Holy cow, hard to believe tomorrow marks the end of our second week of classes here in Paris. That means our program is halfway over - and time is FLYING! Right now it's 21h45 (9:45pm) on Thursday night here, which makes it 12:45 in the afternoon on Thursday at home. I would assume most everybody is enjoying the sunshine and doing super outdoorsy things in Bend like hiking or floating or something. Today started out pretty nice and never got blistering hot because it rained quite a bit yesterday, now it's mellowing out and is a comfortable 72 degrees F out. The weather report for this weekend/week looks in the high 70's/low 80's, which is perfect! Here's to hoping that the heat wave is over.
This week was our second week of classes, which also doubled as our 'welcome back to reality' week from our amazing weekend in the South. I was so tired on Monday morning I didn't make it to my morning class, but I did get a lot done so it all works out in the end. Plus my teacher, Dominique, loves me and didn't even mention it. Tuesday we went to the Paris Opera Ballet: La Petite Danseuses de Degas, which was beautiful! It was in the historic Paris Opera House, and was about 2 hours long. It wasn't air conditioned (obviously, nothing in France seems to be), but thankfully it was a nice day out so it wasn't too hot in there. Plus, we were in the nosebleed section (incredibly high up, cheap tickets, you know), so that was nice.
The Fondation group (minus a few) going to the ballet!
La Petite Danseuses
After the ballet we attempted to attend the free concerts at the Bastille, but it was so packed full of French people we ended up grabbing some kebabs to go and heading home for the night. Wednesday was NO SCHOOL day - happy Bastille Day to us! It rained incredibly hard all morning long so we opted out of the military parade, for that reason as well as the fact that the French don't even have an impressive military. Then in the afternoon a group of us girls decided to head down to a very cutesy shopping/grocery/cinema plaza called Bercy to hang out, get lunch, and watch a movie since it was dreary outside.
Flags above the main stretch of shops at Bercy.
After Bercy we met up with a big group of API kids to go watch the fireworks by the Eiffel Tower for the last Bastille Day hoorah. We ended up walking a LOT that night to find a decent spot to watch the fire display, or so we thought (it actually ended up being a poor choice, there was a huge building right in our way, but whatever). We met some crazy Australian kids and hung out with them and watched the fireworks, just an all around good time. Headed home late on the crazy crowded Metro and struggled to wake up for class this morning.
Our Eiffel Tower view on the other hand - not bad.
Our API firework watching crew.
And of course the Aussies. I told them this picture would make them famous on the internet.
Today (Thursday) we had our morning class, then skipped out on afternoon classes at the Catho to attend the Eiffel Tower visit scheduled for us. It's kind of lame that API schedules things that we've already paid for in advance (like that were included in the program cost) on days we have classes. I guess in this case it works out because they write us an excuse note, but none the less it's still somewhat annoying. So after morning classes we all headed over to the Eiffel Tower and basically got red carpet access. There were hour and a half long lines that we didn't have to wait in (bonus) because we'd purchased our tickets so far in advance, so we pretty much got to walk right on to the elevator. We went halfway up because the wait for the elevator to the very top was another hour wait (no thank you), then walked down the stairs to the ground level. It was great, definitely a cool experience.
(I'll update in a few days with pics, they're still on my camera)
The rest of my day has been pretty mundane, came home to a construction sight under my sink. The repair men FINALLY came (a week after I filed my complaint) because my sink leaks every droplet of water that comes out of the faucet, creating huge pools of sink water under my closet. Not so nice. So that's finally fixed, hallelujah. Took a nap this afternoon, hung out by the Seine this evening with some folks, and now I'm here, needing some serious sleep because I have class again in 6 hours! Yipes!
With that being said - goodnight from Paris!
<3
were there any 'girl' aussies ? haha! mom
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