What brought you in today?

Today, I got my first hourly-paid, in-the-world job! I'll be working at Pier 1 starting on Tuesday. I'm pretty happy about it! I have an interview with Macy's to work cosmetics on that same day, and I'll still go because it would be a full-time job instead of part-time, but I'd rather work at Pier 1 and just have then give me more hours, haha. It looks like it'll be lovely, and the boss-lady Lucy is really nice.

On top of that, Momma comes home tomorrow with the bro/sis duo! What a good weekend. I'm drinking tea and Tristan and I are puttering and tidying up the house before they get home. Dad and Tristan both have work tonight, so I think I'm going to walk to the store and get some milk and sugar when the sun goes down a bit. I might lay outside while the sun is shining, though. Sunlight is such a benefit of Florida, let me just tell you. When I know my work schedule, I want to go to the beach. Mmmm.

Sophy

P.S. I don't remember if there was any exciting news to report before today because if there was, I would have blogged about it, and blogger was not working out for me at all. :(

Productivity Party!

This morning I woke up at 8am-ish. I did my usual grandma routine of watching today show and eating toast and drinking tea. You know.

Then I spent 200 dollars on contacts and books, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, washed ALL my laundry and folded it, and put on my bathing suit for some sun time. I sat out there soaking up those rays when I got a call from my dear friend Melanie! We talked for a good long time and got all caught up. I love talking to her. We're going to live together after we graduate along with some other lovely ladies, in a house which we referred to as "The Rainbow House" during tornado week. I think this picture is what I wish our house could look like. I also would like a cat that could have a goatee. I think that would be really funny! We're going to have people over and eat good food and watch Modern Family. It'll be great. One year. This is really the last time I'll live at home for any long stretch of time. After this, I'll come to visit but I'll be living in Chattanooga. Crazy to think I'll leave the house we've lived in for 16 years!

Anywho, I was talking to Melanie when I got a call from Pier 1, who wanted to interview me for a job! Woohoo! I went in for my interview at 6:30 and I think it went well. They'll let me know early next week. It's only part-time, so if I got the job I'd probably look for another part-time job to round things out. Gotta pay the parents back for Paris, you know! Good experience, but expensive experience.

I'm really tired. I think I'll get ready for bed. 9pm is slightly early, but I am just sleepysleeps :)

Good night, all.

Sophy

Jiggity-jig.

HOME! And boy does it feel good. I got back yesterday afternoon.

We got up at 4:30am Paris time (10:30pm Miami time) and took a shuttle to the airport because the earliest flight of one of our group members was 7:30. My flight wasn't until 11:15, so I was chillin' in the airport, eating cookies and talking to Jordan until we boarded. My flight felt a lot shorter than it was, thankfully! When I first got on the plane I had a window seat, which was lovely but also meant that I couldn't get out easily and didn't have a whole lot of room. Just as I was becoming content with this situation, a flight attendant asked me if I wanted more room! I said I would and she moved me to an aisle seat with two empty seats next to me. It was terrific. I knew I needed to sleep, so I had a cute mini wine bottle on the flight (complements of Air France)and after my vegetarian meal, was in a perfect spot to snooze for a couple of hours. Because I had free seats next to me, I curled up on two of them and it was pretty good!

I'm really not sure what I did with the other 7 1/2 hours of my flight. I didn't read, I don't think I watched an entire movie on the flight, and there was no one to talk to. Ah, the mysteries of life.

