seventh update

Yesterday i slept in pretty late. the family made came in and was probably impressed with my ability to sleep. I would have been. She also did some laundry and aperently the dryer does actually work. the knob can only be turned by someone.. much stronger than i am. next time... we'll make it happen

yesterday, Haley and Ariel met up with Courtney and me to do another walk. we met up infront of the eiffel tower and took some pics. i had some action shots doing cart wheels, but they aren't on my camera so i'm going to make them email me those pics. it was pretty silly. we went on the first Marais walk after that, and we saw Hotel de sens, jardins saint-paul, the remains of philippe auguste's wall, hotel de sully, which is near where Victor Hugo's house is. We got to go inside that. then we saw musee ccarvavalet which has some cool mideaval stuff. then we saw Hotel marle. again, some of it i was a tad confused of what the importance was. we were going to do the second half of the walk but it started pooring on us pretty hard core so w2 clase wimped out and went to our usual sandwich place. I actually think the ladies that work there get annoyed when we come...

For my French 362 class, we're supposed to do some stuff focusing on stuff in paris that we are really passionate about, so if you are passionate about architecture, then look at buildings, etc. I always hate stuff like that 'cause honestly i am really not passionate about anything. I was thinking about it and i actually get pretty worked up about sexism stuff, and i thought i could maybe focus on that. eleanor of aquitaineEleanor of Aquitaine was pretty important for feminism stuff, even though i don't think she was in paris all that much. there's also the courtly love which did a lot for women back in the day. idk, any ideas?

I have also been eating non stop! i'm seriously going to get fat...

Anyways, last night, Ariel came over to spend the night. we had lots of chocolate, soda, and chips. it was pretty fun. We watched makeup tutorials and chris crocker clips. I have also wanted to straighten my hair really bad. i basically never do at home but the fact that i just can't here cause of the rain really makes me want to have straight hair so last night i did mine and ariels. it was really nice feeling having straight hair. we also teased it and did makeup. fun times

Last night i had the most psycho dreams. i dreamed that i had to duel a baby for something for mom and the baby was psycho. it came back to life like 4 times and i had to smash his head in and stuff. it was really graphic and icky. Then i had a dream that i kissed brandt, my old tennis coach. I have no idea why that would come up in my dreams, it really freaked me out. it was all so strange. it was one of those mornings this morning where it was super relieving to wake up. I asked Ariel "what could have given me those dreams?" and she said "Chris Crocker." it's prob true.

today we met up with more kids in our group to do another walk. we saw the Musee de cluny, the Sorbonne, the pantheon, the st. etiene-du-mont church and the Roman arena. It was nice to socialize with the other kids in the group a little. i was sort of beginnign to feel a tad cut off from the croud. Cluny was really really amazing. the *almost just fell off the really tall stool* the "lady and the unicorn tapestries" are really breathtaking. i guess i really .like tapestries now. I had to buy this little pamphlet on them. they were too cool. i just liked all the pieces that were in there, though, they were just some things i haven't normally seen in other places. i liked the whole thing. the pantheon was pretty cool, all the graves were neet to see, like voltair's and the like. st-etienne-du-mont church is pretty cool, and it has a tad of saint genevieve's remains left. Revolutionaries destroyed most of them. The revolutionaries seemed to have destroyed a lot of things so they are starting to bug me. The Roman arena was cool cause you could still see the animal cages at the bottom. It's also interesting cause it is used as a park. there were tons of kids playing soccer in the center of it! pretty wild if you ask me. After that, we were all cold and tired so we went into a pub and had some sandwiches. good deal. of course i wanted more food... so i ate some more chocolate. oh boy.

OH! and Ariel is from springville so we know tons of the same people and she even knows Ryan. It's weird that i know so many people from there. pretty random. It's fun to talk about mutual friends and give honest opinions about them. Random connections.

Lidwin has a friend over for a sleep over right now. they are in the theater room that's between courney's and my room. I went over there to brush my teeth and Lidwin and her friend were dancing to some beyonce songs they found on youtube and it was super cute. :) Earlier they were doing karioki and seriously, really cute. lidwin asked be if she needed to turn down the bass but she said it funny and i had a hard time at first but i figured it out and said it was ok.

