Day 1 and 2

Day 1

I finally arrived in Paris!!!! I do not think you realize how ignorant you are of other cultures and customs until you arrive in a foreign country and discover that people are not going to cater to you just because you are American. In fact, within the first day of being in Paris I feel like I learned French in order to survive. I think that this experience is going to be more of just me going to classes and looking at pretty buildings and statues, but rather a situation in which I will learn what it means to take care of myself and figure things out on my own. The more I am here, the more I wish I had taken the opportunities to go study abroad before my senior year. There are people here who have been abroad at least three times. It's crazy because I wasn't even planning on studying abroad and now I realize that this was the best decision I have ever made.

I am staying at the Cite Universitaire which is a complex of about 30 dorms filled with students and young professionals from all over the world. I think my first realization that I was in Europe was walking into my room and feeling that I walked into Ikea then looking in the bathroom and seeing a nozzle on my ceiling that was the shower with no enclosure space. I laughed for about five minutes thinking about my dad's response to something like this. We met our tour guide person who helped us walk around the neighborhood to grocery stores and cell phone places. Everything looked so different. The boulangeries (bakeries) are abundant and everything in the grocery store has bright colors. The wine is also two euro. Eventually I made it back to the dorm and collapsed due to pure exhaustion and the overwhelming reality of being in Paris.

Day 2

I found out why Parisians are sooooo skinny. They walk miles everyday. Up hills, across bridges, through mazes of subways. It is crazy. My day went as such

10:30---Walk to supermarket to buy groceries

11:00---Realize supermarket is closed

11:30---Wait for group to come downstairs

12:00--- Take the train to the uchicago Paris center

12:45---Finally arrive at Paris center after guide got us lost for thirty minutes. In other words, nobody knows how we got to our location but we are already tired and cold

1:15-- They allow us to start eating French cuisine (lots of bread) and drinking wine (you have to love Europe)

2:00--- Begin walking tour of neighborhood

3:15--- Finish walking tour of neighborhood frozen and tired.

4:00---Load onto bus that was taking us on a tour of a basilica

4:30---Bus drops us off because he can't drive to the basilica but it is a quick walk away.

5:00--- Arrive at basilica.

Sidenote: The basilica is where Marie Antoinette, Louis XIV, and Catherine de Medici are buried. It is beautiful. There is an underground crypt and beautiful carvings of each person in the grave. I think it is at this point that I begin to feel the realness of what is going on around me. There is so much history in this city. This is so much bigger than the architecture in Chicago. It's crazy!

5:30--- Leave the basilica for dinner

6:00--- Bus leaves us somewhere in Northern Paris for dinner. Start hour walking tour and search for dinner.

7:00---After an hour of walking circling this Parisian neighborhood we finally arrive at our dinner location.

***These people really expect you to work for a free meal. We walked sooo much for soo long and I am pretty sure our person was lost because he continued to look at a map and places started to look the same. We were okay with because we thought our dinner was going to be amazing. The dinner was good, but not worth the walk. People also were not sure if it was goat or beef. At least there was bread and wine.

8:15 ---Leave dinner, but we have to find our own way home with minimal directions. We ask four times where the metro train was. I even asked once "Excusez moi- metro tren?". My French is awesome.

9:00--- We finally make it to the train. I have never seen a train station like this. Really easy to navigate, but it is like a crazy maze with tons of escalators and assembly lines. Everytime we turned the corner there was another set of stairs. It was too crazy for me. I just soaked it all in. I also laughed alot. I think it was a combination of my exhaustion and frozen feet.

9:45---Home!!! Collapsed on bed and fell asleep.

So as you can see, I am having a wonderful time in Paris. Every day is a new adventure. The people on the program are wonderful and so nice.

I will be trying to update as frequently as possible, and once I learn how to use my computer I will update with pictures. If you have any advice, comments, or questions, please feel to post!!!

Sincerely,

Imah