means no more waking up at three am and wandering around our apartment wide awake.  Not much has happened since last time, but we've finally finished with our snooze-fest orientation meetings.  We've done a bit of exploring around our neighborhood and have found a few grocery stores, cafes, creperies, boulangeries, patisseries-- you name it.  Of course, we've yet to find a laundromat.

So after pretty much getting settled, we decided to move on to the next most important things-- eating and shopping, obviously.  Yesterday after our final orientation meeting, a group of us sought out the best bowl of french onion soup in Paris-- and we may have found it.  This was at a small restaurant near our central campus.  The cheese was in a category of its own, and the flavors just came together like a dream in your mouth.  I'm sure we'll be back there soon.

Next, my roommates and I bought ourselves a fresh baguette, a roll of brie cheese, and a bottle of red wine (2 euros at the supermarket!).  And if that wasn't French enough, we followed it up today with a stop at the local cafe for breakfast and Nutella and banana crepes for lunch.  Next on our eating agenda are croissants (which we will pick up fresh from the bakery, first thing in the morning), escargot (which we have promised ourselves we are going to try), and frogs legs (which, I am still trying to persuade everyone, is a good idea).

For our first round of shopping, we roamed around the 1st arrondissement, a very lively and young area.  We had hoped to hold off on making purchases for a little longer-- we wanted to make our euros last and  to get a better feel for what we wanted to buy-- however, the stores right now are legally required to offer sales.  This has been going on for a week or two now, but the sales end this weekend.  The next time this is going to happen is in June, so what were we supposed to do?  Fortunately, we exhibited a fair sense of self control and managed not to spend too much on clothing.  I proudly bought my first two scarves-- 2 euros each off a street vendor!  I'm sure there will be many more of those to come...

Well, I'll be back to blog again soon.  Next weekend it's off to Amsterdam!

Gratinee a l'oignon. Mmm...

(half of) my first crepe

Roommates sans Abbey

Well, we made it here...

Bonjour tout le monde!


Here we are--finally in Paris.  We arrived yesterday, 5:30 am Paris time, after a turbulent 8 hour flight from JFK in New York.  After not-so-gracefully lugging our enormous suitcases into the wrong building, watching our poor cab driver try to help us manage the said luggage (to little avail), and finally, struggling with the elevator doors, Abbey and I finally made it to our beautiful apartment here at 53 avenue Parmentier.


The apartment is surprisingly spacious, and fully equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, sitting room, coat closet, and internet connection.  So far, we don't have much going on, except we're still pretty exhausted from first missing a night of sleep and then a very busy two days.  Yesterday we spent most of the day getting settled and unpacking our things, and today we had our first day of orientation, which included meet-and-greets, basic info about Paris, and a 2.5 hour bus tour of the city.  We got to see all of the major monuments-- le Tour Eiffel, le Bastille, l'arc de triomphe, etc.-- and drove down the Champs Elysees and past Notre Dame de Paris.  It all just got us even more excited to be here in Paris and made us eager to get out to visit some of these places in more depth.


We had our first two successful French-speaking exchanges today, too!  First, we found ourselves a little cafe on a random corner where we ordered and paid for two cafe noirs.  The drinks were absolutely disgusting, but we still left the place completely giddy.  Then, later in the day, we purchased our metro cards-- again, an exchange completely in french!


So now we're heading out to buy some groceries.  Then the plan is to cook ourselves dinner tonight, so we'll see how that goes... 


Well, that's all the news I have thus far, but take a look...

kitchen

outer room

coat closet

bathroom

our (messy) bedroom

Abbey struggling to set up her duvet

 l'arc de triomphe and the Champs Elysees

first picture of us!

le tour eiffel