In any case, I got home at 3pm Miami time and Dad picked me up. I was so glad to see him! We got home and saw Tristan and decided that we should all go swimming. We put on our suits and hit the back yard, where the sun was shining. Ooh yes. So nice. The water was even warm. We got back inside and I got washed up and put on clean pajamas and then we watched Tangled. First of all, I love that movie. It is my favorite that Disney has done in recent years. Secondly, I cried during it. Twice. Again. The first time I watched it there was a constant stream of tears running down my face at two separate parts of the movie. This time wasn't much different. Good tears, though :)

I went to bed at about 9pm (3am Paris time) and surprisingly didn't wake up at all until almost 7, and even then I went back to bed until 9! I am a super jetlag killer, I've decided. I got up and at 'em and after eating breaky, watching the Today show, and calling my mom, decided I needed to find a job. I called a couple of places I'd applied to online and they said they weren't hiring. Bummer! So I went out to a plaza with a lot of new boutiques and restaurants to see if anyone wanted to hire me. Then I went to another plaza, and then a mall. I was out for almost five hours total. Hopefully not without fruit; many of them took my resume/application. We'll see.

So now I'm getting ready to go to bed.

If you're my family, know that I love you and I'm glad to be home. If you're my friend, know that I miss you and I want you to call me or write me a letter. I would write back.

Sophy

Lovely Sunday

Hi there :)

I almost made the most spontaneous decision of my life thus far today, but it couldn't work out. But I will get to that in a moment.

This morning on the way off of the metro I got flirted with again. The raised eyebrows and the smile combo with a piercing eye? Yeah, it was that one. I have a hypothesis about why I'm so appealing over here. It's because of my awkward eye contact. In Miami, people think I'm strange because I look at them. In Paris, people think I'm interested because I look at them.

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I DO THAT!

Back to my day. We went to church at Thomas' family's church which was very small and equally sweet and welcoming. The little old ladies let us help set out the hymnals and bulletins. A man in the church who spoke English translated the passage and part of the sermon for us. It was wonderful, even though I didn't understand most of it. Thomas played viola during the service, and everyone loved it except for him. After church I got to meet the last brother, Ben, while Thomas had a smoke outside.

Here comes the spontaneity: I almost decided to stay in France. I realized during church that I could have done it all along, just planned to stay with the Bouzys for longer than the class time! I was like, ooh, the day before I go to Miami, just decide to stay an extra week or so? That's crazy! But I told Thomas how I felt stupid for not realizing it earlier, and he was like - is it too late?!?! So I texted my Dad to ask if it costs money/would be possible. I wasn't sure if I would do it, but I do like their family so I thought it could be super cool and something out of the ordinary for me!

But alas, the change of ticket cost wasn't justifiable for such a short extension. I do want to get back to my family, anyhow. I just will miss Thomas so much and would have loved to get to know his family more! We did the three bisous with his family and then hugged goodbye until another year.

After goodbyes there, we went to say goodbye to the artists we had interviewed and interrupted. That was nice, got to have a nice little chat with two of the artists that had been especially welcoming to us. We came back to the hostel after this and just spent time together. We just found out that everyone has to leave on the shuttle at 4:45am. That's crazy early, but I'll make it. My plane leaves at 11:15am and will arrive (after gaining 6 daytime-hours) at 2:40pm tomorrow afternoon. It's so weird right now, because everyone's so ready to get home and we're getting antsy to leave, but we also recognize that some cool stuff has happened these two weeks. We have new friends, we saw real life Van Gogh paintings, we met interesting people, I saw an old friend, we had bad times, we had fun times!

It was a good trip. I can't wait to tell you all more in person...this blog does make it a little easier on me, though :)

Sophy

I'm running out.

Hey followers.

Well yesterday was quite the day. We got up at our usual hour and had a meeting about what loose ends of the class needed to be tied up. Directly following this meeting, we collected our gear and headed to the hostel's dining room to work on our presentation. Dr. C told us it would take six hours so we didn't want to do it all on Sunday, plus Kait left a day early so we wanted her to be able to collaborate with us. We worked and worked and got frustrated and kept working. It was a pretty hard thing. We got it finished at about 4:30 and then let Sam finish up the formatting and we presented at 6pm. Dr. C said it was in the "A" ballpark. Whew.

