Hiii friendsss. I'm updating right now after like, way too long of a period of time between posts, so sorry but this one is gonna be a novel. I'm sitting here in bed, it's 9:00 pm on Monday, and I've literally been in bed for around 24 hours straight. Woke up to my alarm this morning with a horrible cold, congestion, and a sore throat. Decided it probably wasn't in my best interest to go to class, slept through my alarm, and have been sleeping on and off since I went to bed last night. Abby and Carey brought me back some cold medicine which was a god send because there's no way I'm in normal-human-being-enough shape to get my butt out of bed and down to a pharmacy - so thank you girls, you're the best! Now we're all just sitting in my room on our computers waiting for the pizza that they bought to get done cooking.
Let's see what day I updated last... I think it was Wednesday, so Thursday. Well of course I had hours of class at the Catho. Morning language class wasn't bad, had lunch in the Luxembourg gardens with Abby, Carey & Sara which was really pretty. Met a lady from California and had her take our picture, then walked around by the Catho til our afternoon workshops. Phonetics workshop with Abby was rough, probably the roughest class at the Catho to date. I had a laugh attack and got yelled at in my headphones by our instructor because I wasn't repeating the French words. Survived phonetics somehow, then had to reward ourselves with gelato and shopping in the 1eme (the First Arrondissement, super touristy but it's fun). Came back to the FEU and we all congregated in Tom's dorm room for a pseudo dorm party sesh before our failed attempt to find a boat club that was free for international students called Erasmus. A group of us took the Metro to where we thought the boat club was, got lost (of course), followed the direction of someone in our group who had no idea where we were going, walked up and down the Seine by the Eiffel Tower (can you really complain about that?) for about an hour and a half before finally finding stupid Erasmus. Since we got there so late, there was a 20 Euro cover fee that myself and another study abroad kid named Ulysees didn't want to pay. So everyone else ended up paying it while we took a cab home. All was not lost though, at least we had a fun walking adventure, ate a crepe underneath the Eiffel Tower, and even got yelled at by the cab driver for flipping a cab off. Apparently that's not kosher in Paris. Viva la France.
Obviously.
Me, Aimee & Ulysees post Spice Girls karaoke.
Let's see what day I updated last... I think it was Wednesday, so Thursday. Well of course I had hours of class at the Catho. Morning language class wasn't bad, had lunch in the Luxembourg gardens with Abby, Carey & Sara which was really pretty. Met a lady from California and had her take our picture, then walked around by the Catho til our afternoon workshops. Phonetics workshop with Abby was rough, probably the roughest class at the Catho to date. I had a laugh attack and got yelled at in my headphones by our instructor because I wasn't repeating the French words. Survived phonetics somehow, then had to reward ourselves with gelato and shopping in the 1eme (the First Arrondissement, super touristy but it's fun). Came back to the FEU and we all congregated in Tom's dorm room for a pseudo dorm party sesh before our failed attempt to find a boat club that was free for international students called Erasmus. A group of us took the Metro to where we thought the boat club was, got lost (of course), followed the direction of someone in our group who had no idea where we were going, walked up and down the Seine by the Eiffel Tower (can you really complain about that?) for about an hour and a half before finally finding stupid Erasmus. Since we got there so late, there was a 20 Euro cover fee that myself and another study abroad kid named Ulysees didn't want to pay. So everyone else ended up paying it while we took a cab home. All was not lost though, at least we had a fun walking adventure, ate a crepe underneath the Eiffel Tower, and even got yelled at by the cab driver for flipping a cab off. Apparently that's not kosher in Paris. Viva la France.
Friday we all woke up pretty late, and I ended up getting lunch at this Japanese place with Uly and Tom, which was great and surprisingly inexpensive! It was a really nice change from crepes and Nutella and sandwiches every day of my life. Found Abby wandering around the Marais by herself, and went to a Starbucks (the only Starbucks we know of, by Notre Dame) and sat there in utter bliss with our coffee for like half an hour. It was really funny because the cashier spoke perfect English, and we were all trying to order in French and she just automatically switched to English for us - dang it, why does that always happen to us?! Spent the rest of the day laying around the FEU and watching stupid youtube videos and things like that, then walked down to the grocery store a few tram stops away to buy beer and some food for dinner. Left the grocery store with beer in tow and had a homeless man yell at us to give him some beer. Uh, no thanks. Watched Summer Heights High in Cara's bed with Aimee, Cara and Abby for like an hour straight, then decided... obviously.. we needed to find another boat club. Ended up at Batofar (the red boat club pretty close to the Cite that we've been to a few times before). Stayed there way too late, like 6am late, got home and tried to take "naps" for about half an hour because we had to be at the bus station by 8am for our day trip to Champagne.
So since Friday and Saturday kind of blended into one due to lack of sleep, I woke up from my "nap" really late, like at 7:30am and we were supposed to meet at 8:00am at the bus station, which is a good thirty minute Metro ride from the Cite. So I jumped out of bed, woken up by Abby's phone call (life line, I literally wouldn't wake up half of the time here without her phone calls), and we ran to the Metro and raced to the bus as fast as humanly possible. Our program director, Anne-Marie, actually waited like 20 minutes for us four girls (me, Abby, Carey & Sara) because we were so late - which was really nice because they usually don't wait for anybody. Then we had a 2.5 hour long bus ride to the Champagne region of France, toured a wine cellar (cave) at Taittinger for about an hour, it was really pretty and incredibly COLD because it was so far underground. After the tour we boarded the bus and drove up for a picnic surrounded by vineyards up on a little hill, then headed to our second wine cellar at Mercier for another tour. By this time we were all incredibly tired because half of the group hadn't slept the night before, so we all napped on the bus on the drive back to Paris. Arrived back "home" around 7:00 pm and had "picnic #2" in Abby's room with the leftover food from the picnic earlier that afternoon. Watched some ANTM, shocker. Then traipsed down to Tom's room to drink some beers and hang out. Somehow we all got talked into going out again to the same boat club as the night before... why? I'm not sure why. We're insane, I guess. The girl at the bag check even remembered me - embarrassing! Walked home at 6:00am for about half an hour, then slept until at least noon on Sunday because we were all so exhausted.
Sunday started with a really late wake up call & a very unsuccessful attempt at buying train tickets to visit Nick in Edinburgh this weekend. When I finally woke up (around 1pm) I wen tto lunch with Cara & Aimee at this gross "American" burger/steak place at Porte d'Orleans, I guess it wasn't that bad, but a burger was not what I needed to eat for my "breakfast" at one in the afternoon. Attempted to visit the Catacombes after lunch only to realize that it takes about an hour to get through the crazy line, so we just headed down to the Champs-Elysees to get to the Tour de France early. Apparently 95% of the people watching the end of the Tour had the same exact thought because the crowds were MORTIFYING - even 2.5 hours before the racers came through! We watched about 2 laps of racers (they do 8, then a victory lap) and decided to try and beat the crowds to the Metro station. I guess we did alright, it was pretty crowded but that's to be expected. Came back "home" to the FEU and ate a bunch of Nutella and took very necessary naps, had pizza from the pizza guy across the street and ended the day with a movie night in my room with Carey, Cara, Sara & Abby. Abby bought Vicky Cristina Barcelona on her laptop and we borrowed Javier's speakers and set up our own little ghetto entertainment center for the night. Everybody called it pretty early and I woke up feeling super sick this morning... then here we are, it's almost 11:00pm now (yes, updating this blog takes THAT LONG due to our crappy internet here) and I need to go to bed in order to actually make it to class tomorrow.
Can't explain how enthused I am for 6 hours at the Catho in the morning.
<3
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