Day 2

the Louvre

Place de la Concorde

Musée d'Orsay

Liz with her escargot..and her help

Home of the famous macaroons

Rue St. Germain by night

Salut!

Today was a great day. It seems that I'm starting to recover from jet lag (thank goodness). My roommate Chelsea and I woke up early this morning, got dressed, left the hotel in search of breakfast (I had a delicious almond croissant), and then returned to the hotel for class at 9. Today we discussed the epic novels of the 12th-13th century. This period was interested in mostly recounting tales of chivalry, thus...King Arthur. Of course, I was very interested in this! 
After class ended at 10:30, Chelsea and I left the hotel again to do some shopping. I was very proud of myself, because I got everything I needed: an adapter, breakfast food, stamps, melotonin, etc! It was fun navigating the city, and I'm no longer terrified of addressing Parisiens in French. Strangely however, they seem to recognize that I don't speak French fluently even before I utter a word. This makes me sad, because many ask if I speak French, and I keep having to say "biensûr!", which means "of course!". Some Parisiens respond well to foreigns, and are very nice...others, not so much.

I'm in my room now taking a little break before I go out again at 3 to walk around some more! Our group will be meeting at 4 to go on a tour of the Musée d'Orsay. We'll probably break up into smaller groups and go to dinner after that. Going to restaurants around here is so fun, because everything is different than in the US! And last night I discovered hot wine, which I enjoyed very much and look forward to having again tonight :)

Yesterday was a harder day: I say that because I was exhausted in the middle of the day. We had class at 11 yesterday, where I embarrassingly I had trouble staying awake (not because it wasn't interesting, but because it was 5am my time). Luckily, the teacher was very understanding!
After that class I promptly collapsed in bed and slept from 12:30 to 2:30. I forced myself to get up then, though I was tempted to stay in bed. We had a meeting at the louvre at 5, so I decided I would go walk around for a bit. I explored the whole area around the Louvre, though didn't do much shopping (it's very expensive here, especially in certain areas). I then took a while to walk around the gardens and square outside the Louvre. They are beautiful, and I vaguely remember visiting them when I was very young.
Our tour lasted around 2.5 hours, where we saw the important women: Mona Lisa, The Venus of Milo, The Victory, and a few other things. The Louvre is huge! It would take at least a full week to see everything in there.

Exhausted and famished, I and my friends Elizabeth and Chelsea went to get dinner. We ate in a very cute little cafe near the Pont Neuf, which is very close to our hotel. Our server seemed to enjoy the fact that we were American, and even helped Elizabeth open her escargot!
After that, a quick nutella crepe, and back to the hotel! I studied a bit, and then went to bed, exhausted, but still unable to sleep. Hence, the melatonin. That should help me adjust!

Something very interesting has started to happen: I find speaking English a bit difficult! It now sounds strange to me, and writing in it is more taxing than usual. I've found that even in this blog, my sentence structure is a bit odd. SO COOL!

That's all for now,
À bientôt mes amis!