Bonjour!
A random, interesting note about French breakfast: it is
mostly the same as American breakfast. There is cereal with milk (corn flakes,
muesli, even Cocoa Puffs), toast with butter, jam or honey and coffee or tea.
It's interesting that it's so similar to what we often eat in the US. They
would never have eggs and bacon though - eggs in the morning is so incredibly
strange to French people. I personally am already getting tired of toast and corn flakes, and I am only four days in. Yikes.
We did not get lost on the metro yesterday morning. Yay! And we
even found a quicker route to school, so it was an all-around
success.
We had just a smidge more orientation, and then the office
took us on a little field trip to a student cafeteria for lunch. The food was
not very good and I would not recommend it to anyone, though it is cheap.
After lunch, some new friends (hey guys, I made friends!)
and I took an incredibly long walk to the Eiffel Tower, but it was definitely, one hundred percent worth it.
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| Carrie, Heather, Carrie, Landry and I! (yes, there are two Carries. There are also two Sydne(y)s and two Abbys. Dang those typical 90s girl names.) |
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| This is a building in the Jardins de Trocadero, just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. I tried to translate it for you, but it doesn't change over to English very well. Or I just don't know any French at all, which is also possible. |
Several embarrassingly long photo shoots from many different
angles later, we ate crêpes, stopped in at a coffee shop and then rode the
metro for approximately 1000 stops to get home. I actually thought my feet might fall off.
Landry and I did get lost on our way back home, but only briefly and we
figured it out pretty quick. I will master this public transit system
soon, I swear it. The hardest part isn't navigating the actual metro
line to line, its figuring out where the nearest metro stop is or how to
get from your stop to where you want to go. Streets are difficult.
After dinner, we went to a new friend's house for cake because it was
her 21st birthday. Happy birthday Carrie! Her homestay apartment is
literally a beautiful mansion and I am so jealous. Our house is cute,
but it definitely isn't Carrie and Bonnie's princess bedroom!
Oh well, I like how leafy it is. I may not have a pink princess room, but I do have trees.
We got back late last night and I only got five hours of sleep, which
was very inconvenient because today was our first day of classes. Both
my fashion and photography classes are 4 hours long, and I definitely
slept through at least half of photography because my teacher was very
dull today. I tried reallyreallyreally hard to stay awake, but what can I
say? I am QUEEN of Falling and Staying Asleep. Luckily, we went on a
field trip to the Musée Carnavalet for the second half of my fashion
class, so that helped me to stay conscious, and also my professor is
very interesting. I can say with complete certainty that he is the most
fabulous man I have ever met.
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| This is the museum's courtyard. So perfect. |
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| Interior design à la Louis XVI |
So that's where we are now - I am sitting in bed writing this and
preparing to take a nap, because I need to make up for all that lost
sleep last night, and if I don't then I will only start to spiral deeper
and deeper into crankiness and probably insanity.
Au revoir!
Sydne
--Read more from Sydne at http://theyesgirlwrites.blogspot.com/
To find out more about the ISA Paris, France: Arts & French Language at the Institut Catholique de Paris program, check out http://studiesabroad.com/paris
