Well I'm in Paris. Yay! I got in yesterday around 2 and we finally made it to the hotel at 4. We haven't seen any sites yet, but still yesterday was very interesting. The flight was fine (just really long!), but they fed us well and because I was on Swiss Air they gave us authentic swiss chocolate and baguettes :). I flew into Zurich from Chicago and I was sitting next to a guy from Zurich so he was showing me some different things on the ground from the plane. It is very small, but very pretty. It only has like 300,000 people and is covered by farms and the Alps. The airport was fairly small. That was the first place I was where I realized everyone was speaking a different language around me, which was freaky. I had a 50 minute flight from Zurich to Paris and I sat next to a french guy and I started speaking french to him and he didn't even know I was american! I fooled the host guy bringing around drinks too. I saw the Eiffel Tower from the plane and no lie I almost started crying. I just can't believe I'm actually here! It is incredible.
The airport in Paris was incredibly confusing and it took me 30 minutes to find my bags and find the Joy, the girl I was supposed to meet to take the shuttle with. I didn't know that I would be coming in a completely different terminal than her that was in a different building, and after 20 minutes of walking around aimlessly I realized I had to take a metro to her other terminal which was a couple miles away. BUT we made it to the shuttle and to the hotel easily after that. Our hotel room is tiny!! It has bunkbeds and is probably a 7x7' room. I guess its efficient though. We couldn't figure out how to flush the toilet yesterday and it's in its own little closet thing so that was interesting. When we got here we met our director and we took the metro to his apartment downtown so that we could make a phone call. Everyone here travels by the metro and they are cramped and smelly and hot, especially during rush hour which is when we were there. We took it for probably 20 minutes there. It was very interesting to see different types of people. We saw older ladies that were the epitome of french ladies carrying flowers in striped shirts, and kids coming home from school, and teens all listening to their ipods and playing playstation, and business men and women, just everyone. Their clothes aren't too different, but their shoes are. They don't wear any of the typical brands we have in the US besides adidas and puma. Otherwise everyone is wearing what look like designer shoes to us, even the kids and old people. We could see the Eiffel Tower from Prof. Erickson's apartment and he has an apartment that is exactly what you would think a french apartment looks like. One girl said it reminded her of something you would see in a Bourne movie.
After we took the metro back and we went to dinner and a french pizzeria by our hotel. Dinner took us no lie three hours!! At this point none of us had eaten since we got off the planes and it was 7 when we went to eat. Everyone was jet-lagged and exhausted and hungry, so going to this place was kind of frustrating because no one wanted to sit and wait. There were about 20 of us there and we took six tables and there was only one waiter. He took the drink order from one table and then went and got their drinks, served them, and then took the order from the next table. It took over an hour for everyone to get their drinks. Water is like a delicacy here. It only comes in bottles and it's not free. After we all had drinks, he went back to the first table and they ordered food and then he served them before going to the next table. It took atleast 20 minutes for each table to get their food and we were the fourth table so we sat and waited for over an hour while the other three tables got theirs and were almost finished eating before we got ours, and yes we were starving. I got a pizza and here they put raw egg on their pizza, which actually wasn't bad, but I didn't like how watery it was. The waiter did his same routine for dessert so it took another hour. I got creme brulee, which is incredible. So yes, we didn't leave the restaurant until 10. We talked about how different it was to go eat there because in the US we buy food and a restaurant or fast food place because we don't have a lot of time for dinner, but here they go to a restaurant and spend the whole night there. So it was an interesting first day. I got a good 8 hours of sleep and now I'm ready for today! We're meeting our host families today, so wish me luck! I love you all!
A bientot,
Andrea
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