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