Raining...

Today is Tuesday and it is pouring rain... it is very wet outside and i don't like it because we cant really go anywhere and i don't have shoes that are rain proof! I haven't even left the foyer today because it is so bad outside... it kind of looked like a storm.

Yesterday chhavi and i booked all of our tickets to go to Annecy. I am so excited to get out of Paris because i can only have the city life for so long. i am not really like a big city person i have realized, but its okay. I LOVE Paris. We also yesterday finished all of our Spain trip stuff so i am super excited! yay!

Europe here i come!

Disneyland Paris

I'm a pretty much soaking wet sitting in my apartment in Paris waiting for Ivana to get home from the bars, but because i am so cold i am sure that i will go to sleep before she comes back.

So today i woke up and i decided that i wanted to go to Disneyland at 7am so i got ready and set out to buy my ticket online with Jonathan then print it out. But we walked for about an hour trying to find one and getting directions from french people. But we finally found it on our own... not from the help of the directions. But i got it and then about an hour later saibra, maria, annita, jonathan, chhavi, and i arrived in Disneyland park!

It was so much more pink than the one in LA and with more flowers and beauty that it looked fake. It was so cute i seriously couldn't contain my excitement. Main street was called U.S.A. just like the original. All of the rides were very short lines because i guess Europe hasn't found out how awesome Disneyland is. But it was great, there is no other way to describe my excitement rather than my pictures.

Although it rained, we stuck through it and watched the fireworks and then got home at midnight, which leads me to where i am now.

FAIL.

At the moment i am in my room in the early morning of the 16th but for me it is still technically. Today i woke up pretty late because we stayed out for the independence day. But i got ready and we decided to go the Orangarie museum near the Louvre and the gardens. It was a smallest museum i have visited so far, with only 2 stories and a modern feeling on the inside despite the Renaissance look on the outside.

One of the rooms were really cool, or actually two rooms of the huge paintings of water lilies. The same one that were featured in the Midnight and Paris movie! it was very cool to see a place that had been in a movie that i saw recently. Afterward we were tired so we took the metro back home.

I took a nap and then said back to the Australians and then got ready to go out. However a lot of people wanted to go so the total was about 25 people walking the streets of Paris. But we were denied entree because we had to many people. SO we tried to go somewhere else but couldn't so we just walked home. so lame and embarrassing. We are in Paris and we couldn't find a place to go out on a Friday night, such a fail.

Crazyness of Paris

So today was Bastille day and there was a parade in the morning. Although i am not the biggest fan parades i went anyways and there was a lot of people, as i expected and more Parisians than i thought there would be.

However, i was suppose to meet some of our friends that we met in London, who are from Australia, but they don't know any french, didn't own a map, and had only been in Paris for 10 hours before they decided to meet us. So they were lost for a while, but we randomly found them in the metro going to the Champs Elysee. The parade was ok. not what i had expected because it was it was a military parade with tanks and guns and all branches of the army of France. But i did get to see Nicolas sarkozy, the president of France, which was very cool to me.

We had class in the Luxembourg gardens and a lot of french people were wondering what a large groups of Americans were doing sitting in a circle eating pie and talking about being french and flanerie. So then we went back to the foyer to regroup and decided what to do. And after a lot of uncompromising ideas we decided to go to another museum. d'orsay, the one we couldn't go to before.

It was nice but you couldn't take pictures. which held me back a little but i held it together. So we got some food and walked over the Invaildes, a place that we were going to watch the fireworks from the Eiffel tower because it is independence day in France. We met some of Esmee's friends there, who were french and they taught us that an American English accent speaking french is very cute. Something that is hard to believe to me because i don't think that English is the prettiest language let alone have an accent in french. This is probably because i have tried so hard to get rid of my accent in Spanish and Portuguese.

The fireworks were not as magnificent as i thought but they were going to be, but still nice. After it was over we walked the streets to try and see the base of the Eiffel tower. We did it and it was such an experience, part of the beauty of the night was the fact that so many people were on the streets that traffic had stopped and everyone just enjoyed the night. Although it was crazy, and i have never seen that many people in my life walking in the street, i wasn't scared or worried about getting lost or anything happening to me.

