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