Last night when Courtney and i were coming up to our gate, like 7 guys with their faces covered by bandannas walked by with crowbars in their hand. it was creepy. it looked like they were about to go cause some trouble or already had. I'm glad they ignored us.

and i photo bombed some girl's picture. that's always fun. Ok, i think i'm done now... seriously.

sixth update

Yesterday I had french again and that was fine, i guess. I'm expected to spell everything right in that class and, as you know, i can't even do that in English. Hopefully i'll do fine. So far i have remembered quite a bit of it so it's not that hard. hopefully i can keep it up the rest of the semester. I swear i have the worst memory in the world. memorizing vocab and grammar and stuff is so hard for me. we'll see how it goes. I also had French 362 with Ricks. so far it looks like it is going to be managable. Apperently at BYU, that class is actually taught in french! I'm glad i don't have to deal with that...

After class, courtney, ariel, and i went wondering. someone had sent ariel some instructions to cheep shopping places so we tried to find them. we mostly failed but we ended up in a pretty cool part of town. I guess it was a jewish quarter. there were lots of cheep places and the buildings there were showing their age. I actually liked it there. i think i'll go back henever i can.

our first art history class was today. our teacher, valery, is very bubbly for a french person. mostly we are just focusing on french paintings from just before the revolution. I was kind of just hoping for a three month long tour but i'll live. we focused on like 6 paintings in three hours which was hard for some of us because we wanted to look around! I'm still excited to be taking this class. she's going to take us to Versailles three times! can't wait.

today i slept in until 11:30 and it was amazing. Courtney and i met up with haley at the RER station and then headed over to the eiffel tower and met up with Ariel, Rosalie, Sky, Brooklyne, Richard, and Mike. we took some pics there and then split up. Haley, Courtney, Ariel, and i headed over to the latin quarter for another paris walk. It was pretty cool, i guess. Lots of cheep food there which i really like. There was the narrowest road in paris hich was called "the cat who fishes." random... and kind of cool i suppose. I don't even remember what else we saw. The latin quarter is where all the students would hang out because that's where the old university is where they spoke in Latin... hence the name.

I had dinner with the family tonight. We had Raqlette! i told them i ate it with my family before and we learned about it from Swiss friends. They only used one kind of cheese that was verry mild. very fun. For dinner we just had yogurt and fruit. I seriously stuffed myself. i ate way more than i should have. I spoke a little to Lauren which was a lot less awkward than it can be sometimes. We talked about school and what we're studying. She is doing business and we discussed how America seems to have a lot more choices for studies whereas most french kids do business. i toldd them i wanted to see the Dali museum and when i said that Dali is my favorite artist the dad did one of those joking "you're odd" faces. and whenever I tell french people that i want to learn norwegian they have the funniest reaction. when i told valery she said "where are you from?!" and the mom was just like "why?" and made a disgusted face/that's the most useless thing i have ever heard of face. she also made a "it's smelly" gesture. then the dad made some joke about how he speaks sweedish and Ikea but i didn't quite catch on. i think it was like "i speak sweedish...Ikea" idk. So dinner was really funny, today. I felt much more comfortable today and i felt like they were treating me more like a norman=l somewhat smart person tonight.

Usually during dinner, i use the napkin modestly but two days ago i noticed that they just fold up their napkins and put them back in the cabinet for reuse and it occured to me that they never really use them. I feel pretty bad now.

Here's my address here if you want to google map it! 6 avenue des Tilleuls - 78290 croissy sur seine :) enjoy!

School starts...

yesterday, i was in one of those moods where i couldn't stop telling my life story. ok, ok it was just that i was talking a little more about my life than is usual... if that makes ANY sense. I hate being in that mood too cause while i'm talking, I realize that the other person could care less, but i keep talking anyways. oh my, me and my moods

Class started yesterday. I had french 201. I forgot how much work went into that class! I forgot about all the assignments and such. I got super spoiled during 202. 202 was my most chill class last semester. of course last semester sucked...

I was done with class after that and we went wondering to find some food. We found this little bakery that sells AMAZING sandwiches for not that much money and it's really close to the institute. All us kids are going to frequent that place a lot. I seriously went four times yesterday. they also have sweets to sell.

