un mois

Good morning!

This is the end of my 5th week in France, and it is beginning to feel like a very long time. I enjoyed my weekend in Paris, but I have to admit, it was a very wonderful feeling to come back "home" after a few sleepless nights to "my room". I realized how comfortable I have become here.

I traveled by TGV to Paris on Friday evening with 7 classmates- you probably recognize them from the 956 pictures I took- ha! We stayed in a hostel which was everything a hostel should be: dim, poorly insullated, creaky, and questionably sanitary. I was surprised however that this was not a youth hostel, but one open to anyone. We were the youngests guests there, and I had to feel sorry for the older generations climbing into shaky metal bunkbeds. I won't be doing that at that age! I will say however that the hostel was not cheap- 20 euro/night- the motel 6 would have costed less, and the quality would have been 5-star in comparison. Oh well, we got "free" breakfast of bread and hard boiled eggs each morning and I confiscated an extra roll to snack on later.

It was nice to leave the planning up to someone else this time. Kathleen (tall, reddish hair), was in Paris for a week before the semester began and thus, is very familiar with it. She led us around to Montmatre, the Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, Sorbonne, St. Chapelle, Jardin de Luxembourg/Tuilleries, Louvre etc. all the stuff you're supposed to do in Paris. We also saw the catacombs which was quite disturbing. 6 million-something dead bodies were moved to these underground tunnels and arranged in artistic patterns and piles. Eeek. But interesting I suppose.

Paris was expensive! We did not even enter a museum. It was 8 euro to go up Notre Dame, 8 for the ferriswheel, 11 for a ride down the Seine, 2 for each metro ticket (although we bought day passes) and let's not forget about those 6 euro sandwhiches! We stayed out of the museums with the instinct that we'd be back with our families or on other excursions- mainly a way to save money. But it was sure worth it! The Eiffel Tower is so beautiful during the day or night and I enjoyed our picnic on the Champs de Mars. I also enjoyed 3 ice-cream cones that weekend. I figure if you're going to eat ice-cream which costs 4euro, might as well do it under the Eiffel Tower.

Leaving Paris was hard: doing it at 5 am was horrendous. We woke up in the dark and scurried out of the hostel leaving behind a few classmates who didn't have classes until evening. Unfortanately, we had not taken into consideration that the metro has fewer trains in the early morning, and we found ourselves losing 15 precious minutes waiting for our train. When we got off the metro, we ran uphill to the Gare de Lyon, and literally, the train doors closed behind us as we got on. We were fortunate to have found our train fairly quickly as when you enter these old-fashioned looking trainstations, you see about 8 trains lined up in the middle of the corridor without good indications as to where they are heading. Very surreal.

I apologize for not updating this sooner. I have been teaching English in a high school (very enlightening), meeting with my Tandem Exchange partner weekly, and planning my fall break- a trip to Italy!). Today I will see the Pont du Gard which is just outside of Nime. I will not actually go into Nimes, which I'm kind of disappointed about because I really wanted some denim from there (de-nimes!). Tonight I'll see a movie with friends and in the morning we leave for Arles to see the Amphitheater and some traveling art exhibits.

I do not have class this morning and our bus does not leave until 1 so I will go for a bike ride (yes, I bought a bike!) before we head off.

Miss you all! Thanks for reading!