J'espere...

Bonjour de Paris! I'm a little down right now... just missing home a little bit. Being here has made me realize that everything back home is so great. I love it here- really, I love the city of Paris. I love the French language. I just can't take the people sometimes. They can be mean when they find out your American- not to mention the fact that they REFUSE to speak French to you. Madame has turned out to be a little less of an accomodating person than first perceived. I think it's mostly a huge communication misunderstanding... still, I wish I had MY mom here with me :). Honestly, it's made me realize how great MY mom really is compared to some others. I'm still keeping my head up and at least I have Katie and Jamie to talk to about it. They're in the exact same position as I am... it's hard but the fact that we're in Paris definitely compensates for it. Oh well, on with the blog...

On Thursday morning, Katie and I got up at 7:00 to go running but her blisters (from walking so much) hurt to bad to run. So, we just went back up to the apartment, took showers and headed to class. Our quizzes are so hard so we studied SO much. It was still hard... Oh well, Dr. Romeiser won't give us bad grades because he's so nice. After class, Katie and I got a sandwich and ate it on the way to Notre Dame. We went on a GREAT tour of L'Ile de la Cite. L'Ile de la Cite is the island in the middle of the Seine River in the middle of Paris. It was where the city was first founded. It contains Notre Dame and several interesting streets of restaurants and bars. Our tour guide was amazing. Dr. Romesier was so cute... he had told us about Scott, our tour guide, way back in February because he knew Scott was an amazing tour guide. Dr. R would get so excited when Scott would make us laugh. I love that man! Haha! After we finished the tour, Roxanne, Andrea, Katie, Orie, and I went to Hageen Daz for ice cream- SO good. We, then, headed back to our apartments to have dinner.

After we ate, we got ready and went out for the evening. We met Andrea's friends from UT who have been backpacking Europe for a month. We all went to a bar in the Latin Quarter. It was so much fun! I love these little places here- they're so tiny and cute. We got home and studied for Friday's quiz on all the provinces of France. It was tres difficile (very hard)!

This morning (Friday) Katie and I got up and ran 3 miles. It was very refreshing. We knew we were going to gain weight if we didn't so we ran to Luxembourg garden and back to the apartment. We got ready for class and went to take this horrible quiz. Dr. R felt so sorry for us that he let us take it open-book. That SAVED MY LIFE! It still took us about 45 minutes to finish the quiz.

On Fridays, we don't have an excursion in the afternoons so Katie and I headed to Olympiades with Rachel. Her home-stay parents are free-lance artists so they are very laid-back and easy-going. Since we're not allowed to take naps at Madame's we slept for about 2 hours and Rachel's. It was great because we had been up so late studying.

Dr. R invited about 6 of us at a time to his apartment on separate nights for dinner at his apartment. We met there at 6:00 tonight. His apartment his awesome! It's beautiful! The rent is $2500/month, though. I loved dinner, though. We had wine and lots of little snacks. He's such a great professor and person, in general.

We're back at the apartment, now, just packing for this weekend's trip and relaxing. Tomorrow is Katie's 21st birthday so we had plans to go out tonight for that. We are very tired, though, and have decided to stay in.

I'm so excited to go to the Loire River Valley this weekend. We have to be at the bus at 7:30 tomorrow morning. We're staying in a Best Western. You better believe I'm taking an hour-long shower. I can't wait! :). Ok, until next time... J'espere vous passez des bons jours!