While on this trip i have not been able to satisfy my hunger ever. I eat a lot... seriously about 4 times what i ate last semester. Of course i didn't eat that much at home. All their food is cooked in TONS of butter. I'm a little afraid of earning me a set of love handles. I told Courtney to keep an eye out for me... Thank goodness we do so much walking. Hopefully that will be enough to keep me skinny.

a bunch of girls and i went to the St. Dennis church thingy. While there i really wanted to find a post office so i could mail off some letters including my visa letter. the line in the post office was super long! idk if it was like the only post office in the ten mile radius or if everyone just decided to go that day but it was crazy. I was able to do a good portion of it in French but then we had troubles when i asked for the confirmation of delivery for my visa thing. it took her forever to figure out what i was talking about. By the time i was finally done the church was closing. The other girls said it wasn't that amazing inside... so i guess it's ok

That night, all us kids met up at Dr. Ricks place for family night. I sat and talked with ariel a lot and we had a giggle attack randomly while Ricks was trying to talk to us. It was fun. After that, ariel, Bart, courtneys a, Rebbecca, and i were playing with Max and Jack, the Ricks boys. They were sitting on our legs while we tried to hold them up off the floor. We were all able to do it! We wound those boy up a ton. Poor dr. and sr. Ricks.

Today i woke up with a cold... I just have a runny nose and a slight fever. Nothing i can't handle, and after tomorrow it'll be the weekend so i suppose i plan on resting up.

Before Courtney and I left for school, we had to tell our host mom that we ate all our breakfast and that we needed all. she was asking what we needed more of and when we told her we ate everything her jaw hit the floor. i wonder if the French just don't eat much breakfast. we got resupplied though. :) It was funny.

We had French 201 again, today, and just went over homework and vocab. I knew most of it except personality stuff... that was hard for me to learn last year and i have a feeling it will be hard again this year. Hopefully it will be ok. The first chapter is pretty simple stuff. Right after that we had French Conversation 211. In that class, we have to read three articles a week and keep journals on them in french, learn 50 new words a week, have seven assigned conversations with my family and keep journals on that and i can't remember what else. It shouldn't be too hard, but to be honest, i'm not sure i will be able to keep up with the work just 'cause that's how i roll. I don't really need those credits, so i could possibly drop that class and pick up the religion one because i do actually need religion credits. 211 would offer me lots of practice with the language but i already feel like i have a pretty good amount of practice and 201 will def help... idk.

after that, i made another visit to that awesome bakery. i'm able to order everything in french. well ok, it's not that hard, actually, but i'm still pretty proud of myself. after that, Courtney, Haily, Ariel and i did the Notre dame walk. We saw Notre Dame, obviously, then we went into the escevation place where they found gallo-roman ruins. It's weird to think that when i'm walking through Paris, i'm pretty much standing over ancient ruins that are underground. It's odd how it all just got built over like that. Next was Saint Chapelle. I was suprised by how small it is! but it is still quite impressive. It is prob one of the most colerful gothic churches i have been in. I really really enjoyed it. The sucky thing is that they are cleaning some of the glass so the front of the chaple where it is super impressive was actually covered up. even then i was really impressed.

We all split up and went home after. I did my French 362 reading and took a nap before dinner. I was feeling really crappy and i wasn't sure if i would be able to make it to dinner. When i finally got out of my bed my nose stopped running, thank goodness, i didn't want to be sniffling all through dinner. I also felt much better. They could tell that i wasn't doing so hot, though, so tonight they didn't really talk to us much. I do a little more talking than Courtney, even though she def has a better vocab than i do. I just try to say as much as i can.

Random side note, but the stools at the bar in my room are just a little too high. I have the hardest time getting on and off them.

Now for more homework! oh my...

Fourth Update

yesterday... I can't really remember it all that well. I was in a really irritable mood for some reason which sucked. the whole time i was just biting my tongue and trying not to glare too much. of course i hate being in that mood and i know it's irrational so usually i like to be alone. Of course that wasn't going to happen. it was a pretty good day, though.

yesterday courtney and i just hopped into town to knock out another paris walks walk. we met up with Richard, Mike, Brooklyne, Sky, Rosalie and Ariel. We split up into two groups. Ariel, Courtney and i went on the Metro walk, and the others went shopping and on a different walk.the metro walk was kind of useless. we learned a bit about the metro's history which was pretty cool i guess. nothing interesting enough to type down, though. we saw the arc de triomphe and there were street dancers there performing. I had to check it out expecting great things. it wasn't all that impressive...

we then went to some french department store so i could buy supplies. Everything is redic expensive! notebooks were like ten euros and a pack of twenty envelopes were 6. holy cow. It's a good thing it's the soldes (sales) right now or that would have hurt. it still did a tad... i miss how cheap everything is in the US! idk what all my european studies teachers say... that is def one awesome thing about the US. and how our outlets have two plugs... and our toilets are in our bathrooms... I was able to talk to all the employees in french the whole time, though, so i'm proud.