After that was done, we changed out of our working clothes and went out for our last group meal. We went to a place called Chez Clement and it was so lovely! The decorations were all spoons and forks and things, but it didn't look modern at all. It had hanging plates and a china bird in a metal cage and it was just really cute. Our waiter was so funny and the food was delicious. I had a fillet of pollock with pepper sauce and rice, along with sparkling water ("with the big bubbles," our waiter said). To go along with this I had a glass of Chardonnay and a floating island, which is soft meringue in a pool of custard creme with some caramelly sugar wisps on it. It was delicious. Of course we also had baguettes and lots of fun, and Covenant paid for it all, hoorah!

Then we came back and got in bed. We watched an episode of Modern Family and went to bed promptly.

I'm glad today is our last day in France. I'm ready to be back home with my family because 1) I love them, 2) I'm running out of money and need to get a job, and 3) I am running out of energy to want to be here. Then again, that last one has been waning ever since I arrived, probably because of the rushed nature with which school ended.

I'll update this afternoon after I pack!

Sophy

Breads

This is what I'm listening to right now. Hollaaa!

Today we woke up at like 10:30am and went for a coffee and pastries, aka breakfast! After that we went to the Galleries Lafayette, a mall equivalent, for shopping. I got some pretty things, some present things, and some rockin' lipstick. We came back and we're just gonna watch a movie in one of the hostel rooms. THAT'S what I call a relaxing free day :)

Sophy

TGI Biz.Cas.Fri!

That's right, kids, it's business casual Friday! For me, that means some business, mostly casual, and Friday all day long.

But as everyone learned from Rebecca Black, yesterday was Thursday. So let's talk about it! Yesterday we woke up early and got down to breakfast at 7:45. We went to Montmartre by ourselves because Dr. C went to pick up his wife. We came back at noonish and wrote up our notes. Then, Dr. C gave me permission to go out with Thomas! I met him by the Conservatoire and we went to get pizza to eat on the lawn. It was pizza with a oeuf (egg) on it! Weird but good. Then we went to Thomas' favorite park which had a wonderful view of Paris! It was gorgeous, and because it was sunny everyone was out. Then we walked to go to an art exhibition, but by the time we got there it was closed, so we had to find something else to do. Thomas suggested a river boat tour! It was sooo fun! The wind, the waves, the boat-houses. So lovely. We talked for hours about so many things. Relationships, Christianity, how our families have been, and so on! It's good to talk to my french brother. Then the best part: I got to go have dinner with the Bouzys (that's his family, fyi)! I haven't ever met them before, but my mom has and my brothers stayed with them for two weeks in the South of France.

When I first got there, we greeted and kissed as the french do. I tried to be a frenchwoman and kiss twice, but even that wasn't quite right because they kiss three times in the south. I learned quickly and just kept kissing.

After these polite salutations we sat down and talked. It was interesting because both parties didn't really understand the others' language. Mrs. Bouzy and Thomas speak English well, but the two brothers don't speak as much and the Mr. Bouzy doesn't speak any. With the English they all understood and the very little French I understand, the jokes and the fun didn't really ever stop, haha. I enjoyed being with them so much! We ate nuts and olives and they had juice and wine (I stayed on contract, I'll have you know) and it was lovely. Then we moved to the table and ate duck in balsamic sauce with cooked zucchini and rice. After this, we had the cheese platter with homemade bread. Then finally we ate dessert of tapioca pudding and strawberries with cream. It was delicious and the conversation was great and I LOVED their family! I haven't felt more at home since I've been here. After that we took the metro and walked back. (P.S. My metro pass has a mugshot of me staring into your soul on it and I couldn't smile so it's really funny. I'm looking forward to showing you all when I get back.)

I'll post about today later, because I just lost my train of thought. It'll be short, most likely.

TTYL.

Sophy

More, more, more.

SO...
It feels like I haven't really updated in a while. Life has been crazy and I've been sleep deprived.

