It's Finally Warm!!

I don't know about the US, but it has been far too cold here the past two weeks! Even my host family has said that this "froid" is very rare for Paris in the spring. BUT, fortunately, yesterday it finally started getting warm, and now it is warm enough not to wear coats, which is awesome. Our director told us not to bring long sleeve shirts besides a sweatshirt and a light weight coat, so no one has had warm clothes to wear the past two weeks and we had to wear our coats instead of our cute spring clothes everyday, sad huh? Finally the sun has come out and we were able to lay out in the Jardins du Luxembourg today and get some color. The past few days have been very eventful. We have this thing called a "Walks Book" which includes 21 "walks" around Paris that we have to do while we're here. The walks were written by our french teachers and they are basically tour guides to both well-known monuments and the less-visited parts of the city. Today we did the Montmartre walk, which was absolutely gorgeous. The Basilica of Sacre Coeur is the "white church" that sits on top of Montmartre hill. From the top you can see the whole city. We climbed some 200 steps up to the top. There were a lot of people enjoying the sun, their lunch, and the entertainers sitting on the steps. One man was dressed all in silver and he had painted his whole body silver and he was posing as a statue of an elf. Two others were white monks. We went behind the church and saw the rest of Montmartre, which was very cool. It is a lot of narrow, cute streets-all cobblestone. Montmartre is home to the first cabaret in Paris, Le Lapin Agile, as well as the homes of Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Renoir, Picasso, and it includes the Moulin Rouge (SO cool!). We went and saw all of these places. Cool huh? The streets were very pretty, except now the area has become filled with tourist shops and vendors. Yesterday we went to the Monet museum, which was very cool to see. We saw a lot of his famous pieces like Lilypads, the Haystack, Japanese Bridges. It is awesome to be able to see the original version of the pieces that I had learned about before coming here. We were also able to see some of the original posters by Toulouse Lautrec and the actual place where Renoir painted Le Moulin de la Gallette. We have had dinner with our host family the past two nights and it has been very good. Madame Boissy is a very good cook. Yesterday we had chicken with creme fraiche sauce and pommes de terre purées (mashed potatoes) and une tarte citron (lemon tart) for dessert. Today we had spaghetti with cut up ham and parmesan and le fromage blanc for dessert. It has definitely become easier to talk with my host family over the past couple of weeks. It kind of surprises me how up-to-date they are will global and french politics and with the history of France. We come home and tell them about what we learned about that day and where we went and they always know what we are talking about. It makes for good conversation. They told us that we probably know Paris better now than most parisiens; which makes sense because I can say that I know Paris better than Chicago or Milwaukee. Anyway, that's my update for now. We are leaving for London on Friday and I am very excited! I love you all, bisoux