Courtney and i took Ariel back to show her our place. apperently we got the set up. like the best place here. then we went into our little town to check out any food we could get. it was really cute! It had the bakery, buchery, cheese place, winery, fruit stand... everything. it was all still open too. it was prob at 7 this point. we went into this one pub looking for food and an awkward exchange of words revieled that no one serves food past a certain time. It was weird cause all the little shops were still open. oh well. I'm also getting really frusturated wtih my lack of ability to communicate. I'm actually looking forward to my french class for once!

That night i watched the French VMAs with Lidwin and the mom. Robbi Williams won something. he has been around for forever. they were very suprised to learn that he isn't really popular in the US. Black eyed pees won best foreign song. i guess they are really popular here. i noticed though, that a lot of american music that they listen to, i have never heard. rock operas are the thing now, too. it was very interesting. Then the dad came down and they put in Slumdog Millionaire. It was in french and they only had french subtitles hich helped me a little. Even though i didn't understand a good portion of it, it was still a really good movie. It's not really a feel good movie though... kind of a tragedy even though the main charecter wins out in the end. it was fun to be able to socialise wtih the family and to hang out with them.

They don't sleep... They are always up later than us and wake up way before us. It makes me woner. They prob think we sleep a ton. They also don't eat greens or drink a ton of water. I'm not sure how they are so healthy...

Today we had church! it's at 9:30 which sucks a tad cause of our commute. we left a bit late but courtney and i seriously lucked out with catching the train on time so we weren't too late... most of the ward aren't actually French. there are a lot of chinese people, black people, and americans. it's also one of those wards that does everything backwards. I didn't understand any of reliefe society... bored. most of us went to the single adult's class (a couple went to the english class and Rich, our token asian went to the manderine class). it was taught by an american in French so i understood most of it. It was about adam and eve. pretty interesting. They invited us to go to their institute class and FHE and i really want to get involved with them. the other kids are kind of hesitant though.

One of the guys, mike, came over for a bit. he just came into paris yesterday so he's pretty jet lagged. he fell asleep on the couch in the basement by our rooms and was snoring really loud. there is apperently another older girl and her fiance came down to use the computer. he didn't really say anything to me but i started giggling and mike's snoring and then he looked at me, then looked at mike and started to giggle as well. idk why but it was just a grand moment. he then asked me how to say that in english. i tried to tell the story at dinner. it wasn't very succesfull and i ended up snoring since i didn't know the verb... why would i. they wanted to know the english word for snore too. well... amusing.

I just had dinner. it was just lidwin, tiphaine, tristan and the mom were there. we had a salad wtih some weird but tasty asperigus egg thingy with more bread and cheese. Tristan left and then we had a "crepe fete" I ate a ton because i haven't really eaten anything the past two days. it's rough trying to feed myself. they had a cool little pan kind of like our racklette thingy only for crepes. it was pretty cool. i tried to talk a log. I'm so terrible but they are pretty good about helping me through it with conjugations and such. i'm so glad to have that all refreshed in my french class. boo for homework though. we talked about the princess and the frog and the.... stuff. Mostly i didn't understand them but i didn't tune them out this time and whenever i heard a sentance i sort of understood i would try to throw my two cents in. they prob think i'm super random... but i want to try and talk more. they asked if i liked avatar and i was able to say something like it was beautiful but i thought the plot as a tad stupid. then i tried to say that the "blue people" were like american indians. Tiphaine told me that she did a project on cowboys and indians in school. I talked a little about the reservations about how they are good and bad. bad because they don't work and are fat and love beer but good because it preserves their culture. you're going to think i'm a nerd but like three days ago i was practicing talking about the reservation for the heck of it (i like practicing certain convo scenarios just to practice speaking...) so i was excited to be able to say all that. Idk why but during the whole dinner i was trying not to giggle. like when i accidentaly gulped my water really loud or when the mom dropped her crepe in her lap... i mostly held it in. thank goodness!

the family pretty much doesn't laugh. They talk loudly and over each other and joke but they just don't really laugh, and if they do it's really quiet. it made me notice how much i laugh. it's odd. i wonder what they think of it.

also their floors and walls are super dirty. my feet get really dusty when i just walk from the shower to my room. They always wear shoes. Just a difference i guess, cause in the US we always keep our floors clean and take off our shoes in the house.