The past two days have been a whirlwind and yet I feel like it's been an entire week. We're in the stage of the research where we're doing two or three hours of research a day. We're mostly doing interviews, but some observations still. We've been getting a lot of good info - most of the artists speak English, or at least enough to answer questions adequately and keep the conversation going. Me and my partner have facilitated seven interviews so far and have talked to quite some characters! We have to write down everything that's dictated, so we've written about how one guy talked about how he had gone to jail, one guy talked about how the pill liberated women to make love and not war, and we've encountered three men who described the artist's square as "sh*t." Definitely the most colorful homework I've ever done. We've also been able to hear a lot of good information for our research, though, so it's been good to see how field research would really go.

Yesterday we got the morning off after we finished coding the last day's interviews, and so we went to get paninis and sodas and ate them in the park. Everyone went back to nap, but my research partner and I sat in the Luxembourg Gardens for hours. It was sunny and nice and what I had been waiting for all week. We came back in time to meet up with the group to go meet a contact Dr. C had made - a dancer named Nikola. She was an American who had lived in Montmartre for six years or something. It was good to hang out with her, but we ended up getting to the research site and about 7:30pm and a lot of the painters were gone. It's strange, you get to know who's usually there and who's usually not when you go every day. The portrait artists were still there and we got two really good interviews. There was a creepy man on the metro who stared at me and Jordan, smiled like a weirdy, took pictures of us even after seeing that we were both "engaged" (hers real, mine just a ring-switch), and then blew us kisses as the metro passed his stop. Let's just say it was not flattering, it was just gross. The man who, when I asked which pastries I could have with my formule (combo), said "These. Or you can have me." and smiled was much less creepy, but just kind of goofy/sweet, so I just giggled and ate my pastry.

Today was Jonathan's birthday, so Kait and I woke up early to buy him some pastries as a surprise. He's always talking about how he wants to sample all of the French lifestyle, so we thought it would be perfect. There was more coding and an hour nap, and then we met to go to Montmartre! We went to a Thai food place first and then headed out. We got more interviews today than we ever had because we were bold. It was great. After that we came back and typed up field notes, which takes a while. We only got through one interview and we decided to eat and then go to a happy hour because we were given permission. I got a jambon (ham) croissant and an Orangina. We went to a Cuban place for happy hour, which is later here, and I got my first mixed drink, a Margarita. We played never have I ever and a game that Dr. C called "The Nutty Chronicles," where you pass around a piece of paper and take turns writing a man's name, a woman's name, a time, a place, what they are doing, what he says, what she says, and an ending - you end up with a pretty funny story sometimes. Fun stuff.

We came back and finished typing up our notes and NOW IT IS BEDTIME!

I love bedtime. My roommates are cool too.

Sophy

Nugglets.

Hey.

So today is a pretty short post because today everyone was having a bad day. There was a lot of "I want to go home," a lot of frustration, a lot of disappointment, and so on. I cried about things that happened, our group had to repent of unkind thoughts, and the general mood was on edge.

I had typed out everything bad that had happened, but then I realized that's a bad idea for me because I don't want to focus on those things that only frustrated me. So here are some other things that happened. They were pleasant.

-We got a really good interview with a lady on the square who had been selling there for 36 years. She gave us such good insight into their world and talked so much! It was great, we were so proud.

-Jordan bought me chocolate.

-I got a lot of money that I didn't expect.

-I was reminded to pray when frustrated with events or people.

-I sat in our room and did nothing but talk to Jordan for two hours+.

-We joked a lot about "nugglets," which we haven't decided the definition of, but it is funny.

-I got a sweet 7-day pass for the metro with a picture that looks like a mugshot.

Pray for a better day tomorrow.

Thank you and good night.

Sophy

This zouks my mind.

Hello, friends!

So, I didn't post yesterday, but it would have been short and I was tired. So here's two days worth!

