Le Week-end

This weekend was a great one, as far as weekends in Paris go (aka they’ve all been pretty sweet so far).  I did a bunch of errands on Friday day, including getting really neat suede Parisian shoes.  They are tan and lace up, and have a short heel.  I feel much more European than before I owned these bad boys.  Then Friday night we went out to some bars in the Latin Quartier.  We attempted to go to a jazz bar, but the music was just ending when we arrived.  It was still a cool bar though—small and wooden with red accents.  Then we went to a cool Irish bar, and then to an all-night resto, in which I had an amazing banana split. Our goal was to stay up until 5:30 am to catch a metro home (the metro closes from 2-5:30 am, and cabs are rather expensive), and we totes succeeded.  It was a little rough in the early morn and our waiter really wanted us to leave the restaurant, but we made it.  Check check!

Don’t have enough time to tell about Saturday for now, but I will soon as it was pretty exciting!  Sunday consisted of homework and a family dinner with the group of amigos (or rather amis) of wine and cheese and bread and galette.  Nummers.

Also, here are some pics of my room, in case you were curious:  (note: its not very well decorated at the moment, but that will change after I go to Musée d'Orsay!)

The best part of my room --> the view!

From Last Thursday:

So I am just sitting down to a wonderful dinner of grilled veggies and petits pains grillés (little toasted breads) and Le Cremeux cheese.  Every cheese I have tried here thus far has been entirely amazing.  Le Cremeux is a grocery brand cheese, and it is way better than anything remotely its price in Colorado Springs.  My fave cheese thus far though is this harder one (not even sure what its name is) with baguette and honey.  It is a combo that’s hard to beat. 

Beginning at noon, I had two of the four classes I’m taking today.  The first was my French class, which normally is a pretty sweet class.  The professor is definitely the best French prof I’ve ever had.  Today, however, as with all Thursdays we had the TA.  Maybe its because she is just starting teaching, but she is really awful.  That hour and twenty minutes was one of the slowest of my life.  However, I also had my super AWESOME Prague class today, which totally redeemed the day.  It is a history course about the city, and here’s the best part:  we go to Prague in the spring for five days!  Chyesss!  The professor for this one is really intelligent and very excited about the subject, which is always a good sign in a professor.

There’s been an internet problem at my house for the past week and a half now, and I really hope it gets fixed soon.  It takes about a half and hour to get to school, so it’s a bit unfortunate to have to go all the way to school to do some emailing, ect.  This would be the main reason I haven’t been arblogging much.  Now, though we have one ether cable to share so we can have internet sometimes.  Now is one of those times for me.

The First Bit...

So I have finally officially started my abroad blog, or abrlog, if you will (maybe that's what I should have named it...?).  I am sitting here in my cute little room in the 17th arrondissement in Paris  posting to the world wide web.  Hmm...  Where to begin?  I suppose I do a little recap of orientation, and then move into this week.

So I arrived in Paris on January 8th and it has been not stop busy-ness since then!  From the moment we arrived at the airpot, AUP (American University of Paris) has had us attending workshops, figuring out housing, phones, and doing some touristy things as well.  All of last week we had workshops about the school, or the city, most of which were optional but highly recommended.  Some of them were very helpful, and some not so much.  I learned a ton of handy info in one called Paris Inside and Out that AUP students lead, including what grocery stores are the best and how to get a monthly metro pass.

While we were attending said workshops, we were staying in the FIAP, which is an establishment that falls somewhere between a hostel and a hotel.  We were there until we found our permanent housing, which luckily I found pretty early on in the process--AUP helps you find the kind of housing you want.  My room is very cute, and a little sparsely decorated at the moment, but this will soon not be the case.  The 17th arrondissement is very nice residential area with a park.  I live in a house, well a floor of an apartment building with two other girls from my school, and Hugh, our landlord.  It is a homestay in the sense that we are living in Hugh's home, but not in the sense that we eat or do things together.  Hugh is very cool though and I like him a lot, although he speaks perfect English, which is a bummer for improving my French skills.  The two other girls who live in the house with me are Cola and Hannah, and they are great as well.  We have a kitchen to ourselves that is pretty big!  I just went to the grocery store this evening to stock it with some fruits and vegetables because I feel like I've been eating a solid diet of bread and cheese since I got here (yes, this is your fault croissants, sandwiches, pizzas, and all the other pastries I don't even know the names of!).  Also, apparently you are supposed to weigh fruits and veggies before you bring them up to buy them which I didn't realize, and I had to leave all my other food half checked out while I went back to weigh them, and then squeeze back through the line of people behind me to pay for everything.  I felt un peu dumb, but hey, now I know!

I'm going to end here for today as I'm pretty exhausted, but more soon!

Je t'embrasse,

Teal