--> The Seine The past few days have been filled with information sessions, guided tours, and lots of walking. On Thursday we started the day with a two hour discussion on being a student in France, safety, security, and other practical matters. The head of our program decided that this presentation should be done in French...leading me to completely zone out. My lack of intelligence with the French language makes me think that the past 10 years of studying really may have been useless, we'll see. After the first two hours we had a lunch break where I tried some French cheese, I have absolutely no idea what it was called but it wasn't half bad. Then we had more meetings about our host families. After all the meetings me and my roommate, Caroline, were so exhausted we both napped. Then lovely dinner time in the cafeteria. Let's just say my diet yesterday consisted of a croissant and two cookie dough flavored balance bars. We were free for the night at that point and a few of us went to a local pub and just sat around for a couple of hours. Then we went straight to sleep, jet lag is still kicking in.
Today was a much more exciting touristy day. In my last post I say "Welcome to Paris" I really didn't know what that meant until I actually got into the heart of the city today. It is absolutely beautiful. We started out this morning going to the ILFC (my school for the next four months). I took my first ride on the metro as well! Once we got to the school we were told we had to take our oral placement exams. Things got so screwed up and so confusing they eventually kicked us out without taking the tests. That was quite the relief for me. I did get my school ID card though, so the trip wasn't completely pointless. After the ILFC a few of us wanted to see where the IPP school was (another school I have classes in). The schools are almost directly diagonal from each other and we get to cut through the "Jardin du Luxembourg" to arrive at the IPP school. It is a beautiful giant garden that well be even more beautiful once the weather starts to get nice.
After checking out the school we went to a crepe and sandwich shop and I got my first crepe in France! It had sugar and butter on it, very delicious, not very healthy. After lunch we decided just to walk around to see the stores and stands around school. After staring at the map for a while we realized we were very close to Notre Dame. We decided to go there. This was the first major monument I have seen so far and it definitely lived up to it's expectations. 
It was very beautiful on the outside and the stained glass made it even prettier on the inside.
After that we started walking around to try and find a metro station to take us to the louvre. The longer we walked the more we couldnt find a station. The longer we walked also brought us close to the Louvre. We ended up just walking there. By this time you could imagine our feet were killing us.
Once we got to the Louvre we met up with the rest of the group and Dr. Costello (the director of the program) gave a tour, again all in French, again I couldn't understand a thing :( 
I got to see all the famous sites such as the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.
After the Louvre I met up with Amanda and Lauren for dinner and finally saw the infamous Bastille that Julie talks about all the time on her blog. It is such an exciting area with so many people and so much to do. I am so excited to finally move in over there on Sunday. That's all I have for now but tomorrow should be more exciting...Versailles here I come!
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