The Incredible-ness Continues

This comprises days 2-4. Turns out being in Paris keeps you busy and doesn't give you much time to do anything besides see everything it has to offer! We had to walk around with our big group of 27 students and our director to see the sites on the second day, which was rather frustrating. Everyone instantly knew we were americans because we were stereotypically loud and we didn't really know what was going on around us. It is also frustrating because there are quite a few people in our group that don't like speaking french all the time and so they speak in english, even to the natives, which really bothers them. I've been trying to speak french as often as I can because I really want to become better. I can already tell that I've become a lot more confident in approaching natives and speaking to them, even if there are still quite a few words I don't know. I'm figuring out how to describe things even if I don't know the right word for it. The french people are much more understanding if you try to speak in french with them first, even if you don't get it all the way right. We have class Monday through Saturday from 10:30am to 12, which is not bad at all. We're studying French history from 1715 to present so right now we are covering the time leading up to the Revolution and the conditions of the different classes during this time. I think I have learned about the Revolution five or six times now, but each time I learn new things and it gets more in-depth. It has been incredible being able to see the buildings and the monuments that go along with what I have learned. Two days ago after class we went to H&M and did some shopping. Then we got baguette sandwiches from a boulangerie and ate in the court in front of Hotel de Ville (the big building in the first picture).
Then we went to Notre Dame, which is a thousand times more beautiful in real life than in pictures. The outside is the most incredible part because the architecture is so ornate and so detailed, it's incredible. The back has the flying buttresses which I though was the most fascinating part of the building; well that and the rose window, which is also incredible. We took the pilgrimage walk through Notre Dame and looked at the stained glass windows and the many statues and paintings it has inside of it. We are going to go back a different day and climb the stairs to get a view from the top. After that we went to the Crypte archéologique du Parvis Notre Dame, which was across the court in front of it and under ground. It was basically the rock foundations for the Roman and very early Parisian constructions, which was interesting to see. Then we went to the Conciergerie, which is where some of the earlier kings lived and it is most notable for being the place where Robespierre and the Jacobins put their prisoners before they sent them to the guillotine. We saw the cell for Marie-Antoinette there and they had some pictures of what it must have been like for the hundreds of prisoners to be stuffed in that one room. Terrible. It did have some really incredible gothic architecture. We had to go through a metal detector and check before we went in there and the guard started talking to us in french, but he could tell by how we were responding that we weren't french. He guess we were German; I could tell that he was pleasantly surprised that we could speak another language when we told him we were American and he was very interested in how and why we learned french.
After that we went to Sainte-Chapelle, which is a cathedral at the center of the island that is part of Paris. Its second floor (which here is called the first floor because the ground floor is called 0, cool huh?) has amazing stained-glass windows that go like 40' high and are very colorful. The windows depict different seems from the Bible. It was kind of sad because they were doing some restoring of the windows so they had the Passion side of the floor covered with boards and we didn't get to see it. I tried to take some pictures because the ceiling was really beautiful and there were some amazing sculptures in between the wall and the ceiling, but none of them even come close to being able to show what it really looks like. Its awesome.
We took the metro and the RER (train that leads further out of the city) back to Le Vesinet and had dinner with out host family: 3 meat quich, baguette, salad, fromage, and for dessert fromage blanc (white cheese) with sugar, cinnamon, and biscuits (cookies). That was all one day! We have been keeping very busy.

I'll keep the information about yesterday short, because we did more American-esque things. Yesterday was the fete du travail (labor day) so hardly anything was open, which made lunch and dinner difficult. We took the RER out to Bercy and saw Iron Man 2 in english with french subtitles. I don't think it's released in the US yet, but everyone should go see it, it's very good! (AND stay until after the credits ;) We ate baguette sandwiches from a boulangerie again and ate in a very pretty park in Bercy (the pictures with the stone arches and flowers). Then we went out to Versailles and went to an institute dance with the church members from the surrounding cities. It was very fun and I met some cool people. I think there may have been more American people there than french people though! They played a lot more American music than French music so we had a lot of fun with it. We didn't get back until 12:30am, which was not a good idea because the trains close down at 1 so we barely made it.

Today we went to church in Paris. It was all in french which was great because I learned a lot of church words and I could really understand almost the whole thing. Elizabeth Smart is here serving a mission so we went to church with her. Turns out all museums are free the first sunday of every month so we went to the Louvre this afternoon just to get a feel for it. It is huge beyond belief. I think you could spend 20 years there and still not see everything. We only had a couple hours so we saw La Jaconde (Mona Lisa) and mostly the french artists and the italian renaissance art. We are definitely going to go back soon.

I know that this is long, but it is still only a fractions of everything we have seen and done! It was raining today, but otherwise the weather has been incredible. The sun is shining, it is warm, there are flowers everywhere, and it's just beautiful. Le Vesinet is covered in lilacs which make walking down the streets smell so pretty. If you can't tell I am really loving it here, and I am so excited to keep seeing more!

A bientot et bisoux!

My First European Experience

Bonjour tout le monde!!

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