Yesterday was Saturday, so we woke up and had breakfast and had our devotions like every morning and then spent time discussing interviewing as a team and meeting about our observations from the previous day. After this we got to go back and nap before going out to do research. We got lunch and got on the metro and ended up getting to the square at about 1pm. We had a couple of leads but I personally was not encouraged by the results thus far, I felt like we were getting nowhere. Thankfully, we were wrong! I've been doing all of our duo activities with Jordan, who is super funny+down-to-earth+cool, so it was great. We first went with Dr. C to interview someone and it went really well, she was friendly and willing to talk, and he even bought a painting, so I felt good but I felt like he had done most of the work. Now that we knew what interviews like this looked like, we went out to see if we could talk to anyone else. We had admired these few paintings with sepia-tone Paris scenes...about 600 euros. CRAZY good though. I asked the man sitting there if he had painted them and he said they were his sons, but we could talk to his son because he was coming back soon. Andreas, the artist, gave us a substantial interview and was even flattered that we asked! He gave us a real view of what things are like and the competition that can exist between artists and the rudeness of some of the people there. It was really cool to talk to him and Jordan and I were so proud! We came home and bought dinner and typed up our notes and then relaxed/watched Modern Family.

OH! I discovered Speculoos spread. It's like cream of graham cracker. I can't describe it - basically it's a cookie that people eat and they decided to make it into a spread. I'm totally bringing some home. I thought I was buying peanut butter, but apparently they don't have that here. They have Nutella and Speculoos instead. SCORE.

So today we woke up and ate breakfast downstairs and then got ready to go to Mass at Notre Dame. I had never been to a catholic mass, so it was interesting. There's way more ritual than I expected. It was cool, but it was weird. I liked singing things in french that I understood, like Psaume 22 - le Seigneur est mon Berger/The Lord is my Shepherd! The sermon was on John 10 - how Christ is the gate. I understood some of it, but not much. We also read the apostle's creed. Good stuff, but not church. Next week we're going to try to find a Protestant church.

After this we went to lunch out. I don't like to eat out or shop on Sundays generally because I think that the commandment speaks to providing for even the alien within your gates so that they don't have to work, but in this case I was kind of the alien and it was not a situation where it was avoidable, so I didn't worry about it, haha. After this we went directly to the Musee d'Orsays. I got to see more Monet, and Cezanne, and Renoir, and Degas, etc. I liked it, but I got tired again! It's a long time to spend at a place like that, even when the paintings are as amazing as Monet's Les glaçons (shown above).

After this, we got back and waited for my dear friend Thomas to call and say he was here! He got in around 7 and I gathered some of the troops and we went to the cafe under our hostel - Le News Cafe. I got an espresso, he got a beer, and we had such a wonderful time! We talked about the times he stayed with my family, the weird things we remember, how our lives are now, and then the entire group talked about the differences between France and America and what things we should do while in Paris. He told us we should eat pastries and say "zouk" because he's trying to make it catch on. He said it's from a commercial that says "That zouks my taste buds" (in french, of course). He's also trying to make frire catch on - it's a conjunction that he made up that means crazy-laugh. As in, you make me crazy-laugh. Good times, haha!

We told him he should say totes. I don't think it's a fair trade-off.

Then, we came back to the hostel and we're gonna sleep so we're ready for interviews tomorrow. Such a good day...I need to think of what I'm going to do on our free day! Hmm.

Well, good night for now, you all.

Sophy

We blew a fuse.

Wow. My feet hurt. I love walking everywhere, but I also love taking the metro. I used a map and figured out a good way to get where we needed to go today and I was so proud! I know most people can use maps and I don't think I have a special talent, but with my newfound map skills and the French that I didn't expect to remembered and yet somehow have made me realize: I think I could get around Paris, order food, ask where things are and all of it by myself! So exciting.

So this morning, Kait blew the lights out with her straightener. She told Chiareli that "our" power went out when "we" used "our" straightener and we all burst out laughing. We got it all under control, but it was pretty hilarious to refer to each person as a collective unit there for a while, haha. You know, as in maybe if "we" were smarter "we" wouldn't have to straighten our hair. Probably wasn't that funny when I just wrote that, but oh well. You had to be there.