Paris has a weird way to making you feel a part of the city and people

Notre Dame

Today i didn't do a lot of the field work because there were a lot of tourists out because it was a sunny day. A lot of us were going to go the the Museum d'ordsay but the lines we outrageous. So the 2nd plan was to go to the catacombs but we didn't have the allowed time and rather than spend money to get on the metro and miss the entry anyways i just stayed with the group who pretty much had no idea what to do after we failed. So we sat on the steps of a very large building that was beautiful and must have had importance but i couldn't read the sign.

But i went home a little later and then walked to the Notre Dame to meet Oksana, Jasleen, Josh and their parents. They had been in Rome for the past week and then are in Paris for this week and going back to Rome for the 3rd week. We took a couple of jumping pictures in front of notre dame because we were excited!! It is one of the oldest buildings in Paris and we walked around the back to see the gargoyles and the park around it.

Afterwords i gave them a tour of the Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg gardens, the Sorbonne, and the Pantheon. They loved this side of Paris, as i do and i got to be the tour guide and not the tourist :)

My first Castle :)

So Sunday was not as exciting as it should have been. We were suppose to see the catacombs which is i think a large underground area with a lot of skulls. I am not sure the history behind it but the line was super long and it was going to be at least 3 hour long wait so we decided to do it during the week when it wasn't so busy.

We walked around for a little but and then when to eat some crepes and then walked back home to the foyer. I took a nap because for some reason i was still tired. I woke up and then had another crepe for dinner, which was VERY good! it was chicken and feta cheese. Almost half of the program went upstairs to do some reading up on the terrace and the sunset was amazing. The Eiffel tower just looked unreal with all of the colors in the background. The bad thing is that only being here for a week i feel like i am getting a little used to Paris and being around all of this magnificence.

After dark, we all went downstairs and then studied a bit more and then went to sleep.

I woke up early today to go running in the gardens before class. However it was a little harder than normal, but i think that i need a little more protein because i haven't been eating at much meat lately because of the cost. A lot more bread and fruit, but i am not hungry, but have lost weight.

After class today we made our way outside Paris to visit a castle, it was called La Chateau du Saint Germain en Layee and was about 40 minutes away on the metro after a twenty minute walk. It was in a very cute little town that had a lot of cafes, shops, and food. I bought a cute shirt that was on sale and a couple others bought some clothes as well.

The castle was cool, it was smaller than i had thought but the outside looked very nice and we went to the inside of the castle and it was impressive as well. There was not a lot of rooms that we could enter that were anything but museums, but the exhibits were nice, a lot of historical artifacts from as far back as 2400 BC. The chapel was perhaps the most intact out of the whole castle, and it had amazing ceilings and architecture.

After coming home, Ivana and i made ourselves a little dinner and then she went out for a bit but i was tired so how i am just going to go to sleep :) Bonsoir Paris

My first Castle :)

So Sunday was not as exciting as it should have been. We were suppose to see the catacombs which is i think a large underground area with a lot of skulls. I am not sure the history behind it but the line was super long and it was going to be at least 3 hour long wait so we decided to do it during the week when it wasn't so busy.

We walked around for a little but and then when to eat some crepes and then walked back home to the foyer. I took a nap because for some reason i was still tired. I woke up and then had another crepe for dinner, which was VERY good! it was chicken and feta cheese. Almost half of the program went upstairs to do some reading up on the terrace and the sunset was amazing. The Eiffel tower just looked unreal with all of the colors in the background. The bad thing is that only being here for a week i feel like i am getting a little used to Paris and being around all of this magnificence.

After dark, we all went downstairs and then studied a bit more and then went to sleep.

I woke up early today to go running in the gardens before class. However it was a little harder than normal, but i think that i need a little more protein because i haven't been eating at much meat lately because of the cost. A lot more bread and fruit, but i am not hungry, but have lost weight.

After class today we made our way outside Paris to visit a castle, it was called La Chateau du Saint Germain en Layee and was about 40 minutes away on the metro after a twenty minute walk. It was in a very cute little town that had a lot of cafes, shops, and food. I bought a cute shirt that was on sale and a couple others bought some clothes as well.

The castle was cool, it was smaller than i had thought but the outside looked very nice and we went to the inside of the castle and it was impressive as well. There was not a lot of rooms that we could enter that were anything but museums, but the exhibits were nice, a lot of historical artifacts from as far back as 2400 BC. The chapel was perhaps the most intact out of the whole castle, and it had amazing ceilings and architecture.

After coming home, Ivana and i made ourselves a little dinner and then she went out for a bit but i was tired so how i am just going to go to sleep :) Bonsoir Paris