Finally...Paris

January 30, 2007

Paris, France

I’m in love. Perhaps because I’ve build Paris up for so long (since I was a little girl and my Dad and I started to save for our own trip) or perhaps because it’s just my soulmate, whatever the reason, I’m absolutely in love with this city. Where to begin… There are so many emotions going on right now that it’s going to be hard to put them all into words for you, but I’ll try. I promise.

Back to the trip from Cannes to Paris. So imagine 75 college students (American students I remind you) boarding the TGV (france’s high speed train) in less than 3 minutes. Chaos does not begin to describe what this trip has been. So we all did in fact make it on the train and I quite enjoyed the ride through the French countryside. During the five hour ride I enjoyed some Jonny Lang and my Let’s Go Europe book and of course the company of mes amies…Upon our arrival in Paris we meet Claire and Martha at Le Gard de Lyon for our “white envelope ceremony”. Now, I’ve been building this part of the trip up for awhile because I’ve begun to realize that AIFS-Paris2007 is a reality TV show that we’ve all become apart of. I thought this part of the adventure was the final task in which we receive our housing assignments, but as you will soon read, it is not.

So – the white envelope ceremony is an event in which all students staying in AIFS housing receive the name and address of their host family and then proceed to take a taxi to their respective locations. Annie and I received our white envelope (and captured the occasion on my camera…) and were placed in the 12^th arr. (Paris is divided into 20 districts). This, we had heard, was a good placing and were very excited about our possibilities. The rest of our friends were spread out over Paris but we arranged to meet at the American Church of Paris (first American church built on foreign soil…)for service the next morning. So it becomes time for Annie and I to get in our taxi and the driver begins to speak to us in rapid French. Able to only catch two words “a pied” meaning, “walk”, we discover that our flat is too close to the train station for this taxi driver to take us, so Claire (gotta love her) instructs us to brave the metro. Nothing like throwing us right into the lion’s cage. We manage the metro and arrive at rue du Bercy in the 12^th. As the next part of the story (housing) is rather stressful and really just makes me want to curl up in a little ball and sleep I’ll perhaps cover it on another day.

Sunday morning Annie and I take the metro to Pont L’Ama for church and as we walk up the stairs from the underground I turn around to get my bearings and there’s the Tour Eiffel rising up from the background. I grab onto Annie to prevent myself from falling as she begins to cry and we just savor our first real moment in Paris. After reuniting with Lauren, Claire, Jackie, and Caitlin at church (you would have thought we hadn’t seen eachother in years) we had a nice lunch and jaunt around the city.

Upon going our separate ways we agreed to meet at a yoga studio for some exercise and dinner in the evening. Although this did not happen (we might have gotten lost…) Annie and I did manage to walk for several hours and ended up at Le Louvre with our mouths open wide. Feeling quite content we called it a day.

Monday we arrived at the AIFS office bright and early and got some quick (haha) information and such. After attempting to deal with our housing fiasco we ate the lunches we packed from our first grocery shopping experience and waited to take a quick bus tour of Paris. This is where we realize our “amazing race” is not over because Jon, our activities director, hands Annie and I another white envelope about housing and the adventure continues. Being the sophisticated person that I am, I deal with stress by wanting to sleep, so I, of course, fell asleep while trying to take in the best of Paris only to awake before the Cathedral de Notre Dame. Dans the middle of the tour we witnessed a cavalry parade and ended up on the Champs-Elyess – what a day. We ended our first weekday in Paris by surprising Claire and Lauren for dinner in which we’re very sure we disrupted the entire café with our laughter, but quite enjoyed ourselves and ventured back to the 12^th.

Tuesday was our placement test for the Sorbonne which was less than fantastic – but was quickly solved by a cup of real American coffee (and by real I mean Ethiopian) from Starbucks. We picked up the rest of our luggage which was shipped from Cannes on Friday and waited impatiently for a taxi for the next 2 hours. After a thrilling taxi ride to the flat I sent out to pick up some essentials and ended up at Habitat and GoSports – I’m becoming very European might I add…Annie’s friends from school are also studying in Paris so we met them and the girls for dinner and the night ended with a nutella crepe.

This has been Paris so far. There is so much more to tell you and to come - I will tried to keep everyone up to date, but just know that I love you and would love to hear from you (via email or phone…) I am the proud new owner of a French cellphone on which you can reach me, but will be charged probably ridiculous amounts of money, although text is cheap J! Number is : 033-06-50-04-68-41

SIDEBAR: We all know how great I am about answering my phone in the states, so let’s see how I am in Europe… BONNE CHANCE

Bisous,

Katy