This morning we spent the first bit of our day talking about strategy and what we are starting to do, but then we headed right out to Montmartre, our research site (picture above). We heard rumors of a strike with the metro workers, but thankfully we were able to get on it as long as we stayed within Paris. It was about a 20-minute metro ride, but it would have been much longer if we had walked, and as I mentioned, we already walked tons this week! This is where my magical map skills come in. I got us to the station, figured out our route, and got us out! Mary, Mc, and I led the way and it was so liberating. When we got to Montmartre, we did observations first of all, but to be honest it was the least interesting sociological observation I've done. The nature of the square is that tourists come and then artists sell, which makes it very routine - good for observing, I suppose, but not fascinating. A bird pooped on my sheet of paper in a swirly S shape, but it's not so pretty when you know it's poop. I did get to eat a chicken, egg, and cheese crepe, though!

We left to go back to the hostel because we found out that on Friday nights, the Louvre is free for students! We transcribed our observations and took 20 minute naps and then got up to go. We decided to walk to the Louvre to see more of Paris and because some of the metro passes stopped working (?). The Louvre was beautiful from the first sight of the outside...duh, it used to be a palace! So, we got in for free and I got to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and other greats! My favorite, though, was seeing Monet's paintings, because impressionists are my favorite and I especially like Monet. Our feet were especially worn this day, though, and our minds were tired from the week, and our naps had put us in weird moods, so a few of us decided to sit outside and watch the sunset over the Louvre. It ended us being just me and Mary Claire, which was so wonderful. We talked for probably an hour before the whole group found us and made us walk home.

It doesn't get dark until about 9:30 here, so it had just gotten dark when we were walking back. The walk back was so interesting! We saw Paris night life, which consisted of a lot of sitting outside on bridges over the river drinking wine and eating baguettes while having lengthy chats and outbursts of laughter, just like you'd think! We also walked past neat little restaurants and buildings, and all along the river where the boats had lights and people sat by the water with their friends. Some people stopped for gelato, and we got back just in time to listen to J.Lo, facebook stalk, and blog. Good life.

This has been another update from Paris. Join us tomorrow.

Sophy

Tu est un fromage!

Picture this: I'm sitting in my fourth-floor room in my hostel with the widows open, overlooking the courtyard and the little lady who sits at her second-floor desk and writes (I always wonder about people - who is she? what is she writing? does she live here?) sitting at a distressed table, overhearing a small French boy speaking to his mother and typing away in Paris. Mhmm.

Today started out the same as usual - nutella and bread and a cappuccino. Oh yes, delicieux. Nikola, the man who owns the hostel, is so nice and always makes sure we're taken care of.

After a quick lesson on how to write up observations, we set out for Montmartre, where we'll be doing our research. For this trip, one of the guys on the trip and I are in charge of security, which was good because we took the underground metro and I actually knew what I was doing! I counted eight little heads, feeling like the mom, haha! There was a man playing the accordion on the metro, too, but I didn't think the locals were big fans, so I decided not to give money and encourage him. We looked around at first, going into the Sacre-Coeur and walking down all the little streets, and then we got to the research site - a square of artists, all selling their art of the streets of Paris! There were probably ten on each side of the square with more in the middle and on the edges. Very cool. Some of the art wasn't my cup of tea, but there were some that were sepia tone oil paintings of the street leading up to the Eiffel Tour and they were gorgeous - if only I had 300 euros.

We decided to walk to a different metro stop so that we could pass by the Moulin Rouge. That is one rough part of town. So many sex shops and things like that. I'm glad it was the middle of the day when we walked through. We caught our metro back to the hostel and had a little break before going out for dinner. Someone asked what we should get and I was sick of spending money and going out for every meal, so I suggested we buy baguettes and cheese and head to the park. Perfect. I bought Comte cheese and strawberry jam and split a baguette with Jordan, one of the girls on our trip. SO GOOD! I kept wanting to eat the jam with a spoon!