Third Post

Yesterday was basically just a day to ourselves to get settled and do whatever. Courtney and i slept in and were ready around eleven because mom was going to show us around town a little around then. We have breakfast in my room. the fridge is in the wine cellar in my room and we eat at the bar. mom drove us to the supermarket and the RER train station that is close. they are both about a seven minute walk away from the house. My metro pass covers the train. the commute to the institute(which is really close to Hotel de Ville) is about a 45 minutes. It's pretty simple. the commute just means i have to wake up pretty early. YUCK!

Courtney and i went into town to find the institute which is in this old castle like thing that has a court yard. that's also where church is going to be. I'm pretty excited for church, idk why. After that, courtney and i found a cebab place and ate up. it was super yummy and we stuffed ourselves. After that we wondered around Paris for about an hour. We wondered around on the island that is right next to the island that has Notre Dame on it (I really need to learn the names of the islands).

We headed back to Croissy sur Seine (where the house is) and went to the supermarket to buy shampoo, detergent, and dish soap. I also really wanted crackers but the ones i baught are really bland... i just tried one. the supermarket was just a mini albertsons though. We went though the self check out and i had issues with my american credit card but it ended up being ok.

We had dinner with the family again last night. Their oldest daughter, Lauren, was there and their cousin, Roman was there. This night they didn't talk to us much because they were busy talking with Roman and Lauren. At one point they asked me what the cost of ciggeretts are in America. I said that i didn't know but that i hear there are a lot of tax. Dad was supprised that neither my mom or dad smoke. Lauren said a lot of french youth smoke. I said that not a lot of americans smoke ciggeretts anymore, but a lot of youth smoke marijuana which made them laugh. They also asked something about jobs (I now realize that i misunderstood what exactly they were asking...) But i think they were asking how much people work in america. I said that it depends on the person like 14 year olds work on the weekends and they were amazed that 14 year olds would have a job.You should have heard their gasps! they asked how easy it was to find work in America and i said it was fairly easy and they informed me that it is pretty hard in France.

The mom said she liked it if we helped with the dishes so Courtney and i tried but we were mostly in the ay and getting things wrong so we just kind of stood awkwardly for a bit and then wondered downstairs. we were both stressing out because we weren't sure where we were supposed to be like if we should socialize with the family more or what... so we opted to stay downstairs. The kids then came downstairs and were watching a movie in the theater so i didn't really want to shower and them to see me all wet and such so i just hung out in my room and fell asleep. it's kind of awkward cause i never know where i'm supposed to go and i don't want to bother them too much. Oh well, hopefully i'll figure it out sometime.

Today we had to meet at the institute at ten for a lecture given by a past director of the paris program. Honestly his lecture was a little boring because I didn't really learn anything new. He also said some things i didn't exactly agree with. Oh well.

a little off subject but i have decided i am a tad sick of my european studies major. So far, all it has been are someone self-righteous men trying to convince the students of how Europe is better than the United States in all matters. I just want to learn about Europe, not argue who's the best. oh well, i'm going to stick with it.

anyways, after that we all made our way to a north african eatery for free lunch. it was pretty good. I socialized with some new kids. after that, most of us made our way to sacre coeur for one of our paris walks for the class. Sacre Coeur is a really neat little church, you just have to look out for all the people trying to get money out of you. the walk was really confusing and not that neat... we saw some useless broken fountains and the like. oh well. it took about two hours. we were all laughing and having fun, though. after that we got Crepes and then took Ariel home because she was alone and lives in the middle of Paris and then headed home! no dinner with the family tonight. Our french teacher tagged along. We also decided that we were going to try to knock all the paris walks out of the way early before school gets too intense and so we can know paris better. there are 21 walks and they all take at least two hours... oy.

sorry the last bit is a tad rushed. I'm super tired and want to sleep. :) it's pretty long anyways. Well, i Miss you all! <3

Second Update

Sorry for all the rambling and grammatical mistakes i make in all these updates.

I'm really tired and having a hard time soaking up everything. Thank goodness i have three months to be able to soak up stuff. Yesterday the rest of the kids met up with us finally. we went on the boat tour of Paris. of course that was really neat. After that we were all really cold and tired so Ricks sent us back to our hotel. It was basically a formula one only with the plastic shower and toilet in our rooms. The bedding smelled like cigarettes. I still smell like them actually.

I slept a bit better last night. I had tons of crazy dreams that kept my night from being too restful. I dreamed about monsters, ice skating/skiing, dating troubles, and being at girls camp and having a hard time finding a toilet while bears kept licking the back of my knees (apparently i hate that). I woke up at like 5 so i did a little better last night than the night before. hopefully tonight will be great.

This morning we were all sent off to get our Louvre passes. That was fun and took a while. After that we split up into groups. One to go shopping and the other to explore the louvre a little. One girl, Ariel, really wanted to see the winged victory and one other painting so we hung out mostly in that area. I don't know much about art and the other girls were all talking about their favorite artists there. I'll be happy to know more so i can join in the conversation. All i can really say now is "i like Dali..."

After that we all met back up at the hotel where Ricks met us so we could get on our way to our host families. My roommate, courtney, and i took a cab. Cabs always make me sick and they all smell the same. Thankfully our host family lives right next to the train that we can take to the metro.

Our host family lives in a large old house way outside of Paris. The patriarch is a surgeon and i understood that he works on intestines. He was very interested to learn that my dad is a bone surgeon. Courtney and I basically have the whole basement to ourselves. We each have our own rooms. My room has a dresser where all my cloths go. I'm having problems trying to figure out where to put all my stuff but i think i'll figure that out. I also have a mini bar in my room and the wine cellar is connected to my room where our fridge is. Courtney's room is a bit smaller but it has more storage. It also has the bathroom that only has a shower, a sink, and a chair. When we shower we have to leave the window open so the steam doesn't damage to walls. it's cold. the toilet is across the hall from my room and has no sink. Connected to Courtney's room is a living room with a projector and a large screen and the computer. The house is really old and even has that old smell. they have a lot of modern furniture with some antiques mixed in. They also have a pretty intimidating alarm system. I really hope i don't mess that up!

I like Courtney. She is still recovering from a car accident. She injured her head and apparently her serotonin levels are thrown off. She's not feeling too hot right now but hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow.

we ate dinner with the family. They are very nice and talk during the whole meal. They speak to us in French for the most part but when Courtney and i are having troubles understanding they will switch to English. Their English is pretty good, about as good as Courtney's and my French. They asked us questions the whole time and i was surprised by how much i could say... i was still terrible. We just talked about very basic stuff. I said how many siblings i had and their ages, how long i studied French and so on. it was very fun. I hope that I will be able to keep up better as the semester progresses. Their correcting me is actually really helpful.

There are three daughters and a son. The daughters are 13, 15, and 20 and the boy is 17. the 20 year old has moved out and named Laura. The boy is named Tristan and i can't remember the others. they are a cute family. They aren't LDS.

Ariving on the 18th

So the flights were ok. on the way to dallas i sat by a New Zealander. pretty cool. I guess he was in the air force. On my second flight to Paris, I had a window seat and the seat next to me all to myself which was awesome for when i took my sleeping pill. I woke up when we landed and looked at my watch to see it was only 4 am in paris, which made me confused cause i knew we were supposed to land around 9am. it turns out we were in New York and had to switch planes for whatever reason. I was super groggy cause of my sleeping pills so i never got to find out what was wrong. We all had to just sit in the terminal for an hour or so until we got our new plane. I was able to get the row to myself again and slept the rest of the way. I also ate tons knowing that i prob wouldn't eat a ton when I landed. I'm ok with landing late in paris because today is pretty lazy and all i'm doing is sitting around... that's all i really want to do. I'm super tired...

I went to check out my hotel that was reserved but it ended up being in a pretty sketchy part of town. Professor Ricks doesn't have a car but he decided that i shouldn't stay there so he took me to his apartment and we checked out the hotel across the street where i ended up staying. It was really cute. the room was small but it was just right for the just me on the first night. I hung out with Ricks and his wife and two sons. they have wii in their place and i ate dinner with them. I'm actually on sister Ricks' computer. it's nice to be early to get comfortable with the place and get to know the family.

It's the second day now. Last night i woke up at around 1 and had a hard time going back to sleep. I ate some of the chocolate i brought and was able to go back to sleep. I had to wake up at 6 to meet up with Ricks and go to the new hotel to meet up with the other kids. Only one girl came so we dropped off our luggage and went off on our own and checked out Notre Dame! it was fun.

I already feel really comfortable here. The Metro is really easy to navigate. It's really simple. I'm liking Paris. I already feel like i own the City.