We ended the day by coming back to the hostel and hanging out...just us girls, in our room, spending time together. It was lovely, and I think an early night is in order!

Sophy

P.S. Sorry if this has been a little formulaic or boring.

Some interesting things...

-Totally love the pastries here. Can't wait to try my first crepe!

-Totally embarrassed when we all ran across the street following Dr. C as he crossed about three lanes in a roundabout (read: constantly moving traffic) instead of using the underground passage that a tour book described as "the only sane way" to get to the Arc de Triomphe. Yikes.

-Totally want a music box. They have a bunch in the touristy shops, but they're so cute and there's a particular song I want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOXzGtlLGgw . I had never heard it but it sounds beautiful on the music box.

-Totally excited to see Thomas, our French brother. Hecame to America and stayed with us for three summers when I was in middle/high school and I haven't seen him in a few years, but he plays viola with the Paris Conservatoire now, so he's living here and I'll get to see him! Yay!

Well, here we are!

City of love is right!! So much PDA here. So many awkward, long glances at the significant other as you walk away blowing kisses. So much "two guys in a car raise their eyebrows and wave at Sophy a lot."

No, but let's start with the beginning.

We woke up this morning to classical piano outside out wide-open French windows. Yesterday we looked around the neighborhood for a while after our nap and then had dinner and nutella gelato. After our wonderful wakeup call this morning, we went downstairs and had French bread with nutella (I think I have made it a goal to have nutella each day). Then we had a short devotion before practicing our mapping for our ethnographic research. We went in pairs down the streets of Paris and assessed what kind of things were there - shops, people, residences, etc. On me and my partner's way back, we went into le Jardin du Luxembourg. So beautiful!

I have to admit, I wasn't particularly "wowed" by Paris up to that point, but I could have seen myself relaxing there for a long while. It's not that Paris wasn't nice, it just all seemed very fast-paced and precise at first...two things that I'm not, and I didn't think Paris was either! Anywho, we debriefed after this and then began our Paris tour. We got paninis and "coca-cola light" and then walked everywhere. We walked past notre dame, past the river, past the louvre, down the Champs-Elysees, past the arc de triomphe, and up into the Eiffel Tower. Our tour was about 11am to 11pm - walking all the way. We even walked 700 steps up the Tower, but then decided to take the elevator the rest of the way. You could see everything from up there, it was amazing! It was sunny and warm and there was even an accordion player on the river.

After we went up into the Tower, we went down and had dinner. I had a Boeuf Bourguignon with a Bordeaux wine (because Dr. C approved...and payed, yippee!). So good. Next we went back to the lawn outside the Tower to watch it light up. It lit at about 9pm, but at 10 it started to twinkle for about 10 minutes - it was gorgeous! Definitely magic.

Then we had our long walk back to the hostel, which is pretty nice by the way! We have a beautiful view of the courtyard outside and a little cafe right below us where I accidentally spent four euros on a small bottle of water. Oops.

So, that's my first two days in a nutshell! I didn't even mention the Tai Chi in the gardens with swords or the many, many, people who tried to illegally sell us small Eiffel Tower figurines. "No, merci" was a catchphrase for the day, for sure.

Bonsoir, monsieurs et madames!

Sophy

An American in Paris

So, one year since my last post, here we are. And...

I'm going to Paris, folks! Sociology Field Research Practicum/3 credits/2 weeks/France, here I come! Kaitikins told me I should blog, and I do like to write, so we'll see if I can keep up with life. I decided I would experience France in all of it's wonder and baguette-glory, so there may not be bajillions of pictures or pages upon pages of blog posts, but I should have time to write after I type up my notes in the evenings, so I may be writing every once in a while.

This is where I'll be staying!

http://www.hotelresidencedupalais.com/

So excited. My plane leaves at 5:50pm tomorrow. Oh, how I love to travel!